In brood, ugly duck, swan even
So, several decades too late, I find out there is a grading curve for looks.
It’s called the Cheerleader Effect, and it started out as a farfetched theory by Barney Stinson, Neil Patrick Harris’ character in the TV sitcom How I Met Your Mother. While in a bar with some pals, Barney waxes eloquent — at least in his mind — about a nearby group of women, saying they look more attractive in a group than they do individually.
“The Cheerleader Effect is when a group of women seems hot, but only as a group,” Barney says. “Just like with cheerleaders. They seem hot, but take each one of them individually … sled dogs!”
A study published on Oct. 25 in Psychological Science, a journal for the Association of Psychological Science, found that people were rated as more attractive when they were part of a group. The findings showed that people in groups were rated 5.5 percent more attractive than when viewed on their own.
“According to psychological scientists Drew Walker and Edward Vul of the University of California at San Diego, people tend to ‘average out’ the features of faces in a group, thereby perceiving an individual’s face as more average than they would be otherwise,” trumpets an online association news release, dated Oct. 29.
Walker is quoted thusly: “Average faces are more attractive, likely due to the averaging out of unattractive idiosyncrasies. Perhaps it’s like Tolstoy’s families: Beautiful people are all alike, but every unattractive person is unattractive in their own way.”
Acting on a hunch, Walker and Vul conducted five experiments, using more than 130 undergraduate college students. Each student was shown photos of 100 humans — some in a group portrait; some isolated in a cropped photo. Male and female photo subjects were seen as more attractive in the group shots. Well, not by much — they went from the 49th percentile to the 51st percentile. But, as Vul joked, “Some of us need all the help we can get.”
Yielding the same results were experiments in which a person’s individual photo was put in a collage with others.
Hmmm. So you need not be Jennifer Lopez or Brad Pitt to get a date. Basically you need only be friends with, or just go stand around, a group that includes cuties. Your bad features will undergo a real-life Photoshopping! (Again, had I known this, I might have been tempted to hire myself out as a term-paper writer for the pretty gals in high school.) The only caveat: The lookers in the group might accuse you of being an attractiveness welfare recipient,
trying to get benefits without working to boost your looks on your own.
And I’ll add this warning: Don’t hang out with a single attractive same-sex friend, thinking your looks will “average out.” You will find the experience akin to being a Brussels sprout next to a Krispy Kreme doughnut.
As is usually the case when I read of such studies, I would like to see more extensive research on the subject. What might the results be if:
There had been photos of a mixed group of really good-looking people and really bad-looking people? What if there were a group of Olivia Popes mixed with Madeas? Or a group of James Bonds mixed with Freddy Kruegers?
The group pictures had contained a mix of men and women? In the How I Met Your Mother scene, Barney was in mixed company when he schooled his comrades on the Cheerleader Effect. I think Barney benefited.
They had a picture consisting of Barney with a group of sled dogs?
As it stands, the study definitely gives new meaning to that Beatles song line “I get by with a little help from my friends.” And the theory is certainly popular. Google “the cheerleader effect” and you’ll get a wealth of results, even a Cheerleader Effect Facebook page.
And to those who’d rather not fool with the Cheerleader Effect: there is a quick, cheap way to garner compliments about your looks, no matter how they may be lacking. Post a profile photo on Facebook. Your friends, God love ’em, will be so profuse with their compliments, they’ll have you wondering why you didn’t get those dates in high school.