Running head: EFFECT OF HIGH ATTRACTIVENESS ON PERCEIVED INTELLIGENCE 1

The Effect of High Attractiveness on Perceived Intelligence

Katlyn Hogue, Cara Mulhall, and Kara Stewart

Hanover College

PSY 344: Social Psychology

Winter 2012

Running head: EFFECT OF HIGH ATTRACTIVENESS ON PERCEIVED INTELLIGENCE 2

Abstract

This study was designed to measure the effect of high attractiveness on perceived intelligence.

Participants (N=50, 79.25% female) were presented with 30 facial photographs and rated either

the attractiveness, naturalness or the intelligence of the people in the photos. Our hypothesis

that there will be a negative linear relationship between intelligence and attractiveness was not

supported. However, when examining the linear regression between attractiveness, intelligence

and naturalness, a linear model of best fit was used. In doing this we fit a linear regression

model with intelligence as the outcome and attractiveness and naturalness as a predictor. The

results were found to be significant with R2=0.6116 and p<0.001. This shows that 61% of an

individual’s intelligence can be inferred independently from their attractiveness and naturalness.

Running head: EFFECT OF HIGH ATTRACTIVENESS ON PERCEIVED INTELLIGENCE 3

The Effect of High Attractiveness on Perceived Intelligence

Appearance is used in many situations to guess unknown characteristics about a person.

Eisenthal, Dror, and Ruppin (2005) believe that using beauty to judge characteristics is part of

the human experience--something we all do. That is, using appearance to infer characteristics

is a universal process. These characteristics, such as intelligence, occupational success, and

goal-orientation, are often given to the person without having a valid reason for ascribing them.

Physical attractiveness, which is readily available, is more often used to make judgments rather

than assigning characteristics by talking with or learning about their goals and past (Dion,

Berscheid & Walster, 1972).

In Dion et al.’s (1972) study, participants were asked to rate photographs of three

people, ranging from low, medium to high attractiveness. They rated the photographs for several

categories, such as overall happiness, career success and personality traits. These ratings were

averaged. The results showed that physically attractive individuals were viewed as more socially

desirable and predicted to have better academic, occupational, and personal futures. Hill and

Lando (1979) also found that more attractive females, when compared to unattractive females,

were attributed to having higher levels of success, a higher likelihood to be happy, and higher

intelligence. Jackson, Hunter, and Hodge (1995) found very similar results, such that people use

attractiveness to judge other characteristics when merely given appearance.

The previous research about the correlation between attractiveness and positive

characteristics, such as Dion et al.’s (1972) analysis, claims a linear relationship. There were

limitations to their study, however. Not every characteristic demonstrated that positive linear

trend; some leveled off and some actually had negative trends, such as parental competence. The

Running head: EFFECT OF HIGH ATTRACTIVENESS ON PERCEIVED INTELLIGENCE 4 relationship must be more complex. In our previous study, Hogue, Mulhall and Stewart (2011),

which looked at the effect of attractiveness on intelligence, there was a significant quadratic

trend such that faces with moderate levels of attractiveness were viewed as more intelligent than

faces with either low or very high attractiveness. Also, pictures of high very high attractiveness

were generally found to be of lower intelligence than those of very low attractiveness. In

other words, we found that there was a point at which being too attractive became negatively

correlated with intelligence. This is contrary to the strictly linear claims.

It could be argued, then, that a linear model until a certain point is attributed to the

possibility that the individuals with higher attractiveness appear more so like models. With this

comes the stereotype that models are seen as having lower intelligence. One reason why high

attractiveness might connote lower intelligence is that high attractiveness in the mass media

is often accompanied by stereotypes (Lynn and Shurgot 1984). They are not shown as having

any positive characteristics except beauty. Other evidence comes from a priming study by Bry,

Follenfant, and Meyer (2008). These researchers primed participants with a blonde stereotype

(higher attractiveness/lower intelligence) category or no prime, and found that when answering a

knowledge based test, the participants who were primed with the blonde stereotype by showing

them pictures of blonde celebrities performed significantly lower than those who were in the

no prime condition. This shows that people view blondes as being of lesser intelligence, and

the authors concluded that simply thinking about the stereotype that blondes are cognitively

impaired negatively influences self-performance.

