Data on stereotypes and behavioral expectations associated with facial attractiveness provide one of the most consistent, pervasive, and robust findings in developmental and social psychology. Both adults and children prefer attractive over unattractive individuals: They attribute positive qualities and abilities to attractive individuals, negative ones to unattractive individuals, and they behave differently toward attractive and unattractive persons. It has long been assumed that these preferences for attractiveness were gradually learned and were evident only after years of exposure to the media and/or socialization agents. In contrast, our work reveals that even young infants detect and prefer attractive over unattractive faces. This preference for an attractive appearance affects the development of children both as perceivers of others and as the perceived. The effects of such preferences of others on children are direct: The treatment and responsiveness of others are influenced by the attractiveness of the child. The effects on children as perceivers are less obvious but will also affect the social environment in important ways: Children's perception of and preference for attractiveness in others will influence their selection of social interaction partners. These preferences, then, form a strategic component in children's active construction of their social world. The research plan has two major goals. The first is to continue our research on infants' preferences for attractive faces by investigating the cross-cultural generality of these preferences and by investigating whether these preferences are innate or acquired. The second goal is to understand the functional significance of appearance -based information by determining what cues are conveyed by faces differing in levels of attractiveness. It is proposed that information about age, gender, health, affective state, and prototypicality is differentially conveyed to perceivers by attractive and unattractive faces. These facially-based signals are proposed to have important consequences for social interaction. The research will lead to new theoretical accounts of the mechanisms of development of social stereotypes based on facial appearance by investigating whether preferences for attractive faces are innate or are acquired through the very early cognitive abstraction of faces. The research will therefore contribute to our knowledge of early infant social perception. By learning why facial attractiveness is preferred by infants, children, and adults alike, we will be able to specify how attractiveness might influence socialization and social interaction. These studies will therefore lead to new explanations of the functional significance of appearance-based stereotypes. Finally, the research is designed to have applied implications for parenting, child abuse, sex-role socialization, and the mental and physical health of LD and ADD children.
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