Physical attractiveness stereotype and memory

Three experiments examined explicit and implicit memory for information that is congruent with the physical attractiveness stereotype (i.e. attractive-positive and unattractive-negative) and information that is incongruent with the physical attractiveness stereotype (i.e. attractive-negative and unattractive-positive). Measures of explicit recognition sensitivity and implicit discriminability revealed a memorial advantage for congruent compared to incongruent information, as evident from hit and false alarm rates and reaction times, respectively. Measures of explicit memory showed a recognition bias toward congruent compared to incongruent information, where participants tended to call congruent information old, independently of whether the information had been shown previously or not. This recognition bias was unrelated to reports of subjective confidence in retrieval. The present findings shed light on the cognitive mechanisms that might mediate discriminatory behavior towards physically attractive and physically unattractive individuals.     

Physical attractiveness and interpersonal influence

The relative success of influence attempts undertaken by attractive vs. unattractive fifth- and sixth-graders was investigated by giving subjects a monetary incentive contingent upon their influencing a peer's behavior. Compared to a control group which was not subject to peer pressure, three groups were successful: attractive males and attractive females with opposite-sex peers and unattractive males with same-sex peers. Attractive girls tended to be more successful than their unattractive counterparts in influence attempts directed toward peers of the opposite-sex. Unattractive males were more effective than attractive males with same-sex peers. Analysis of the influence strategies employed revealed markedly different styles of interpersonal influence, particularly between attractive males and attractive females. The former made considerably more influence attempts and were judged to be more persistent. This type of behavioral difference was not found for unattractive males compared to unattractive females.     

Interpersonal risk and the evaluation of transgressions in close relationships

An experiment examined individuals’willingness to excuse a romantic partner of blame for a transgression when perceptions that a relationship is risky are salient. Participants evaluated an actual transgression on measures tapping three levels of appraisal: (a) initial impressions of the act (i.e., severity of the transgression), (b) considerations of the context in which it occurred (i.e., judgments about excuses and extenuating context), and (c) judgments about its broader implications for the relationship (attributions of globality). Evaluator perspective was also varied. Half the participants (actors) evaluated their own partner's wrongdoing; half (observers) evaluated another participant's partner's wrongdoing. Compared to controls, risk participants rated the transgression as more severe and were more cautious and risk-averse in assessing the merits of potentially excusing information. Evaluator perspective did not influence these judgments, a finding consistent with a cognitive interpretation of the results. In contrast, the effects of risk on judgments of globality were more pronounced among observers than among actors, suggesting that motivational pressures come into play when the evaluative stakes are higher.     

Physical attractiveness and its relationship to sex-role stereotyping

On the basis of recent findings showing that physical attractiveness serves as an important evaluative cue in person perception, the present paper reviews evidence which indicates that physical attractiveness differentially affects the judgments of males and females. Recent research seems to indicate that the physical-attractiveness stereotype — which holds that attractive individuals are more positively evaluated across a wide range of dimensions than unattractive individuals — is more potent when applied to women than to men. The origins of this differential stereotyping are discussed in terms of the historically defined roles of men and women in our society. In addition, the paper discusses the implications of the physical-attractiveness stereotype for the general problem of sex-role stereotyping.     

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.     

Physical appearance, attractiveness, and the mediating role of emotions

Determinants of physical attractiveness were investigated in a study employing U.S. college students of both genders. Five factors were derived from a study of 37 stable and changeable physical features: Masculinity (strength, larger body and chest, broader chin), Femininity (longer hair, make-up, larger and rounder eyes), Self-care (overall grooming, shapely figure, flat stomach, erect posture, fitted clothes), Pleasantness (friendly, happy, babyish face), and Ethnicity. Factor analytic results did not support a priori (and nonstatistical) groupings of babyish facial features by investigators who use this concept. Self-care, Masculinity (Femininity), and Pleasantness were positive correlates of male (female) attractiveness. Attractiveness was described parsimoniously in terms of emotions: more attractive targets elicited more pleasure, more arousal, and less dominance (or more submissiveness) from others. Men and women reacted in essentially similar ways in rating others’ attractiveness. Statistical tests showed that emotional reactions mediated relations of the independent variables (physical features) to the dependent variables (judgments of attractiveness).     