We have observed that in the media, and through images of models, beauty is often

portrayed by showing models that appear to be less natural by wearing heavy amounts of

Running head: EFFECT OF HIGH ATTRACTIVENESS ON PERCEIVED INTELLIGENCE 5 makeup and having “touch-ups” done to them. Clarke and Griffin (2007) found that women

prefer to look natural even when engaging in beauty work or surgery. Artificial appearance

usually has negative consequences, such as appearing plastic or doll-like. This artificial look

may be playing a key role to the association of lesser intelligence with models or those who

appear model-like. While attractiveness may be positively correlated with intelligence, the level

of artificiality could be the more important factor influencing this perception. Therefore, a

higher degree of artificiality may constitute a downgrade of perceived intelligence. Concepts of

beauty are now associated with this unnatural look because models are chosen because of their

physical appearance and not for their intellectual ability. Expanding on this knowledge, we

believe how natural a person looks also helps determine their inferred intelligence. This is

because we believe having natural beauty is more desirable than having beauty that appears to be

fake and manipulated. Therefore, people of natural beauty will be perceived as having higher

intelligence.

We decided to study just females, as in the study by Hill and Lando. We did this to

simplify our study, and future research should be conducted to answer the question of whether

our findings generalize to pictures of men. We expect that the women who are rated as less

attractive will be perceived as having higher intelligence than those who are rated as more

attractive. We expect a negative linear trend because all the photographs were picked to be of

high to very high attractiveness, therefore not displaying our previous curvilinear results of a

wider range of attractiveness. Also, women who are rated as having higher natural attractiveness

will be perceived as having higher intelligence that those who are rated as having artificial

attractiveness. This will occur because women who are seen as more natural are less likely to

Running head: EFFECT OF HIGH ATTRACTIVENESS ON PERCEIVED INTELLIGENCE 6 appear as a model.

The participants were told that the study was designed to study the perceptions of others.

The participants received one of three versions of the questionnaire, which was randomly

distributed via computer. The survey contained 30 pictures of women, of high attractiveness,

from the shoulders and above. The photos were user-submitted from http://hotornot.com, so their

appearance in background and color varied, such as black-and-white photos. (See Appendix A

for example photos.) There were three conditions of the questionnaire, and each participant was

only given one condition. Since we were more interested in intelligence, the majority of

participants rated intelligence, whereas the rest rated either naturalness or attractiveness. The

participants then filled out the questionnaires, taking an average of 15 minutes to complete. After

completing the survey, participants were debriefed.

Method

Participants

A convenience sample of 50 Hanover College students was obtained. Participant gender

was 79.25% female and 20.75 % male. The ages of participants ranged from 18 to 23 year

old, with the average participant being 20.57 years old. Participants' ethnicities were 86.79%

Caucasian and 13.21% other. Three participant responses were omitted because of zero variance

in their answers.

Materials

Materials required for this study included a computer to access the online survey. Each

survey had the same images of the 30 women appearing in random order. The photos were

obtained from http://hotornot.com by searching through women that were listed as ages 21-30.

Running head: EFFECT OF HIGH ATTRACTIVENESS ON PERCEIVED INTELLIGENCE 7 Photos were chosen that had a pre-rated score of seven or higher out of 10 by http://hotornot.com

users. This website was utilized because individuals post their photos with the intentions of

public rating, knowing that by submitting them they “waive absolutely any and all moral rights.”

Also, photos were released of all copyrights, allowing them to be used by any internet user in

any fashion.

Since the photographs were user-submitted photographs, the features of the photos

varied. All photographs were cropped so just the shoulders and above were showing. There

were three versions of the questionnaire, and each participant was only given one version.

The participants who were in the attractiveness condition (N=14%) were asked to rate how

attractive they thought the people in the photos were, participants in the intelligence condition

(N=76%) were asked to rate the perceived intelligence of the targets, and participants who

were in the natural beauty condition (N=10%) were asked to rate how natural, as compared

to a professionally doctored appearance, the subject appeared to be. The participants were

asked to rate each quality on a six point Likert scale; one being not very intelligent/attractive/

natural and six being highly intelligent/attractive/natural. The questionnaire contained the

words “intelligent”, “natural” or “attractive”.

A between-subjects design was used to keep the participants from realizing the

hypothesized correlation between intelligence, natural beauty and attractiveness. This was used

based on previous research. In a meta-analysis, Eagly et al. (1991) stated that while within-

subject designs showed less error because each participant served as their own control, the

results were also seen as tainted because the two conditions were contrasted against each other.

