Beautiful stereotypes: The relationship between physical attractiveness and mixed race identity (original) (raw)
Related papers
What Are You Mixed With?: An Analysis of Perceived Attractiveness, Skin Tone, and Mixed Raciality
Studies consistently show that attractiveness is racialized, and in a racial hierarchy that privileges whites at the expense of blacks, white phenotypic characteristics are deemed more attractive than black phenotypic characteristics. This study seeks to examine whether the racialized nature of attractiveness is based on more than just appearance. To that end, I use Add Health data to analyze whether black people who identify as mixed race rather than as a single race are perceived as more attractive even when controlling for phenotype, particularly skin tone, eye color, and hair color.
"Shades of Beauty:" Examining the relationship of skin color on perceptions of physical attractiveness The purpose of this research project was to investigate the relationship between skin color and level of perceived physical attractiveness. Previous research suggests that skin color plays an important role in how we perceive an individual's physical attractiveness. The current study was conducted to determine how influential the role of race is on perceptions of physical attractiveness. In this study, seventy-nine subjects were asked to evaluate images of potential endorsers to be used in an upcoming advertising campaign. The images each were actually females of varying skin tones. Data was then collected and analyzed to determine if skin tone and level of skin color can in fact influence the physical attractiveness stereotype.
Attractiveness in African American and Caucasian women: Is beauty in the eyes of the observer?
Eating behaviors, 2010
Traditional body image studies have been constrained by focusing on body thinness as the sole component of attractiveness. Evidence suggests that African American women may hold a multifactorial view of attractiveness that extends beyond size to include factors such as dress attire and race. The current study employed a culturally sensitive silhouette Model Rating Task (MRT) to examine the effects of attire, body size, and race on attractiveness. Unexpectedly, minimal differences on attractiveness ratings emerged by attire, body size, or model race between African American and Caucasian women. Overall, participants preferred the dressed, underweight, and African American models. Factors such as exposure to diverse groups and changes in African American culture may explain the present findings. Future studies to delineate the components of attractiveness for African American and Caucasian women using the MRT are needed to broaden our understanding and conceptualization of attractiveness across racial groups.
Attractiveness as a Function of Skin Tone and Facial Features: Evidence from Categorization Studies
Participants rated the attractiveness and racial typicality of male faces varying in their facial features from Afrocentric to Eurocentric and in skin tone from dark to light in two experiments. Experiment 1 provided evidence that facial features and skin tone have an interactive effect on perceptions of attractiveness and mixedrace faces are perceived as more attractive than single-race faces. Experiment 2 further confirmed that faces with medium levels of skin tone and facial features are perceived as more attractive than faceswith extremelevels of these factors. Black phenotypes (combinations of dark skin tone and Afrocentric facial features) were rated as more attractive than White phenotypes (combinations of light skin tone and Eurocentric facial features); ambiguous faces (combinations of Afrocentric and Eurocentric physiognomy) with medium levels of skin tone were rated as the most attractive in Experiment 2. Perceptions of attractiveness were relatively independent of racial categorization in both experiments.
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1995
The consistency of physical attractiveness ratings across cultural groups was examined. In Study 1, recently arrived native Asian and Hispanic students and White Americans rated the attractiveness of Asian, Hispanic, Black, and White photographed women. The mean correlation between groups in attractiveness ratings was r = .93. Asians, Hispanics, and Whites were equally influenced by many facial features', but Asians were less influenced by some sexual maturity and expressive features. In Study 2, Taiwanese attractiveness ratings correlated with prior Asian, Hispanic, and American ratings, mean r = .91. Supporting Study 1, the Taiwanese also were less positively influenced by certain sexual maturity and expressive features. Exposure to Western media did not influence attractiveness ratings in either study. In Study 3, Black and White American men rated the attractiveness of Black female facial photos and body types. Mean facial attractiveness ratings were highly correlated (r = .94), but as predicted Blacks and Whites varied in judging bodies.
Attractiveness of Own-Race, Other-Race, and Mixed-Race Faces
Perception, 2005
Averaged face composites, which represent the central tendency of a familiar population of faces, are attractive. If this prototypicality contributes to their appeal, then averaged composites should be more attractive when their component faces come from a familiar, own-race population than when they come from a less familiar, other-race population. We compared the attractiveness of own-race composites, other-race composites, and mixed-race composites (where the component faces were from both races). In experiment 1, Caucasian participants rated own-race composites as more attractive than other-race composites, but only for male faces. However, mixed-race (Caucasian/Japanese) composites were significantly more attractive than own-race composites, particularly for the opposite sex. In experiment 2, Caucasian and Japanese participants living in Australia and Japan, respectively, selected the most attractive face from a continuum with exaggerated Caucasian characteristics at one end an...
Skin Tone, Ratings of Attractiveness, and Personality Traits
2015
A survey research design was used to investigate whether or not HBCU (N=40) students' self-reported skin tone (light, medium, and dark) could predict their ratings of their own attractiveness and their ratings of others' attractiveness (as a function of skin tone). This study also investigated whether target's skin tone impacted perceivers' ratings of the targets' personality traits. While results indicated no relationship between participants' own self-reported skin tone and attractiveness (p> .05), results did indicate that darker-skinned participants, compared to light and medium-skinned participants, rated others as more attractive. Analyses did not reveal any statistically significant differences for personality ratings.