Perceptions and Judgments
The development of a flawless perception of beauty goes a long way in creating acceptance and awareness for people who do not necessarily fit into society’s rigid beauty standards. The idea will help people, especially women, look at whatever they think makes them look unattractive positively. By accentuating flaws, people can erase the negative stigma associated with not-so-good-looking people. The negative stigma associated with appearance is easily erasable since it is self-imposed in most cases. People can embrace their ‘flaws’ through self-acceptance.
Judging people by their facial appearance leads to the halo effect. The halo effect refers to the use of global evaluations to judge people’s traits. By simply looking at a person, one decides whether they are attractive or not and then decides their personality traits (outgoing, arrogant) (Shaver, 2015). The video ’10 Stunning Before and After Makeup Pictures’ illustrates how the halo effect can be misleading. By judging the women based on their appearance, one may say the women to the left look unattractive, while those to the right are attractive. However, the only difference between the comparisons is the absence/presence of makeup. The disadvantage of the halo effect is that appearance can be altered to create false impressions.
According to Zebrowitz & Montepare (2008), one of the social influences determining the perception of attractiveness is the fitness cue. For instance, those with unsymmetrical faces are perceived as being less intelligent and healthy. Also, age comes in as older faces put across an unattractive image. On the positive side, however, people with older faces seem socially warm and honest compared to younger faces. Older faces tend to be structurally identical to anomalous faces, thus attracting negative trait perceptions.
References
Olson, I. R., & Marshuetz, C. (2005). Facial attractiveness is appraised at a glance. Emotion, 5(4), 498.
Shaver, K. G. (2015). Principles of social psychology. Psychology Press.
Zebrowitz, L. A., & Montepare, J. M. (2008). Social psychological face perception: Why appearance matters. Social and personality psychology compass, 2(3), 1497-1517.
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Question 
Perceptions and Judgments
For this Discussion, watch the brief video “10 Stunning Before and After Make Up Pics” at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YYYktOfCT6Y
Stun
After watching the video and reading chapters one, five and six in your Principle of Social Psychology textbook, ponder this: Social psychologists have found that our perceptions and judgments are subject to a variety of biases and other distorting influences. To what advantage is the deliberate development of the perception of flawless beauty in our society? What disadvantage? Using the attitude heuristic of the Halo Effect, how would your general impressions differ by seeing only the image of the woman on the left side of the screen with the same woman if you saw her image only on the right side of the screen? In other words, just by viewing the two images, describe the personality characteristic (your general impression) of each one separately: woman A and woman B.
Then, explain the aspect(s) of social influence most evident in your perceptions and judgments and to what degree you were aware of using perception and judgment at the time. Based on what you know now, explain whether you would use the same aspect(s) of perception and judgment with this situation today or what type of influence you would employ instead, and give your reasoning.