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An experimental study examined the effects of exposure to physically attractive and dominant same-sex individuals on self-assessments. Consistent with prior findings on mate selection, it was predicted that women’s self-assessments of their mate value would be adversely affected by exposure to highly physically attractive women and would be relatively unaffected by exposure to socially dominant women. Conversely, men’s self-assessments of their mate value were expected to be more affected by the social dominance than by the physical attractiveness of the men to whom they were exposed. Findings for self-assessed judgments of desirability as a marriage partner were in line with hypotheses. Results fit with earlier findings suggesting that such effects may be caused by changes in the perceived population of competitors rather than direct changes in self-perceptions of physical appearance or dominance. Overall, findings are supportive of models assuming domain-specific rather than domain-general cognitive processes.

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Earlier theorists assumed that exposure to physical attractiveness leads to pleasant affect. However this relationship might hold only for judgments of the opposite sex. In this study, subjects exposed to opposite-sex photos showed a pattern consistent with the affect-attraction model: highest mood after attractive faces but lower mood if the series was interrupted by an average face. Those exposed to the same sex, however, showed lowered mood following attractive photos, whether or not an average face interrupted the attractive series. Further judgments of the average target's attractiveness were independent of subjects' affective states but followed a pattern consistent with a contrast model-relatively lowest ratings if the target followed attractive faces, whether or not the photos were of the same or the opposite sex. This suggests that the cognitive appraisal of physical attractiveness in others can operate independently of the affective reaction they evoke.