ArticleScandinavian journal of psychology2020
Unattractive people are unaware of their (un)attractiveness.
Article in Scandinavian journal of psychology, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 5 papers.
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Who cites it
5 citing papers in PubMed.
- Validation of the Multidimensional Sociosexual Orientation Inventory (SOI-M) in the Chilean population.PloS one · 2025Article
- Behavioral and neural responses to social exclusion in women: the role of facial attractiveness and friendliness.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- Attraction is altered via modulation of the medial prefrontal cortex without explicit knowledge.Frontiers in human neuroscience · 2024Article
- Examining the Prospective Bidirectional Associations between Subjective and Objective Attractiveness and Adolescent Internalizing Symptoms and Life Satisfaction.Journal of youth and adolescence · 2023Article
- Unattractive people are unaware of their (un)attractiveness.Scandinavian journal of psychology · 2020Article
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1 author.
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Abstract
Past research has shown that how people rate their physical attractiveness is only moderately correlated with how they are rated by others, suggesting that at least some people have little insight into their true level of attractiveness. The present research tests the hypothesis that unattractive people are not aware of their unattractiveness. In fact, six studies (overall N = 1,180) showed that unattractive participants considerably overestimated their attractiveness compared to ratings by strangers. In contrast, attractive participants were more accurate. If anything, they underestimated their attractiveness. It was also examined why unattractive people overestimate their attractiveness. As expected, unattractive participants differentiated less between attractive and unattractive stimulus persons than did attractive participants. They were also more likely than attractive participants to select unattractive stimulus persons to compare themselves to. However, these tendencies did not account for why unattractive participants overestimated their attractiveness, nor did affirming participant's self-worth. Limitations and avenues for future research are discussed.
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