Title: Beauty is but skin deep Attractiveness and cooperation in social exchange.
1Beauty is but skin deep Attractiveness and
cooperation in social exchange.
2How physical attractiveness affects behavior in
social exchange ?
- Previous studies
- Physical attractiveness collects premium in labor
and marriage markets (e.g. Elder, 1976 Hamermesh
Biddle, 1994 Taylor Glenn, 1976). - In the domain of social exchange, Mulford,
Orbell, Shatto and Stockard (1998) found that
participants who played the prisoners dilemma
game (PD) were more likely to enter a game with
and cooperate with others they found physically
more attractive.
Attractive people are advantageous in social
exchange
3How physical attractiveness affects behavior in
social exchange ?
- In our study,
- we investigate how physical attractiveness
affects subjects behavior in three different
experimental games (Dictator game, PD, SD).
4Experiment 1
Please rate the Physical attractiveness of
this person. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 not
very attractive
attractive
Photographed people have already participated in
the game.
5Result 1
- Cooperators faces were rated more attractive
than defectors faces. - This relationship was observed only among male
players regardless of raters sex.
6Experiment 2
- Why the less cooperative males are rated more
attractive? - Do they have any traits that attract raters?
We created an averaged face of cooperators and
another averaged face of defectors in the SD game
for each sex of the players .
7Averaged faces
Cooperators face
Defectors face
Please judge which person is more attractive.
8Result 2
- Majority of the raters judged the male defectors
averaged photograph more attractive than male
cooperators average photograph.
Our findings indicate attractive men were less
cooperative whereas physical attractiveness was
unrelated to cooperation among women.
9(No Transcript)