Self-consciousness,evaluation of physical characteristics,and physical attractiveness

Results from an investigation of the relationship between habitual awareness of oneself as a social object (Public self-consciousness) and speed of processing information about the overt self are reported. Since high public self-consciousness subjects report themselves to be concerned about their physical appearance, they were expected to have more readily retrievable evaluative judgments concerning their physical characteristics. Consistent with this prediction, high compared to low public consciousness subjects required significantly less time to report their evaluations of eleven of their physical features. In a second study, high public self-consciousness was shown to be positively related to judged physical attractiveness in two geographically diverse samples. The quicker evaluations of the high public self-consciousness group were discussed in terms of information processing model recently described by Markus (1977).     

Physical attractiveness and dating choice: A test of the matching hypothesis

Previous studies have failed to find support for the hypothesis, derived from Level of Aspiration Theory, that individuals chose to date those whose “social desirability” level is similar to their own. In the present experiments, which were designed to test the matching hypothesis, the salience of possible rejection by the dating choice was varied. Both experiments found support for the principle of matching in social choice. This support was obtained, however, not just under conditions in which rejection was presumably salient but for all conditions of choice. This and additional findings were discussed.     

Physical attractiveness and academic performance: Beauty is not always talent1

Stepwise multiple regressions were used to determine the relative importance of physical attractiveness in the prediction of academic achievement for two samples of college students. In the first study, only ACT scores made an independent contribution to the prediction of males' (N= 55) grade average. For females (N= 65), verbal IQ (as measured by Borgatta and Corsini's Quick Word Test) and father's education yielded the only independent effects. In the second, follow-up study, males' (N= 50) achievement was significantly positively associated with intelligence and high school grades and negatively associated with attractiveness. For females (N= 87), independent effects were obtained for intelligence, high school grades, socio-economic status (positively correlated), and need for approval (negatively correlated). Attractiveness was again not associated with females' academic performance. In a final study involving high school students, attractiveness was not associated with achievement for 84 boys but was negatively associated for 83 girls. The results are discussed in terms of potential underlying mechanisms and the limitations of a “what is beautiful is good” stereotype.     

Physical attractiveness, romantic love, and equity restoration in dating relationships

Measures of physical attractiveness, romantic love, and dominance were given to a sample of 123 dating couples. Contrary to expectation, attractive subjects were not loved more than those judged as less attractive. As suggested by equity theory, however, subjects who believed that their partners were the more attractive member of the dyad loved their partners more (p < .05) and indicated greater submission in their relationships (p < .01) than those who believed that they were the more attractive member. The results suggest that as the dating relationship progresses, the relative difference in attractiveness between partners may become a more important determinant of attraction than overall level of attractiveness.     

Physical attractiveness and health: comment on Weeden and Sabini (2005)

Evolutionary behavioral biology suggests that certain characteristics of the human face and body are important for mate preferences and are therefore subject to sexual selection. J. Weeden and J. Sabini identify a number of weaknesses in the association between traits' attractiveness and health. In contrast, the authors argue that (a) studies on preferences for physical characteristics that rely on 1 trait permit only limited interpretation, (b) limitations placed on J. Weeden and J. Sabini's review exclude important associations, (c) there are misconceptions in their treatment of some traits, and (d) their selected literature provides an inaccurate picture regarding effect size. The authors suggest that future research in this field should seek conceptual and methodological constancy in trait selection and in the evaluation of attractiveness- and health-related traits.     

