Study tracks how we decide which groups to join (2016) | Hacker News Reader

Study tracks how we decide which groups to join (2016)

ox.ac.uk

45 pointsthunderbong17 comments

So, it sounds like they proved that, if given absolutely no other information by which to judge others, and needing to join up in a group with absolutely nothing at stake, they join up with people of similar attractiveness. Which, you know, sure, but that doesn't really seem like it tells us much.

If they had to join together in small groups to perform some task together, it might have been a little more interesting. It also would have been more interesting if we had been given some measure of the correlation between the rated attractiveness and the propensity to join the same group.

I mean, for all we know, this could just mean that the people doing the attractiveness ratings gave anyone non-Anglo a low score, and that the students tended to join up more often than not with members of the same race. Or, they tended to rate women as more attractive than men, and the students tended to clump up in same-sex groups. I'm not saying that's what actually happened, but you can't tell from this article.

I don't think you can assume any of those bias assumptions form this article. There are well known attractiveness metrics that do not include race. The article gives no indication of the identities of those doing the ratings. The assumption that women are being judged more attractive than men belies your own identity as being a hetero male.

But the artificial task of collecting 500 washers with no other purpose than collecting them into a bin makes it hard to take any real meaning from this study.

You definitely cannot assume any of those bias assumptions from this article, for sure, but the point is you can't demonstrate that they are not. Maybe the actual experiment controlled for this, but if so the article here didn't mention any of that.

I am curious about how physical attractiveness was rated, and if there was particular criteria.

“..with the physical attractiveness of each participant rated by three members of the research team to produce an averaged single attractiveness score”

That seems very subjective to me, and subjectiveness may not even be the problem but having an average of just three scores.

“They found that individuals were likely to join groups containing members with similar physical traits – including levels of attractiveness. The researchers also discovered that attractive women were the most likely to be placed in the physical centre of social groups.”

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The trait is literally called ‘attractiveness’.

People who people were attracted towards were also rated the most attractive.

People gather with others who are like them, this is expected. A more interesting question would be, if you send someone who considers themselves both smart and attractive into a room with separate groups, one attractive, one smart, which group will that person choose to join?

In other words, of the many traits a person may possess, which traits are most important when finding "similar others".

Can you determine intelligence by sight?

Since light travels faster than sound, people may appear smart until you hear them speak.

Can confirm, I appear quite smart until I speak.

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...

Here's a study that found both men and women can predict the IQ of men based on their facial appearance. However, neither men or women could predic the IQ of women.

I think people gravitate towards people that are at least as attractive than themselves. IMO, very few people are truly unattractive, but generally, no one recognizes themselves as unattractive.

More studies of college-age upperclass people?

Psychology students, so even narrower than that.

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