The research outlined in this proposal has three primary goals and one secondary goal. The first primary goal is to investigate the origin of appearance-based stereotypes by integrating two separate bodies of research in the fields of developmental and social psychology. A series of studies are proposed that examine infant preferences for attractive faces using research paradigms adapted from the infant perception literature. The results from these studies are expected to reveal that appearance-based stereotyping and judgments are evident in rudimentary forms very early in development. A second major goal is to describe the components of attractiveness by using techniques from cognitive psychology and by experimentally varying facial features with computer simulations of facial transformations. The third major goal is to examine the relationship between infant appearance and behavior and to investigate the mediating role of minor physical anomalies in newborn appearance and developmental status. Finally, two methodological studies are proposed to rule out rival hypotheses in interpreting results from these and other investigations of attractive and unattractive individuals. The work proposed here is expected to lead to new and different views of the role of appearance in development and to new theoretical explanations of attractiveness phenomena.
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