physical attractiveness

• Physical attractiveness plays a major part in the formation of relationships and has been the subject of various explanations by psychologists.
• The halo effect is the idea that people who are judged to be attractive are typically perceived in a positive light.
• Dion et al. (1972) found that attractive people are consistently rated as successful, kind and sociable when compared with unattractive people.
• The matching hypothesis suggests that a person’s choice of partner is a balance between a desire to have the most physically attractive partner possible and their wish to avoid being rejected by someone who is 'way out of their league'.
• Palmer and Peterson (2012) asked participants to rate attractive and unattractive people in terms of how politically competent and knowledgeable they believed them to be, and found that attractive people were consistently rated higher on these characteristics compared to unattractive ones.
• Explanations based on the idiographic approach may be more appropriate for studying romantic relationships.
• Elaine Walster and her colleagues first proposed the matching hypothesis in 1966 and conducted research to test it.
• The matching hypothesis is based on a nomothetic approach to studying human behavior, but there are significant individual differences in the importance of physical attractiveness.
• The matching hypothesis ignores the fact that people may compensate for the lack of physical attractiveness with other qualities.
• Physical attractiveness seems to be an important factor in forming relationships across cultures.
• Other research has failed to provide conclusive evidence for the matching hypothesis.
• Taylor et al (2011) found that website users were more likely to try and arrange a meeting with a potential partner who was more physically attractive than them, contradicting the matching hypothesis.
• There are significant individual differences in the importance of physical attractiveness in relationships.
• The matching hypothesis mainly applies to short-term relationships, while long-term relationships focus more on similarity of values and needs satisfaction.
• Towhey (1979) found that physical attractiveness was more important for participants who displayed sexist attitudes.
• There are significant gender differences in how important appearance is for attraction.
• They invited 752 first-year students at the University of Minnesota to attend a dance party, secretly judging them in terms of attractiveness when they picked up their tickets.
• During the intervals at the dance party, and 4 to 6 months later, students were asked whether they found their partner attractive and whether they would like to go on a second date with them.
• Feingold (1988) conducted a meta-analysis of 17 studies using real-life couples, establishing a strong correlation between the partners’ ratings of attractiveness, just as predicted by the matching hypothesis.