PSYC 241 Lecture Notes - Lecture 10: Physical Attractiveness, Confirmation Bias, Terrycloth
15 Jun 2018
School
Department
Course
Professor
WEEK 10
Content from this lecture will be applicable for the second assignment AND CH 10
The importance of intimate relationships
- We are inherently social
- We have a fundamental need to belong
- We want to have enduring interactions with others that are satisfying
- Growing amount of research linking to satisfying relationship to
o Positive health outcomes
▪ We bounce back from illnesses faster if we have positive satisfying
relationships
▪ Beneficial to both in a heterosexual relationship – men really benefit
▪ As stress in relationships increase this especially effects women
o Social support
▪ If people are there for you when things go wrong
▪ Provide comfort
o Capitalization
▪ Are people there for you when things go right
▪ Celebrate accomplishments
▪ Make positive events more positive
o “Michelangelo effect”
▪ In context of close romantic relationships
▪ The partner sees us as more positively than we see ourselves – this is to
the extent that our relationship is satisfying
▪ The effect says that overtime we will become more like our partner’s
idealized version of ourselves
o Goal pursuit
▪ We are better able to pursue independent goals to the extent that we are
supported by others
o Self- expansion
▪ Through close relationships with others, we become broader and better
versions of ourselves – we learn what others know
▪ They allow us to grow in our own worlds
▪ We become more interested in what others know
What factors influence our choice of close friends and partners?
- Proximity
o We are more likely to get to know people that we interact with in real life
o If we see someone frequently we tend to like them more (mere exposure effect)
and we are more likely to become friends with them
- Physical attractiveness
o Compared to people who are less attractive, physically attractive people are more
likely to:
▪ Marry, or re-marry
▪ Achieve good grades
▪ Attain prestigious occupations
• Study – took 700 MBA grad pictures and had people rate how
attractive they were. They contacted the MBA grads a 10 years
later and asked them what their occupation is and how much
money they make – found that people who were more attractive
made more money and had better jobs
▪ Get lighter sentences for crimes
• Unless their attractiveness helped them commit the crime (e.g.
fraud)
o Why might the beauty bias be true
▪ “halo effect”
• People make more benign attributions about people based on how
they look
• If we see someone who is attractive we think that they are smart,
sociable etc
▪ History of positive social interactions
• People treat more attractive people better
• Attractive people have a larger history of positive social
interactions – this allows them to develop better social skills, and
become more confident
▪ Both?
• Not mutually exclusive but you can have both
▪ Study of attractiveness and social skills
• Participants had a series of phone calls – could not tell
attractiveness, but the researchers knew—they rated the
attractiveness.
• Object of study was to talk to people on the phone and rate how
socially skilled they were
• Asked participants to rate their own attractiveness and correlated
this with the experimenter’s ratings
o Findigns: males – no relationship between what they
thought their attractiveness was, and what the judges’
ratings were
▪ Females – their sense of their own attractiveness
was closely correlated with the judges’ ratings –
probably has to do with the way females are
socialized
o For the people who were more attractive – they were found
to have better social skills as rated by the participants even
though the participants could not see the person they were
talking to
o
Males
females
Self attractiveness
and rated
attractiveness
-.01
.39
Rated
attractiveness by
judges and rated
social skills by the
participants
.31
o .29
▪ Another study
• Males called women, were led to believe that the women were
attractive or not attractive – were showed a picture of a woman but
they weren’t actually talking to the person
• Taped the phone calls
• FINDINGS
o People who thought they were talking to someone who was
attractive – let the other person talk more, laughed at their
jokes – confirmation bias – people were nice and of course
the other person was nice back
o If the men thought they were talking to an unattractive
person, they were polite but less inviting and this was
reciprocated back to them
o What influences attractiveness?
▪ Baby-facedness
• Related to young girls aged 6-7
• Big eyes relative to the rest of their face
• Same proportions as seen in a child but the elements of maturity –
cheekbones and jawline
• Small chin
• Why baby faced features are seen as attractive
o Evolutionary – anything that looks like a baby is cute and
evokes a nurturing effect in us
o Men value youth and fertility
▪ Want women who are young enough to have kids
• Hard to test
▪ Facial symmetry
• We see symmetrical faces as more attractive even if we are not
noticing the symmetry
• Signal of health – has reproductive benefits
• Asymmetry is related to invitro pathogens -- not good
▪ Facial features in females
