Judgments Of Physical Attractiveness Research Articles

Hot at the top: The influence of self-rated attractiveness on self-perceived status

Beautism reflects the phenomenon of a widespread positivity bias that physically attractive people enjoy. This bias results in more attractive people receiving more positive social judgments, interactions, and economic outcomes. However, the literature has largely focused on third-party judgments of physical attractiveness, neglecting examinations of how self-rated attractiveness may predict self-evaluations. We sought to address this gap by examining how self-rated attractiveness predicts self-inferred social status, which is related to a myriad of psychosocial outcomes. Across one pilot test, one cross-sectional study, and a between-subjects experiment, we find converging evidence for the notion that self-rated physical attractiveness positively predicts higher self-inferred status. We discuss how this finding may have implications for status-navigating strategies in light of the malleability of self-rated attractiveness in a variety of social and occupational contexts.

What influences judgments of physical attractiveness? A comprehensive perspective with implications for mental health

Judgments of physical attractiveness are based on appearance but are influenced by and influence more than just physical features of the face and body (e.g. clothing and personality traits). This is explored in a selective review of previous research, plus new analyses of data from three previously published studies: the Boston Couples Study, the Multiple Identities Questionnaire, and the Intimate Relationships Across Cultures Study, with implications for mental health. Self-ratings of attractiveness are inflated by self-esteem and confidence in self-halo effects. Partner-ratings are inflated by love and relationship satisfaction in partner-halo effects. Positive responses from others influence attractiveness-enhancing cycles, while negative responses influence attractiveness-deprecating cycles, with impacts on well-being. These influences are represented in a comprehensive Attractiveness Halo Model, which identifies Ten Components of Attractiveness that are inter-related, including physical, emotional, sexual, sensory, intellectual, behavioural, observer, situation, reciprocity, and time. Aspects of the model are supported by analyses of the three studies, generalising comprehensive attractiveness halo effects across time, identities, cultures, and relationship types.

Fashion model profiles: the intersection of self, ideal and preferred

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to understand how young female fashion consumers assessed the facial attractiveness of an advertising model. The study focused on the consumers exposed to both local and foreign fashion advertising.Design/methodology/approachThe study sample consisted of 161 young female (18-30 years old) university students from the State of Qatar. A research questionnaire was designed to assess the perceptions of young Qatari females toward the facial features of a cluster of international fashion models representing a variety of looks. Due to the cultural sensitivity of the research topic, data were collected online using SurveyMonkey. Apart from the key demographics, the research questionnaire captured the respondent’s own self-assessed facial profile, an ideal facial profile, and the facial profile of the most preferred model from a set of choices. The authors analyze the similarities and differences between the three profiles collected from each respondent: self, ideal and choice.FindingsThe findings indicated that a mix of facial features (a blend of classical Arabic looks and contemporary Western looks) is preferred by most respondents. This matches the expectation of consumers exposed to local as well as international fashion advertising.Practical implicationsIn developing markets (such as Qatar), preference for fashion models is shaped by a combination of local and foreign advertising influences. Hence, it is likely that hybrid models (i.e. representing a combination of Eastern and Western looks) appeal to young female consumers within these markets. Retailers of fashion clothing and accessories can use this information to select models who maximize the appeal of their brands.Originality/valueThe research sheds light on how judgments about the attractiveness of female models are made by triangulation among the self, the ideal and the selection of models available to choose from. The research provides a window into how young women make judgments of physical attractiveness based on facial features.

Is beauty in the face of the beholder?

Opposing forces influence assortative mating so that one seeks a similar mate while at the same time avoiding inbreeding with close relatives. Thus, mate choice may be a balancing of phenotypic similarity and dissimilarity between partners. In the present study, we assessed the role of resemblance to Self’s facial traits in judgments of physical attractiveness. Participants chose the most attractive face image of their romantic partner among several variants, where the faces were morphed so as to include only 22% of another face. Participants distinctly preferred a “Self-based morph” (i.e., their partner’s face with a small amount of Self’s face blended into it) to other morphed images. The Self-based morph was also preferred to the morph of their partner’s face blended with the partner’s same-sex “prototype”, although the latter face was (“objectively”) judged more attractive by other individuals. When ranking morphs differing in level of amalgamation (i.e., 11% vs. 22% vs. 33%) of another face, the 22% was chosen consistently as the preferred morph and, in particular, when Self was blended in the partner’s face. A forced-choice signal-detection paradigm showed that the effect of self-resemblance operated at an unconscious level, since the same participants were unable to detect the presence of their own faces in the above morphs. We concluded that individuals, if given the opportunity, seek to promote “positive assortment” for Self’s phenotype, especially when the level of similarity approaches an optimal point that is similar to Self without causing a conscious acknowledgment of the similarity.

