Physical Attractiveness (AQA A Level Psychology)

Physical Attractiveness

• Physical attractiveness may be what first draws a couple together: each partner finds  the physical appearance of their mate to be pleasing and this further motivates the couple to spend more time together

• There is some research which  attempts to explain who/what is deemed attractive universally:

  • The babyface hypothesis (Berry & MacArthur, 1986) rests on the assumption that people are drawn to the appealing, unthreatening features of babies e.g. large eyes, soft skin, blemish-free appearance as these act as social releasers prompting nurture and feelings of protectiveness in the observer

  • Attractive children and adults are judged more positively than unattractive children and adults, even by those who know them (Langlois et al. 2001)

  • Facial configurations which closely resemble the population mean and which have symmetry, dimorphism (i.e. a female face looks identifiably feminine), and youthfulness tend to be preferred across cultures as this may signal the ability to develop normally whatever environmental conditions are present

• Being found physically attractive can have wide-ranging, long-term benefits from being  less lonely, less socially anxious and more popular (Feingold, 1992); attractive people may also receive less harsh punishments in a court of law than unattractive people (Zebrowitz & McDonald, 2001)

Will the baby-faced good  looks of these two actors help or hinder their careers?

The Halo Effect

• The halo effect can be summarised as the ‘what is beautiful is good’ stereotype

• The halo effect is a term coined by Dion et al. (1972) to describe the array of positive personal qualities, traits and skills that are attributed to good-looking people

• The halo effect occurs when a good-looking person is thought to be more sociable, kind, intelligent, interesting; in short they are deemed to be socially desirable

• The halo effect operates outside of gender, age and cultural parameters: it appears to be a universal construct e.g. students from the USA and Korea found good-looking people to be more friendly and trustworthy than those deemed unattractive Kim (1997)

• The influence of entertainment such as Disney films, perpetuates the stereotype that beauty equals goodness e.g. heroes and heroines are attractive; ‘baddies’ are generally ‘ugly’ (large hooked noses, hunched backs, bad skin, crooked features)

• The halo effect is a type of cognitive bias as it involves generalising conclusions and forming an impression about a good-looking person based only on their attractiveness and on no other available information

The typical Disney ‘baddy’ may serve to perpetuate harmful stereotypes and notions of beauty/ugliness.

The Matching Hypothesis

• The matching hypothesis (Walster, 1966) is based on the assumption that people tend to pair up with partners who are of roughly the same level of attractiveness as they themselves are

• The matching hypothesis is a cognitive mechanism that uses self-rating and rating of others based solely on physical appearance e.g. ‘I think I rate as a level 7 so I’m looking for another 7, ideally an 8; but I may have to settle for a 6’

• The matching hypothesis revolves around ideas as to self-worth and self-esteem i.e. if your partner is deemed to be ‘ugly’ then this will affect your social standing but if your partner is a ‘looker’ then your social status will rise: either outcome will have an effect on how you view yourself (as worthy or not worthy)

• There is a fine balancing act involved in the matching hypothesis: someone must weigh up their chances of aiming for someone ‘out of their league’ - and risk rejection, or decide to take the ‘any port in a storm’ option and simply ‘settle’ for a partner who is less attractive than them

Research which investigates physical attractiveness

• Aharon et al. (2001) -  fMRI scans showed that dopamine-rich areas of the brain are activated when males are shown pictures of beautiful female faces 

• Cunningham (1986) - baby-faced female features (small nose, large eyes, small chin, large smile) were positively correlated with levels of attractiveness by males who also demonstrated a higher tendency to to perform acts of prosocial behaviour towards these attractive females

• Dion et al. (1972) -  participants consistently rated photos of attractive people more favourably than less attractive people; the attractive people were imbued with positive qualities and life outcomes such as marital happiness and career success

• Walster et al. (1966) -  the researchers found no support for their hypothesis that people will only date those of a similar level of attraction: the best predictor of someone being asked out on a date is how attractive that person is, regardless of the level of attraction of the person asking them

Evaluation of Factors Affecting Attraction: Physical Attractiveness

Strengths

• Feingold’s(1998) meta analysis of research on the matching hypothesis using actual couples found that partners tended to be equally attractive: this finding increases the external validity of the theory as it can be seen in operation in real life

• There is some predictive validity in the halo effect: Landy & Sigall (1975) found that essays written by attractive schoolchildren were graded higher than those written by unattractive schoolchildren

Weaknesses

• Taylor et al. (2011) investigated the matching hypothesis using the activity logs of an online dating site which revealed that people do not necessarily apply the matching hypothesis when it comes to dating decisions, professing a preference for the most attractive males/females on the site

• Notions of ‘what is attractive?’ are highly subjective and prone to individual differences which means that associated theories lack scientific validity

Link to Issues & Debates

The matching hypothesis could be said to take a nomothetic approach to understanding behaviour as it uses large samples to determine the extent to which self-rating and rating of others is a factor in forming a relationship.

Theories of physical attractiveness may suffer from a beta bias as they assume no real differences between the ways in which men and women view physical attractiveness - research into sexual selection as covered on the AQA spec (and on this site) has shown that males place much more emphasis on looks than females do so it is an overgeneralisation to suggest no gender differences on this point.