Mirror, Mirror: The Importance of Looks in Everyday Life

by Elaine Hatfield, Susan Sprecher

Mirror, Mirror… examines the hidden truth about good looks. Through extensive research of scholarly studies and popular culture, the authors provide a lively and comprehensive view of what behavioral scientists have learned about the effects of personal appearance. A wealth of illustrations and photographs give visual support to the evidence presented. The book explores the view that people believe good-looking individuals possess almost all the virtues known to humankind; consequently they treat the good-looking and ugly very differently. Mirror, Mirror reviews the stereotypes held about people with specific characteristics and it explains the impact of height, weight, and attributes such as hair color, eye color and facial hair on the course of social encounters. The authors show that through time these reaction patterns have their effect and that good-looking and unattractive persons come to be different types of people. To show the relative nature of concepts of beauty, the authors also present examples of what other cultures consider attractive.

446 pages, Paperback

First published December 12, 1985

Reviews

[Henry · Rating 4 out of 5]

Few takeaways:

- People tend to marry each other based on their attractiveness levels. When couples are mis-matched, the likelihood of marital unsatisfactory is much higher: if the male is more attractive, cheating is more likely; if the female is more attractive, withholding of sex is more likely

- Scientists can’t “pinpoint” what makes someone universally attractive given cultural differences are prevalent

- A stable marriage should be rooted upon mutual understandings of upbringings, even for things like race (in addition to similar in attractive levels)

[Lisa · Rating 3 out of 5]

Depressing. Characters remained 2 dimensional.