PSA001 Secondary Analysis: Examining the “attractiveness halo effect” by Carlota Batres

Research has demonstrated that we are able to make judgements of people after only 100

milliseconds of exposure to their faces (Willis & Todorov, 2006). With such minimal information,

participants are able to effortlessly and intuitively rate faces on a wide array of traits, such as

competence and aggressiveness (Willis & Todorov, 2006). Moreover, empirical evidence shows

that the effects of these impressions on social outcomes are pervasive (Todorov, Mandisodza,

Goren, & Hall, 2005; Třebický, Havlíček, Roberts, Little, & Kleisner, 2013).

Physical attractiveness can also be judged from such short exposures (Willis & Todorov,

2006) and it has been found to have several real-world effects (Badr & Abdallah, 2001; Clifford

& Walster, 1973; Landy & Sigall, 1974). For example, premature infants rated as more physically

attractive by nurses caring for them did better in terms of weight gain and length of hospital stay,

compared to those perceived as less attractive (Badr & Abdallah, 2001). This positive effect of

attractiveness extends to all age groups. In children, for instance, teachers given a report card with

a photo of unknown children rated the more attractive children as having higher intelligence, better

social relationships with classmates, and more likely to progress in school (Clifford & Walster,

1973). In adults, judges given an essay with a photo attached rated the attractive authors as

significantly more talented than the unattractive authors (Landy & Sigall, 1974).

Given these results, attractiveness has been said to have a positive “halo effect”, where

physical attractiveness confers socially desirable personality traits. Indeed, several studies have

documented this “attractiveness halo effect”. For example, more attractive individuals are rated as

more extraverted (Albright, Kenny, & Malloy, 1988), friendlier (Dion, Berscheid, & Walster,

1972), and more trustworthy (Ma, Xu, & Luo, 2015). Most of this research, however, has been

conducted using Western samples. Some studies have found cross-cultural agreement in
judgements between western and non-western samples (e.g., between Chinese and American

participants) (Albright et al., 1997) but other research has found cross-cultural variation (e.g.,

between Nepalese and Japanese participants) (Marcinkowska et al., 2014). Therefore, this report

aims to extend the cross-cultural work on this topic and examine the “attractiveness halo effect”

across eleven world regions. The Psychological Science Accelerator collected thirteen ratings on

faces, including attractiveness (for details see (Jones et al., 2018; Moshontz et al., 2018)). We

hypothesized that attractiveness would correlate positively with the socially desirable personality

traits and negatively with the socially undesirable personality traits.

Methods

Data was collected across eleven world regions (see Table 1). For each testing site,

approval was obtained from the local IRB, ethical approval was either not needed for this type of

face rating task, or it was covered by preexisting approval. All participants provided informed

consent.

Table 1. Countries where data was collected for each world region
Wold region Countries
Africa Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa
Asia China, India, Malaysia, Taiwan, Thailand
Australia and New Zealand Australia, New Zealand
Central America and Mexico El Salvador, Mexico
Eastern Europe Hungary, Lithuania, Poland, Russia, Serbia, Slovakia
The Middle East Iran, Israel, Turkey
The USA and Canada Canada, the USA
Scandinavia Denmark, Finland, Norway, Sweden
South America Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador
The UK England, Scotland, Wales
Western Europe Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Switzerland

The facial stimuli used consisted of the photographs of 60 men and 60 women taken under

standardized conditions with neutral expressions. Of the 120 images, 30 were Black (15 male, 15

female), 30 White (15 male, 15 female), 30 Asian (15 male, 15 female), and 30 Hispanic (15 male,
15 female). The same facial stimuli were used in each testing site, with the instructions provided

in the language appropriate for each country.

Participants first completed a short questionnaire requesting demographic information

(e.g., sex, age, ethnicity). Participants were then randomly assigned to rate one of 13 adjectives

(i.e., aggression, attractiveness, caringness, confidence, dominance, emotional stability,

intelligence, meanness, responsibility, sociability, trustworthiness, unhappiness, weirdness). Each

of the 120 faces was rated from 1 (not at all) to 9 (very) in a randomized order. Each participant

completed the ratings twice and the ratings from the first and second blocks were averaged for all

the analyses.

