Physical attractiveness Flashcards
What is physical attractiveness?
How appealing we find a person’s face - important factor in formation of romantic relationships
Symmetry
People with symmetrical faces are rated as more attractive - signal of genetic fitness
Shackleford and Larsen
social norms
Rapid changes in partner preferences due to changing social norms
Tamas Bereczkei
Neotenous features - neoteny
Baby-face - neotenous features eg widely separated and large eyes, delicate chin and small nose - more attractive - trigger protective or caring instinct
The halo effect
Someone that is physically attractive is seen with positive traits
How one distinguishing feature (physical attractiveness) has disproportionate influence on our judgements of a person’s other attributes
Dion - 1972
What is beautiful is good
- Physically attractive people consistently rated as kind, strong, sociable and successful compared to unattractive people
Self-fulfilling prophecy
Behaving more positively towards people we view attractive so they behave more nicely in return
Who came up with the matching hypothesis?
Walster and Walster - 1969
The matching hypothesis
We look for partners who are similar to ourselves in terms of physical attractiveness
What did Walster et al design?
Study to test matching hypothesis called ‘The computer dance’
Procedure of the design?
Male and female students invited to dance - rated for physical attractiveness by objective observers and completed questionnaire about themselves
Told data about themselves and information would be used by a computer to decide their partner for evening
Actually paired randomly
Findings?
Hypothesis - not supported
Most liked partners - most physically attractive
What did Berschied et al find?
Replicated study - each participant was able to select their partner from varying degrees of attractiveness
Participants tended to choose partners who matched them in physical attractiveness
Conclusion?
Tend to choose partners whose attractiveness matches our own
Choice of partner is a compromise - risk rejection in selecting most attractive people so we settle on those who are in our league physically
EVAL - research support for halo effect
- Strength - physical attractiveness associated with halo effect
- Attractive people rated as more politically knowledgeable and competent
- Halo effect persisted even when participants knew the person had no particular expertise
- Implications for politics - dangers for democracy if politicians judged due to being physically attractive
- Palmer and Peterson
EVAL - evolutionary explanation
- Some female features considered attractive across cultures - white hispanic and asian men rated as highly attractive
- Small nose, large eyes, prominent cheekbones, high eyebrows
- Cunningham et al
- What is considered physically attractive consistent across different societies
- Symmetry is a sign of genetic fitness
- Makes sense at evolutionary level
EVAL - research challenging the matching hypothesis
- Limitation - matching hypothesis not supported by real-world research
- Taylor et al - studied activity logs of popular online dating site
- Real-world test - measures actual date choices not just preferences
- Online daters sought partners who were more physically attractive than them
- Undermines validity as contradicts central prediction
Counterpoint
- Choosing individuals for dating could be considered different situation from selecting partner for romantic relationship
- Meta-analysis of 17 studies - Feingold
- Significant correlation in ratings of physical attractiveness between romantic partners
- Support for matching hypothesis from studies of real-world established romantic partners
EVAL - individual differences
- Most of evidence highlights role of physical attractiveness in initial formation of romantic relationships
- Evidence some people to not attach much importance to attractiveness
- Touhey - measured sexist attitudes of men and women (MACHO scale)
- Low scores - relatively unaffected by physical attractiveness when judging the likeability of potential partners
