Common maxims about beauty suggest that attractiveness is not important in life. In contrast, both fitness-related evolutionary theory and socialization theory suggest that attractiveness influences development and interaction. In 11 meta-analyses, the authors evaluate these contradictory claims, demonstrating that (a) raters agree about who is and is not attractive, both within and across cultures; (b) attractive children and adults are judged more positively than unattractive children and adults, even by those who know them; (c) attractive children and adults are treated more positively than unattractive children and adults, even by those who know them; and (d) attractive children and adults exhibit more positive behaviors and traits than unattractive children and adults. Results are used to evaluate social and fitness-related evolutionary theories and the veracity of maxims about beauty.I cannot say often enough how much I consider beauty a powerful and advantageous quality. Socrates called it "A short tyranny," and Plato, '~Fhe privilege of nature." We have no quality that surpasses it in credit. It holds the first place in human relations; it presents itself before the rest, seduces and prepossesses our judgment with great authority and a wondrous impression.--Montaigne, Essays "Beauty is truth, truth beauty," --that is all Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know. --Keats, Ode on a Grecian UrnBeauty has interested poets, philosophers, and scientists for centuries. Indeed, the ancient Greeks believed that there is a fundamental relation between beauty and positive qualities: Those who are beautiful are also good (Sappho, Fragment No. 101). "Beauty is good" was empirically tested in a seminal study by Dion, Berscheid, and Walster (1972), who demonstrated that, even in modem times, human beings attribute positive qualities to attractive people and negative qualities to unattractive people. Since this important study, much research has focused on the effects of attractiveness, especially facial attractiveness, on, the attributions, impressions, and stereotypes of strangers. These studies primarily have investigated attributions made by college students about attractive and unattractive strangers based on a photograph of the face and, sometimes, minimal printed "background information" about the hypothetical individuals. This strangerattribution literature has been summarized by earlier meta-analyses (see, e.g., Eagly, Ashmore, Makhijanl, & Longo, 1991;Feingold, 1992b), which have confmned the association between attractiveness and many attributions of positive characteristics. 1Contrary to these findings of a reliable relation between attractiveness and attributions of positive qualifies, however, are several age-old maxims and precepts holding that attractiveness either is not or should not be a significant factor in social interactions or behaviors. Three maxims in particular are heard frequently: (a) Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, (b) never judge a book by its cover, and (c) beauty is only skin-deep...

Research on infant face perception has shown that infants' preferences for attractive faces exist well before socialization from parents, peers, and the media can affect these preferences. Four studies assessed a cognitive explanation for the development of attractiveness preferences: cognitive averaging and infant preferences for mathematically averaged faces, or prototypes. Studies 1 and 2 demonstrated that both adults and 6-month-old infants prefer prototypical, mathematically averaged faces. Studies 3 and 4 demonstrated that 6-month-olds can abstract the central tendency from a group of naturalistic faces. Taken together, the studies suggest that infants' preferences for attractive faces can be explained by general information-processing mechanisms.

Studies that attempt to define facial attractiveness often do so in terms of structural features of the face (e.g., symmetry, averageness). However, these studies typically use static images of faces that may not be analogous to dynamic faces that are frequently used in other areas of attractiveness research, such as research investigating the impact of attractiveness on social interaction. The current studies investigated similarities and differences in how dynamic and static faces are perceived and evaluated. Study 1 demonstrated that dynamic and static faces are judged by different evaluative standards. Study 2 demonstrated that perceived emotion may be more salient in judging the attractiveness of dynamic faces than in judging the attractiveness of static faces. These findings illustrate the need to more fully explore the differences between dynamic and static faces to facilitate a better understanding of the characteristics underlying perceived attractiveness.

Like adults, young infants prefer attractive to unattractive faces (e.g. Langlois, Roggman, Casey, Ritter, Rieser-Danner & Jenkins, 1987; Slater, von der Schulenburg, Brown, Badenoch, Butterworth, Parsons & Samuels, 1998). Older children and adults stereotype based on facial attractiveness (Eagly, Ashmore, Makhijani & Longo, 1991; Langlois, Kalakanis, Rubenstein, Larson, Hallam & Smooth, 2000). How do preferences for attractive faces develop into stereotypes? Several theories of stereotyping posit that categorization of groups is necessary before positive and negative traits can become linked to the groups (e.g. Taifel, Billig, Bundy & Flament, 1971; Zebrowitz-McArthur, 1982). We investigated whether or not 6-month-old infants can categorize faces as attractive or unattractive. In Experiment 1, we familiarized infants to unattractive female faces; in Experiment 2, we familiarized infants to attractive female faces and tested both groups of infants on novel faces from the familiar or novel attractiveness category. Results showed that 6-month-olds categorized attractive and unattractive female faces into two different groups of faces. Experiments 3 and 4 confirmed that infants could discriminate among the faces used in Experiments 1 and 2, and therefore categorized the faces based on their similarities in attractiveness rather than because they could not differentiate among the faces. These findings suggest that categorization of facial attractiveness may underlie the development of the 'beauty is good' stereotype.