Physical Attractiveness

• What kind of role does physical attractiveness play?

  A role in why an individual is initially attracted to someone
• Physical attractiveness is an immediate and accessible way for potential partners to rate each other
• Physical attractiveness of females is more important to males in partner selection than it's to females selecting partners
• What is physical attractiveness know to?

  Know to create a favourable impression
• Attractive people are more likely to be seen as processing desirable personality characteristics such as being trustworthy, interesting, exciting, optimistic and sociable
• What is the halo effect?

  Where a general impression of someone is incorrectly formed from one characteristic, this is one reason why physically attractive people are more desired as dates or romantic partners than less physically attractive people
• The physical attractiveness stereotype affects us all and has been shown widespread
• What do the experiments show?

  That people avoid facially disfigured, that young children are biased towards attractive young children, that babies gaze longer at attractive faces and that teachers rate attractive children as cleverer are more successful
• There's support for the idea that physical attractiveness is an important filter in relationship formation and multiple research studies show it
• There are many possible reasons why we should be attracted to physically attractive people
• There are potential costs of rejection from someone who doesn't see us as physically attractive
• Many studies showed that, in Western cultures, at least, physical attractiveness is one of the major determinants of whether we express a wish to develop a romantic relationship and that we seek out attractive individuals to date