Through this conclusion, we decided that a between subjects design would yield unbiased

Running head: EFFECT OF HIGH ATTRACTIVENESS ON PERCEIVED INTELLIGENCE 8 responses, that is the participants would be less likely to catch on to our hypothesis.

Procedure

The participants were given an informed consent form to view. On this form, the

participants were told that the study was designed to investigate the factors that seem to

contribute to attractiveness and stereotypes, or how different aspects of individuals’ images

seem to work together. The condition to which the participant was assigned was determined

randomly. 38 of the participants rated intelligence, 7 of the participants rated attractiveness, and

8 of the participants rated intelligence. The participants then viewed the pictures on the survey

and filled out the questionnaires, taking an average of 15 minutes to complete. After completing

the survey, participants were taken to a screen that debriefed and dismissed them.

Results

Participants' responses to the attractiveness survey were averaged together for each

photograph, and the same was done for the intelligence and naturalness surveys. We expected

to find a negative linear relationship between intelligence and attractiveness, that is as

attractiveness and artificiality increased, intelligence decreased. However, our results did not

support our hypothesis.

Table 1. Predictors of Perceived Intelligence

Running head: EFFECT OF HIGH ATTRACTIVENESS ON PERCEIVED INTELLIGENCE 9

Note: N = 50. **p < 0.01, ***p < 0.001.

We first tested the interaction between naturalness and attractiveness as a predictor of

intelligence. The results of this test (after centering) showed to be not significant. However,

attractiveness and naturalness both work independently on intelligence. A linear model of best

fit was used to examine this relationship between attractiveness and naturalness as predictors of

intelligence. The results were found to be significant with R2=0.6116 and p<0.001.(See table

1.) This shows that 61% of an individual’s intelligence can be inferred independently from their

attractiveness and naturalness.

Discussion

The results showed to not support our hypothesis that among individuals with high

attractiveness there will be a negative relationship between intelligence. We also expected an

Running head: EFFECT OF HIGH ATTRACTIVENESS ON PERCEIVED INTELLIGENCE 10 individual's naturalness rating to have an effect on this intelligence rating. A significant linear

regression model with intelligence as the outcome and attractiveness and naturalness as predictor

found that people who were seen as having the highest attractiveness and highest naturalness

were also viewed as having high intelligence. In addition, we found that the effect of

attractiveness does not change at different levels of naturalness. In other words, at high levels of

naturalness the relationship is linear. Conversely, at low levels of naturalness, attractiveness

appears to be perceived more as artificial.

Our findings can be applied to the halo effect. Nisbett and Wilson (1977) describe this as

having individual characteristic acting as a predictor of other positive characteristics. As Moore,

Filippou and Perrett found (2011), there is a positive relationship between facial attractiveness

and intelligence. Therefore, those with high naturalness were perceived as being intelligent and

more attractive. This shows that when a person has one good quality, they are assumed to have

other good positive traits. This finding can be applied to everyday life, such as in situations

where first impressions and judgments can be made and will be used to guess other qualities

about the person. This is important to realize because it implies that first impressions have

lasting effects on how a person is seen, since the first impression is related to other qualities a

person may have. An example of this is in the marketing world. Advertisements should include

individuals who have high attractiveness and high naturalness because the person will be

perceived as more capable than a person who is of high attractiveness and low naturalness.

Limitations

There were limitations in this study. A big limitation was that our measurement of model-

like stereotype. We used ratings of naturalness which could be an ineffective proxy for model-

Running head: EFFECT OF HIGH ATTRACTIVENESS ON PERCEIVED INTELLIGENCE 11 like. Are artificial and model the same? There could be a difference between how people see

models and how people see artificiality.

Also, we were unable to completely test our hypothesis since we did not have any

photographs of high artificial and high attractiveness. This is a problem because were not able to

examine if high attractiveness and high intelligence are correlated.

Another limitation we encountered was that stimuli were all selected as being high

attractiveness or at least above average, but a few stimuli were actually rated by our participants

as being of low attractiveness. This could have occurred because users of http://hotornot.com

could be overly generous in their ratings, which therefore threw off the ratings a couple

photographs. Also, the stimuli rating was in an artificial setting, and participants only had

attractiveness to judge the photograph on, meaning they could not use important characteristics

such as tone of voice to infer about intelligence or naturalness.