The Role of Similarity and Dissimilarity Focus in Sequential Judgments of Physical Attractiveness

ABSTRACT The present results indicate that procedurally priming comparison focus can change the contrast effect in judgments of physical attractiveness (Kenrick & Gutierres, 1980). Participants were primed to search for similarities vs. differences between target and standard of comparison in a task using material irrelevant to the subsequent physical attractiveness judgment. Focusing participants on similarities testing produced the assimilation effect: evaluation of target and comparison standard as being similar. Focusing participants on dissimilarity testing produced the contrast effect: evaluating the target as different from the standard of comparison.

Testing a postulated case of intersexual selection in humans: The role of foot size in judgments of physical attractiveness and age

The constituents of attractiveness differ across the sexes. Many relevant traits are dimorphic, suggesting that they are the product of intersexual selection. However, direction of causality is generally difficult to determine, as aesthetic criteria can as readily result from, as cause, dimorphism. Women have proportionately smaller feet than men. Prior work on the role of foot size in attractiveness suggests an asymmetry across the sexes, as small feet enhance female appearance, yet average, rather than large, feet are preferred on men. Previous investigations employed crude stimuli and limited samples. Here, we report on multiple cross-cultural studies designed to overcome these limitations. With the exception of one rural society, we find that small foot size is preferred when judging women, yet no equivalent preference applies to men. Similarly, consonant with the thesis that a preference for youth underlies intersexual selection acting on women, we document an inverse relationship between foot size and perceived age. Examination of preferences regarding, and inferences from, feet viewed in isolation suggests different roles for proportionality and absolute size in judgments of female and male bodies. Although the majority of these results bolster the conclusion that pedal dimorphism is the product of intersexual selection, the picture is complicated by the reversal of the usual preference for small female feet found in one rural society. While possibly explicable in terms of greater emphasis on female economic productivity relative to beauty, the latter finding underscores the importance of employing diverse samples when exploring postulated evolved aesthetic preferences.

Race and Advertising: Ethnocentrism or “Real” Differences in Physical Attractiveness? Indirect Evidence from China, Malaysia, and the United States

Implicit in the concept of ethnocentrism is the idea that people will consider members of their own race or ethnic group to be more attractive than members of other groups. If so, one would expect advertisers to take advantage of such preferences by choosing “local” models when promoting clothing fashions and other products. A contrary view is that judgments of physical attractiveness are to a substantial degree neurologically “hard-wired” and evolved similarly throughout the world. With the assumption that fashion models and manikins are considered highly attractive, the present study recorded the race of models and manikins publically displayed in city malls in China, Malaysia, and the United States. Caucasian (white, European) models were found to be mainly utilized in all three countries, especially in regard to clothing fashion displays. Even advertisements for cosmetics and fashion accessories were “Caucasian-biased” in China and Malaysia although less so than in the U.S. and less so than advertisements for clothing fashions. Findings call into question the relevance of ethnocentrism in determining the choice of fashion models used in advertising, and are instead consistent with other evidence of universal standards of physical beauty that advertisers rely on to help promote their products.

Personality goes a long way: The malleability of opposite‐sex physical attractiveness

AbstractThis study tested the influence of personality information on judgments of physical attractiveness. Employing a within‐subject design, 56 female and 22 male college students rated attractiveness of opposite‐sex photos; participated in a distraction task; viewed each photo again, along with personality information (desirable, undesirable, none); and then rated the photos for physical attractiveness, desirability as a friend, and desirability as a dating partner. Personality information produced significant changes in ratings of physical attractiveness for attractive, neutral, and unattractive targets. The pattern of results is consistent with a model in which desirability of the target’s personality leads to greater desirability as a friend, leading to greater desirability as a dating partner, leading to the target being judged as more physically attractive.

Physical Attractiveness and Health in Western Societies: A Review.

Evidence from developed Western societies is reviewed for the claims that (a) physical attractiveness judgments are substantially based on body size and shape, symmetry, sex-typical hormonal markers, and other specific cues and (b) physical attractiveness and these cues substantially predict health. Among the cues that the authors review, only female waist-to-hip ratio and weight appear to predict both attractiveness and health in the claimed manner. Other posited cues--symmetry and sex-typical hormonal markers among them--failed to predict either attractiveness or health (or both) in either sex. The authors find that there is some indication that attractiveness has an overall relationship with health among women, but little indication that male attractiveness relates to male health.

