The attractiveness-positivity link: Let’s contextualize it

ABSTRACT

The statement “what is beautiful is good” reflects a persuasive heuristic that may be supported either by a general association of attractiveness with positivity or by a specific association with the perceived credibility of an attractive source. In one study (N = 58), we approach this question using an explicit and an implicit measure (Stroop Task) to assess whether attractiveness is more likely associated with valenced words when these are related (vs. unrelated) to credibility. Results show that this effect occurs but only for the implicit measure. When the word-face associations were made at an explicit level, we found a general association between positivity and attractiveness, unrestricted to the dimension of credibility. We discuss how these results inform about attractiveness as a shortcut to judgments of validity.

KEYWORDS:

• Credibility
• explicit
• implicit
• physical attractiveness
• positivity

Notes

1. Each block consisted of a set of two colors: blue and pink; light and dark green; brown and green; yellow and red.

2. Within our current sample, we found no significant effects for gender and age of participants.

Additional information

Funding

The writing of this article was supported by the doctoral grant PD/BD/114065/2015 awarded to the first author, by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology