| Summary: | 碩士 === 中原大學 === 心理學研究所 === 90 === Abstract
Previous research on physical attractiveness focused mainly on the occurrence of contrast effects. The study examined the influence of physical attractiveness on individual’s self-evaluation. To enhance the impact of physical attractiveness, we matched the comparison other with subject’s ideal image of an attractive person. Furthermore, we investigated the impact of self-activation on the comparison process and self-evaluation.
One hundred and nineteen female participants were assigned to a 2 (ideal image: match vs. not match) × 4 (similarity condition: high vs. high and primed with the “I” concept vs. high and primed with the “WE” concept vs. low) factorial design. The dependent measures were global self-evaluation, self-ratings of physical attractiveness and evaluation toward the target person. The results indicated that, when the comparison other didn’t match with subject’s ideal image, similarity condition made no difference. One the other hand, when the comparison other did match with subject’s ideal image, a contrast effect was found. That is, subjects in the high similarity condition had significantly lower self-evaluation than those who in the low similarity condition. We also found that, if the comparison other matched with subject’s ideal image, then subjects who were primed with the ‘WE’ concept would assimilate with the target person, and therefore, obtained significantly higher self-evaluation than subjects in the high similarity condition.
In sum, our hypotheses were mainly supported. However, we did not find that subjects who were primed with the “I” concept showed a contrast effect on self-evaluation. We speculated it might be due to the activation of uniqueness. Furthermore, a “two-stage model of social comparison” was proposed to explain the results.
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