Physical Attractiveness

• Physical attractiveness


  How appealing a person's appearance is, usually based on a set of cultural criteria.
• Halo effect


  • When one distinguishing feature can have a disproportionate influence of your judgement on the person
  • There are preconceived ideas about the personality of a person due to their looks.
  • It can lead to the reason that good looking people are often seen as more kind, sociable and compassionate.
  • "self fulfilling prophecy" - when we behave more positively towards the attractive person
• Matching hypothesis


  The belief that we do not select the most attractive person and rather go for someone of a similar attractiveness to avoid rejection.
• Walster and Walster (1969)

  PROCEDURE

  • Male and female students invited to a dance
  • Rated for physical attractiveness by observers and did a questionnaire abot themselves
  • Told that they would be paired up for the night however, it was actually done randomly

  FINDINGS

  • The hypothesis was not supported
  • The most liked partners were the most physically attractive RATHER than taking their own attractiveness into account

  BUT Walster did the study again and had Ps that were allowed to choose their partners and they chose partners that had a similar level of physical beauty to themselves.
• Research Support - Halo Effect

  Palmer and Peterson

  • physically attractive people were rated as more politically knowledgeable and competent.
  • halo effect persisted even when it was seen that these people had no expertise
  • this has negative implications for political processes
• Evolutionary Explanation

  Cunningham et al

  • women who had large eyes, small nose, prominent cheekbones were rated as more attractive by Hispanic, Asian and white men
  • the idea of attractiveness is very culturally sensitive
• Challenging research

  Taylor et al

  • studied activity logs of the online dating side and was shown that the matching attractiveness was not really a central point of choosing
  • good as it studied choice and not just preference

  BUT Feingold's research- meta analysis of 17 studies contradicts this as there was a correlation in physical attractiveness rating and choice