The effect of nonphysical traits on the perception of physical attractiveness: Three naturalistic studies

From an evolutionary perspective, beauty is regarded as an assessment of fitness value. The fitness value of a social partner can be influenced by both physical and nonphysical traits. It follows that the perceived beauty of a social partner can be influenced by nonphysical traits such as liking, respect, familiarity, and contribution to shared goals in addition to physical traits such as youth, waist-to-hip ratio, and bilateral symmetry. We present three studies involving the evaluation of known social partners showing that judgments of physical attractiveness are strongly influenced by nonphysical factors. Females are more strongly influenced by nonphysical factors than males and there are large individual differences within each sex. In general, research on physical attractiveness based on the evaluation of purely physical traits of strangers might miss some of the most important factors influencing the perception of physical attractiveness among known associates.

Sex Differences in Judgments of Physical Attractiveness: A Social Relations Analysis

Men and women rated the physical attractiveness of other men and women who were sitting nearby and were rated by them in return. They also provided meta-perceptions of how they thought those others rated them. Attractiveness ratings were partly a function of both the target being rated and the perceiver providing the ratings regardless of the sex of the perceiver or target, but the highest levels of consensus occurred when men judged the attractiveness of women and the highest levels of idiosyncrasy occurred when men rated other men. Meta-perceptions were also idiosyncratic; some believed that they were consistently considered attractive, whereas others thought they were seen as unattractive. People were aware of what others thought of them and, in particular, women's meta-perceptions were highly related to men's judgments of them. People agree about others' attractiveness, and those who are attractive to others know they are pretty or handsome.

The Visual Process Method: A New Method to Study Physical Attractiveness

The visual process method is a computer-aided procedure that allows for the recording of the viewing sequence, viewing time, and amount of information used with respect to various face and body parts in judgments of physical attractiveness. A study with 26 male and 44 female participants demonstrated the reliability and validity of the data gathered with this method. In agreement with evolutionary psychology, features associated with the mate value of the individual—youthfulness, health, sexual maturity for female targets, and status and dominance for male targets—were looked at sooner and more often.

Beauty is as Beauty Does?: Makeup and Posture Effects on Physical Attractiveness Judgments1

Recent studies have examined human beauty as a biological, structural trait. This view of beauty is incomplete because it does not consider the amount of variability in beauty judgments attributable to self‐presentation strategies. This study was designed to estimate the importance of self‐presentation practices on beauty judgments. For women within plus or minus one standard deviation of average facial attractiveness, makeup effect size estimates were comparable to previously published estimates of the importance of structural factors in attractiveness judgments. Similarly, for average weight stimuli, posture was comparable to body build in influencing attractiveness judgments. Implications for personal appearance businesses, health psychology, and counseling practice are discussed.

First Impressions Formed of Boys with Learning Disabilities and Attention Deficit Disorder

The present study examined the first impressions that are formed of boys with either learning disabilities (LD), attention deficit disorder (ADD), or both disorders, in an effort to understand better why they are so often unpopular with and rejected by their peers. The intent of the study was to remedy methodological problems of previous first-impression studies to determine whether devaluation of boys with either LD or ADD after a brief exposure is a reliable and valid finding. To this end, physical attractiveness data were gathered, children were employed as judges, subgroups of stimulus children were formed, and situational demands were varied. Results indicated that the boys with either LD or ADD were devalued relative to controls on a variety of dependent variables, including popularity. Both situational demands, as well as judgments of physical attractiveness, appeared to play a role in accounting for these differences.

