Quantitative Laboratory Report on the Effect of Perceived Physical Attractiveness on the Estimated Annual Salary They Are Attributed

Firstly to define which of the 15 men are most and least physically attractive a bigger sample would be beneficial to the strength of the research. There needs to be a general consensus on what is seen as physically attractive and what is seen as physically unattractive. In order to support the much larger studies into this area a bigger sample rating the 15 men would have made the findings stronger and more respected. And only having 20 participants in each of the conditions once the two men were chosen is a very small sample. Also using all the participants from the same place (Specsavers Opticians) may affect the results. The man rated as the least physically attractive carried a potential problem that would make the study invalid. Averett and Korenman (1996) found evidence that obesity can affect a person's salary especially in women. Even though men were being attributed annual salaries in this study their evidence still finds that people who are obese as classified by their BMI index earn up to 17% less. The man rated as least physically attractive is overweight although it is not known if he is obese. This could be the reason why he was estimated as earning in a lower annual salary bracket. If the study was to be replicated a suggestion would be to use men of the same weight to eliminate this as a possible cause for the difference in estimated annual salary. In conclusion the results finding support for Hamermesh and Biddle (1994b) were found to be significant and overall the experiment has to be seen as success.…