InMemoriam
Make Paragon Glowie Again
★★★★★
- Joined
- Feb 19, 2022
- Posts
- 7,507
Scandinavian Journal of Psychology
Volume 61, Issue 4 p. 471-483
Cognition and Neurosciences
Open Access
Tobias Greitemeyer
First published: 11 March 2020
https://doi.org/10.1111/sjop.12631
In the present research, the idea is examined that those who are objectively unattractive overestimate their attractiveness and thus maintain unrealistically positive self-views. In contrast, attractive people should be more accurate in their self-rated attractiveness. A further purpose was to establish what psychological processes account for the tendency that unattractive people overestimate their attractiveness. As will be seen, whereas all studies consistently show that unattractive participants overestimate their attractiveness, the operating mechanisms are rather elusive.
Likewise, people typically maintain unrealistic positive perceptions of their own body size (Mazzurega, Marisa, Zampini & Pavani, in press) and most people rate themselves more attractive compared to how they are rated by strangers (e.g., Murstein & Christy, 1976; Springer, Wiltfang, Kowalski et al., 2012; Yoder, Ault & Mathews, 2017). However, the tendency to overestimate one’s attractiveness cannot necessarily account for the relatively small correlation between people’s subjective and objective attractiveness. If everyone overestimates their level of attractiveness compared to how they are perceived by others to the same degree, then a perfect correlation would result. This means that some people more than others have to overestimate their attractiveness.
Overall, there is overwhelming evidence that incompetent people fail to recognize their own incompetence. The main underlying mechanism why incompetent people overestimate their competence is the inability to recognize that they perform poorly (Kruger & Dunning, 1999). That is, it is not that the overestimation is driven by a desire to have favorable self-views, they simply lack the skills that are needed to evaluate competence. In fact, incompetent people have deficient general metacognitive abilities as they not only fail to recognize their own faults, but are also less capable to recognize if others are failing or shining. When incompetent participant's metacognitive skills were improved, then the accuracy of how they perceive their own competence was also improved. Ironically, after becoming more competent, they recognized their own incompetence. In contrast, competent people have these metacognitive abilities, but they fall prey to a false-consensus effect, in that they underestimate the skills of their peers because solving the test is easy for them and thus they wrongly assume that others also easily succeed. As a consequence, they underestimate their own performance.
The present research also addressed why unattractive people overestimate their attractiveness. As just noted, incompetent people lack the metacognitive skills that are needed to recognize their own incompetence. Relatedly, it was examined whether unattractive people would have less general insight into who is attractive and who is not. It might be that unattractive people have a different beauty ideal than do attractive people and thus would not only overestimate their own attractiveness, but also perceive unattractive others to be more attractive compared to how these are rated by attractive people. It was therefore investigated if unattractive participants overestimate their own attractiveness the less they differentiate between attractive and unattractive stimulus persons.
Another underlying mechanism might be that unattractive and attractive people select different comparison targets. Previous research has shown that people are affected in their attractiveness ratings by prior exposure to attractive or unattractive stimulus persons. In one study (Kenrick & Gutierres, 1980), a photo of an average looking female was rated less attractive after male raters had been exposed to highly attractive female stimulus persons. Other research (Cash, Cash & Butters, 1983) showed that self-evaluations of physical attractiveness are also affected by contextual contrast effects. After exposure to attractive stimulus persons (compared to exposure to unattractive stimulus persons), female participants rated their own attractiveness lower. Subsequent research (Thornton & Moore, 1993) documented that not only female judgments but also male judgements of their own attractiveness are lower after exposure to attractive stimulus persons and higher after exposure to unattractive stimulus persons. Given that people tend to compare themselves with others who they feel are similar (Wood, 1989) and who they view as relevant to the self (Lockwood & Kunda, 1997), unattractive people may compare themselves with others that are unattractive, whereas attractive people compare themselves with attractive others. As a consequence, both could come to the conclusion that their attractiveness level is similar to most others, which results in unattractive people overestimating their attractiveness and attractive people underestimating it.
