Physical Attractiveness Flashcards
Physical Attractiveness.
Usually applies specifically to how appealing we find a person’s face.
Why is it important? (Evolutionary explanation).
Shackelford and Larsen (1997) found that people with symmetrical faces are rated as more attractive. This is because it may be an honest signal of genetic fitness.
People are also attracted to faces with neotenous features.
They trigger a protective or caring instinct.
The Halo Effect.
Describes how one distinguishing feature (physical attractiveness) tends to have a disproportionate influence on our judgments of a person’s other attributes.
Dion et al. found that physically attractive people are consistently rated as kind, strong, sociable, and successful compared to unattractive people.
This belief that good-looking people probably have these characteristics makes them even more attractive to us, so we behave positively towards them.
The Matching Hypothesis (Walster and Walster 1969) suggests that…
We look for partners who are similar to ourselves in terms of physical attractiveness instead of choosing the most appealing people.
Elaine Walster et al. (1966) designed a study called…
The Computer Dance.
The Computer Dance: Procedure.
Male and female students were invited to a dance.
They were rated for physical attractiveness by objective observers at the start and also completed a questionnaire about themselves.
They were told the data about themselves and this information would be used by a computer to decide their partner for the evening.
The Computer Dance: Findings.
The hypothesis wasn’t supported.
The most liked partners were also the most physically attractive rather than taking their own level of attractiveness into account.
However, Berscheid et al (1971) replicated the study but this time each ppt was able to select their partner from people of varying degrees of attractiveness. This time ppts tended to choose partners who matched them in physical attractiveness.
The Computer Dance: Conclusion.
We tend to seek and choose partners whose attractiveness matches our own.
Choice of a partner is a compromise - we risk rejection in selecting the most attractive people available so we settle on those who are ‘in our league’ physically.
Strength: There is research supporting that physical attractiveness is linked with the halo effect.
Palmer and Peterson (2012) found that physically attractive people were rated as more politically knowledgeable and competent than attractive people. This halo effect was so powerful that it persisted even when ppts knew that these ‘knowledgeable’ people had no particular expertise.
This finding has implications for the political process - it suggests there are dangers for democracy if politicians are judged as suitable for office just because they were considered physically attractive by enough voters.
Strength: The role of physical attractiveness is supported by research regarding evolutionary processes.
Cunningham et al (1995) found that women who had features of large eyes, prominent cheekbones, small nose and high eyebrows were rated as highly attractive by white, Hispanic and Asian men. The researchers concluded that what is considered physically attractive is remarkably consistent across different societies. Attractive features are a sign of genetic fitness and therefore perpetuated similarity in all cultures (sexual selection).
Therefore the importance of physical attractiveness makes sense at an evolutionary level.
Limitation (includes counterpoint): The matching hypothesis is not supported by real-world research into dating.
Taylor et al (2011) studied the activity logs of a popular online dating site. This was a real-world test of the matching hypothesis because it measured actual date choices and not merely preferences. This is in keeping with the original hypothesis which concerned realistic as opposed to fantasy choices. The researchers found that online daters sought meetings with potential partners who were more physically attractive than them.
This undermines the validity of the matching hypothesis because it contradicts the central prediction about matching attractiveness.
However, choosing individuals for dating could be considered a different situation from selecting a partner for a romantic relationship. Feingold (1988) carried out a meta-analysis of 17 studies and found a significant correlation in ratings of physical attractiveness between romantic partners. Also, just because online daters seek more attractive potential partners doesn’t mean that they get them; so dating selection may be just as ‘fantasy’ as it is in laboratory research.
Therefore there is support for the matching hypothesis from studies of real-world established romantic partners.
Limitation: It mainly applies to short-term relationships.
When choosing a partner for long-term relationships, people tend to focus more on the similarity of values, rather than physical attractiveness, This questions the validity of the Matching Hypothesis, as it will only describe a limited number of relationships. Furthermore, the Matching Hypothesis ignores the fact that people may compensate for the lack of physical attractiveness with other qualities, such as intellect or sociability. This compensation explains repeatedly occurring examples of older, less attractive men being married to attract younger women; something that the Matching Hypothesis cannot account for.
IDA.
The Matching Hypothesis may be suffering from a beta bias, as it assumes that men and women are very similar when it comes to the importance of physical attractiveness. Research, however, suggests that this may not be the case. For example, Meltzer et al. (2014) found that men rate their long-term relationships more satisfying if their partner is physically attractive, while for women their partners’ attractiveness did not have a significant impact on their relationship satisfaction. This shows that there are significant gender differences in how important appearance is for attraction.
