THE UNDERESTIMATION OF THE ROLE OF PHYSICAL ATTRACTIVENESS IN DATING PREFERENCES - IGNORANCE OR TABOO

The literature suggests that subjects tend to underreport the impact of physical attractiveness on their dating preferences. It was investigated whether this is due to subjects' inability to achieve accurate introspective reports or to a tendency to intentionally provide distorted reports of the role of physical attractiveness in such preferences. Female subjects were shown profiles containing photographs and information about the personalities of potential male dating partners and were asked to state the dating desirability of each target person. Subsequently, they were asked to introspect about the factors that affected their dating preferences. The findings suggested that subjects are capable of accurate introspection. The subjects tended to intentionally underreport the impact of physical attractiveness on their preferences. More specifically, when subjects thought that they were connected to a lie-detector-like apparatus, they produced more accurate overall introspective reports, admitted a more extreme influence by the physical attractiveness of the targets, and endorsed more extreme dating desirability ratings for physically unattractive men. Attractive men were consistently preferred and physical attractiveness was found to be the single most influential target variable on the subject's preferences.