Physical attractiveness can have a significant effect on how people are judged in terms of employment or social opportunities, friendship, sexual behavior, and marriage.
[3][4] The physical attractiveness stereotype was first formally observed in a study done by Karen Dion, Ellen Berscheid, and Elaine Walster in 1972.
The study found that the traits associated with attractiveness were only remarkably strong for social competence (e.g., sociability, popularity), whereas people also tended to view them as more vain and less modest.
With evidence finding that the “beauty-is-good” theory was not one-dimensional, using the implicit personality framework was argued to be most appropriate, encouraging the context-dependent nature and complexity of the physically attractive stereotype to be acknowledged.
[7] The reproductive strategy of women and men differ; however, both include advertising to potential mates and competing with same-sex members to demonstrate one's value.
[21] Studies found people often mistakenly recognised stereotype-congruent information as familiar, [22] bolstered by findings of recognition biases stemmed from stereotypes generating false memories.
[23][24] Furthermore, when memory processes were compromised, stereotypes were exercised as heuristic cues in facilitating the retrieval of information and formation of judgements.
[26] For instance, one study found that as decision-making became harder, jurors exhibited stronger stereotype-congruent recall of case details and judgements on defendants.
Their 2011 study found evidence that both explicit (conscious) and implicit (unconscious) memory systems recognised stereotype-congruent better than incongruent information.
Across three experiments, researchers presented participants with equally divided sets of congruent and incongruent face-word pairs (e.g., an attractive face with “kind” or “cruel”, respectively).
Implicit memory was measured similarly, albeit participants only focused on the word's valence (e.g., "kind" is "positive") to judge whether the presented “face” influenced response/reaction time.
Results demonstrated no moderator had a statistically significant impact in reducing bias, indicating the need for potentially accommodating real-world scenarios to account for the strength of the physically attractive stereotype.
[30] In the years since the publication of the original study, further research has bolstered the physical attractiveness stereotype and expanded its influence into other areas.
It was found that defendants who were physically attractive, female, and of high socioeconomic status received weaker sentences.
However, in the case of negligent homicide, attractive individuals received harsher punishments than their unattractive counterparts, though the effect size of these findings were notably small.
This is potentially a result of jurors perceiving defendants to weaponise their attractiveness, hindering stereotype-congruent associations to be exercised in decision-making.
Empirical evidence revealed that people rely on stereotypes in inferring forgotten details when recalling personal memories, or as a heuristic to ease complex decision-making.
[25][27] Such findings further shed light on potentially detrimental biases impinging jurors, with similar implications applying to memory-based judgements like eyewitness testimonies.
[43][44] The implications of this on eyewitness testimonies can be inferred, where unattractive individuals are particularly vulnerable to these stereotype-motivated recognition errors, especially when sharing similar characteristics to the actual perpetrator or those associated with criminality.
Current literature has also found that asking witnesses to select out of options can make them feel more confident in their answers, where this is misconstrued as accurate.
Studies have also found that stereotype-motivated behaviour is potentially easily reversible, where simply informing participants to be more deliberate and conscious in mitigating stereotypical thinking can almost entirely remove its biassed effects.
Researchers believe this is an example of a self-fulfilling prophecy, where the teacher's higher expectations for the attractive students cause them to work harder and perform better.