Lecture 2/3 - Social Behavior And Physical Appearance

Front 1

Protesting at Dartmouth College

Back 1

- appearance and precieved political opinions
- Professor Hart editorializes concerns on the protests over Dartmouth’s investments in South Africa
- Feels that all the protestors are ugly = he is engageing in stereotypical behavior, just because he does not like the cause that they are protesting

Front 2

Assessing the possibility of a stereotype linked to facial attractiveness

Back 2

- Strongly affected: Social competence, Likeability, Leadership
- Moderately affected: Intellectual skills, Adjustment, Assertiveness
- Not affected: Honesty, Concern for others

Front 3

Is beauty always "better"?

Back 3

- Iowa Students rated pictues of those from the Uniersity of Minnisota
- Confirmed the previous stereotypes linked to facial attractiveness
- they also rated them as:
• More conceited and materialistic
• Less likely to be good parents
• More likely to engage in extramarital affairs
- But once we know the person we are no longer prone to such stereotypical thinking

Front 4

More attractive offspring are:

Back 4

- Likely to date more frequently.
- More likely to be president of their class.
- Have more satisfying social lives. - no more likely to experience academic success.

Front 5

Date parading on the Dartmouth Campus-What functions does it serve?

Back 5

Research answer: The male that is in a relationship with the female he has the traits of the attractive female

Front 6

Summary of attractiveness

Back 6

1. Given only the information that you are physically attractive we attribute mostly positive characteristics to you.
2. Stereotype not undermined by contact.
3. Beauty radiates traits - but only if we are in a relationship with the attractive person.
4. Females more inclined to think of their attractiveness as a social resource than are men.

Front 7

Beauty is "in the eye of the beholder"

Back 7

- usual approach to identifying attractive and not so attractive others
- Age, sex, and cultural factors in the judgement of facial attractiveness

Front 8

The “preferential looking” paradigm with infants who cannot speak

Back 8

Infants have a preference for a person who is attractice rather than unattractive

Front 9

Does it matter whether the perceiver know you?

Back 9

- Yes, if you are in the middle of the distribution. Then it will change you rating but if you are in either of the ends of the distribution that pysch factors don’t matter

Front 10

A General Principle in Perception

Back 10

The clearer or less ambiguous the stimulus, the less likely it is that psychological factors will affect your perception of that stimulus

Front 11

Most research has measured attractiveness through perceiver ratings

Back 11

- Reliability of such ratings is high across age, culture, race, sex, etc.
- Even very young infants appear to know the difference.
- Acquaintance makes a difference - but only for averagely attractive faces.

Front 12

Does the facial attractiveness of others affect an infant’s behavior ?

Back 12

- Very young infant prefer to look at attractive faces over unattractive face
- Play more positively with attractive dolls over unattractive dolls

Front 13

Is facial attractiveness an advantage to children?

Back 13

- Baby crying = Takes the mother longer to respond to an ugly baby that a pretty one
- Shopping cart seat belts= children that are not buckled in are uglier

Front 14

Celebrity obsessions

Back 14

- Made rhesus monkey’s thirsty… chose to look at picture of celebrity monkey over juice and didn’t want to look at insubordinate monkeys
- Alpha animals are most attractive in every group
- Interest in faces that say something in social status – recent study since 1968
- Have very strong stereotype linking facial attractiveness to positive personal traits

Front 15

Does facial attractiveness affect how others treat you at Dartmouth?

Back 15

- Brought women into a lab and either made them look attractive or unattractive. Had them socialize with men and recorded interactions
- Looking behavior = Male spends twice as much time looking at attractive woman
- Smiling behavior= We like when people smile at us; they smile more at attractive women
- What did she say?= Went to males and asked them what woman said to them; could recall much more from attractive woman
- What was she wearing? = Could remember if was attractive
- Where is she? = Looked for her on campus if she was attractive
- If only in my dreams != More dreams if she was attractive

Front 16

Expectations become reality: The self-fulfilling prophecy dynamic

Back 16

- Maze bright and maze dull rats
- Fifth graders who are expected to “spurt”.
- Attractive and unattractive women on the phone.

Front 17

Maze bright and maze dull rats

Back 17

- Researcher would say different things to groups of people working with the rats; would either say they were maze bright = really smart, or maze dull = really dump
- Maze bright group come back with data showing they could learn the maze quickly and maze dull people came back with slow and bad data
- All rats were the same and pulled at random
- Student trainers treated rats differently based on maze bright/dull classification
- Maze bright = spoke to rats and gave reinforcement
- Maze dull = threw rats around and didn’t speak to it and didn’t treat it nicely

Front 18

Fifth graders who are expected to “spurt”

Back 18

o Teacher had expectation of intellectual gain, 5 kids have greater IQ when expected to “spurt”
o Results published in pygmalian in the classroom

Front 19

Attractive and unattractive women on the phone

Back 19

- Recorded conversations that a male has with an unattractive woman vs an attractive woman
- Woman and man both create positive behavioral response when they both think the woman is attractive

Front 20

Necessary conditions to have your face change your social outcomes & behavior

Back 20

- Other people need to agree on how facially attractive you are.
- You need to be relatively constant in your level of facial attractiveness during development.

Front 21

Mitch Sader’s Honors Thesis: attractiveness over early development in a small Ohio community

Back 21

- Took pictures of people and studied them based on how they looked when younger
- If either very attractive/unattractive you pretty much stayed them same through graduation
- If in middle of attractive spectrum, then attractiveness over high school development changes through out

Front 22

How do we know that a face is attractive?

Back 22

- Happy expressions are more attractive than unhappy faces: For females, default expression is a slight smile; Neutral face = negative feelings only for women not for males
- The attractive face is the prototypical face: Langlois = Put all faces of girls in a class together to form one face; As you get more and more faces in composite, the face gets more attractive; Works with people in other cultures as well
- What is attractive is “babyish” = only in women; Features move upwards when you age

Front 23

Biases in the research on attractiveness

Back 23

- Overly focused on the face = o Attractive voices, bodies, etc; Faces are primary social stimulant
- Research studies are sexist = Most subjects are male and most targets are female; Attractiveness matters if you’re a woman but doesn’t matter if you’re a male in terms of how females view you; Most research done by females = weird
- Lack of cross-cultural studies.

Front 24

General conclusions

Back 24

• Effects are robust and not trivial
• Attractive people are perceived and treated differently
• Attractive differ from unattractive in several traits and behaviors
- Genes that make face attractive may also give you special traits or personalities
• Attractiveness is important for both sexes

Front 25

Characteristics of our self perceptions of attractiveness

Back 25

- Correlations with peer assessments are low (Females = +.25; Males = +.28).
- Self-perceptions reflect Lake Wobegon effect.
- Females more “modest” in their assessments of how peers view them than are males.

Front 26

Do we have accurate view of how we appear to others?

Back 26

- We should be clear on if we are attractive or not
- All people think mom will be very generous with rating, over dad’s rating
- Proved to be accurate

Front 27

Physical Characteristics you think are noticed by others

Back 27

- Women think things like hair and clothes are more important than men think they are
- Men over estimate height by over an inch and women will underestimate weight by 5-10 lbs