Physical Attraction

• Physical attractiveness is an important factor in the formation of romantic relationships
• Physical attractiveness usually applies to how appealing we find a person’s face, it is an immediate and accessible way to rate a potential partner
• The assumption of PA is that people seek to form relationships with the most attractive person available
• Cunningham (1986) found that males place great importance on physical attraction when choosing a mate, the appearance of a woman is an important cue to her health and fertility
• Cunningham (1986) also found that women are attracted to more masculine traits since they suggest genetic fitness, they also suggest that a man has good characteristics that will be valuable in offspring
• The ‘halo effect‘ refers to how one distinguishing feature has a disproportionate influence on our judgement of people’s character
• Dion et al (1972) found that physically attractive people are considered to be more outgoing, more sociable, intelligent, happy and more successful. The belief that good looking people probably have these characteristics makes them more attractive to us, so we behave positively towards them
• Gennell and Ceci (2010) found that physically less attractive people are 22% more likely to be convicted in a court of law and more likely to get prison sentences on average 22 months longer than attractive people. This supports the halo effect, that physically attractive people are generally seen as more trustworthy than lesser physical attractive people
• Feingold (1988) carried out a meta analysis of 18 studies between 1970 and 1987. A total of 1644 couples were included in the sample, some romantic couples and other pairs of friends
• Feingold (1988) found a significant correlation in ratings of attractiveness between the romantic couples. This effect persisted for both objective ratings by outsiders and for self ratings of attractiveness
• Towhey (1979) asked male and female participants to rate how much they liked a target individual based on a photo and some biographical information. The participants also completed the MACHO scale which measured sexist attitudes and behaviours
• Towhey (1979) found that participants who scored highly on the scale were more influenced by physical attractiveness when judging the likeability of the photographs. Low scorers on the MACHO scale were less sensitive to the influence of physical attractiveness