Hierarchical Encoding Makes Individuals in a Group Seem More Attractive

Drew Walker; Edward Vul

doi:10.1177/0956797613497969

Hierarchical Encoding Makes Individuals in a Group Seem More Attractive

University of California, San Diego

Drew Walker, University of California, San Diego, Department of Psychology, 9500 Gilman Dr., La Jolla, CA 92093-0109 E-mail: dehoffma{at}ucsd.edu

Author Contributions Both authors contributed to the design of the experiments. The experiment was programmed by D. Walker. E. Vul and D. Walker analyzed and interpreted the data. D. Walker and E. Vul drafted the manuscript. Both authors approved the final version of the manuscript for submission.

Abstract

In the research reported here, we found evidence of the cheerleader effect—people seem more attractive in a group than in isolation. We propose that this effect arises via an interplay of three cognitive phenomena: (a) The visual system automatically computes ensemble representations of faces presented in a group, (b) individual members of the group are biased toward this ensemble average, and (c) average faces are attractive. Taken together, these phenomena suggest that individual faces will seem more attractive when presented in a group because they will appear more similar to the average group face, which is more attractive than group members’ individual faces. We tested this hypothesis in five experiments in which subjects rated the attractiveness of faces presented either alone or in a group with the same gender. Our results were consistent with the cheerleader effect.

Article Notes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests The authors declared that they had no conflicts of interest with respect to their authorship or the publication of this article.