Hot--Or Not? Study Says
Most Agree on Beauty
Excerpt By Alison McCook, Reuters Health

Men and women generally agree about how attractive another person is, and are often quite accurate in predicting how others will rate their own appearance, new study findings show.

These results indicate that, not surprisingly, people tend to pay very close attention to their own and others' attractiveness.

"One gets the feeling that physical attractiveness is one of the major themes of social life," study author Dr. Rowland Miller told Reuters Health.

Interestingly, men and women also show subtle differences in how they rate themselves and others, illustrating that both genders are not equally attuned to physical attractiveness, report Miller and his coauthor, Dr. David K. Marcus.

Raters were most likely to agree about the attractiveness of another person if all raters were male, and the person being rated was female, Marcus and Miller note. The least agreement among raters occurred when men rated other men.

During the study, the Sam Houston State University researchers--based in Huntsville, Texas--split 112 male and 112 female students into groups of eight, divided equally by gender. All of the group members were strangers when the study began.

Once in their groups, students were asked to indicate how attractive they thought each group member was, their own attractiveness, and how they thought they would be rated by other group members.

The researchers emphasized that students were to rate the general appearance of each group member, and not how attracted they were, personally, to each person.

Reporting in the March issue of the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, Marcus and Miller found that, in general, all group members agreed about how attractive each other was, regardless of gender.

But certain gender differences did emerge, the authors note. The most agreement among reviewers appeared when men rated the attractiveness of women, and the least when men rated the attractiveness of the other men in their group.

In contrast, women generally agreed with each other about the attractiveness of both male and female group members.

And while people generally estimated well--or overestimated--how attractive their group members would find them, women were especially good at predicting how men would rate their appearance.

Men were only "modestly" accurate in predicting how women would rate them, and not good at predicting appraisals by other men, the authors note.

During an interview, Miller suggested that men may be especially focused on their mates--rather than their own--physical appearance.

"Men care more about looks, physical attractiveness, in their partners than women do," Miller said.

Marcus suggested that the gender differences seen in the study may stem from inequality between the sexes, noting that if women were generally the more powerful sex, roles might become reversed, and they might focus more on looks than men do.

Meanwhile, the fact that men focus so much on women's physical attractiveness may explain why women were so accurate in rating their own and other women's appearances, Miller added.

"Attentiveness to other women's looks, by way of competition, would make sense for women," he noted.

SOURCE: Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 2003;29.

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