The influence of position and context on facial attractiveness

It has been shown that a person's position in a group influences how that person is evaluated, with people in the middle perceived as more important than people on the fringe of a group. Four experiments examined whether the position of a face, in a line of five faces, influenced facial attractiveness. The middle position influenced the perceived attractiveness of the target face but the direction of this effect depended on the attractiveness of the target and the surrounding faces. Attractive faces were perceived as less attractive when in the middle of unattractive faces, or faces of average attractiveness. Conversely, unattractive faces were perceived as more attractive when in the middle of other unattractive faces. These results have wide implications, suggesting that the more central a stimulus is in a context then the greater the influence of the context on the judgment of that stimulus.