Hierarchical Encoding Makes Individuals in a Group Seem More Attractive

Drew Walker; E. Vul

DOI:10.1177/0956797613497969

Corpus ID: 16309135

Hierarchical Encoding Makes Individuals in a Group Seem More Attractive

@article{Walker2014HierarchicalEM,
  title={Hierarchical Encoding Makes Individuals in a Group Seem More Attractive},
  author={Drew Walker and E. Vul},
  journal={Psychological Science},
  year={2014},
  volume={25},
  pages={230 - 235}
}

Drew Walker, E. Vul

Published 2014

Medicine, Psychology

Psychological Science

In the research reported here, we found evidence of the cheerleader effect—people seem more attractive in a group than in isolation. We propose that this effect arises via an interplay of three cognitive phenomena: (a) The visual system automatically computes ensemble representations of faces presented in a group, (b) individual members of the group are biased toward this ensemble average, and (c) average faces are attractive. Taken together, these phenomena suggest that individual faces will… CONTINUE READING

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