Image: MARIO WAGNER
Beauty is not just in the eye of the beholder—it is also in the eyes of the beholder’s friends. A study published in April in Psychological Science found that men judge a woman as more attractive when they believe their peers find that woman attractive—supporting a budding theory that groupthink is not as simple as once thought.
Researchers at Harvard University asked 14 college-age men to rate the attractiveness of 180 female faces on a scale of 1 to 10. Thirty minutes later the psychologists asked the men to rate the faces again, but this time the faces were paired with a random rating that the scientists told the men were averages of their peers’ scores. The men were strongly influenced by their peers’ supposed judgments—they rated the women with higher scores as more attractive than they did the first time. Functional MRI scans showed that the men were not simply lying to fit in. Activity in their brain’s pleasure centers indicated that their opinions of the women’s beauty really did change.
The results fit in with a new theory of conformity, says the study’s lead author Jamil Zaki. When people conform to group expectations, Zaki says, they are not concealing their own preferences; they actually have aligned their minds. In addition, the likelihood of someone conforming depends on his or her place within the group, according to a study in the December 2010 issue of the British Journal of Sociology. Members who are central are more likely to dissent because their identities are more secure. Those at the edges, who feel only partially involved or are new to the group, may have more malleable opinions.
This article was originally published with the title Following the Crowd.
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12 Comments
Add CommentHow does "following the crowd" equate with trying to appear "beautiful"? There is no logic to that premise. By definition, a crowd is a number of people; the only way to fit into a crowd would be to try to get as close to AVERAGE as possible!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishe article is inversely named, it should have been How to Stand Out in a Crowd! What a bizarre form of logic! Perhaps they meant the In-crowd; anyway, ignore this and BE YOURSELF!
If you want to run with a certain crowd, then you will think with that crowd, no matter what they think. People who are natural leaders never think with the crowd, whither they are pretty or ugly. They start their own like minded crowd, so that makes their opinion just as flawed as all the other crowds since they are influencing your opinion. If you do not want to run with a crowd and you want an honest opinion...ask a hermit. But even then, you become the hermit's crowd. So how can you stay away from crowds and maintain your own opinion on beauty and ugly...get a dog.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis is interesting but it seems intuitive to me. People are going to believe what they are told and then attempt to conform to the crowd. I have found that there are also a number of non-conformists that will not follow the posted ratings. These tend to be people who perform data analysis and interpretation for a living and are paid based upon their opinion and the accuracy thereof. I would be interested to see how this experiment played out if you ran tests on a broad spectrum of people (all ages, etc) and also on specific groups of people (students, professionals of different types, etc). I suspect that what you would find is that there are very strong conformance/non-conformance trends and that they are clearly divided (at least as clear as statistics can indicate).
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPromytius, your comments make no sense. The article is not about "trying to appear beautiful". Read it again and you might understand.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisLike a knife, this apparent tendency can be both invaluable and extremely dangerous.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe secret lies in being aware of it, so that we can control it consciously. This awareness training should be a central part of our civic education. "Know yourself..."
In a society, conformity is a "learned" behavior. It is taught to us the minute we leave our mother's womb. The nursery,classroom,work environment and even our private family life involves "conformity". Necessary perhaps, but allows little room for "critical" thinking. Thinking outside the of the perverbial "box" is necessary for continued improvement on any society. If,for example, some of our greatest inventors had listened to the conformists, we wouldn't have such things as automobiles, airplanes or computers.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSometimes our peers or the "herd", if you will,do not have our best interests in mind.
I'm just saying; there is a time to conform and a time to think for ones self. Being "politically correct" is not always the best avenue for me. I'm learning the difference.
I do agree with the article; that my mind does subconsciously align itself with the conformity of others. I have to work on that!
In reply, that's because I don't live in a crowd, think like a crowd, or act as the crowd desires. It doesn't make sense to you, ok, re-read the article and think, and then you'll get my point, although I really don't care if you do or not; I'm not in your crowd, and that is the point. Be YOURSELF.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisalways did and did as my parents and older brother did however after my 6 week backpacking trip to EU in August, weeks prior to the event I swore to never EVER wear a tie and my life values changes , sort of like going to work for Greenpeace from being a logger so to speak. but not exactly. TRUE.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTo avoid effect of crowd on our mind is impossible.When you are in crowd you behave just like crowd.Why this happen?Man is social animal, without social contact we cannot survive.This survival instinct instinct blindly follow the crowd. This survival instinct don't care good or bad,its only duty id survival in any condition.So in crowd man ready to kill,fire a house or ready do any destructive deed.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI think you misunderstood the article, too. It isn't about trying to fit in by being one of the beautiful ones. It is about the ones judging the beauty on their own and again when they have some yardstick from another provided. There is a difference between not "getting it" and being true to yourself even when you do.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisjust a speculation:- we, all of us, have the DNA stands in our cells.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSuppose that the two spiralling strands have a tiny electrical effect/charge in their in-between spaces and this can be influenced by stronger personality's so that those not really 'knowing/understanding themselves' can be 'swept up' into the 'crowd' mentality.
Thank you Sci -Am, It's just a thought.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thismarg.