•  
  •  
 

1st Student's Major

Psychology

1st Student's College

Social and Behavioral Sciences

Students' Professional Biography

Aaron Karst is a student in the Psychology Department at Minnesota State University, Mankato.

Mentor's Name

Edison Perdomo

Mentor's Department

Psychology

Mentor's College

Social and Behavioral Sciences

Abstract

The purpose of this research project was to investigate the “physical attractiveness stereotype”. Previous research suggests that the physical attractiveness plays an important role in how we ascribe certain personality traits. Weiten (2002) for example, noted the stereotype as people’s tendency “to ascribe socially desirable personality traits to individuals who are considered to be more attractive, seeing them as more sociable, poised, and well adjusted than those who are less attractive”. However, very little research has been conducted to explore the role race may have on the concept. The current study was conducted to explore the validity of the physical attractiveness stereotype and determine how influential the role of race may be. In this study, twelve subjects were given a series of cards, each with four pictures on them, and were asked to match certain personality traits (some positive and some negative) to the pictures that were presented on the cards. The pictures on the cards actually represented people of different race and varying attractiveness. Data was then collected and analyzed to determine if race can in fact influence the physical attractiveness stereotype.

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License

Share

COinS
 
 

To view the content in your browser, please download Adobe Reader or, alternately,
you may Download the file to your hard drive.

NOTE: The latest versions of Adobe Reader do not support viewing PDF files within Firefox on Mac OS and if you are using a modern (Intel) Mac, there is no official plugin for viewing PDF files within the browser window.