Factors Affecting Attraction: physical attractiveness

Question 1

Outline- The halo effect

Answer 1

The idea that we assume that physically attractive people are kind, strong, sociable, and successful compared to unattractive people.
The belief that good looking people have these traits make them even more attractive.

Question 2

Outline- the matching hypothesis

Answer 2

The belief that we don’t select the most attractive people, as a realistic partner, but instead we are most attracted to people who approximately match us in physical attractiveness.
So we take in to account our own attractiveness when selecting a partner.

Question 3

Outline- importance of psychical attractiveness

Answer 3

Shackleford and Larsen (1997)

• found people with symmetrical faces are rated as more attractive. This is because it’s an honest signal of genetic fitness (as it’s hard to fake facial symmetry)
• people are also attractive to neotenous (baby-like) features such as big eyes, small nose, because we trigger a protective and caring instinct.

Question 4

Evaluation- support for halo

Answer 4

Palmer and Peterson (2012)

-found that more attractive people were rated as more politically knowledgeable and competent than unattractive people.

Question 5

Evaluation- Individual differences

Answer 5

Towhey (1979)
-asked male and female participants to rate how much they would like a target individual based on their photograph and biographical information.
-also used the MACHO scale for measuring sexist attitudes and behaviours.
Results- those who scored highly on the scale were more influenced by physical attractiveness of the target when making their judgement of like ability. Low scorers were less sensitive to this.
So- the effects of physical attractiveness can be moderated by other factors, so physical attractiveness isn’t always the most important thing to people.