Young Children's Conception of Physical Attractiveness as Evidenced in Human Figure Drawings

Abstract

In an effort to assess young children's conceptions of “pretty” and “ugly,” 29 five‐ and six‐year‐old children (14 male and 15 female) were asked to draw a pretty person and an ugly person. These drawings were scored for developmental maturity according to the Goodenough Draw‐a‐Man Test and for emotionality by means of the Koppitz Scale of Emotional Indicators. The data confirmed that young children do make discriminations on the basis of physical attractiveness that affect their drawings. The children's drawings of an ugly person reflected a lower level of developmental maturity (p < 0.001) and greater emotionality (p < 0.001) than drawings of a pretty person. These differences between pretty‐person and ugly‐person drawings suggest that young children have a well‐developed concept of physical attractiveness that conforms to the cultural stereo type found in older children and adults, in which “ugly” produces more primitive and emotional responding than “pretty.” As a practical matter, the results underscore the need to be alert to the presence of transient emotional states in the testing of young children.