Title:
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Non-physical components of perceived facial attractiveness
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The idea that a not-so-attractive person, is perceived as increasingly attractive
the more one gets to know them, is a commonly reported experience, which is often
attributed to familiarity. Features initially judged as unattractive, may later be judged
as cute or unique. However, this explanation cannot account for why a person may
be perceived as less attractive as one gets to know them. The first aim of the present
research was to investigate whether liking for the target is the critical mediating
factor in the relationship between knowing a person's non-physical characteristics,
and appraisals of their facial attractiveness. This hypothesis is confirmed in Chapter
2. The second aim of this research was to explore the social-cognitive mechanisms
underlying this effect. Chapter 2 found that personality infonnation, with a strong
association to liking, cues expectations regarding the physical attractiveness of the
target, which predict actual attractiveness ratings. Chapter 3 examined whether the
effects are specific to the faces to which the personality information referred, and
found that the effect carried-over to influence evaluations of a subsequently
presented novel face, but that the effect was not mediated by whether the novel face
physically resembled the target face, or was a friend of the target person. Chapter 4
found that affective priming, with words unrelated to personality characteristics,
affects evaluations of facial attractiveness in much the same way. However, nonaffective
priming does not influence ratings of attractiveness and relevant facial
characteristics in the same way as affective priming does. Chapter 5 found that
negative stimuli had a larger impact on affect scores and attractiveness judgements
than positive stimuli. Chapter 6 presents a social-cognitive model of the effect of
non-physical factors which influence how a face is processed to fonn attractiveness
judgements, which brings together the different findings of the present research.
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