Physical Attractiveness - Facial Similarity and Racial Bias

Facial Similarity and Racial Bias

Several studies have suggested that people are generally attracted to people who look like them and they generally evaluate faces that exhibit features of their own ethnic or racial group as being more attractive. Although both men and women use children's "facial resemblance" to themselves in "attractiveness judgments," a greater percentage of women in one study (37% n=30) found hypothetical children whose faces were "self-morphs" of themselves as most attractive when compared to men (30% n=23). However, one report in The Guardian suggested there was a "Caucasian beauty standard" spreading worldwide because of the proliferation of the Western entertainment industry.

The more similar a judged person is toward the judging person, the more the former is liked. However, this effect can be reversed. This might depend on how attractiveness is conceptualized: similar members (compared to dissimilar ones) of the opposite sex are judged as more likable in a prosocial sense. Again, findings are more ambiguous when looking for the desiring, pleasure related component of attractiveness. This might be influenced by the measure one uses (subjective ratings can differ from the way one actually reacts) and by situational factors: while men usually prefer women whose face resembles their own, this effect can reverse under stress, when dissimilar females are preferred.