Beautiful people
Maria Dalamagka Despite the widely accepted ‘What is beautiful is good’ stereotype, our findings suggest that the beautiful strive for conformity rather than independence, and for self-promotion rather than tolerance,” writes a research team led by Lihi Segal-Caspi of the Open University of Israel. In other words, the positive traits we attribute to good-looking people are simply a matter of stereotyping. But this study, published in the journal Psychological Science, suggests the unusually attractive have a distinct set of values—and they’re not, well, pretty. The experiment featured 236 university students (mean age 29), all of whom completed detailed questionnaires designed to uncover their personality traits and deeply held values. Half the participants—118 women—were then videotaped for roughly one minute apiece as they walked around a table and read a weather forecast while looking into the camera. The other 118 (a mixed group, 59 percent female and 41 percent male) su...