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from the basement-dwellers-getting-invites dept.
Here's some useful research from Royal Holloway, University of London's Department of Psychology:
Research published in the journal Psychological Science [DOI: 10.1177/0956797616661523] [DX] has shown that judgements of attractiveness vary depending on who is nearby, and how good-looking they are in comparison. A person will rank higher on a scale of attractiveness when compared alongside less attractive people, than they would when judged alone. Popular opinion points to a person's perceived level of attractiveness as somehow fixed. However, research from Royal Holloway, University of London shows that context is key to assessing attractiveness.
[...] Participants in the study were asked to rate pictures of different faces for attractiveness, one by one. They were then asked to assess the same faces, placed alongside ones perceived to be undesirable. When adding these 'distractor faces', the attractiveness of the same faces increased from the first round of ranking.
Participants were then shown two attractive faces, alongside a 'distractor' face and asked to judge between them. The presence of the less attractive face was found to make the viewers more critical between the attractive face, as Dr Furl explained: "The presence of a less attractive face does not just increase the attractiveness of a single person, but in a crowd could actually make us even more choosey! We found that the presence of a 'distractor' face makes differences between attractive people more obvious and that observers start to pull apart these differences, making them even more particular in their judgement."
The DUFF (2015). You may also be interested in this study suggested by Medical Daily:
Attractive Female Romantic Partners Provide a Proxy for Unobservable Male Qualities: The When and Why Behind Human Female Mate Choice Copying (open, DOI: 10.1177/1474704916652144) (DX)
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 03 2016, @12:42AM
Another garbage study, courtesy of the social sciences. The researchers have no real way to objectively measure how attractive someone thinks someone else is, and rely on asking people to give them possibly incorrect or untruthful information.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by stormwyrm on Monday October 03 2016, @06:05AM
Here's an old article by Jared Diamond [ua.edu] that addresses this issue. I can hear echoes of Serge Lang's scoffing in the above comment: "How does Dr. Furl measure attractiveness? Does he have an attractiveness-meter?" The whole of science begins with attempting to operationalise the concepts of a theory. To be able to compare evidence with theory. The whole of the experiment described in TFA is an attempt to operationalise the concepts of beauty and physical attractiveness.
There are ways to get useful measurements in the social sciences, and it is very hard to do them right. It involves a lot of statistical analysis, and these can correct for things like people being untruthful. In many ways, it's harder to do than for the "hard" sciences like mathematics and physics.
Numquam ponenda est pluralitas sine necessitate.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 03 2016, @03:11PM
Here's an old article by Jared Diamond
Appeals to authority, false comparisons, and word games. If the social sciences were anywhere near as rigorous and reliable as mathematics, there would be no issues. Many social science studies can't even be replicated, and even though there are techniques that can help reduce the chance of errors and bias, oftentimes they are not used, used improperly, or only partially address the problem.
Should we really be laughing at people who are cautious of fields of science that have proven to be less reliable than some other fields of science? Whether the social sciences are easier or more difficult to do properly is completely irrelevant to how reliable they are.
The author also admits that operationalizing is "inevitably more difficult and less exact in the soft sciences", which seems to confirm what I've been saying.
and these can correct for things like people being untruthful
It may be possible that people lie about certain issues and not others; therefore, you would need to scientifically study which issues people will lie about and which they won't lie about.
In many ways, it's harder to do than for the "hard" sciences like mathematics and physics.
I'd say that's another reason to be cautious of the social sciences. It's also irrelevant to the overall quality of the fields in question. No one sensible would lower their standards of evidence simply because certain fields of science are harder to get right.
(Score: 2) by Nuke on Monday October 03 2016, @12:42PM
The researchers have no real way to objectively measure how attractive someone thinks someone else is
Nevertheless there is a strong general consensus on attractiveness. That is why film stars who take parts where "attractiveness" is essential to the role tend to have a certain type of appearance - one that is generally regarded as attractive. Of course there are edge cases, and there are various types of attractiveness such as Asian attractiveness versus Negroid attactiveness. Hard to choose between those, but given photos of a dozen Asian girls, I (as a Caucasian) and most people could soon order them by attractiveness and I suspect that our orders would be nearly the same.
An example is in the Bond film "You only Live Twice". Bond is about to have a fake marriage to a Japanese girl who is also an agent. He has not seen her before. We see a number of girls passing him on the way to the ceremony; not knowing which is to be his "bride" he winces at the sight of some of some them, and about others he is somewhat indifferent. Being a Bond film, it turns out of course that his fake bride is the prettiest of them all; I found her the prettiest and from his reaction Bond obviously thought so too. This film was made for Western audiences, but the director was clearly in no doubt that the vast majority of his audiences would find that girl the prettiest - that was the point of the scene.
and rely on asking people to give them possibly incorrect or untruthful information.
There is no particular reason why someone taking part in a survey like this should want to give false answers. No more than any other survey.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 03 2016, @02:37PM
Nevertheless there is a strong general consensus on attractiveness.
So what?
There is no particular reason why someone taking part in a survey like this should want to give false answers.
The mere fact that you cannot conceive of a reason that someone would lie about something such as this doesn't mean that one doesn't exist. There may even be multiple reasons. In any case, assuming they're not lying is not very scientific.
There is also the possibility that the people taking the survey cannot accurately translate how attractive they believe someone is into a number or similar.
No more than any other survey.
Unless you can objectively verify the accuracy of the information, your survey is probably unscientific.
(Score: 2) by art guerrilla on Friday October 07 2016, @12:27AM
i recall reading a summary about a univ of md (fear the turtle !) study (10-20 years ago ?) where it was shown that attractive/pretty/handsome people were essentially the 'average' of the range of human facial features, large to small, proportions, arrangement, etc... averaging out the extremes of size, location, etc of the range of noses, ears, eyes, etc is what made for a 'beautiful' face...
and i am -like- totally average...
8^)