Week 2 & 3 Research - Social Perception

For week 2-3 research, I chose activity 6 focusing on social perception. The given link (http://www.uni-regensburg.de/Fakultaeten/phil_Fak_II/Psychologie/Psy_II/beautycheck/english/sozialewahrnehmung/sozialewahrnehmung.htm) led us to the website – Beauty check developed by some German scholars and was conducting couple of experiments on what human physical attractiveness and how it affects people’s  social perception of others.  Based on their studies, they found out that there is a well defined stereotype of attractivess: People with more attractive faces were assessed to be more successful, contended, pleasant, intelligent, social, exciting, creative and diligent than people with less attractive faces. (http://www.uni-regensburg.de/Fakultaeten/phil_Fak_II/Psychologie/Psy_II/beautycheck/english/zusammen/zusammen1.htm)

I found the research quite interesting. First of all, the judgment of beauty is different from cognitive or moral judgment which is influenced subjectively by personal standards on what is aesthetic or attractive. I believe it happens quite frequently for most of people, which we don’t agree with choices of the winners from the judges, the audience in the show or even the people in the same room for the beauty contests. The viewers use to have their own preferences concerning of beauty. There is an extreme example of how personal perception gets involved the interpretation of attraction, a movie- Shall Hal stars Gwyneth Paltrow and Jack Black. Hal (Jack Black) used to date only women who are physically attractive. However, he runs into a self-help guru who hypnotizes him into recognizing only the inner beauty of women. Hal later meets Rosemary (Gwyneth Paltrow) who is extensively obese but owns kind and generous personality. Hal is attracted by her and authentically thinks her as slender and beautiful and starts a relationship with her. In fact Rosemary used to being overlooked by people due to her weight. The following picture shows how differently people perceive Rosemary’s figure from Hal. We would see how social perceptions constitute and have impacts on people to form impressions of others from the movie which is happening in real life at a mild level.

 

                                   (Picture adopted from: joe-ks.com)

On the top of the stereotype associated with beauty revealed by “Beauty check”: People with more physical attractiveness are more likely to be successful than people with less physical attractiveness, Dr. Hamermesh from University of Texas has conducted a series of survey in the Unites and Canada which showed that when all other thinks are taken into account, people who are less attractive get paid 10-12% less than average incomes, while people who are more attractive get paid 5% more than average people. He also publishes a book – Beauty Pays (2011) and discusses why attractive people are more successful. It explains why job applicants try to look not just professional but also attractive in job interview. With a better-looking appearance, it may help to get a better salary. 

Although the evidence found by Beauty check, Dr. Hamermesh and other studies associated with beauty and success seems unfair but sadly realistic in some way for those who are unattractive in their appearance. However, as I discussed in the previous paragraph, positive personality, characteristics and ethics also contribute to people’s outlook and beauty which also play a role leading to success.  There was a series of commercial produced for a bank service in Taiwan. Its theme is “nothing is more beautiful than a devoted woman” which depicts my belief in beauty perfectly.