{"id":3130,"date":"2017-04-17T22:22:07","date_gmt":"2017-04-18T02:22:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/?p=3130"},"modified":"2020-02-07T10:37:50","modified_gmt":"2020-02-07T15:37:50","slug":"please-try-to-be-extremely-good-looking","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/2017\/04\/17\/please-try-to-be-extremely-good-looking\/","title":{"rendered":"Being Extremely Good-Looking Benefits You – the Halo Effect"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Abercrombie & Fitch models<\/p><\/div>\n

You must have seen these charming male models in front of some Abercrombie and Fitch stores, right? Did you stop for a picture with them? Did they successfully allure you to walk in the store and carry a huge shopping bag on your way out? Well, if these two scenarios sound familiar to you, then you probably should have known the power of looking good. It is not hard to find comparable examples besides Abercrombie and Fitch in the real life. The faces of attractive Hollywood celebrities have invaded everywhere such as on posters and televisions. Why? Because their pretty faces are worth millions of dollars and they can lead you to buy anything! One evidence\u00a0from a report<\/a> on\u00a0Fashionista shows that Puma has successfully increased its sales by 7.6 percent just because it invited Rihanna to be its brand ambassador and women\u2019s creative director. Although you might be immune to the commercials and argue that \u201ca book should not be judged by its cover\u201d, you cannot deny that these good-looking people can\u00a0at least please your aesthetic taste. Therefore, let me remind you again \u2013 be extremely good-looking \u2013 because it is highly possible that your attractiveness gets rewarded.
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The halo effect – angel or damon<\/p><\/div>\n

The underlying rationale of the value of beauty is called the halo effect. It refers to a phenomenon in which if we have an overall positive impression of someone, we are likely to have positive opinions about other aspects of that person, including personality, academic competence, etc. Wikipedia gives a more in-depth explanation if you are interested to know, click here<\/a>. Among all the factors that influence the first impression, a higher physical attractiveness is the leading one that substantially promotes the halo effect. In other words, we tend to believe that those people who are physically more attractive have, for example, a higher perceived academic competence (Talamas, David, and Perrett, 2009). Moreover, the impacts of physical attractiveness on the halo effect extend to the topics of cognitive psychology such as stereotypes, pattern recognition, and categorizations. In addition, the social phenomenon caused by the halo effect can be explained by topics of cognitive psychology such as stereotypes, pattern recognition, and categorizations. In general, the halo effect is an everyday social phenomenon supported by a variety of cognitive processes.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s first define what attractive physical features are. I am sure you have your own answer in mind. As psychologists, Zebrowitz and Franklin (2012) regarded the \u201cbabyface stereotype\u201d as a kind of physical attractiveness. In general, according to the study by Zebrowitz and Montepare (2008), babyfaceness refers to infantile facial characters, including larger eyes, higher eyebrows, rounder faces, etc. Adults with these certain facial features tend to be perceived as submissive, gentle, and honest. In their study, the participants, divided into a young adult group (YA) and an older adult group (OA), were asked to rate the attractiveness, babyfaceness, competence, health, hostility, and untrustworthiness based on the facial stimuli of both young and old adults. TThe reason why the researchers linked attractiveness halo effect to the babyface stereotype was that both faces of high attractiveness and faces of more childlike features had higher scores on competence and health and lower scores on hostility and untrustworthiness. Just as discussed above, the cognitive explanation was that the higher attractiveness, which contributed to a strong positive halo effect, led the participants to have more positive opinions about people\u2019s other characteristics, such as high competence and good health. Though not mentioned directly in the study, facial pattern recognition and categorizations played an important role in forming the attractiveness halo effect and the babyface stereotype. A less complicated definition of facial pattern recognition and categorizations is that when we see something, we tend to match the received visual information with the pre-existing knowledge in our memory to recognize it and understand it. Here<\/a> is a more detailed explanation of pattern recognition in psychology.\u00a0Among different kinds of pattern recognition, facial pattern recognition is unique because when people process faces, they do it holistically instead of analytically, which means people perceive a face as a whole rather than breaking a face down into parts. In this case, as we holistically view the childlike features, the illusion of a baby-face can activate our knowledge of babies and young children who are often considered non-hostile, healthy, competitive, and trustworthy and thus, an attractiveness halo effect is emerged. Therefore, why not try to look young and fresh? Looking young and thus more attractive probably can help you help you leave better impressions on others.<\/p>\n

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asymmetric vs. symmetric face<\/p><\/div>\n

Another factor that influences physical attractiveness is how symmetrical a face is. According to the study by \u0160vegar (2016) related to facial symmetry, it was demonstrated that the reason why people favored a symmetric face was that it could symbolize good health whereas an asymmetric face could not because it lacked in resistance to external stressors from both genes and the environment. Now you might have a sense of the reason why those attractive Hollywood stars have spent a million dollars on plastic surgeries that give them symmetric nose bridges and equally big eyes – these symmetric facial features may deliver an illusion of health to you. From a cognitive perspective, symmetric facial features have been pre-categorized and can be recognized as symbolic patterns of good health. Thus, the access to prior knowledge triggered the halo effect on more symmetric faces.<\/p>\n