A further mechanism that was examined was whether unattractive people truly believe their reported attractiveness level or whether they know that they are unattractive. It is almost a truism that everyone has the wish to perceive oneself positively (e.g., to be attractive). If this favorable view is threatened, defensive responses often take place that directly reduce the threat. If, however, the self is protected through the affirmation of alternative sources of self-integrity, defensive biases are less likely to occur. In line with self-affirmation theory (Steele, 1988), it was examined whether unattractive people would perceive themselves more accurately after they had affirmed aspects of their self that were unconnected to their appearance. Moreover, previous research (Bollich, Rogers & Vazire, 2015) has shown that most people often are aware of whether their self-perceptions are biased. Compared to an objective criterion, participants with positive biases admitted to be positively biased and participants with negative biases accurately reported on their negative biases. These findings suggest that even when people have biased self-perceptions, they are aware that their self-assessment is not correct. Hence, unattractive people may admit that they perceive their physical attractiveness in a positively biased way.
Volume 61, Issue 4 p. 471-483
Cognition and Neurosciences
Open Access
Unattractive people are unaware of their (un)attractiveness
Tobias Greitemeyer
First published: 11 March 2020
https://doi.org/10.1111/sjop.12631
Abstract
Past research has shown that how people rate their physical attractiveness is only moderately correlated with how they are rated by others, suggesting that at least some people have little insight into their true level of attractiveness. The present research tests the hypothesis that unattractive people are not aware of their unattractiveness. In fact, six studies (overall N = 1,180) showed that unattractive participants considerably overestimated their attractiveness compared to ratings by strangers. In contrast, attractive participants were more accurate. If anything, they underestimated their attractiveness. It was also examined why unattractive people overestimate their attractiveness. As expected, unattractive participants differentiated less between attractive and unattractive stimulus persons than did attractive participants. They were also more likely than attractive participants to select unattractive stimulus persons to compare themselves to. However, these tendencies did not account for why unattractive participants overestimated their attractiveness, nor did affirming participant’s self-worth. Limitations and avenues for future research are discussed.Introduction
The physical attractiveness1 of a person has important implications for how this person is treated by others. Attractive people are more likely to receive help (Benson, Karabenick & Lerner, 1976) and less likely to be punished (Berkowitz & Frodi, 1979), their performance is rated more favorably (Landy & Sigall, 1974), and they are more likely to be desired as a romantic partner (Walster, Aronson, Abrahams & Rottman, 1966). Contrary to the maxim “beauty is in the eye of the beholder,” there is generally high agreement about who is attractive and who is not (for meta-analyses, Feingold, 1992; Langlois, Kalakanis, Rubenstein, Larson, Hallam & Smoot, 2000). Given the importance of physical attractiveness for people’s daily life and high agreement in attractiveness judgments, one may assume that people are well aware of whether they are attractive or not. However, abundant evidence has shown that self-assessed attractiveness (in the following, subjective attractiveness) and how a person is rated by others (in the following, objective attractiveness) are only moderately related. In a meta-analysis of 21 studies (Feingold, 1992), the correlation between subjective and objective attractiveness was r = 0.24. To sum up, others mostly agree about whether a person is attractive or not, but this person does not necessarily agree.In the present research, the idea is examined that those who are objectively unattractive overestimate their attractiveness and thus maintain unrealistically positive self-views. In contrast, attractive people should be more accurate in their self-rated attractiveness. A further purpose was to establish what psychological processes account for the tendency that unattractive people overestimate their attractiveness. As will be seen, whereas all studies consistently show that unattractive participants overestimate their attractiveness, the operating mechanisms are rather elusive.
