Perceived Physical Attractiveness of Supporters and Nonsupporters of the Women's Movement

Abstract

Two studies were conducted to investigate the supposed physical attractiveness bias against supporters of the women's movement and to test a possible explanation for this reported bias. An attitude-similarity-mediated error (AS-ME) hypothesis was tested that proposes that people rate similar others as more physically attractive than dissimilar others, regardless of the attitudinal issue involved. Experiment I employed Byrne's attraction paradigm and had 235 males and 237females evaluate a same-sex stranger who had either similar or dissimilar attitudes related to either the women's movement or censorship. In Experiment 2, 176 males and 237 females evaluated opposite-sex strangers. The AS-ME explanation was supported in both experiments.