Communicator physical attractiveness and persuasion.

Abstract

In a field setting, physically attractive or unattractive male and female com-municator-subjects delivered a persuasive message to target-subjects of each sex. Results indicated that attractive (vs. unattractive) communicators induced significantly greater persuasion on both a verbal and behavioral measure of target agreement. In addition, female targets indicated greater agreement than did male targets. Data gathered from communicator-subjects during an earlier laboratory session indicated that physically attractive and unattractive com-municators differed with respect to several communication skills and other attributes relevant to communicator persuasiveness, including grade point av-erage, Scholastic Aptitude Test scores, and several measures of self-evaluation. These findings suggest that attractive individuals may be more persuasive than unattractive persons partly because they possess characteristics that dispose them to be more effective communicators. Experimental evidence regarding the effect of communicator physical attractiveness on persuasion is equivocal. Although two studies have demonstrated that attractiveness can significantly enhance a male communicator's persuasiveness with both male and female message recipients (Horai, Naccari, & Fatoul-lah, 1974; Snyder & Rothbart, 1971), the majority of published experiments have failed to obtain significant attractiveness effects or have obtained interactions between attractive-ness and other variables (Chaiken, Eagly,

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