Unattractive (vs. attractive) individuals were judged to be more likely to engage in purity violations compared to harm violations; the observed effect was driven by the upper half of the attractiveness spectrum

Klebl, Christoph. 2021. “Physical Attractiveness Biases Judgments Pertaining to the Moral Domain of Purity.” PsyArXiv. February 26. doi:10.31234/osf.io/3bnge

Abstract: Research on the Beauty-is-Good stereotype shows that unattractive people are perceived to have worse moral character than attractive individuals. Yet research has not explored what kinds of moral character judgments are particularly biased by attractiveness. In this work, we tested whether attractiveness particularly biases moral character judgments pertaining to the moral domain of purity, beyond a more general halo effect. Two pre-registered studies found that unattractive (vs. attractive) individuals were judged to be more likely to engage in purity violations compared to harm violations and that this was not due to differences in perceived wrongness of the violations (Studies 1 and 3). We also found that the observed effect was driven by the upper half of the attractiveness spectrum (Studies 2 and 3). The findings shed light on how physical attractiveness influences moral character attributions, suggesting that physical attractiveness particularly biases character judgments pertaining to the moral domain of purity.