Psychology at Sweet Briar

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Physical Attractiveness and Same-sexed Friendships

Vanessa Correy, Jen Hatter, Sarah Quortrup & Heather Tinnell

    Our project was designed to examine whether attractiveness played a perdominate role in same-sex friendship selection. The project was established to discover whether attractiveness would outweigh other personality characteristics when people chose friendships.  In the project we used the term roommate. We used roommate so  no one would know exactly what we were searching for and what our hypothesis was. The project was designed by a 2x2 factorial design. The variables were 2(physical attractiveness) x 2(personality characteristics). The project was designed so that the participants would choose which individual they would want as a future roommate.

    In this experiment we used three different questionnaires. The first questionnaire was the Self-Perceptions Questionnaire. This questionnaire was designed to assess the different personality characteristics that were important to the participants. The next questionnaire was named the Perceptions of a Roomate Questionnaire. This questionniare was designed to assess the different personality characteristics thatthe participants would want in aa future roommate.

    The first two questionnaires were used to individualize the participants answers to their different numbers. Each participant had the characteristics they chose individualized to their number for the last session. The last questionnaire was the Friend/Rommate Questionnaire. This quesrtionnaire took the different personality characteristics and asked the participants whether they looked for them in a friend, a roommate, both, or neither.  The experimenters then used ten pairs of pictures. The pictures were taken from old high school yearbooks. The pictures were arranged in pairs, one picture would be the attractive individual and the next picture would be the unattractive individual. The participants were asked to choose which one would they want as a future roommate.

    The next part of the experiment is the procedure. There were 26 women undergraduate students from Sweet Briar College. Each one was recruited from lower level psychology courses, from dormitories, and by asking the researchers friends. The participants were given an envelope which contained the Consent Form, the Self-Perception Questionnaire, and the Perceptions of  a Roommate Questionnaire. The participants were told to return these envelopes when they returned for the first session.  In the first session the participants were shown the ten pairs of pictures. The pictures had listed under them three neutral characteritics. Examples of the characteristics were high school attended and favorite color. The participants were asked to choose which picture they would want as a future roommate. The participants were also asked to rate their confidence level of choosing the pictures on a 5-point Likert Scale. The scale ranged from 1 which was very confident to 5 which was not confident. Afterwards the participants were asked to return for the final session.

    In the final session the participants were shown the same ten pairs of pictures except this time the participants individualized characteristics were listed under the pictures. Each picture had three characteristics listed under them. The pictures either had two positive and one negative, or they had two negative and one positive. The picture fell under one or the other groups, attractive with postive characteristics, attractive with negative characteristics, unattractive with postive characteristics, or unattractive with negative characteristics. The participants were asked to choose which individual picture they would want for a future roommate.

    The results of the experiment were mixed. The first analysis that was done was the one sample t-test. This analysis used the two questionnaires to do an analysis of attrctiveness. This analysis showed significant findings. It went along with our hypothesis at the beginning that attractiveness plays a large role in same-sex friendship selection.  The next analysis done was on the confidence levels of their responses. The test was a Pre/Post Test on Confidence levels. In this analysis it showed no significant findings. This stated that it did not go along with our hypothesis that attractiveness plays a large role in same-sex friendship selection.

    The evaluation of the project was that it was a very interesting project and was well executed but there were some possible confoundings that could have had an effect on the results. The first is that there was a small population tested. That this community is not generalizable to the general population. The second was that attractiveness is subjective. In other words everyone has a different perception about what is attractive and what is not. The last possible confounding is that there may not have been a clear understanding of the personality characteristics by the participants. This is that all  the participants may not have understood what all of the characteristics meant and that could have caused them to choose something that they did not want.The conclusions reached from this project are that  attractiveness does play a large role in same-sex friendship selection. Also that attractiveness is and always will be subjective. Also in the  majority of the time physical attractiveness will outweigh personality characteristics when it comes to same-sex friendship selection.