Reasons to Hate Beauty
Michael Levine delivers an excellent tirade in “Why I Hate Beauty” published in Psychology Today. It is a great paper on what’s known in marketing circles as “the contrast effect”.
As an author of books on marketing, I have long known about the contrast effect. It is a principle of perception whereby the differences between two things are exaggerated depending on the order in which those things are presented. If you lift a light object and then a heavy object, you will judge the second object heavier than if you had lifted it first or solo.
Psychologists Sara Gutierres, Ph.D., and Douglas Kenrick, Ph.D., both of Arizona State University, demonstrated that the contrast effect operates powerfully in the sphere of person-to-person attraction as well. In a series of studies over the past two decades, they have shown that, more than any of us might suspect, judgments of attractiveness (of ourselves and of others) depend on the situation in which we find ourselves. For example, a woman of average attractiveness seems a lot less attractive than she actually is if a viewer has first seen a highly attractive woman. If a man is talking to a beautiful female at a cocktail party and is then joined by a less attractive one, the second woman will seem relatively unattractive.
Obviously, this can present a large problem in today’s society. We are constantly bombarded with images of men and women that are created under controlled, ideal circumstances. The problem is that when looking for your perfect mate in the real world, circumstances are never controlled and only very rarely ideal. For instance, when was the last time you and someone of the opposite sex “met cute”? Most likely never, and constant exposure to situations/images like this can set a dangerous expectation of what’s normal and what’s not in our minds.
It’s a sobering read.
Why I hate Beauty - Psychology Today
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