The Mean Ratings of Each Trait for the 4 Pictures Were Calculated Respectively

Results

For comparison, the mean ratings of each trait for the 4 pictures were calculated respectively.

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Table 1: Mean ratings of each positive trait for male

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Table 2: Mean ratings of each positive trait for female

By comparing Table 1 and 2, it first shows that attractive people (attractive male: 3.8; attractive female 3.2) have higher mean ratings in the “attractiveness” trait than unattractive people (unattractive male: 1.2; unattractive female 1). Besides, attractive people have the lowest mean ratings in “loyal” (attractive male: 1.4; attractive female 1) among the positive traits which are even lower than the unattractive people (unattractive male: 3.4; unattractive female 3).

To associate the respondents’ general perception towards each picture, the mean ratings of all positive and negative traits combined for the 4 pictures were then calculated respectively.

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Table 3: Mean ratings of all positive traits combined

According to Table 3, the attractive people (attractive male: 3.01; attractive female 3.02) have higher mean ratings of all positive traits combined than unattractive people (unattractive male: 2.56; unattractive female 2.1). Furthermore, the difference between the mean ratings of female (0.92) is greater than male (0.45).

For the social distance scale, each role has been given a score according to closeness (neighbor = 1, coworker = 2, friend = 3, romantic relationship = 4, marriage relationship = 5). Subsequently, the mean ratings of the most preferred social distance were computed for each picture.

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Table 4: Mean ratings of the social distance scale

Table 4 shows that mean ratings of the social distance of attractive people (attractive male: 3.4; attractive female 3.6) are higher than the unattractive people (unattractive male: 2.4; unattractive female 2.2).

Discussions

Hypothesis 1

The results in Table 3 indicate that respondents mostly associate positive traits more often towards attractive people than unattractive people. It could be illustrated by the “Physical Attractiveness Stereotype” (Dion, Berscheid & Walster, 1972) that people would correlate others’ character and personality with their appearance positively.

In specific cases, attractive people could instead be associated less positively than unattractive people. From the results, attractive people were predicted as less “loyal” than unattractive people which is the opposite to the general findings. It is believed that attractive people would usually encounter more social opportunities (Mulford, Orbell, Shatto, Stockard, 1998). Thus, people perceive that attractive people would possess more choices and become less loyal to one option. Yet, attractive people are still proved to be perceived as more socially desirable than unattractive people in general.

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