How Physical Appearance Affects Personality Worksheet 1.

The aim of the article: It purposes that physical appearance is a major factor in the development of personality and gives examples of experiments and literature that supports this assertion, also, a method is suggested for more directly observing this phenomenon experimentally. 2. Reason for the assertion: People form opinions by what they see in a person physically, and respond to that person accordingly. In turn, people tend to fulfill the expectations they believe others have for them. 3. A persons personality is affected both by genetics and environment. 4. How does being anti-social affect the environment? If someone is very antisocial, people will not respond openly and warmly to this person, if given the opportunity to interact with an anti-social person in the first place. 5. Why should physical appearance be studied? The most promising source for understanding how people's natural or existing traits can affect the responses of the environment lies in the examination of the traits with which people are born, most notably physical appearance. 6. What aspects of appearance does personality affect? Certain elements of appearance, such as hygiene and selection of clothes, are also functions of personality, but for the most part, physical appearance is independent of personality. 7. Which relationships with physical appearance had been studied before the current experiments? How physical appearance affects happiness, self-esteem, and success. 8. Which reactions to their appearance do children discover before the age of 10? People react with certain biases to people who look one way or another. Goodlooking children are treated as social superiors, because in society, stereotype dictates that popular people are good looking. Conversely, children who are deemed to be not as attractive are often treated as inferior to the other children. 9. How does that affect their personality? The students develop accordingly to conform these expectations. The children begin to conform their self-opinions to the opinions of those who interact with them, and eventually will even change the ways they dress and take care of themselves to conform to others' preconceived notions of them. 10. Which results did Fischer (1986) and Ellis &Young experiments have? Fischer's studies showed that at a very early age, children began to pick whom they would like for playmates by such standards as facial attractiveness and body form. Ellis' & Young' study found that across several age groups subjects consistently ranked photographs of numerous people based on attractiveness with similar results. 11. What did Eckert and Wicklund (1992) discover? That when subjects went through an opinion on them, their self-esteem was markedly lower after the interview.

12. Which experiments showed a correlation between self-esteem and environment? None of the surveyed experiments were conducted with this express purpose. 13. Which further experiments does the author suggest? Manipulation of people's perceived responses from others and then analysis of how their personality changes. 14. The main outcome of the article: Natural characteristics are ultimately the greatest determinant of personality, those characteristics that most heavily influence environment would also indirectly determine personality.