For nearly three decades, the existence of the physical attractiveness stereotype or the stereotype that physically attractive people have a more socially desirable personality almost has been taken for granted in social psychology. However, the existence of this stereotype is not so evident as is often assumed to be. Results of an experiment reported in this paper demonstrate that the effect of perceived "beauty" of a stimulus person (photographed female) on the subject's evaluation of that person's personality is drastically reduced or even reserved when the degree of subjects' liking of that person is controlled. On one personality dimension, even the reverse stereotype that physically attractive people have a malignant personality was found to exist when subject's liking of the stimulus person is controlled. These and related findings suggest that people assume that physically attractive person has a nice personality not because they have an implicit personality theory connecting physical and mental attractiveness but rather because people simply like an attractive person.
Japanese Journal of Social Psychology 12 (1), 54-63, 1996
The Japanese Society of Social Psychology