Honestly now...... What does it for you?

UCDVet

One eyed Jack wrote: »

One person's idea of attractive is another person's idea of unattractive, and the studies you refer to really won't tell you a whole lot either.

I have no problem in admitting I'm shallow as a puddle of water, but often what I may find physically attractive offers no basis for what type of personality I may find attractive. A combination of the two in the one person can often be quite rare, whereas taken separately, they're quite common to everyone.

Often times I've noticed in my experience that while you can assume a lot from a person's photo, you really can't know how you would interact with that person based on just their looks alone as there's no feedback to go on only what's self-reported in their profile. Self-assessment really doesn't tell you a whole lot about how you might interact with them either, and that's why the whole online dating thing is very rarely ever successful for the vast majority of people that use it hoping to meet someone they are compatible with - you really don't know what a person is like and whether you're really attracted to that person until you meet them in person.

Actually, that's a misconception.

Nearly everyone does agree on standards of beauty. Sure, sure, we can say that everyone is a unique snowflake and nobody can say that one person is more attractive than another...but the truth is, the vast majority of people do agree.

I don't know if it's still popular or not, but there used to be lots of sites where people could rate the physical attractiveness of random people on the internet and the distribution of scores clearly, without any doubt, shows that attractiveness is not uniquely different for each person.

It'd be more accurate to say that 'almost everyone' has very similar standards of beauty with some slight variation of preferences.

Shakespeare's Sister

TheBeardedLady wrote: »

That's all well and good but can you provide evidence that people who talk about the importance of personality and sense of humour are the SAME people who go for the hot, rich bastard in the end? Anecdotal evidence is not enough.

As well as this, how do you know they've chosen the doctor because of his salary and not the fact that he's a hero who saves lives (very sexy, let's face it) as opposed to someone who a plumber who doesn't?

I fancy good-looking men but insisting I'm talking bull when I say I also find smart, easy-going men with a sense of humour INCREDIBLY attractive is rubbish when you look at the man I've ended up with and the previous men I've been with/



But you're talking about initial sexual attraction. OF COURSE looks matter in the first moment but if you're looking for someone to actually spend time with outside of the bedroom (which is where most people spend their time), then personality is vital.



There could be a number of factors why they've chosen that bastard or why they stay with them. Lack of confidence or fear of being alone or denial. Yes, I've no doubt people stay with horrible people for their looks alone but not most.

Most people don't end up with horrible super models, most people end up with average people with average looks who are decent for the most part.

Well said TBL. The armchair psychology as to what everyone "thinks" they like but they don't really, can get tedious.

TheBeardedLady

Macavity. wrote: »

Good looking people generally end up with other good looking people (they may or may not have a good personality). People further down on the looks scale will put more emphasis on "personality" as they can't afford to be as picky about looks. This is what I have noticed from just everyday observation. It seems to be backed up by studies as well.

I'd be interested in seeing those studies. Since starting psychology, I'm ALL about the studies.


I.e. a study that proves that good-looking people value physical attractiveness over personality.

Macavity.

TheBeardedLady wrote: »

I'd be interested in seeing those studies. Since starting psychology, I'm ALL about the studies.


I.e. a study that proves that good-looking people value physical attractiveness over personality.

You are putting words in my mouth now. I never said "good-looking people value physical attractiveness over personality". I said that less attractive people will put more emphasis on personality than looks as they cannot be as picky about appearance. Surely this is something you must have noticed by now?

TheBeardedLady

Macavity. wrote: »

You are putting words in my mouth now. I never said "good-looking people value physical attractiveness over personality". I said that less attractive people will put more emphasis on personality than looks as they cannot be as picky about appearance. Surely this is something you must have noticed by now?

This is what you said:

I think some unattractive people often put more focus on things such as humour and "personality" (which are, of course, entirely subjective) because they realise a physically attractive partner is unrealistic.

Good looking people generally end up with other good looking people (they may or may not have a good personality). People further down on the looks scale will put more emphasis on "personality" as they can't afford to be as picky about looks.

What I gather from that is you believe people who are less attractive value personality more than people higher up on the good looks scale. Is that what you're saying?

Again, relying on what I've noticed doesn't cut the mustard. Psychological research often disproves what people believe to be common sense. I don't trust anything I previously believed to be true since starting this course tbh (not sure if that's a good thing).

UCDVet

TheBeardedLady wrote: »

That's all well and good but can you provide evidence that people who talk about the importance of personality and sense of humour are the SAME people who go for the hot, rich bastard in the end? Anecdotal evidence is not enough.

As well as this, how do you know they've chosen the doctor because of his salary and not the fact that he's a hero who saves lives (very sexy, let's face it) as opposed to someone who a plumber who doesn't?

