Admissions
Students’ article suggests personality can affect attractiveness
Lake Forest, Ill. – Two psychology majors at Lake Forest College will have an article they co-authored published in a national undergraduate psychology journal, Modern Psychological Studies.
Their work, “Is Beauty Only Skin Deep?: The Relationship Between Personality and Attractiveness Ratings,” will appear in the summer issue for 2009.
"Katie and Marie’s project," Associate Professor of Psychology Matthew Kelley said, "exemplifies the high quality research conducted by psychology students in and out of the classroom at Lake Forest College."
Katie Gorga '10 and Marie Russell '10 sought to determine whether positive and negative personality traits affected attractiveness ratings. They found that ratings increased significantly for both attractive and unattractive photos when paired with a positive description.
"This kind of research has some really interesting results," Gorga said. "It can tell us a lot about how people view others and possibly even on what people base their ideals of attractiveness."
The study examined whether positive and negative personality traits influenced attractiveness ratings for pictures of men and women. In the first phase, fifty-two participants rated 80 photographs of men and women (half attractive; half unattractive) on their attractiveness. Two to four days later, the same participants were asked to learn and remember four personality descriptions (two negative; two positive) paired with four different photographs. All photographs were of the opposite sex of the participant and all had appeared in the first phase. Following the learning task, participants were given a surprise attractiveness rating task for the four photographs. When positive personality traits were paired with the photos, the attractiveness ratings increased significantly for both attractive and unattractive pictures, whereas attractiveness ratings remained stable across phases in the negative trait condition.
"We became interested in this topic after reviewing research that dealt with personality and attractiveness," Gorga added. "We thought it would be interesting to conduct our own study with some changes."
This work was completed as a final project for a statistics course taught by Associate Professor of Psychology Matthew Kelley in the fall 2008.
Lake Forest College is a national liberal arts institution located 30 miles north of downtown Chicago. The College has 1,400 students representing 45 states and 69 countries.
# # #
Will Pittinos '06
847-735-6177
pittinos@lakeforest.edu
Their work, “Is Beauty Only Skin Deep?: The Relationship Between Personality and Attractiveness Ratings,” will appear in the summer issue for 2009.
"Katie and Marie’s project," Associate Professor of Psychology Matthew Kelley said, "exemplifies the high quality research conducted by psychology students in and out of the classroom at Lake Forest College."
Katie Gorga '10 and Marie Russell '10 sought to determine whether positive and negative personality traits affected attractiveness ratings. They found that ratings increased significantly for both attractive and unattractive photos when paired with a positive description.
"This kind of research has some really interesting results," Gorga said. "It can tell us a lot about how people view others and possibly even on what people base their ideals of attractiveness."
The study examined whether positive and negative personality traits influenced attractiveness ratings for pictures of men and women. In the first phase, fifty-two participants rated 80 photographs of men and women (half attractive; half unattractive) on their attractiveness. Two to four days later, the same participants were asked to learn and remember four personality descriptions (two negative; two positive) paired with four different photographs. All photographs were of the opposite sex of the participant and all had appeared in the first phase. Following the learning task, participants were given a surprise attractiveness rating task for the four photographs. When positive personality traits were paired with the photos, the attractiveness ratings increased significantly for both attractive and unattractive pictures, whereas attractiveness ratings remained stable across phases in the negative trait condition.
"We became interested in this topic after reviewing research that dealt with personality and attractiveness," Gorga added. "We thought it would be interesting to conduct our own study with some changes."
This work was completed as a final project for a statistics course taught by Associate Professor of Psychology Matthew Kelley in the fall 2008.
Lake Forest College is a national liberal arts institution located 30 miles north of downtown Chicago. The College has 1,400 students representing 45 states and 69 countries.
# # #
Will Pittinos '06
847-735-6177
pittinos@lakeforest.edu