Objective and Subjective Physical Attractiveness Judgments among Young Adults

The pervasive nature of physical attractiveness stereotypes in Western culture has been amply documented. Negative attributes are assigned to unattractive persons, while positive attributes are assigned to attractive persons (2). Moreover, interjudge agreement concerning target subjects' levels of attractiveness is generally high, which suggests that attractiveness is both scaleable and culturally-defined (1). However, the correspondence between targets' self-assessments and judges' assessments of them remains unclear. When such comparisons have been made, targets have usually been aware that their own ratings were to be compared with judges' ratings of them. The present study examined correspondence between subjects' self-assessments of attractiveness and judges' assessments when subjects were unaware they were being judged and when two separate indices of attractiveness were used by both judges and subjects. The targets included 53 female and 28 male undergraduates while the judges included three female and three male undergraduates who were unacquainted with the targets. Targets completed the Personal Attributes Questionnaire (3) in which two items (physical attractiveness, physical appeal to others) were embedded. While targets completed the 42-item questionnaire, judges independently assessed both the attractiveness and appeal of each target on 1-5 scales. Targets were told only that judges were verifying subjects' identification numbers and seat assignments. Targets were later carefully debriefed. Mean interjudge correlations (Pearson) were hlgh for both attractiveness (.86) and appeal (.82) and were similar for both male and female judges. The mean correlation for judges' assessments of attractiveness and appeal was .72. Correlations between targets' and judges' estimates of attractiveness were low (range = .24 to .31), as were those for appeal (range = .09 to .28). The correlation between targets' self-judged attractiveness and appeal was generally high (.56), but was significantly (p< .05) higher for male targets (.63) than for female targets (.52). While assessments of attractiveness and appeal appear consistent across judges, these assessments are only moderately related to targets' self-assessments. Moreover, self-assessments of attractiveness and appeal were related, but especially among men. The lack of correspondence between judges' and targets' ratings, and the sex-divergent pattern of self-ratings of attractiveness and appeal deserve lrther empirical work.

Cross-gender judgments of cues and attributes from photographs

It was hypothesized that judgments about a stimulus person are more dependent upon interpersonal inferences and are less controlled by the actual features of the stimulus as the observer moves from judgments of cues to judgments of dispositional attributes to decisions about how to relate to the stimulus person. The data tend to support this hypothesis for cues versus attributes, but they suggest that a decision about how to relate to the stimulus person is no less under the control of “objective” features of the stimulus person than are attribute judgments. Judgments of physical attractiveness, however, were more similar to cue judgments than to attribute judgments.

Consensus in personality judgments at zero acquaintance.

This research focused on the target effect on a perceiver's judgments of personality when the perceiver and the target are unacquainted. The perceiver was given no opportunity to interact with the target, a condition we refer to as zero acquaintance. We reasoned that in order to make personality judgments, perceivers would use the information available to them (physical appearance). Consensus in personality judgments would result, then, from shared stereotypes about particular physical appearance characteristics. Results from three separate studies with 259 subjects supported this hypothesis. On two of the five dimensions (extraversion and conscientiousness) on which subjects rated each other, a significant proportion of variance was due to the stimulus target. Consensus on judgments of extraversion appears to have been largely mediated by judgments of physical attractiveness. Across the three studies there was also evidence that the consensus in judgments on these two dimensions had some validity, in that they correlated with self-judgments on those two dimensions.

Judging Physical Attractiveness

The present study attempted to determine what body parts and functions young adults use in judging physical attractiveness and how these body items are related to different dimensions of body esteem. College students completed the Body Esteem Scale and then rated the importance of body items in determining same-sex and opposite-sex attractiveness. Results indicated a good deal of congruence in men's and women's judgments of physical attractiveness. Aspects of male body esteem dealing with upper body strength and aspects of female body esteem dealing with weight concern figured prominently in these judgments. Findings further indicated that men generally have more positive attitudes toward their bodies than do women.

Judgments of Physical Attractiveness

The relative and combined influences of faces and bodies on judgments of physical attractiveness were assessed in a factorial design crossing 3 levels (high, moderate, and low) of face and body attractiveness. Based on preratings, 3 sets of slides were created that super imposed faces onto bodies. A second sample of subjects then rated these 27 slides (3 faces X 3 bodies X 3 sets) on physical attractiveness, intelligence, sociability, and morality. Strong effects of both face and body on attractiveness ratings were obtained. In addition, a significant interaction was obtained between faces and bodies on ratings of physical attractiveness. Faces significantly influenced ratings of intelligence, sociability, and morality, whereas bodies had a significant effect on ratings of intelligence and sociability.

Assessment of social skills in visually-handicapped adolescents

The present study provided a comprehensive behavioral assessment of social skill in visually-handicapped adolescents. Role-play tests, standardized interviews, parent ratings and judgments of physical attractiveness were employed to evaluate level of social functioning among: (1)18 visually- handicapped adolescents in a residential school; (2) 17 visually-handicapped adolescents in public schools; and (3) 17 sighted adolescents in public schools. Results indicated that visually-handicapped adolescents exhibited deficits on selected verbal components of social skill. Moreover, these deficiencies were most apparent in visually-handicapped Ss from a residential setting. Findings are discussed in terms of the utility of social skills training for a subset of visually-handicapped adolescents and the importance of additional controlled research with visually-handicapped persons.