Psychology 205 Athleticism vs Attractiveness

Athleticism vs. Attractiveness

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Abstract

This study focused on the effect that being an athlete has on how attractive a person is found by those around them. 6 athletes, 3 male and 3 female (baseball/softball, lacrosse, and soccer players) were selected and photos of them either in their sports uniform or in their everyday clothing were shown to 200 random individuals in Shenendehowa High School East across a time span of one week. Those shown a photo of an athlete in their sports uniform were not also shown the photo of that same athlete in their everyday clothing, and those shown a photo of an athlete in their everyday clothing were not also shown the photo of that same athlete in their sports uniform. A hypothesis test performed on the resulting averages of the surveys handed out to participants showed no significant results. According to our findings, the fact that someone is an athlete has no effect how how attractive they are found by those around them.

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Much research has been done on the topic of attractiveness and qualities that make people attractive. Attractiveness is a very broad topic that is hard to pinpoint because what is deemed
“attractive” differs greatly from person to person and there is no set guidelines to follow that tell specifically what is attractive and what is not. The general topic of attractiveness allowed for many different more specific topics of research pertaining to attractiveness that could be linked or similar to our hypothesis.
Physical attractiveness plays a key role in how attracted a person is to another person.
One of the first studies in this area was done by Walster, Aronson, Abrahams, and Rottman in
1966. The study focused on what differences lie between what qualities females find attractive in males, and what qualities males find attractive in females. In this study, physical attractiveness was found to be the most significant predictor of ‘liking’ someone for both males and females, while such factors as academic achievement, intelligence, and various personality measures were unrelated to degree of liking. Other research in the area of physical attractiveness has focused on preferences for various body build and facial characteristics. Both sexes have been found to be attracted to a slender body build. Females have been found to prefer tallness, largeness in male body parts , and the stereotypical V­shaped male form. While males have been found to prefer female figures with larger than average breasts, medium­sized legs, and small to medium buttocks. Our focus is going to build off of the fact that physical attractiveness determines how much someone is ‘liked’ and go more into depth to figure out if certain factors make people perceived as more attractive. Athletes are known to take care of themselves and stay in shape in order to excel at their sport. Joseph L. Nedelec and Kevin M. Beaver (Evolution and Human Behavior, 2014)

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found that the health of someone proves to be a major component as to how physically attractive someone is. Nedelec and Beaver came to the conclusion that males with more masculine features, due to exercise and excellent health, were rated more attractive than men whose features were less masculine and whose health was less than excellent. Generally athletes fit the description of someone who would be deemed attractive according to the findings of this specific study.
A previous study done by Peters, Rhodes, and Simmins in 2007 found that having an attractive body or face contributed to overall attractiveness. In this study, volunteers were given photos of only the faces of people, followed by photos of only their bodies and were asked to rate them. It was concluded that men thought that an attractive face or body made the woman more attractive overall, but an attractive face did not make her body more attractive and vice versa. For females, an attractive face or body made a man more attractive as a whole.
Also an attractive face made a man’s body more attractive as well and vice versa. If it can be assumed that athletes have “attractive” bodies, then that would contribute to how attractive they are deemed by others.
Another study that was done by Currie and Little in 2009 found that ratings of facial attractiveness were a better predictor than ratings of bodily attractiveness of the rating given to images of the face and body combined. This suggests that facial attractiveness is more important in people's evaluation of overall physical attractiveness than body attractiveness.
This is important because it allows this current research to diminish the factor of the less significant body rating by only showing an upper body photo.

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This current research differs from all previous research because it is looking into a specific factor of attractiveness that has not been well covered by previous research. There are signs from previous research that suggest athletes are on average more attractive than other everyday people. This research is looking into the difference that knowing someone is an athlete makes on how attractive people think they are. The researchers in this study hypothesized that subjects will be rated more attractive if the participants can see that they are athletes and less attractive if it is unknown to the participants that they are athletes. This research is important because it could lead to formulating a better idea of what makes up human attraction and the way our brains are wired to find certain people attractive over others, there are a lot of factors to human attraction and we are just looking further into one potential factor. METHOD
Participants
The participants of this survey were 200 males and females. There were 50 participants in each group of this experiment. All of the subjects were from grades 10­12, and the corresponding ages were 14­18. Those who participated in this survey were chosen randomly by the conductors of the experimenter from around the school in various locations across various periods. This was not a true simple random sample so we cannot be sure that the participants selected by the experimenters were completely random. However, the pool of participants do not suffer from convenience bias because experimenters chose random people to the best of

