Perception and attraction Flashcards
What is the evolutionary perspective on attractiveness?
Attraction and mate choice are part of evolutionary selection.
Appearance is considered attractive because at some point in evolutionary history it was associated with advantageous traits.
Attractiveness is meaningful in terms of reproduction and selection.
What is the social and cultural perspective on attractiveness?
Context can shape preferences.
Emphasizes the role of context in shaping our preferences and what is found attractive.
Do the evolutionary and social/cultural perspectives on attractiveness conflict?
No, they provide complementary explanations.
What is the automatic perspective on judging attractiveness?
Our impressions of attractiveness are difficult to inhibit and tend to bias our judgment.
What was the task conducted by Ritchie et al. (2017)?
Participants had to memorize the names of people using their photos.
Some participants were given attractive photos, and others were given unattractive photos.
Participants later had to rate the attractiveness of the same photo.
What did Ritchie et al. (2017) find in their study?
Identities learned from highly attractive photos were rated as more attractive than identities learned from less attractive photos.
This indicates that even though attractiveness wasn’t mentioned in the earlier task, participants still noticed and remembered it later on.
Our perception of attractiveness is automatic and difficult to inhibit.
We tend to notice and remember attractiveness even when it is not relevant to the task at hand.
(Halo effect)
What did Dion et al. (1972) find about the “what is beautiful is good” stereotype?
People expect more attractive individuals to be more successful, have a higher degree of happiness, higher occupational status, and more pleasant personality.
(Halo effect)
What did Rubenstein (1999) find about children’s association with attractiveness?
Infants associate a positive tone of voice with a more attractive face.
Children associate attractiveness with positive things.
What are some of the consequences of the halo effect?
- Better hiring, promotion, success for attractive people – Hosoda et al. (2003)
- Bail & fine payments – Downs & Lyons (1991) attractive people pay lower bail and fines
- Attractive people gain a higher social status – Anderson et al. (2001); Haas & Gregory (2005); Vaughn & Langlois (1983) e.g., they gain higher status in organisations or even children have a greater social standing with peers
- Parental nurturing & teacher expectations – Langlois et al. (1995); Clifford & Walster (1973) attractive children tend to receive more affection and play from caregivers and have better expectations from teachers. This is significant because it can lead to a self-fulfilling prophecy (look this up for empirical evidence)
- Mate choice – Perrett (2010)
How do health cues relate to attractiveness? Zebrowitz & Montepare (2004)
From an evolutionary perspective, attractiveness signified health and therefore choosing an attractive mate meant a higher likelihood of attractive offspring.
It is therefore adaptive to detect fitness and health and we are sensitive to these cues. People are sensitive to these cues and tend to overgeneralise. For instance attractiveness does not necessarily signal that someone is more fit in the evolutionary sense.
What is found to be attractive in terms of skin colouration and why?
Lefevre & Perrett (2015) –> yellowness is perceived as healthier and more attractive (to an extent)
Yellowness is linked to fruit & vegetable intake Tan et al. (2015
Pazda et al. (2016) –> People find the reddest face the most attractive and the least red, the least attractive – this is seen across genders.
Redness is linked to blood oxygenation – Stephen, Coetzee, et al. (2009) - research has tied redness to healthy levels of blood oxygenation – redness could indicate circuitry health. It was not necessarily the reddest face that was chosen as the most attractive but the face associated with the most oxygenation and least deoxygenation that wad the most attractive.
Lightness – Stephen, Law Smith, et al. (2009) –> no link to health, more cultural associations
* Femininity - paler complexions can heighten the contrast with the eyes and mouth which makes someone appear more feminine
* Cultural associations - paleness indicated social standing or status e.g., lack of exposure to sun through manual labour - there are also cultural biases e.g., colourism – the association of lighter skin tones being better
What is deemed attractive in terms of colour distribution?
Jones et al. (2016) –> being completely pale or red isn’t attractive, but lightness under the eyes and redness in the cheek area is considered attractive. However, yellowness is considered more attractive over the entire face
* Evenness – Fink, Grammer, & Thornhill (2001) - even skin is judged as more healthy, e.g., blemishes or colouration may indicate an infection – this may be an overgeneralisation as we are very sensitive to it
Is there variation in ethnicity and culture?
Han et al. (2018)
In earlier studies, redness, yellowness, and lightness were manipulated all at once, this study looked at each channel of colour individually and asked participants for their preference.
White British participants showed the same patterns of preference for greater redness, yellowness and lightness. But Chinese participants did not show a preference for yellowness, a greater preference for lightness than British ppts and less preference for redness than British ppts. They highlighted the cultural context for these findings – higher fruit/veg intake may be associated with poor people in the East and so yellowness is associated with a lower social standing and lower attractiveness.
However, there are differences in methodology that might explain the differing results. All the colours were shown individually. Perhaps people across cultures show preference for greater yellowness, redness and lightness when presented together.
What is adiposity and what level is found attractive?
The amount of fat in the face
* Health & attractiveness – review: de Jager et al. (2018) - people can accurately perceive general body weight from facial adiposity – weight is an indicator of specific aspects of health e.g., cardiovascular health.
* Healthy levels attractive – Coetzee et al. (2009) People prefer faces with a mid-level body mass index – this was considered the most attractive (not an overall preference for thinness.
* Cultural consistency and variation – Coetzee et al. (2012); Batres & Perrett (2014) In western countries as well as South Africa, we see the same pattern of the mid-level BMI that’s considered the most attractive. However, there is other research to suggest that body weight means different things in different cultures e.g., the highest body mass index may be the most attractive because it means the least malnutrition.
Why might symmetry be perceived as attractive?
Little et al. (2011) Some evidence that greater facial symmetry might be a marker of stable development, however it hasn’t been clearly demonstrated. It seems to be an example of overgeneralisation e.g., only extreme facial asymmetry might indicate an infection or something gone wrong in development.
