Hierarchical Encoding Makes Individuals in a Group Seem More Attractive

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 presen...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inPsychological science Vol. 25; no. 1; pp. 230 - 235
Main Authors Walker, Drew, Vul, Edward
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Los Angeles, CA SAGE Publications 01.01.2014
Sage Publications
SAGE PUBLICATIONS, INC
Subjects
Adult
Arithmetic mean
Beauty
Biological and medical sciences
Cognition & reasoning
Experiments
Face
Female
Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology
Gender
Group attraction
Group membership
Group size
Groups
Humans
Male
Men
Perception
Physical attractiveness
Portrait photography
Psychology
Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry
Psychology. Psychophysiology
Research Report
Social interactions. Communication. Group processes
Social psychology
Standard deviation
Vision
Visual perception
Visual Perception - physiology
Visual system
Young Adult
Z score
face perception
visual perception
Human
Social preference
Coding
Social group
Vision
Perception
Experimental study
Face
Social cognition
Social attraction
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Summary: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.
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ISSN:0956-7976
1467-9280
1467-9280
DOI:10.1177/0956797613497969