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Potential Halo Effect in Classroom<\/p><\/div>\n

Now, you might still wonder why I keep telling you to look good especially if you alert to the gimmicky halo effect used by firms and celebrities. You might want to ask if the halo effect is only about leaving good impressions and boosting sales, how would the halo effect be of any bigger importance in our life? In fact, influenced by the physical attractiveness, the halo effect can easily introduce a lot of biases, which might lead to unfair treatment or even discrimination. Imagine you are in a class with your classmates and your professor. Knowing that you are not engaging in a beauty contest so your appearance does not matter that much, do you think that your professor is completely unaffected by the halo effect and has no favoritism at all? From a psychological perspective, not really.<\/p>\n

Talamas, David, and Perrett (2009) suggested that perceived academic performance is not insusceptible to the attractiveness halo effect. In their study, the participants were either asked to rate perceived intelligence, perceived academic performance, or perceived conscientiousness of the stimuli. They hypothesized that since high attractiveness could give people an illusion of good health and high intelligence, perceived conscientiousness would be the most accurate predictor of the actual academic performance because \u201cintelligence\u201d and \u201cacademic performance\u201d contain a lot of ambiguity brought by attractiveness whereas the perceived conscientiousness controls for the attractiveness halo. The results revealed that perceived conscientiousness was indeed the best predictor, which further demonstrated that attractiveness could leave misleading impressions of your actual academic competence on your professors. Therefore, though your physical attraction does not seem that important in a classroom, your professors may not be completely immune to potential biases on your competence and even unfair favoritism.<\/p>\n

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If you like beer, you’ll like Schlity<\/p><\/div>\n

Have I convinced you about the enchantment of looking good? I am not suggesting you spend time and money on things such as plastic surgeries because clearly, those are not real and totally deceptive. A lot of the times, an attractive person does not necessarily have completely symmetric or baby-looking face; things such as good health, a good body shape, high confidence can also leave us with healthy, competent and trustworthy impressions. Therefore, try to be as good-looking as possible \u2013 it will benefit you in ways that you have probably never noticed before.<\/p>\n

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References<\/p>\n

Brooke, E. (2015). Yes, Puma Is Spending A Lot of Money to Work With Rihanna. Retrieved from http:\/\/fashionista.com\/2015\/07\/puma-q2-2015<\/a><\/p>\n

Masip, J., Garrido, J., Herrero, C. (2004). Facial appearance and impressions of credibility: the effects of facial babyishness and age on person perception.\u00a0International Journal of Psychology, 39 (4),<\/em>\u00a0276\u2013289.<\/p>\n

Ostroff, C. & Ilgen, D.R. (1992). Cognitive categories of rater and the rating accuracy.\u00a0Journal of Business and Psychology, 7,<\/em>\u00a0No. 1.<\/p>\n

\u0160vegar, D. (2016). What does facial symmetry reveal about health and personality?\u00a0Polish Psychological Bulletin<\/em>,\u00a047(3)<\/em>, 356\u2013365. doi:10.1515\/ppb-2016-0042<\/p>\n

Talamas, S. N., Mavor K. I., Perrett, D. I. (2016). Blinded by beauty: attractiveness bias and accurate perceptions of academic performance.\u00a0PLOS ONE<\/em>. doi:10.1371\/journal.pone.0148284<\/p>\n

Zebrowitz, L. A., Montepare, J. M. (2008). Social Psychological Face Perception: Why Appearance Matters. Soc Personal Psychol Compass, 2(3): 1497. <\/em>doi:10.1111\/j.1751-9004.2008.00109.x<\/p>\n

Zebrowitz, L.A. & Franklin, R.G. (2013). The attractiveness halo effect and the babyface stereotype in older and younger adults: similarities, own-age accentuation, and older adult positivity effects.\u00a0Experimental Aging Research, 40<\/em>, 375\u2013393. doi: 10.1080\/0361073X.2014.89715<\/p>\n

Image sources<\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2015\/04\/28\/fashion\/abercrombie-and-fitch-has-a-makeover.html?_r=0<\/a><\/p>\n

http:\/\/www.notey.com\/blogs\/halo-effect?page=4<\/a><\/p>\n

http:\/\/dev.null.org\/blog\/tags\/beauty<\/a><\/p>\n

http:\/\/www.ai-media.tv\/visible-classroom-we-were-amazed-by-what-we-learnt-about-ourselves\/<\/a><\/p>\n

https:\/\/priceonomics.com\/post\/48869654882\/being-really-really-ridiculously-good-looking<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

You must have seen these charming male models in front of some Abercrombie and Fitch stores, right? Did you stop for a picture with them? Did they successfully allure you to walk in the store and carry a huge shopping bag on your way out? Well, if these two scenarios sound familiar to you, then […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7007,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[80219,266316,80218],"tags":[150206],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3130"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7007"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3130"}],"version-history":[{"count":18,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3130\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3627,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3130\/revisions\/3627"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3130"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3130"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3130"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}