I fancy good-looking men but insisting I'm talking bull when I say I also find smart, easy-going men with a sense of humour INCREDIBLY attractive is rubbish when you look at the man I've ended up with and the previous men I've been with/



But you're talking about initial sexual attraction. OF COURSE looks matter in the first moment but if you're looking for someone to actually spend time with outside of the bedroom (which is where most people spend their time), then personality is vital.



There could be a number of factors why they've chosen that bastard or why they stay with them. Lack of confidence or fear of being alone or denial. Yes, I've no doubt people stay with horrible people for their looks alone but not most.

Most people don't end up with horrible super models, most people end up with average people with average looks who are decent for the most part.

Evidence? Sure.

http://www.technologyreview.com/view/524081/data-mining-reveals-the-surprising-behavior-of-users-of-dating-websites/

But when they compared each person’s preferences with the attributes of those he or she chose to message, Xia and co found a surprise. “A fairly large fraction of messages are sent to or replied to users whose attributes do not match the sender or receiver’s stated preferences,” they say.

That's just 'online data' and not very scientific though. Here is a published academic paper:
http://faculty.wcas.northwestern.edu/eli-finkel/documents/EastwickFinkel2008_JPSP.pdf

We have suggested that participants’ stated mate preferences
may reflect their a priori theories about the characteristics of a
potential romantic partner that will inspire their interest—in other
words, people do not truly know what they desire in a romantic
partner

That's just a nice way of saying people are full of crap when you ask them what they want in a mate.

Here is from Wikipedia - describing the same thing:

In another study testing first impressions in 56 female and 17 male participants at University of British Columbia, personality traits of physically attractive people were identified more positively and more accurately than those who were less physically attractive. It was explained that people pay closer attention to those they find physically beautiful or attractive, and thus perceiving attractive individuals with greater distinctive accuracy

So, if you take two profiles, one with a cute girl and one with an ugly girl - people will rate the quality of the cute girl's higher. People who say they care about 'personality' will rate the personality of the attractive girl higher than the ugly girl. There are a lot of examples and additional studies agreeing (and it isn't just limited to dating).

I don't have a public link to the study but:

Lewandowski, Gary; Aron, Art; Gee, Julie (2007). "Personality goes a long way: The malleability of opposite-sex physical attractiveness". Personal Relationships 14 (4): 571–585. doi:10.1111/j.1475-6811.2007.00172.x.

looks at people's inability to separate physical attractiveness from non-physical traits. It really is true, if you show a bunch of women who say income isn't important to them, the same pictures of guys and mention that they have low-paying jobs, the women will score their physical attractiveness lower than if you give them high-paying jobs. And they won't even know or acknowledge it. They'll say, 'No, I just judged them on how they looked, like you asked me to'.

Macavity.

TheBeardedLady wrote: »

What I gather from that is you believe people who are less attractive value personality more than people higher up on the good looks scale. Is that what you're saying?

Yes, but that is not what you said in your last post.

Less attractive people will focus more on personality and such things because they can't afford to value looks more - the option is not available to them. If they were more attractive themselves they would put more emphasis on physical appearance when looking for a partner.

This idea is proven in everyday life when we generally see couples where both people are similar on the looks scale, as well as in various studies (look them up, there are quite a lot of them) which also show how couples generally are on a par in terms of looks.

TheBeardedLady

http://faculty.wcas.northwestern.edu/eli-finkel/documents/EastwickFinkel2008_JPSP.pdf

That's just a nice way of saying people are full of crap when you ask them what they want in a mate.

That's interesting. I'll give the whole thing a read later. Does any of this support this claim though:

Nobody wants to think of themselves as shallow. Our society says that's bad. We're meant to care about the person, and blah, blah, blah.

It doesn't disprove that personality or sense of humour are not important or attractive to a person or that we don't care about the person, just that income and attractiveness are important to a woman and man (respectively) when choosing a long-term partner (and perhaps people don't mention that for fear of coming across as shallow when the study talks about evolutionary "justifications" for this).

UCDVet

TheBeardedLady wrote: »

That's interesting. I'll give the whole thing a read later. Does any of this support this claim though:



It doesn't disprove that personality or sense of humour is not important or attractive to a partner or that we don't care about the person, just that income and attractiveness is important to a woman and man (respectively) when choosing a long-term partner.

As I understand it, no.

Basically, they ran a speed dating night where people filled out papers of their preferences, and recorded notes on each partner. Then decided if they wanted to date them or not. They compiled the data showing what the people said they wanted verse what attributes they ranked in the people they said 'yes' they'd date.

So, for example:

a participant who claimed to value physical attractiveness highly in a romantic partner was not significantly more likely than other participants to ... say “yes” to the dates he found physically attractive

TheBeardedLady

Yep, I got that. So what people say is high up in their list of preferences at the initial stages differ from what the studies prove them to be.

This doesn't prove that personality or sense of humour or kindness DON'T feature, just that they're possibly not as high up on that list as people like to think (although the study doesn't seem to mention any of this).