Adults tend to attribute positive personality traits to people they find physically attractive.
- People are able to analyze and judge people’s faces after seeing them for only 100 milliseconds.
- The ability to quickly perceive that a face is attractive is a sign of good health and a well-functioning immune system.
“Halo effect”. It is a cognitive bias that affects people’s perception. Several studies have shown that for some, being attractive is linked to qualities. However, “most of these cohorts were conducted on Western samples”, said an American researcher and a British scientist. That is why they decided to carry out a study, the results of which were published in the journal Current Psychology.
Evaluate 120 faces
As part of this work, the authors examined the “halo effect of attractiveness” in 45 countries. They recruited 11,000 adults, whose data had been collected through a vast cross-cultural network of researchers called the Psychological Science Accelerator. Participants were randomly assigned and rated the photos of 60 men and 60 women from different countries.
After analyzing the faces, they had to determine the character traits of the people in the pictures by choosing one of the following 13 adjectives: attractive, aggressive, benevolent, confident, dominant, emotionally stable, intelligent, naughty, responsible, sociable, reliable, unhappy and weird.
The “halo effect of attractiveness” is observed all over the world
According to the results, physical attractiveness was associated with all personality traits “socially desirable”. “Specifically, across different regions of the world, male and female faces rated as more attractive were rated as more confident, emotionally stable, intelligent, responsible, sociable, and trustworthy,” can we read in the study. In other words, people tend to attribute positive personality traits to adults they find attractive. With this discovery, the expression “blinded by beauty” takes on a little more meaning…
