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Beauty Is Only “Name” Deep: The Effect of First‐Name On Ratings of Physical Attraction
Author(s) -
Garwood S. Gary,
Cox Lewis,
Kaplan Valerie,
Wasserman Neal,
Sulzer Jefferson L.
Publication year - 1980
Publication title -
journal of applied social psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.822
H-Index - 111
eISSN - 1559-1816
pISSN - 0021-9029
DOI - 10.1111/j.1559-1816.1980.tb00721.x
Subject(s) - attraction , beauty , physical attractiveness , attractiveness , psychology , queen (butterfly) , social psychology , task (project management) , aesthetics , linguistics , art , ecology , philosophy , hymenoptera , management , economics , psychoanalysis , biology
College students ( n = 197) voted to select a beauty queen from among six photographs equivalent in physical attractiveness, as determined by rankings of 35 students from a separate university. Half the photographs bore a desirable first‐name and half were assigned an undesirable first‐name. As predicted, firstname had a significant effect on physical attraction: Girls with desirable firstnames received 158 votes to 39 for those with undesirable names. These data were discussed in terms of an additive, rather than an interactive, effect, due to the nature of the task. The strength of these findings was related to the study's ecological validity.