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42 ReferencesA Group's Physical Attractiveness Is Greater Than the Average Attractiveness of Its Members: The Group Attractiveness Effect
Abstract
We tested whether the perceived physical attractiveness of a group is greater than the average attractiveness of its members. In nine studies, we find evidence for the so-called group attractiveness effect (GA-effect), using female, male, and mixed-gender groups, indicating that group impressions of physical attractiveness are more positive than the average ratings of the group members. A meta-analysis on 33 comparisons reveals that the effect is medium to large (Cohen's d = 0.60) and moderated by group size. We explored two explanations for the GA-effect: (a) selective attention to attractive group members, and (b) the Gestalt principle of similarity. The results of our studies are in favor of the selective attention account: People selectively attend to the most attractive members of a group and their attractiveness has a greater influence on the evaluation of the group.
© 2015 by the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, Inc.
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- As a result, attractiveness ratings with the surrounding faces were significantly higher than those with no surrounding face, although there was no effect of the number of surrounding faces. They suggested the ensemble coding mechanism in the visual system, especially for processing facial parts, involves the cheerleader effect (see also van Osch, Blanken, Meijs, & van Wolferen, 2015). Therefore, researchers in this field should test this ensemble-coding hypothesis, and that is why we first tested the robustness of this phenomenon.
[Show abstract] [Hide abstract] ABSTRACT: The cheerleader effect implies that a person in a group look like more attractive than in isolation. Walker and Vul (2014) reported results supporting the existence of the cheerleader effect. We replicated Walker and Vul’s Experiment 4, which manipulated group size. Their participants were asked to rate attractiveness of each female face image in a group (one of 4, 9, or 16 members) and in isolation and revealed that attractiveness ratings significantly increased in all the group conditions. We performed two direct replications of this experiment using Japanese participants. As a result, at least one experiment yielded a pattern of results similar to those of the previous study, although the effect was not significant and the effect size was small.
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