Beautiful people are seen more positively than others, but are they also seen more accurately? In a round-robin design in which previously unacquainted individuals met for 3 min, results were consistent with the “beautiful is good” stereotype: More physically attractive individuals were viewed with greater normative accuracy; that is, they were viewed more in line with the highly desirable normative profile. Notably, more physically attractive targets were viewed more in line with their unique self-reported personality traits, that is, with greater distinctive accuracy. Further analyses revealed that both positivity and accuracy were to some extent in the eye of the beholder: Perceivers’ idiosyncratic impressions of a target’s attractiveness were also positively related to the positivity and accuracy of impressions. Overall, people do judge a book by its cover, but a beautiful cover prompts a closer reading, leading more physically attractive people to be seen both more positively and more accurately.
BiesanzJ.C. (in press). The social accuracy model of interpersonal perception: Assessing individual differences in perceptive and expressive accuracy. Multivariate Behavioral Research.
3.
BiesanzJ.C.HumanL.J. (2010). The cost of forming more accurate impressions: Accuracy-motivated perceivers see the personality of others more distinctively but less normatively than perceivers without an explicit goal. Psychological Science, 21, 589–594.
4.
BorkenauP.ZaltauskasK. (2009). Effects of self-enhancement on agreement on personality profiles. European Journal of Personality, 23, 107–123.
5.
ClevelandW.S. (1979). Robust locally weighted regression and smoothing scatterplots. Journal of the American Statistical Association, 74, 829–836.
6.
ColvinC.R. (1993). Judgable people: Personality, behavior, and competing explanations. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 64, 861–873.
7.
De La RondeC.SwannW.B.Jr. (1998). Partner verification: Restoring shattered images of our intimates. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 75, 374–382.
8.
DionK.BerscheidE.WalsterE. (1972). What is beautiful is good. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 24, 285–290.
9.
EaglyA.H.AshmoreR.D.MakhijaniM.G.LongoL.C. (1991). What is beautiful is good, but . . . : A meta-analytic review of research on the physical attractiveness stereotype. Psychological Bulletin, 110, 109–128.
10.
EdwardsA.L. (1957). The social desirability variable in personality assessment and research. New York, NY: Dryden.
11.
FeingoldA. (1992). Good-looking people are not what we think. Psychological Bulletin, 111, 304–341.
12.
FunderD.C. (1995). On the accuracy of personality judgment: A realistic approach. Psychological Review, 102, 652–670.
13.
FunderD.C.ColvinC. (1997). Congruence of others’ and self-judgments of personality. In HoganR.JohnsonJ.BriggsS. (Eds.), Handbook of personality psychology (pp. 617–647). San Diego, CA: Academic Press.
14.
GriffinA.M.LangloisJ.H. (2006). Stereotype directionality and attractiveness stereotyping: Is beauty good or is ugly bad?Social Cognition, 24, 212–246.
15.
JohnO.P.SrivastavaS. (1999). The Big Five taxonomy: History, measurement, and theoretical perspectives. In PervinL.A.JohnO.P. (Eds.), Handbook of personality: Theory and research (pp. 102–138). New York, NY: Guilford Press.
16.
KennyD.A.LaVoieL. (1984). The social relations model. In BerkowitzL. (Ed.), Advances in experimental social psychology (Vol. 18, pp. 142–182). San Diego, CA: Academic Press.
17.
KennyD.A.WinquistL. (2001). The measurement of interpersonal sensitivity: Consideration of design, components, and unit of analysis. In HallJ.A.BernieriF.J. (Eds.), Interpersonal sensitivity: Theory and measurement (pp. 265–302). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
18.
LackenbauerS.CampbellL.RubinH.FletcherG.J.O.TroisterT. (in press). The unique and combined benefits of accuracy and positive bias in relationships. Personal Relationships.
19.
LangloisJ.H.KalakanisL.RubensteinA.J.LarsonA.HallamM.SmootM. (2000). Maxims or myths of beauty? A meta-analytic and theoretic review. Psychological Bulletin, 26, 390–423.
20.
LemayE.P.ClarkM.S.GreenbergA. (2010). What is beautiful is good because what is beautiful is desired: Physical attractiveness stereotyping as projection of interpersonal goals. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 36, 339–353.
21.
LuoS.SniderA. (2009). Accuracy and biases in newlyweds’ perceptions of each other: Not mutually exclusive but mutually beneficial. Psychological Science, 20, 1332–1339.
22.
ManerJ.K.KenrickD.T.BeckerD.V.DeltionA.W.HoferB.WilburC.J.NeubergS.L. (2003). Sexually selective cognition: Beauty captures the mind of the beholder. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 85, 1107–1120.
23.
SwannW.B.Jr.PelhamB.W.KrullD.S. (1989). Agreeable fancy or disagreeable truth? How people reconcile their self-enhancement and self-verification needs. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 57, 782–791.
24.
WoodD.GoslingS.D.PotterJ. (2007). Normality evaluations and their relation to personality traits and well-being. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 93, 861–879.
