Face-to-Face: An Investigation of Social Comparisons of Facial Attractiveness

Exposure to a face triggers a series of judgments about the person to which the face belongs. Some of the most widely studied judgments humans make from faces are evaluative judgments of facial attractiveness. These judgments are made frequently, automatically, and have important implications for judgments of other important social characteristics like trustworthiness and personality. A relatively understudied set of facial attractiveness judgments that are made from faces are comparative judgments, or social comparisons, of facial attractiveness. Based on social comparison theory, and what is known about evaluative judgments of facial attractiveness, it is likely that social comparisons of facial attractiveness are also frequent and have important implications. Despite this, little is known about social comparisons of facial attractiveness. To address this gap in the literature, three multi-method studies were conducted in this dissertation. The first was a systematic review to synthesize the existing research that directly or indirectly addressed social comparisons of facial attractiveness. Studies Two and Three empirically investigated whether or not social comparisons of facial attractiveness have features of automaticity. Study Two used a think aloud methodology to investigate the mandatory nature of social comparisons of facial attractiveness, whereas Study Three experimentally investigated how quickly social comparisons of facial attractiveness can be made. Together, these studies revealed more about how social comparisons of facial attractiveness occur and have theoretical implications for future research on the automaticity of mental processes more broadly.