Physical attractiveness as a status cue

Abstract

On the basis of a review of attractiveness stereotype research as well as sociological theory and research on status concepts, it was hypothesized that physical attractiveness produces stereotyped status inferences along with the stereotyped trait inferences that have already been given much research attention. This hypothesis was tested by a series of four studies. In the first three studies, subjects matched yearbook photographs with stimulus photo descriptions representing high achieved, high ascribed, low achieved, and low ascribed status. More attractive photos were matched with the high status than with the low status descriptions, and this finding was stronger for ascribed status than for achieved status. Subjects consistently tended to associate the high ascribed status descriptions with the most attractive photos. In the fourth study, subjects responded to the photos in the stimulus set with separate assessments of how likely each person was to earn or inherit a high station in life. Photo attractiveness was found to be weakly correlated with assessments of earned life station, and strongly correlated with assessments of inherited life station. Taken together, these findings suggest that physical attractiveness is a status cue-and in particular an ascribed status cue. A number of previous studies from the physical attractiveness literature are briefly reviewed, and the notion of status inferences in proposed as helping to account for the findings.