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The Beauty Bias: Can people love the one
they are compatible with?
Physical attractiveness is important in
choosing whom to date. Good looking people
are not only popular targets for romantic
pursuits, they themselves also tend to flock
together with more attractive others.
Does this mean then that more attractive
versus less attractive people wear a
different pair of lens when evaluating
others’ attractiveness?
Columbia University marketing professor,
Leonard Lee, and colleagues, George
Loewenstein (Carnegie Mellon University),
Dan Ariely (MIT) and James Hong and Jim
Young (HOTorNOT.com), decided to test this
theory in the realm of an online dating
site.
The site HOTorNOT.com allows members to rate
others on their level of physical
attractiveness.
Lee and colleagues analyzed two data sets
from HOTorNOT.com -- one containing members’
dating requests, and the other containing
the attractiveness ratings of other members.
Both data sets also included ratings of
members’ own attractiveness as rated by
other members.
The results, which will be published in an
upcoming issue of Psychological Science, a
journal of the Association for Psychological
Science, are revealing.
Consistent with previous research, people
with similar levels of physical
attractiveness indeed tend to date each
other, with more attractive people being
more particular about the physical
attractiveness of their potential dates.
Furthermore, people prefer to date others
who are moderately more attractive than
them.
Compared to females, males are more
influenced by how physically attractive
their potential dates are, but less affected
by how attractive they themselves are, when
deciding whom to date.Â
Also, regardless of how attractive people
themselves are, they seem to judge others’
attractiveness in similar ways, supporting
the notion that we have largely universal,
culturally independent standards of beauty
(e.g. symmetric faces).
These results indicate that people’s own
attractiveness does not affect their
judgment of others’ attractiveness.
People of different physical attractiveness
levels might instead vary the importance
they place on different desirable qualities
in their dates.
Lee and colleagues conducted a follow-up
speed-dating study in which more attractive
people placed more weight on physical
attractiveness in selecting their dates,
while less attractive people placed more
weight on other qualities (e.g. sense of
humor).
Much like the famous line from Crosby,
Stills, Nash, and Young, people find a way
to love the ones they can be with.
Psychological Science is
ranked among the top 10 general psychology
journals for impact by the Institute for
Scientific Information.
For a copy of the article “If I’m Not Hot,
Are You Hot or Not? Physical Attractiveness
Evaluations and Dating preferences as a
Function of Own Attractiveness” and access
to other Psychological Science research
findings, please contact Catherine West at
(202) 783-2077 or cwest@psychologicalscien
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