Why Do Women Wear Makeup

How much do you rely on cosmetics? Do you consider makeup to be an essential part of who you are? When wearing makeup, do you expect others to perceive you a certain way? The amount of makeup someone wears influences how physically attractive they look, and how confident, intelligent, and friendly they seem. Previous research has investigated if cosmetics had any impact on the way that women were perceived by others. Previous research has focused on the correlation between cosmetic usage and personality traits, and on the differences in how makeup changes attractiveness ratings. Robertson, Fieldman, and Hussey (2008) studied the the effect of personality variables on cosmetic usage. Participants completed three personality factors questionnaires that came from the International Personality Item Pool (IPIP), then completed a cosmetic usage questionnaire. Researches found that …show more content…
We extended this research by investigating how others perceive women that wear no makeup, light makeup, and heavy makeup. Also, we focused on personality traits such as friendliness, confidence, and intelligence rather than only attractiveness. In our experiment, participants rated different photographs of a woman with the three different levels of makeup mentioned before. Participants were asked to rate in which photo the woman looked the most attractive, most friendly, most confident, and most intelligent. All participants rated the three different photos. Just as Tagai et al. (2016) found that the images in the light makeup category scored highest on attractiveness ratings, followed by the heavy makeup images, and no makeup scored the lowest in this rating, we hypothesized that participants would rate the light and heavy makeup photos the most attractive, the no makeup photo the most confident, the light makeup photo the most friendly, and the no makeup photo the most