Evaluations of moral and conventional intergroup transgressions

To investigate children's understanding of intergroup transgressions, children (3–8 years, N = 84) evaluated moral and conventional transgressions that occurred among members of the same gender group (ingroup) or members of different gender groups (outgroup). All participants judged moral transgressions to be more wrong than conventional transgressions. However, when asked to make a judgment after being told an authority figure did not see the transgression, younger participants still judged that moral violations were less acceptable than conventional transgressions, but judged both moral and conventional transgressions with an outgroup victim as more acceptable than the corresponding transgressions with an ingroup victim. Older children did not demonstrate the same ingroup bias; rather they focused only on the domain of the transgressions. The results demonstrate the impact intergroup information has on children's evaluations about both moral and conventional transgressions.     

The amygdalostriatal and corticostriatal effective connectivity in anticipation and evaluation of facial attractiveness

Decision-making consists of several stages of information processing, including an anticipation stage and an outcome evaluation stage. Previous studies showed that the ventral striatum (VS) is pivotal to both stages, bridging motivation and action, and it works in concert with the ventral medial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) and the amygdala. However, evidence concerning how the VS works together with the vmPFC and the amygdala came mainly from neuropathology and animal studies; little is known about the dynamics of this network in the functioning human brain. Here we used fMRI combined with dynamic causal modeling (DCM) to investigate the information flow along amygdalostriatal and corticostriatal pathways in a facial attractiveness guessing task. Specifically, we asked participants to guess whether a blurred photo of female face was attractive and to wait for a few seconds (“anticipation stage”) until an unblurred photo of feedback face, which was either attractive or unattractive, was presented (“outcome evaluation stage”). At the anticipation stage, the bilateral amygdala and VS showed higher activation for the “attractive” than for the “unattractive” guess. At the outcome evaluation stage, the vmPFC and the bilateral VS were more activated by feedback faces whose attractiveness was congruent with the initial guess than by incongruent faces; however, this effect was only significant for attractive faces, not for unattractive ones. DCM showed that at the anticipation stage, the choice-related information entered the amygdalostriatal pathway through the amygdala and was projected to the VS. At the evaluation stage, the outcome-related information entered the corticostriatal pathway through the vmPFC. Bidirectional connectivities existed between the vmPFC and VS, with the VS-to-vmPFC connectivity weakened by unattractive faces. These findings advanced our understanding of the reward circuitry by demonstrating the pattern of information flow along the amygdalostriatal and corticostriatal pathways at different stages of decision-making.     

Money,moral transgressions,and blame

Two experiments tested participants' attributions for others' immoral behaviors when conducted for more versus less money. We hypothesized and found that observers would blame wrongdoers more when seeing a transgression enacted for little rather than a lot of money, and that this would be evident in observers' hand-washing behavior. Experiment 1 used a cognitive dissonance paradigm. Participants (N = 160) observed a confederate lie in exchange for either a relatively large or a small monetary payment. Participants blamed the liar more in the small (versus large) money condition. Participants (N = 184) in Experiment 2 saw images of someone knocking over another to obtain a small, medium, or large monetary sum. In the small (versus large) money condition, participants blamed the perpetrator (money) more. Hence, participants assigned less blame to moral wrong-doers, if the latter enacted their deed to obtain relatively large sums of money. Small amounts of money accentuate the immorality of others' transgressions.     

Effect of facial stimuli exposure time on evaluation of facial attractiveness

Facial attractiveness has advantages both socially and sexually, and the human brain has evolved to perceive specific facial characteristics as attractive. The current research examined the effect of facial stimuli exposure time on facial attractiveness evaluations. In Experiment 1, 86 students observed 44 facial stimuli in short and long amounts of time. To eliminate any influence of repeated stimuli on the second observations, Experiment 2 was performed on 84 participants who observed the facial stimuli in either short or long durations. Differences in both experiments were significant. These studies showed that exposure time has an influence on the evaluation of facial attractiveness. Participants who were exposed to facial stimuli for a short amount of time perceived greater facial attractiveness than when they were exposed for a longer time to the same stimuli. In other words, faces were more beautiful when they were observed in a short amount of time, and this effect occurred regardless of gender.