Overly positive self-perceptions
Hundreds of studies have shown that people are prone to favorable self-views. For example, people tend to make favorable comparisons to their own past selves (Wilson & Ross, 2000) and report that they will achieve more in the future compared to what they had in the past (Johnson, 2009). Other research has shown that people are likely to claim that they possess more positive qualities (e.g., being a better driver, more athletic, more intelligent) and fewer character flaws (e.g., engaging in immoral behaviors) than the average person (above-average effect; Alicke, Klotz, Breitenbecher, Yurak & Vredenburg, 1995; Chambers & Windschitl, 2004; Logg, Haran & Moore, 2018). This tendency to perceive oneself as being better than the average peers is particularly pronounced when it comes to traits that are highly important, whereas it is less pronounced when it comes to traits of less importance (Brown, 2012). Interestingly, people tend to believe that they are less prone than others to be positively biased in their self-perceptions (Pronin, Lin & Ross, 2002). Overall, at least in Western cultures, most people think highly of themselves compared with not only other people but also objective standards (for a review, Zell & Krizan, 2014).Likewise, people typically maintain unrealistic positive perceptions of their own body size (Mazzurega, Marisa, Zampini & Pavani, in press) and most people rate themselves more attractive compared to how they are rated by strangers (e.g., Murstein & Christy, 1976; Springer, Wiltfang, Kowalski et al., 2012; Yoder, Ault & Mathews, 2017). However, the tendency to overestimate one’s attractiveness cannot necessarily account for the relatively small correlation between people’s subjective and objective attractiveness. If everyone overestimates their level of attractiveness compared to how they are perceived by others to the same degree, then a perfect correlation would result. This means that some people more than others have to overestimate their attractiveness.
Who is most prone to flawed self-assessments?
A seminal investigation (Kruger & Dunning, 1999) assessed participant’s performance in a competence task. Afterwards, participants were asked how they perceived their performance. Across different competence domains (e.g., logical reasoning and grammar skills), incompetent participants had little insights into how competent they actually were. In fact, they dramatically overestimated how they performed in the test and they had unrealistically positive perceptions of their general ability. In contrast, relatively competent participants did not overestimate their test performance and general ability. If anything, they underestimated them. In the end, self-rated competence by objectively incompetent and competent participants hardly differed, although there were large differences in actual abilities. This basic finding that the incompetent overestimate their abilities – termed the Dunning-Kruger effect – has been replicated in dozens of studies (for a review, Dunning, 2011). Critics (Krueger & Mueller, 2002) argued that the Dunning-Kruger effect is simply a form of a statistical artifact driven by regression-to-the-mean. However, some of the findings in the initial report (Studies 3 and 4, Kruger & Dunning, 1999) as well as subsequent research (e.g., Ehrlinger, Johnson, Banner, Dunning & Kruger, 2008) speak against the regression effect.Overall, there is overwhelming evidence that incompetent people fail to recognize their own incompetence. The main underlying mechanism why incompetent people overestimate their competence is the inability to recognize that they perform poorly (Kruger & Dunning, 1999). That is, it is not that the overestimation is driven by a desire to have favorable self-views, they simply lack the skills that are needed to evaluate competence. In fact, incompetent people have deficient general metacognitive abilities as they not only fail to recognize their own faults, but are also less capable to recognize if others are failing or shining. When incompetent participant's metacognitive skills were improved, then the accuracy of how they perceive their own competence was also improved. Ironically, after becoming more competent, they recognized their own incompetence. In contrast, competent people have these metacognitive abilities, but they fall prey to a false-consensus effect, in that they underestimate the skills of their peers because solving the test is easy for them and thus they wrongly assume that others also easily succeed. As a consequence, they underestimate their own performance.
Why could unattractive people overestimate their attractiveness?