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their ability, and did not just select people to participate that they were already acquainted with to make it easier. No repayments or promises were made to the participants.
Apparatus
One of the materials used in this experiment was 200 copies of the survey given to participants, the consent form was put on the back of the survey for participants to sign.The survey sheet contained numbers one through ten (one being no attractive qualities and ten being extremely attractive) for the participants to circle their rating for each corresponding athletes they were shown. 6 athletes were selected, one male baseball player, one female softball player, one male soccer player, one female soccer player, one male lacrosse player, and one female lacrosse player. Two different photos of each individual athlete were selected. One photo where it was obvious that the athlete played a sport (in their sport uniforms) and another where it could not be told that the athlete was an athlete just from looking (in everyday clothing). We printed out four pages of the photos of the athletes (one for each experimenter.) One page contained three photos of the three female athletes in their sport uniforms, another page contained three photos of the same three female athletes in everyday clothing, another contained three photos of the three male athletes in their sport uniform, and the last contained three photos of same male athletes in everyday clothing.
Procedure
To begin our experiment, we divided the surveys up into four groups of fifty and gave each of the four experimenters a group of 50 surveys to hand out. Each of the four experimenters were also given a sheet with the photos of the athletes. The male experimenters were given the photos of the female athletes and the female experimenters were given the photos of the male

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athletes. The female athletes were shown only to male participants to rate while the male athletes were shown only to female participants to rate. Each experimenter then chose random males or females around the school at various times to participate. The participants were first asked if they would mind participating and told that the survey was completely optional and they could opt out at any time. The participants were then given the survey sheet if they were willing to participate, and asked to read the consent form fully then sign and date the bottom of the sheet if they complied. If the consent form was signed, the participants were then asked to flip over the paper to the survey side of the sheet. The experimenter held up the paper with all three photos of the athletes and then asked the participants to rate them one through ten and circle their corresponding answers on the survey sheet. After the participants were done, the survey sheets were collected by the experimenters. The survey sessions varied from participant to participant however the average time taken to complete the survey was one minute.

RESULTS
The data collected from this experiment does not suggest that the fact that someone is an athlete can make them appear more or less attractive. Female number one, the softball player, received an average rating of 6.63 out of 10 with a standard deviation of 1.2 in the photo of her with her sports uniform on, and an average rating of 7.8 out of ten with a standard deviation of 1.3 in the photo of her without her sports uniform on. Female number two, the soccer player, received an average rating of 7.8 out of 10 with a standard deviation of 1.3 in the

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photo of her with her sports uniform on, and an average rating of 5.7 out of ten with a standard deviation of 1.9 in the photo of her without her sports uniform on. Female number three, the lacrosse player, received an average rating of 5.3 out of 10 with a standard deviation of 1.5 in the photo of her with her sports uniform on, and and average rating of 5.12 with a standard deviation of 1.9 in the photo of her without her sports uniform on.
Male number one, the baseball player received an average rating of 4.9 out of ten with a standard deviation of 1.7 in the photo of him in his sports uniform on, and an average rating of 6.3 with a standard deviation of 1.7 in the photo of him without his sports uniform on. Male number two, the soccer player, received an average rating of 4.7 out of ten with a standard deviation of 2.3 in the photo of him in his sports uniform on, and an average rating of 5.4 out of ten with a standard deviation of 2.3 in the photo of him without his sports uniform on. Male number three, the lacrosse player received an average rating of 6.6 out of ten with a standard deviation of 2.3 in the photo of him with his sports uniform on and an average rating of 6.1 out of ten with a standard deviation of 1.9 in the photo of him without his sports uniform on.
After checking that all of the necessary assumptions and conditions were met, a matched pairs t­test was performed on the results of this experiment, using each person’s

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average ratings in each of their two pictures as the matched pair. At a significance level of .05, the results prove to be not significant with a p­value of over 5%. Also, at a higher significance level of .10, the results still prove to be not significant with a p­value of .87. These results do not support our original hypothesis.

