Factors Affecting Attraction: Physical Attractivness Flashcards
A01 points
Symmetrical face
Neotenous face
Halo effect
The matching hyp w + w
Symmetrical face
People with sym faces r perceived as more attractive as this is a sign of goos genes
Shackelford + Larsen
It is thought that this is a sign of genetic fitness that cannot be faked - making it an honest signal
The associated ‘robust’ genes r passed onto future offspring
Neotenous face
(Baby face)
People are attracted to faces with Neotenous features
Such as widely separated huge eyes, delicate chin + small nose
These trigger a protective or caring instinct
Halo effect
Dion found that physically attractive people r consistently rated as kind, string, sociable and successful comp to unattractive people
The belief that good looking people have these characteristics makes them even more attractive we therefore behave positively towards them
Psychologists use the halo effect to describe how distinguishing features can have a disproportional influence on view of people
The matching hypothesis
Walster + walster
Suggest that we look for partners, who r similar to ourselves in terms of physical attractiveness as well in terms of personality, intelligence etc instead of choosing most appealing person ever
Found most liked partners were most physically attractive rather than taking their own level of attractiveness into account after male and female students were invited to a dance and picked partner for evening after completing question are and being rated by observer - they were actually paired randomly
Therefore we risk rejection by selecting the most attractive people ‘out of our league’ so we settle for these in our league.
Strength (rs)
Matching hyp
Berscheid replicated study but each participant was ask to select they partner from people of varying degreees of attractiveness
This tike participants tended to choose partners who matched them in physical attractiveness
Support of ww matching hyp
Validity
Strength r/s - Cunningham
Role of physical attractiveness
Cunningham et al found that women who had features of rage eyes, cheekbones, small nose and high eyebrows were rated as highly attractive by white, Hispanic + Asian men
Researchers concluded what is considered physically attractive is consistent across different societies
Culturally generalised
Limitation - halo effect
Deterministic approach
Halo effect - successful if attractive, no control over this though, how u are born is how u r born
Limitation - matching hyp
Matching hyp is not supported by real-world research into dating
Lindsey Taylor et al studied the activity logs of a popular online dating site - the expectation is that users would match with people of the same level of attractiveness as them
However findings showed online daters sought meeting with potential partners who were more physically attractive a than them
