Year: 2026
Type: dissertation
Abstract: Despite strong consensus about the basic features that make someone look objectively attractive, contextual variation may modulate subjective assessments. Here, I investigate how social group membership provides such a context, comparing attractiveness judgments between lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) versus straight perceivers, and examining how these attractiveness judgments relate to beliefs about the target person’s sexual orientation. I indeed find that perceivers rate targets as more attractive when they believe the target’s sexual majority/minority status matches their own (Study 1). The nature of this association differs according to perceiver identity, however: Although straight and LGB perceivers evaluate the components of facial attractiveness similarly (Study 2), straight men use attractiveness as a cue to sexual orientation (i.e., deeming unattractive women lesbians; Study 3) whereas LGB perceivers use sexual orientation as a cue to attractiveness (e.g., gay men rate men whom they believe are gay as more attractive than men whom they believe are straight; Studies 4 and 5). Thus, LGB identity seems to create a context in which sexual minority perceivers learn to attend to information about sexual diversity that straight perceivers may ignore. These findings highlight how group membership provides a lens for social perception, specifically pointing to how the contextual mindset of partner selection may transmute fundamental facial judgments, such as physical attractiveness.
Source: TSpace (University of Toronto)
Author: Schwartzman, Emily
Institution: University of Toronto
Language: English
Subfield: Experimental and Cognitive Psychology
Field: Psychology
Domain: Social Sciences
SDG: Reduced inequalities
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7203962357