I recently got a beard and had conversations with a few people about whether I look more attractive with it. When talking with one girl she said that the effect of the beard was that I look more mature and that the question is whether that's the image that I want to project.

In some situations looking more mature will be helpful and attractive while in other it won't. That information will get lost when you focus on a single scale of attractiveness.

Despite matureness other qualities such as friendliness, trustworthiness and openness can also be communicate through looks and some people will count them into attractiveness while other won't.