DISCUSSION
No significant evidence was found to support our hypothesis that knowing someone is an athlete will make them appear more attractive in the eyes of others. Upon performing a matched pairs t­test, none of the results proved to be significant. For the female soccer and lacrosse players, average ratings were lower in the pictures of them in their everyday clothing. The female softball player was the only female whose average rating was higher in the picture of her in her everyday clothing as opposed to the photo of her in her sports uniform. For the male baseball and soccer players, the average ratings were higher in the photos of them in their sports uniform. The male lacrosse player was the only male whose average rating was lower in the photo of him in his sports uniform. Not all female athletes were rated higher or lower in the photos of them as athletes, and not all male athletes were rated higher or lower in the photos of them as athletes. Also, the majority of the female athletes received higher ratings in the photos of themselves without their sports uniform on while the majority of the male athletes had a higher average rating in the photos of themselves with their sports uniform on. These inconsistencies play into the reason that no significant results can be found even without taking the hypothesis test into consideration

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and looking at the raw average ratings of the athletes. One thing that can be taken away from this experiment is that because the majority of the female athletes received higher ratings in the photos of themselves without their sports uniform on while the majority of the male athletes had a higher average rating in the photos of themselves with their sports uniform on, it could be said that males find females that do not play sports more attractive while females find males that do play sports to be more attractive. It is important to keep in mind that the results from this experiment are not conclusive. Many more trials and different arrangements of the experiment would be necessary to achieve accurate results. Because no previous research was found that had the same general focus as our experiment, our results do not refute or support any previous experiments or research done to our knowledge. However it is because of this previous research that we know the limitations of our study could have impacted our results. Joseph L. Nedelec and Kevin M. Beaver
(Evolution and Human Behavior, 2014) found that the health of someone proves to be a major component as to how physically attractive someone is. Nedelec and Beaver came to the conclusion that males with more masculine features, due to exercise and excellent health, were rated more attractive than men whose features were less masculine and whose health was less than excellent. Generally athletes fit the description of someone who would be deemed attractive according to the findings of this specific study. Our results did not necessarily refute the finding of this study, however despite the fact that all of the subjects we showed participants photos of were athletes, many of the athletes received below a 5 as their average rating (five being average.)

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A previous study done by Peters, Rhodes, and Simmins in 2007 found that having an attractive body or face contributed to overall attractiveness. It was concluded that men thought that an attractive face or body made the woman more attractive overall, but an attractive face did not make her body more attractive and vice versa. In our experiment, we only showed photos of the athletes neck and up, not full length photos. This could have made an impact on our results because the athlete’s bodies in their sports uniform or everyday clothing could have changed the rating that they were given. By omitting the bodies of the athletes from the photos shown to participants, our results were most likely altered. A study done by Walster, Aronson, Abrahams, and Rottman in 1966 focused on what differences lie between what qualities females find attractive in males, and what qualities males find attractive in females. It was found that both sexes tend to be attracted to a slender body build. Females have been found to prefer tallness, largeness in male body parts , and the stereotypical V­shaped male form. While males have been found to prefer female figures with larger than average breasts, medium­sized legs, and small to medium buttocks. If those traits are the main predictors of how attractive someone is, our experiment may prove to have less accurate results because we only showed photos of the athletes, the photos did not show below the neck where a lot of those traits can be found. Also, only photos were shown to participants so results may have varied had the athletes been there in person for participants to rate.
One other thing to keep in mind when looking at the results of this experiment, is that the photos of the athletes were not kept constant. The photos of the athletes that were shown to participants varied by a lot, they all had different outfits on, and no two photos

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were taken under the same conditions. This is because of the fact that the experimenters were unable to take the photos of the athletes themselves and therefore had to resort to finding them online. The photos shown may also have misrepresented the athlete by being over flatting and making them appear more attractive or under flattering and making them appear less attractive than they actually are. This research can help people better understand why some people are found more attractive over others, and also could help people feel better about playing their sport if they were self conscious before about it making them appear more or less attractive to others. There are a lot of factors to human attraction and this experiment only looked further into one potential factor. Endless future research could be done, and could further look into other traits such as humor, hair color and eye color and the role that they play in how attractive people are found.

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REFERENCES
Aronson, E., Abrahams, K., Walster, E., & Rottman, G. (1966).
Physical Attractiveness And
Dating Choice: A Test Of The Matching Hypothesis. Journal of Experimental Social
Psychology, 173­189.
Currie, T., & Little, A. (2007).
The Relative Importance Of The Face And Body In Judgments
Of Human Physical Attractiveness
. Evolution and Human Behavior, 409­416.
Nedelec, J., & Beaver, K. (2014).
Physical attractiveness as a phenotypic marker of health:
An assessment using a nationally representative sample of American adults
. Evolution and Human Behavior, 456­463.
Peters, M., Rhodes, G., & Simmons, L. (2009).
Contributions of the face and body to overall attractiveness. Animal Behaviour, 937­942.