In romance, looks matters most to the beautiful
Updated: 2008-02-15 09:37
"If I'm less attractive, which I am, and I hang out with less attractive people, you can imagine I start appreciating different things," Ariely told LiveScience. "I [might] start caring less about symmetry and I start thinking more that big ears could be cute. But that doesn't seem to happen."
Regardless of their hot rating, individuals came to the same consensus regarding the hotness of other members.
"Whereas less attractive people are willing to accept less attractive others as dating partners, they do not delude themselves into thinking that these less attractive others are, in fact, physically attractive," they write in the journal article.
Looks can be overrated
To understand how the physically-lacking individuals cope with the cards they were dealt, the researchers conducted a speed-dating study.
Turned out, more attractive people placed more importance on physical attractiveness above other features in selecting their dates. Less attractive people placed more weight on other qualities, such as sense of humor.
"The people who are less attractive basically switch what they care about and they start caring less about beauty and more about sense of humor," Ariely said.
Another recent speed-dating study, published in the February issue of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, revealed that the attractiveness of a potential partner is critical, followed by ambition and earnings.
"In other words good looks was the primary stimulus of attraction for both men and women, and a person with good earning prospects or ambition tended to be liked as well," said study researcher Eli Finkel, an assistant professor of psychology at Northwestern University in Illinois.
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