Physical Attractiveness

• Evolution

  •Shackelford and Larsen found that people with symmetrical faces are rated as more attractive. This is because it may be an honest signal of genetic fitness.
• Evolution

  •People are also attracted to faces with neotenous (baby-face) features such as widely separated and large eyes, a delicate chin, and a small nose — because these trigger a protective or caring instinct, a valuable resource for females wanting to reproduce.
• Evolution

  •Physical attractiveness is not only important at the start of a relationship. McNulty et al. found evidence that the initial attractiveness that brought the partners together continued to be an important feature of the relationship after marriage, for at least several years.
• The Halo Effect


  •Physical attractiveness may also matter because we have preconceived ideas about the personality traits attractive people must have, and they are almost universally positive.
• The Halo Effect

  •Dion et al. found that physically attractive people are consistently rated as kind, strong, sociable, and successful compared to unattractive people.•The belief that good-looking people probably have these characteristics makes them even more attractive to us, so we behave positively towards them — a good example of a self-fulfilling prophecy.
• The Matching Hypothesis-Walster

  Suggests that people choose romantic partners who are roughly of similar physical attractiveness to each other. To do this we have to make a realistic judgement about our own 'value' to a potential partner.

  We desire the most physically attractive partner possible for all sorts of evolutionary, social, cultural and psychological reasons. However, we balance this against the wish to avoid being rejected by someone 'out of our league', that is someone who is very unlikely to consider us physically attractive.
• Complex Matching

  }One reason why research may fail to find evidence for matching in terms of physical attractiveness could be that people come to a relationship offering many desirable characteristics, of which physical attractiveness is only one.}A person may compensate for a lack of physical attractiveness with other desirable qualities. This is called complex matching.