Good-looking people are not what we think.

Abstract

Meta-analysis was used to examine findings in 2 related areas: experimental research on the physical attractiveness stereotype and correlational studies of characteristics associated with physical attractiveness. The experimental literature found that physically attractive people were perceived as more sociable, dominant, sexually warm, mentally healthy, intelligent, and socially skilled than physically unattractive people. Yet, the correlational literature indicated generally trivial relationships between physical attractiveness and measures of personality and mental ability, although good-looking people were less lonely, less socially anxious, more popular, more socially skilled, and more sexually experienced than unattractive people. Self-ratings of physical attractiveness were positively correlated with a wider range of attributes than was actual physical attractiveness.Do good-looking people differ from unattractive people and, if so, why? Now consider self-perceptions of physical attractiveness. Do people who view themselves as physically appealing different from their counterparts who hold modest opinions of their own physical appearance and, if so, why? This article examines and integrates theories and empirical findings from the physical attractiveness literature to address these interesting questions. Conceptualization and Measurement of AttractivenessWhat is physical attractiveness? Social scientists, like laymen, believe that beauty is denned by social consensus (Berscheid & Walster, 1974;Hatfield & Sprecher, 1986). Accordingly, researchers measure physical attractiveness by use of judges, with each judge asked to provide an independent rating of the physical attractiveness of each subject, a procedure strikingly similar to the notorious 1 -to-10 attractiveness-rating scale often used in the "real world" when people first observe strangers of the opposite sex. These assessments are then averaged over judges by subject to yield physical attractiveness ratings (e.g., Walster, . Since the mid-1960s, scores of studies have correlated such pooled physical attractiveness judgments (sometimes called objective physical attractiveness) with other characteristics, including personality traits, cognitive ability, popularity, social skills, and sexual experience I want to thank Ronald Mazzella for assistance in the preparation of data for meta-analysis, two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on a draft of this article, and the following researchers for providing me with unpublished findings for this review:

Maxims or myths of beauty? A meta-analytic and theoretical review.

“…These studies primarily have investigated attributions made by college students about attractive and unattractive strangers based on a photograph of the face and, sometimes, minimal printed "background information" about the hypothetical individuals. This strangerattribution literature has been summarized by earlier meta-analyses (see, e.g., Eagly, Ashmore, Makhijanl, & Longo, 1991;Feingold, 1992b), which have confmned the association between attractiveness and many attributions of positive characteristics. 1…”

“…Moreover, the vast majority of dependent variables analyzed by Feingold (1992b) and L. A. Jackson et al (1995) assessed traits as defined by psychometric tests (e.g., IQ) rather than behavior as defined by observations of behaviors in actual interactions.…”

“…Although these perspectives were not originally conceptualized to account for the origin or causal mechanism underlying attractiveness effects, both have been successfully invoked to understand attractiveness effects, and a number of predictions about attractiveness can be deduced from them (see, e.g., 2Feingold (1990) also meta-analyzed behavioral and trait variables. However, the studies included in his 1990 meta-analysis were virtually identical to those included in Feingold (1992b) and are therefore not cited here as a third meta-analysis. Barber, 1995;Berscheid & Walster, 1974;Buss, 1998Buss, , 1999Buss & Schmitt, 1993;Cunningham, Druen, & Barbee, 1997;Eagly et al, 1991;Feingold, 1992a;L.…”

“…(see, e.g., Eagly, Ashmore, Makhijanl, & Longo, 1991;Feingold, 1992b), which have confmned the association between attractiveness and many attributions of positive characteristics. 1…”

First impressions: Gait cues drive reliable trait judgements

“…Whilst some studies report a 'kernel of truth' in trait impressions (Berry, 1990;Borkenau, Mauer, Riemann, Spinath, & Angleitner, 2004;Penton-Voak, Pound, Little, & Perrett, 2006), plenty of evidence points towards unrelated, and often transient, cues driving personality judgments, such as physical attractiveness (Dion, Berscheid, & Walster, 1972;Feingold, 1992;Jones, Little, Burt, & Perrett, 2004) or emotions (Knutson, 1996;Montepare & Dobish, 2003), which shows that people are not infallible in their judgments. However, consensus at zero acquaintance remains an interesting topic of study independent of the Kernel of Truth hypothesis and the lack of accuracy by no means diminishes the importance of our study.…”