Once more: is beauty in the eye of the beholder? Relative contributions of private and shared taste to judgements of facial attractiveness

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207 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Misconstruing the meaning of Cronbach's alpha, experts on facial attractiveness have conveyed the impression that facial-attractiveness judgment standards are largely shared. This claim is unsubstantiated, because information necessary for deciding whether judgments of facial attractiveness are more influenced by commonly shared or by privately held evaluation standards is lacking. Three experiments, using diverse face and rater samples to investigate the relative contributions of private and shared taste to judgments of facial attractiveness, are reported. These experiments show that for a variety of ancillary conditions, and contrary to the prevalent notion in the literature, private taste is about as powerful as shared taste. Important implications for scientific research strategy and laypeople's self-esteem are discussed. Misconstruing the meaning of Cronbach's alpha, experts on facial attractiveness have conveyed the impression that facial-attractiveness judgment standards are largely shared. This claim is unsubstantiated, because information necessary for deciding whether judgments of facial attractiveness are more influenced by commonly shared or by privately held evaluation standards is lacking. Three experiments, using diverse face and rater samples to investigate the relative contributions of private and shared taste to judgments of facial attractiveness, are reported. These experiments show that for a variety of ancillary conditions, and contrary to the prevalent notion in the literature, private taste is about as powerful as shared taste. Important implications for scientific research strategy and laypeople's selfesteem are discussed.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)199-209
JournalJournal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance
Volume32
Issue number2
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Jun 2006

Keywords

  • Interpersonal attraction
  • Feminine beauty (Aesthetics)
  • Masculine beauty (Aesthetics)
  • Sexual attraction

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