New research published in the Scandinavian Journal of Psychology suggests that unattractive people are largely unaware of how unattractive they are.
Psychology research shows that people, overall, tend to rate themselves as more physically attractive than strangers rate them. However, it seems that not everyone overestimates their attractiveness to an equal degree. A series of studies conducted by researcher Tobias Greitemeyer explored the possibility that unattractive people are more likely to hold exaggerated ideas of their attractiveness than attractive people are.
In an initial study, Greitemeyer had participants rate their physical attractiveness while two strangers inconspicuously also rated each subject’s attractiveness. The results showed that subjects, overall, overestimated their own attractiveness. However, the extent to which subjects inflated their attractiveness was associated with subjects’ objective attractiveness.
Specifically, those who were among the least attractive in the sample overestimated their attractiveness the most, while those who were the most attractive actually underestimated their attractiveness.
Moreover, Greitemeyer conducted five additional studies and each one replicated the finding that unattractive people are especially likely to overestimate their attractiveness.
“Overall,” Greitemeyer relates, “unattractive participants judged themselves to be of about average attractiveness and they showed very little awareness that strangers do not share this view. In contrast, attractive participants had more insights into how attractive they actually are . . . It thus appears that unattractive people maintain illusory self-perceptions of their attractiveness, whereas attractive people’s self-views are more grounded in reality.”
The studies also offered insight into why unattractive people are particularly inept at discerning their own attractiveness.
One study found evidence that unattractive people have different conceptions of beauty than attractive people do. In this study, participants rated photos of attractive and unattractive people. As Greitemeyer describes, “Overall, attractive more than unattractive participants differentiated between attractive and unattractive individuals. In particular, unattractive participants were more favorable toward unattractive stimulus persons than were attractive participants.” Still, this apparent inability to differentiate between attractive and unattractive people did not explain why unattractive subjects overrated their attractiveness.
Another study suggested that it may have to do with comparison targets, revealing that unattractive people were more likely to compare their looks to other unattractive people, while attractive people were more likely to compare themselves to attractive others. However, further analysis found that the choice of comparison targets did not explain why unattractive people overestimated their attractiveness.
Greitemeyer concludes that the explanation for why unattractive people overrate their physical appearance remains unclear. Still, the findings on comparison targets suggest that unattractive people may be more aware of their looks than it seems. The author explains, “the finding that unattractive participants selected unattractive stimulus persons with whom they would compare their attractiveness to suggests that they may have an inkling that they are less attractive than they want it to be.”
The study, “Unattractive people are unaware of their (un)attractiveness”, was authored by Tobias Greitemeyer.