Physical Attractiveness

Cards (6)

  • Physical Attractiveness
    Shackelford and Larson - found that symmetrical faces are rated as more attractive, and are a honest signal of genetic fitness.
    People are also attracted to faces that are neotenous (baby face) because of their protective or caring instinct
  • Halo Effect
    = where one feature has a disproportionate influence on our judgements of a person's other attributes. Preconceived ideas about the personality traits an attractive person has.
    Dion et al - physically attractive people are consistently rated as kind, strong, sociable and successful.
  • Matching Hypothesis
    Walster and Walster - we are attracted to people who 'match' us in physical attractiveness, taking into account our own attractiveness. Our choice of partner is a compromise, as we desire the most attractive but balance this to avoid being rejected by someone 'out of our league'.
  • Eval : Strength
    Palmer and Peterson found that physically attractive people were rated as more politically knowledgeable and competent, even if these people had no particular expertise.
  • Eval : Strength
    Feingold carried out a meta-analysis of 17 studies and found a significant correlation in ratings of attractiveness between romantic partners.
  • Eval : Weakness
    Sprecher and Hatfield suggest that research often fails to find evidence of matching in terms of physical attractiveness because it is just one of the desirable characteristics we seek. We may compensate with other qualities, but this is called 'complex matching'. Suggests matching hypothesis is too simplistic.