Future Directions

In the future, we could look at other variables that could affect intelligence scores, such

as appearing as childlike. This could be an influential factor in rating attractiveness because

many models today strive to appear as innocent or childlike. Through studying this variable, we

could examine if a model that appears to be childlike is assumed to be of lesser intelligence. This

could occur because younger children as assumed to be of lesser intelligence than young adults.

Another direction we could go in is that we could consider the stereotype for high

intelligence and its correlation with low attractiveness. This study would look at people who are

of low attractiveness and how their intelligence is perceived. For example, this study could use

pictures of well-known intellectuals, such as Nobel Prize winners. This study would relate to

Running head: EFFECT OF HIGH ATTRACTIVENESS ON PERCEIVED INTELLIGENCE 12 Farley, Chia and Allred’s (1998) idea that for job competence, high attractiveness is not always

best because highly attractive people in the job world are seen as having less competence than

people of lower attractiveness.

Conclusion

In summary, we found that our hypothesis that there will be a negative linear relationship

between intelligence and high attractiveness was not supported. We gathered that naturalness

does not affect the slope of intelligence. However, from our data, it can be seen that

attractiveness and naturalness both work independently on intelligence. A significant linear

regression model with intelligence as the outcome and attractiveness and naturalness as

predictors found that people who were seen as having the highest attractiveness and highest

naturalness were also viewed as having high intelligence. In addition, we found that the effect of

attractiveness does not change at different levels of naturalness. Conversely, at low levels of

naturalness attractiveness appears to be perceived more as artificial.

Running head: EFFECT OF HIGH ATTRACTIVENESS ON PERCEIVED INTELLIGENCE 13

Appendix A Example pictures used in the survey:

Running head: EFFECT OF HIGH ATTRACTIVENESS ON PERCEIVED INTELLIGENCE 14

References

Bry C, Follenfant A, Meyer T. Blonde like me: When self-construals moderate stereotype

priming

effects on intellectual performance. Journal Of Experimental Social Psychology. 44(3),

751-757.

Clarke, L., & Griffin, M. (2007). The body natural and the body unnatural: Beauty work and

aging. Journal Of Aging Studies, 21(3), 187-201. doi:10.1016/j.jaging.2006.11.001

Dion, K., Berscheid, E., & Walster, E. (1972). What is beautiful is good. Journal Of Personality

And Social Psychology, 24(3), 285-290. doi:10.1037/h0033731

Eagly, A. H., Ashmore, R. D., Makhijani, M. G., & Longo, L. C. (1991). What is beautiful is

good, but…: A meta-analytic review of research on the physical attractiveness stereotype.

Psychological Bulletin, 110(1), 109-128. doi:10.1037/0033-2909.110.1.109

Eisenthal, Y., Dror, G., & Ruppin, E. (2006). Facial Attractiveness: Beauty and the Machine.

Neural Computation, 18(1), 119-142. doi:10.1162/089976606774841602

Farley, S. D., Chia, R. C., & Allred, L. J. (1998). Stereotypes about attractiveness: When

beautiful

is not better. Journal Of Social Behavior & Personality, 13(3), 479-492.

Hill, M. K., & Lando, H. A. (1976). Physical attractiveness and sex-role stereotypes in

impression

formation. Perceptual And Motor Skills,43(3), 1251-1255.

Jackson, L., Hunter, J., & Hodge, C. (1995). Physical Attractiveness and Intellectual

Competence: A Meta-Analytic Review. Social Psychology Quarterly, 58(2), 108-122.

Running head: EFFECT OF HIGH ATTRACTIVENESS ON PERCEIVED INTELLIGENCE 15 Lynn, M., & Shurgot, B. A. (1984). Responses to lonely hearts advertisements: Effects of

reported

physical attractiveness, physique, and coloration. Personality And Social Psychology

Bulletin, 10(3), 349-357. doi:10.1177/0146167284103002

Moore, F. R., Filippou., D. D., & Perrett, D. I. (2011). Intelligence and attractiveness in the face:

Beyond the attractiveness halo effect. Journal Of Evolutionary Psychology, 9(3), 205-

217.

doi:10.1556/JEP.9.2011.3.2

Nisbett, R., & Wilson, T. (1977). The halo effect: Evidence for unconscious alteration of

judgments. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 5(4), 250-256.