Physical Attractiveness

• Physical attractiveness: We instinctively find certain features attractive and we can use evolutionary ideas to help us understand why. Typically males look for signs of fertility including features that symbolise youth such as big eyes, large lips, a waist to hip ratio of 0.7 and facial symmetry. Females look for strength and facial symmetry to ensure her offspring have the best genes on offer.
• It has been found that physical attractiveness is not only important right at the start of a relationship. McNulty et al (2008) found evidence that the initial attractiveness that brought the partners together continued to be an important feature of the relation ship after marriage, for at least several years.
• Halo effect: This describes the idea that an individuals attractiveness tends to have a disproportionate influence on our judgements of their other attributes, e.g. their personality, making us view them in a more positive light.
• Dion et al. (1972) found that attractive people are consistently rated as more successful, kind, strong, and sociable when compared with unattractive people. We not only believe that good-looking people are more physically attractive, we expect them to have other desirable characteristics as well. This expectation from others may make them even more attractive in the way they respond – so we tend to behave more positively towards them in return (a good example of self-fulfilling prophecy
• Matching hypothesis: in real life people also use common sense to estimate whether a prospective partner will find us attractive, and therefore they don't automatically go for the most attractive person around, but choose a partner who matches their own level of physical attractiveness. This is referred to as the matching hypothesis (proposed by Walster et al).
• According to the matching hypothesis, a person’s choice of partner is a compromise 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'. As a result, people often settle for a partner who has roughly the same level of physical attractiveness.
• Palmer and Peterson (2012) found that physically attractive people were rated as more politically knowledgeable and competent than unattractive people. This halo effect was so powerful that it even persisted when the participants knew that these ‘knowledgeable’ people had no particular expertise. This has obvious implications for the political process. The halo effect has been found in many other areas of everyday life, confirming that this aspect of physical attractiveness is important in the initial formation of relationships.
• The matching hypothesis is to some extent supported by research. For example, Feingold (1988) conducted a meta-analysis of 17 studies, and found a strong correlation between partners’ ratings of attractiveness. This shows that people tend to choose a partner who has a similar level of physical attractiveness to themselves, just as the matching hypothesis predict
• However, Taylor et al. (2011) investigated the activity log on a dating website and found that website users were more likely to try and arrange a meeting with a potential partner who was more physically attractive than them. These findings contradict the matching hypothesis, as according to its predictions, website users should seek more dates with a person who is similar in terms of attractiveness, because it provides them with a better chance of being accepted by a potential partner. Although these contradictory findings may be more typical of male behaviour than female behaviour.
• The matching hypothesis may be suffering from a beta-bias, as it assumes that men and women are very similar in their view of the importance of physical attractiveness.
• Meltzer et al. (2014) found that men rate their long-term relationships more satisfying if their partner is physically attractive, while for women their partner’s attractiveness didn’t have a significant impact on relationship satisfaction. This shows that there are significant gender differences in how important appearance is for attraction. Therefore findings that contradict the matching hypothesis might occur because this distinction between males and females is not being made.
• Another weakness of the matching hypothesis is that it mainly applies to short-term relationships. When choosing a partner for long-term relationships, people tend to focus more on similarity of values and needs satisfaction, rather than physical attractiveness. This questions the validity of the matching hypothesis, as it will only describe a limited number of relationships.
• Furthermore, the matching hypothesis ignores the fact that people may compensate for the lack of physical attractiveness with other qualities, such as intellect or sociability. This compensation explains repeatedly occurring examples of older, less attractive men being married to attractive younger women; something that the matching hypothesis cannot account for.
• Physical attractiveness seems to be an important factor in forming relationships across cultures. For example, Cunningham et al. (1995) found that white, Asian and Hispanic males, despite being from different cultures, rated females with prominent cheekbones, small noses and large eyes as highly attractive. This universality of findings suggests that attractiveness is a decisive factor in choosing a partner and might be a genetically reproduced mechanism to aid sexual selection.