Unattractive people are unaware of their (un)attractiveness.

Tobias Greitemeyer

doi:10.1111/sjop.12631

Abstract

Past research has shown that how people rate their physical attractiveness is only moderately correlated with how they are rated by others, suggesting that at least some people have little insight into their true level of attractiveness. The present research tests the hypothesis that unattractive people are not aware of their unattractiveness. In fact, six studies (overall N = 1,180) showed that unattractive participants considerably overestimated their attractiveness compared to ratings by strangers. In contrast, attractive participants were more accurate. If anything, they underestimated their attractiveness. It was also examined why unattractive people overestimate their attractiveness. As expected, unattractive participants differentiated less between attractive and unattractive stimulus persons than did attractive participants. They were also more likely than attractive participants to select unattractive stimulus persons to compare themselves to. However, these tendencies did not account for why unattractive participants overestimated their attractiveness, nor did affirming participant’s self‐worth. Limitations and avenues for future research are discussed.

Highlights

The physical attractiveness1 of a person has important implications for how this person is treated by others
Given the importance of physical attractiveness for people’s daily life and high agreement in attractiveness judgments, one may assume that people are well aware of whether they are attractive or not
The correlation between the participant’s objective attractiveness and the difference between the subjective and objective attractiveness ratings was significantly negative, r (191) = À0.80, p < 0.001. This analysis cannot show whether unattractive participants overestimate their attractiveness and/or attractive participants underestimate it

Summary

Introduction

The physical attractiveness of a person has important implications for how this person is treated by others. Contrary to the maxim “beauty is in the eye of the beholder,” there is generally high agreement about who is attractive and who is not (for meta-analyses, Feingold, 1992; Langlois, Kalakanis, Rubenstein, Larson, Hallam & Smoot, 2000). Given the importance of physical attractiveness for people’s daily life and high agreement in attractiveness judgments, one may assume that people are well aware of whether they are attractive or not. Abundant evidence has shown that self-assessed attractiveness (in the following, subjective attractiveness) and how a person is rated by others (in the following, objective attractiveness) are only moderately related. In a meta-analysis of 21 studies (Feingold, 1992), the correlation between subjective and objective attractiveness was r = 0.24. Others mostly agree about whether a person is attractive or not, but this person does not necessarily agree

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