The study included 54 women and six men ages 45 to 72 who underwent cosmetic surgery on their face. Dr. Chauhan and his colleagues assembled before-and-after photos of each patient, mixed them up at random, and then had 40 first-year medical students guess the age of the person in each photo.
On average, the students said the patients looked 7.2 years younger in their after photo than in their before photo. Moreover, the average age the students assigned to the after photos was roughly nine years lower than the patient’s actual age when the photo was taken.
The more work a person had done, the younger they tended to look afterward. People who had a face-lift and neck lift looked an average of 5.7 years younger post-surgery. Adding in eyelid work shaved off nearly two additional years, and adding a forehead lift on top of that took off about another year. People who had all four procedures were said to look 8.4 years younger in their after picture.
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