Just what, exactly, can we learn from a pretty face?

Because despite axiomatic warnings to the contrary, when we meet other people we spend an awful lot of time judging books by their covers. Encounter someone attractive, and it’s hard for us to look away. But it’s even more difficult for us to refrain from drawing bigger-picture conclusions about what type of person we think we're dealing with.

Indeed, in a recently published study, Israeli researchers set out to test two questions related to our tendency to make assumptions based on physical appearance: 1) What are the characteristics we typically associate with attractive others? 2) What are the characteristics actually predicted by physical attractiveness?

In their study, 118 female “targets” agreed to be filmed for 60 seconds while speaking in front of a camera. Each of these videos was subsequently shown to 1 of 118 “judges” (both male and female) who evaluated the target’s physical attractiveness, and then rated her on a variety of personality traits and personal values.

What did the judges’ responses reveal? Namely that they thought they learned a fair amount about the target’s personality just based on the brief snippet of video they had seen. Specifically, the more physically attractive a target was rated, the more conscientious, open to experience, and extraverted the judges believed her to be. And these conclusions related to target attractiveness were no different among female and male judges

More HERE Via Psychology Today