"Beautiful Is Good" Stereotype And Its Influence Factors

Nowadays,we see many words like “face value is justice” and “you can be forgotten if you look good ” frequently.As we can see,facial attractiveness is of great importance.“Beautiful is good” is a kind of stereotype,people trend to associate good qualities to more attractive people.In this article,we focus on trust.We use a relatively implicit method to verify the existence and influencing factors of the "beautiful is good" stereotype through three studies.Study1 proves that there is a stereotype of “beautiful is good” among Chinese college students.Study 2 and Study 3 explore the influence of behavioral description and cognitive load on this stereotype.In Study 1,the stereotype misperception task was used to explore the effectiveness of the task in Chinese subjects and in the field of “beautiful is good” stereotype.Using the faces with different attractiveness to prime the “beautiful is good” stereotype,then present the target face quickly,finally participants were asked to make judgments on the target face.However,in the case where the available information was limited,the subject would make a judgment using the activated stereotype.The results of Study 1 showed that when the attractiveness of the prime face was high,the subject was more inclined to judge the reliability of the target face as high trustworthy.It proves the validity of the stereotyped misperception task in the Chinese subjects and the “beautiful is good” stereotype.In Study 2,we added behavior description to faces,explored the impact of relevant behavior on the “beautiful is good” stereotype,and verified the validity of the stereotype misperception task model.The model is a multinomial processing tree model,which assumes that there are four cognitive processes underline the stereotype misperception task: stereotype activation,stereotype application,detection and guessing tendency,and the data of the subjects can be used for fitting the model and parameter estimation,and separate the contribution rate of these cognitive processes.Presented the behavior description with prime faces,and then,as in Study 1,asked subjects to judge the trustworthiness of the target faces.The results showed that the data fitted well with the model,and the stereotype misperception task model can effectively separate the contribution rates of the four cognitive processes to the consequence,including stereotype activation,stereotype application,and correct detection and guessing.The results of analysis of repeated ANOVA and multinomial processing tree model showed that when the attractiveness of the prime face is high,the subjects were still more inclined to judge the trustworthy of the target face as high.When the attractiveness of faces were same,and behavior description was trustworthy/good,the participants were more inclined to judge the trustworthiness of the target face was higher,and the stereotype activation parameter was higher as well.Moreover,when target faces and behavior description were consistent,the target face presented after the high attractive prime face was judged to be more trustworthy.In Study 3,the cognitive load of the subjects was manipulated by memorizing the numbers,and the influence of cognitive load on “beautiful is good” stereotype was explored.Before the formal experiment,the subjects were asked to remember a serie of 13 numbers during the task.The other materials were consistent with study2.It was found that data fitted well with the model,and the results of the analysis of repeated ANOVA and multinomial processing tree model all showed that when the attractiveness of prime face was high and the behavior description was trustworthy/good,the subjects were still more inclined to judge the target face as trustworthy.In high cognitive load situation,along with trustworthy/good behavior description,the stereotype application parameter was higher.According to the three studies above,the following conclusion can be drawn:(1)The "beautiful is good" stereotype does exist,and the stereotype misperception task is effective in the "beautiful is good" stereotype;(2)Behavioral information has an impact on “beautiful is good” stereotype.When facial attraction is the same,faces associated with trustworthy/good behavior are more likely to be trusted,and the stereotype activation parameters are higher;(3)When behavior descriptions are consistent,people are more inclined to think that highly attractive faces are more trustworthy than low-attractive faces;(4)When the cognitive load is high,with the trustworthy/good behavior description,participants are more likely to apply “beautiful is good” stereotype;(5)Men are more likely than women to activate the “beautiful is good” stereotype when it comes to seeing highly attractive female faces.