Results

The code used for the analyses was preregistered and made publicly available through the

Open Science Framework: https://osf.io/kq8dz. The data were first split by world region and then

by sex of the facial stimuli. Correlations were then run between attractiveness and the other

measured traits (see Table 2 for male faces and Table 3 for female faces). There were significant

positive correlations between attractiveness and the following traits for both male and female faces

across all eleven world regions: confidence, emotional stability, intelligence, responsibility,

sociability, and trustworthiness. Additionally, there was a significant negative correlation between

attractiveness and weirdness for both male and female faces across all eleven world regions.
Table 2. Correlations between attractiveness and the 14 measured traits for male faces across the 11 world regions
Attractiveness
Africa Asia Australia and New Zealand Central America and Mexico Eastern Europe The Middle East The USA and Canada Scandinavia South America The UK Western Europe
-0.073 ** -0.189 -0.030 * -0.043 -0.155 -0.206 -0.036 0.119 **
Aggressive -.333 -.286 -.347
** ** ** 0.224 ** 0.214 ** ** * * **
Caring .420 .594 .515 .680 .454 .551 .256 .319 .604
** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** **
Confident .636 .668 .751 .608 .738 .581 .766 .745 .766 .642 .805
Dominant .509** .562** .526** 0.184 .635** .519** .596** .622** .578** .558** .554**
Emostable .466** .584** .610** .476** .653** .403** .588** .679** .549** .455** .741**
** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** **
Intelligent .557 .854 .598 .442 .674 .628 .571 .674 .486 .524 .750
-0.252 ** * -0.047 ** 0.056 -0.212 * -0.191 -0.095 **
Mean -.524 -.325 -.386 -.282 -.364
** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** **
Responsible .656 .788 .636 .381 .738 .421 .580 .651 .374 .580 .769
Sociable .652** .596** .618** .454** .704** .304* .656** .668** .609** .483** .683**
Trustworthy .663** .781** .685** .562** .756** .396** .625** .723** .489** .479** .764**
Unhappy -.342** -.341** -.370** -.291* -.402** -0.196 -0.364 -.361** -.489** -.268* -.515**
** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** **
Weird -.709 -.804 -.648 -.526 -.714 -.525 -.689 -.637 -.696 -.705 -.761

Note. **Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level, * at the 0.05 level (2-tailed).
Table 3. Correlations between attractiveness and the 14 measured traits for female faces across the 11 world regions
Attractiveness
Africa Asia Australia and New Zealand Central America and Mexico Eastern Europe The Middle East The USA and Canada Scandinavia South America The UK Western Europe
-0.157 -0.147 * -0.210 ** 0.020 -0.181 -0.244 -0.047 -0.214 *
Aggressive -.255 -.354 -.269
** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** 0.229 ** **
Caring .428 .441 .456 .347 .713 .411 .429 .557 .453 .545
** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** **
Confident .749 .641 .763 .606 .793 .770 .780 .763 .804 .689 .800
Dominant .548** .681** .637** .444** .770** .746** .702** .690** .694** .640** .650**
Emostable .674** .483** .696** .644** .769** .716** .660** .766** .727** .661** .820**
** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** **
Intelligent .773 .920 .789 .723 .896 .757 .803 .860 .776 .802 .892
-0.239 * -0.176 ** * 0.162 -0.077 -0.244 -0.205 -0.169 -0.174
Mean -.261 -.335 -.302
** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** **
Responsible .722 .809 .818 .705 .892 .714 .796 .820 .673 .843 .921
Sociable .701** .541** .609** .458** .771** .468** .691** .722** .606** .593** .662**
Trustworthy .693** .678** .770** .746** .884** .420** .731** .759** .737** .665** .771**
Unhappy -.311* -0.178 -0.215 -.359** -.285* -.280* -.276* -.384** -.412** -0.143 -.396**
** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** **
Weird -.777 -.793 -.802 -.634 -.850 -.688 -.813 -.841 -.805 -.810 -.859

Note. **Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level, * at the 0.05 level (2-tailed).

Conclusions

Our hypothesis that attractiveness would correlate positively with the socially desirable

personality traits and negatively with the socially undesirable personality traits was largely

supported. This was true for both male and female faces. More specifically, across all eleven world

regions, individuals rated as more attractive were rated as more confident, emotionally stable,

intelligent, responsible, sociable, and trustworthy as well as less weird. These results replicate

previous findings of the “attractiveness halo effect” in Western samples and suggest that the

positive effect of attractiveness can be found cross-culturally.

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