Analogous to the Dunning-Kruger effect, the present research addresses the idea that objectively unattractive individuals are not aware of their own (un)attractiveness. Relative to how they are rated by others, unattractive people should overestimate their attractiveness. Attractive people, in contrast, should not over- but may even underestimate their attractiveness. Previous research into whether people have accurate or inaccurate views of their own attractiveness provided mixed evidence, with some research suggesting that people are mostly aware of how attractive they are seen by others (Marcus & Miller, 2003) and other findings suggesting that there is little consensus between self-assessed attractiveness and ratings by others and that unattractive people in particular overestimate their attractiveness (Gurman & Balban, 1990). Hence, I deemed it important to provide a comprehensive test of the idea that unattractive more than attractive people overestimate their attractiveness.The present research also addressed why unattractive people overestimate their attractiveness. As just noted, incompetent people lack the metacognitive skills that are needed to recognize their own incompetence. Relatedly, it was examined whether unattractive people would have less general insight into who is attractive and who is not. It might be that unattractive people have a different beauty ideal than do attractive people and thus would not only overestimate their own attractiveness, but also perceive unattractive others to be more attractive compared to how these are rated by attractive people. It was therefore investigated if unattractive participants overestimate their own attractiveness the less they differentiate between attractive and unattractive stimulus persons.
Another underlying mechanism might be that unattractive and attractive people select different comparison targets. Previous research has shown that people are affected in their attractiveness ratings by prior exposure to attractive or unattractive stimulus persons. In one study (Kenrick & Gutierres, 1980), a photo of an average looking female was rated less attractive after male raters had been exposed to highly attractive female stimulus persons. Other research (Cash, Cash & Butters, 1983) showed that self-evaluations of physical attractiveness are also affected by contextual contrast effects. After exposure to attractive stimulus persons (compared to exposure to unattractive stimulus persons), female participants rated their own attractiveness lower. Subsequent research (Thornton & Moore, 1993) documented that not only female judgments but also male judgements of their own attractiveness are lower after exposure to attractive stimulus persons and higher after exposure to unattractive stimulus persons. Given that people tend to compare themselves with others who they feel are similar (Wood, 1989) and who they view as relevant to the self (Lockwood & Kunda, 1997), unattractive people may compare themselves with others that are unattractive, whereas attractive people compare themselves with attractive others. As a consequence, both could come to the conclusion that their attractiveness level is similar to most others, which results in unattractive people overestimating their attractiveness and attractive people underestimating it.
A further mechanism that was examined was whether unattractive people truly believe their reported attractiveness level or whether they know that they are unattractive. It is almost a truism that everyone has the wish to perceive oneself positively (e.g., to be attractive). If this favorable view is threatened, defensive responses often take place that directly reduce the threat. If, however, the self is protected through the affirmation of alternative sources of self-integrity, defensive biases are less likely to occur. In line with self-affirmation theory (Steele, 1988), it was examined whether unattractive people would perceive themselves more accurately after they had affirmed aspects of their self that were unconnected to their appearance. Moreover, previous research (Bollich, Rogers & Vazire, 2015) has shown that most people often are aware of whether their self-perceptions are biased. Compared to an objective criterion, participants with positive biases admitted to be positively biased and participants with negative biases accurately reported on their negative biases. These findings suggest that even when people have biased self-perceptions, they are aware that their self-assessment is not correct. Hence, unattractive people may admit that they perceive their physical attractiveness in a positively biased way.
The present research
Six studies examine the hypothesis that objectively unattractive people overestimate their attractiveness. In contrast, attractive people should have more accurate views of their attractiveness. A further goal of the present research was to illuminate why unattractive people are prone to unrealistically positive judgments of their attractiveness. In all studies, participant’s self-perceived attractiveness was compared with how participants were rated by strangers (university students, about the same age as most of the participants). These judges' ratings were employed as a proxy for participant’s objective attractiveness. With the exception of Study 4, all studies were part of student projects that employed measures that are not relevant for the present purposes. These additional measures are not reported here, but the data are publicly available (https://osf.io/ndqcy/). Each study was run over the course of one semester, with the aim to run as many participants as possible.
Last edited:
