Study into the relationship between the attractiveness of each member of a couple

[Sarctastic]

So, as part of the transition from AS Psychology to A2 (British education, that it is an important transition is all you need to know) I have to conduct a study, I've decided to be lazy and use the internet to get participants.
This post is probably going to be long so those with short attention spans shouldn't bother.
Finally, a lot of the stuff I'm going to include will seem unneccesary, but it'd be dishonest to write this stuff up after conducting the study.

Invitation to Participate
Hello, my name is Tom White and I am conducting a small study on the veracity of claims about a link between the physical attractiveness of each person in a couple to the other made by of a theory on relationships.
This study is currently nameless, but now it has the name of 'Highly Flawed Correlational Investigation into the Relationship Between Physical Attractiveness of Members of a Couple'.
I am inviting you to participate in this study.

Information on the 'Highly Flawed Correlational Investigation into the Relationship Between Physical Attractiveness of Members of a Couple'
To help you decide whether or not to participate in this study here is some information

What is the purpose of this study?
To check the veracity of claims made by the Matching Hypothesis theory of relationships.

Why have I been chosen to taken part?
Because you visit one of the three forums I decided to use to gather volunteers.

Do I have to take part?
Of course you don't.

What will happen to me if I take part?
You will be asked to rank two sets of celebrities, one set of men, and one set of women in order of attractiveness from 1 to 20 (20 being the most attractive and 1 being the least) and then send me your rankings privately to be examined.

What are the possible disadvantages to taking part
You will be giving up some of your own time.

What are the possible advantages?
You will feel good for having helped someone and furthered mankinds understanding (maybe) of a trivial subject.

What are the possible risks of taking part?
If you have a phobia of celebrities you may get scared, if you don't understand how to use a keyboard you may get scarred.

Will my taking part in the study be kept confidential?
If you want it to be yes, actual participation is completely private, but afterwards you may dramatically admit to having participated in response to this thread.
While you won't be identified in any way in the results or findings of the study they will be read by me, whoever it is at my college who has the unfortunate job of looking through these studies and the members of this very forum if they are interested in the results.

For additional information PM me or just ask in this thread and I should get a reply to you within 24 hours.

Thank you for considering taking part in this study and reading this information.

Consent to the 'Highly Flawed Correlational Investigation into the Relationship Between Physical Attractiveness of Members of a Couple'
If you respond to this thread by PM'ing me in the manner I have requested you are confirming that you have read and understood the information above and have had the opportunity to ask questions.
You are also confirming you understand your participation is voluntary and that you are able to withdraw without giving a reason.
You are also consenting for the data you send to me to be used in this study.


Participating
To participate in this study fill in the following form based on the following photographs by assigning the numbers 1 to 20 to the letter of each photo based on the attractiveness of the person in the picture, with 20 being the most attractive and 1 the least and PM it to me

Photos:
Men: http://i672.photobucket.com/albums/vv88/SarctasticONM/Men.png
Women: http://i672.photobucket.com/albums/vv88/SarctasticONM/Women.jpg


Form:

[b]Men[/b]
A - 
B -
C -
D -
E -
F -
G -
H -
I -
J -
K -
L -
M -
N -
O -
P -
Q -
R -
S -
T -

[b]Women[/b]
A - 
B -
C -
D -
E -
F -
G -
H -
I -
J -
K -
L -
M -
N -
O -
P -
Q -
R -
S -
T -

Thank you for reading this and (hopefully) participating.


Finally, to add something discussable to this topic, how important to do you think physical attractiveness is as a factor in the development of a relationship compared to other factors such as similarity, proximity and power?

 

[hyperhammy]

Women
A - 5
B - 15
C - 12
D - 7
E - 8
F - 4
G - 17
H - 10
I - 18
J - 0
K - 12
L - 12
M - 7
N - 11
O - 3
P - 17
Q - 15
R - 2
S - 7
T - 20

BTW: Good luck on your study. Doubt a lot of people will participate.

 

[Penguinness]

I do not understand your topic, space man, but I do know how to fill in forms. I am assuming that you want me to put them in an order, rather than give them varying numbers! If it was any other way then it'd be hard to me to put a starting point, I could put the average person as 6 and another could put 16 (extremes), therefore I am going with my first assumption.

Men
A - 18
B - 7
C - 9
D - 10
E - 5
F - 17
G - 16
H - 2
I - 11
J - 6
K - 19
L - 15
M - 20
N - 3
O - 13
P - 4
Q - 1
R - 14
S - 12
T - 8

Women
A - 14
B - 8
C - 9
D - 1
E - 12
F - 6
G - 15
H - 3
I - 13
J - 10
K - 19
L - 10
M - 2
N - 4
O - 7
P - 16
Q - 17
R - 5
S - 11
T - 20

I'd like the T and K women please. As another poster mentioned, they could be affected by us knowing them. Fortunately I don't really know many of the women so this is unaffected however due to me being straight and knowing a lot of the male celebrities, this has probably affected my ranking.

 

[Sarctastic]

Thanks to the people who have participated so far, though hyperhammy has missed out the men, perhaps I should have made it clearer that both sets were to be ranked.

One problem with using celebrities. We mentally associate any role they played with them. I'd like to participate, but my opinion is affected by P being Sarah Michelle Gellar as Buffy (and a few look familiar, do I see Summer Glau?).

I don't mind if your opinion is affected, the study is fundamentally flawed anyway, but annoyingly everyone in my year has to do the same thing.
Thanks for giving me another point of evaluation and if you could still find the time to participate (even with an affected opinion) that would be really helpful because I need to get at least 10 participants before my study magically becomes 'representative'.

I do not understand your topic, space man, but I do know how to fill in forms. I am assuming that you want me to put them in an order, rather than give them varying numbers! If it was any other way then it'd be hard to me to put a starting point, I could put the average person as 6 and another could put 16 (extremes), therefore I am going with my first assumption.

I'd like the T and K women please. As another poster mentioned, they could be affected by us knowing them. Fortunately I don't really know many of the women so this is unaffected however due to me being straight and knowing a lot of the male celebrities, this has probably affected my ranking.

Penguinness you assumed correctly, and all there is to understand about the topic is that I'd like people to fill the form in. So you've understood perfectly.
Do you mean you'd like their names? or that you just like them?
To answer the first: T is Mila Kunis and K is Isla Fisher
To answer the second: Yeah they seem to be two of the more popular ones.

 

[Sarctastic]

Milky, you were supposed to use all the numbers from 1-20 and only use each once.
If you wouldn't mind re-doing them that would be great.

Penguinness, if you're reading this, I've just noticed you put 10 for both J and L and missed out 18, was one of the 10s supposed to be 18, if so which one?

 

[Betancore]

Spoiler

Men
A - 20
B - 9
C - 2
D - 12
E - 6
F - 8
G - 15
H - 3
I - 16
J - 13
K - 14
L - 5
M - 19
N - 11
O - 17
P - 18
Q - 4
R - 10
S - 7
T - 1

Women
A - 11
B - 17
C - 9
D - 3
E - 20
F - 4
G - 19
H - 1
I - 18
J - 12
K - 15
L - 16
M - 5
N - 7
O - 8
P - 13
Q - 14
R - 6
S - 2
T - 10

And in response to the last part of your post, for me personally, I find physical attraction very important in the initial stages of a relationship, because although it's not like you can get to know someone just by looking at them, it's what you see first. Also the whole genes thing; I guess people do look for more attractive mates.

Oh dear god and I just did it the other way around...I made 1 the most attractive and 20 the least. Now I have to go and do it all over again. >.>

 

[SL33TBL1ND]

One problem with using celebrities. We mentally associate any role they played with them. I'd like to participate, but my opinion is affected by P being Sarah Michelle Gellar as Buffy (and a few look familiar, do I see Summer Glau?).

Yeah, I'm not going to participate for that very reason, seeing her kick ass has skewed her to the top of my list.

 

[BonsaiK]

So, as part of the transition from AS Psychology to A2 (British education, that it is an important transition is all you need to know) I have to conduct a study

Finally, to add something discussable to this topic, how important to do you think physical attractiveness is as a factor in the development of a relationship compared to other factors such as similarity, proximity and power?

Are you someone who I'm going to read about in a news article five years from now when your results are published? I can see the article now "five-year long University-funded study shows that people are more attracted to more attractive people", and a whole bunch of cynical comments after it from Anons along the lines of "so this is what we fund Universities to research, I could have told you that for free"...

I'm not going to participate in the "grading" because the aspect ratio on many of the pictures is wrong, distorting their faces and giving a false impression of what they really look like. Also, these are still pictures, and physical attraction isn't just about how someone looks in a pose, it's also about how someone looks while moving...

As for your token discussion question, physical attractiveness is obviously a factor in relationships but there's a very high degree of subjectivity in what is considered physically attractive. For instance, from what I can tell from the crooked and in some cases heavily doctored photos, I don't find any of the girls in the female sample to be stunningly attractive, yet they're all models, actresses, singers etc... people who have been chosen for their roles partly because they are supposed to possess a high degree of this "attractiveness" stuff. What other factors come into play of course is also subjective and very much dependent on people's personalities, the cultures in which they were raised, their moral values etc. It's a very complex question and kind of outside the scope of this forum.

 

[Loonerinoes]

Pretty much as the poster above me pointed out, I would participate in such a study if I believed it presented me with a good enough selection of choices from which I could pick. This set of choices is primarily skewered towards the developed world and hence...whatever results come from it would in the end represent only that part of humanity and would likely be heralded as encompassing the 'whole of humanity', regardless of the fact that many 3rd world countries or even certain European countries do not find anything to relate to within this study.

Hence...I prefer to decline. It is true that the Escapist community has many American and developed European country members...but alas not all like myself. Not to mention that if you took the sum total of it all, it would still account for only about 1/4 of the total world's population and hence could not be called 'indicative of humanity' at the end for practically excluding the possible tastes and desires of the 3rd world, which, I assure you, is far less fixated upon the mythos of Hollywood and moreso concerned with the mythos of their own locale.

 

[Lust]

Men

A-19
B-1
C-12
D-8
E-11
F-2
G-13
H-7
I-16
J-3
K-6
L-4
M-15
N-5
O-20
P-17
Q-10
R-14
S-18
T-9

Women

A-5
B-9
C-7
D-4
E-11
F-12
G-14
H-10
I-18
J-20
K-15
L-8
M-6
N-2
O-16
P-3
Q-19
R-1
S-13
T-17

...........yeah, there you go.

 

[iLikeHippos]

It feels creepy to look at the faces of strangers and judge them for their looks.

The Men (I started with who was the ugliest and went up to who was the LEAST ugliest, going 1, the ugliest..2, the one slightly less ugly..3 being even less ugly..)

A - 20
B - 16
C - 3
D - 12
E - 2
F - 17
G - 15
H - 6
I - 14
J - 4
K - 13
L - 8
M - 7
N - 11
O - 10
P - 9
Q - 1 (Hey, isn't that the kid from Home Alone? It is, isn't it? GOD he has gotten ugly in the years)
R - 18
S - 19
T - 5

Da wimen (Same method used here. Can't get racist here, can I?)

A - 2
B - 3
C - 14
D - 1 (Lol Rochelle?)
E - 15
F - 5
G - 18
H - 7
I - 16
J - 8
K - 19
L - 13
M - 9
N - 4
O - 10
P - 11
Q - 17
R - 6
S - 12
T - 20

 

[Jack_Uzi]

Men:

A: 12
B: 9
C: 7
D: 12
E 6
F: 10
G: 9
H: 7
I: 10
J: 8
K: 13
L: 6
M: 11
N: 14
O: 10
P: 12
Q: 6
R: 8
S: 14
T: 7

This was a bit biased, I am not attracted to men, I did my best to be objective.

Women:

A: 13
B: 10
C: 17 (that is one good looking woman!)
D: 9
E: 12
F: 9
G: 10
H: 10
I: 11
J: 9
K: 11
L: 13
M: 8
N: 9
O: 9
P: 12
Q: 16
R: 9
S: 8
T: 10

Oh, don't know if your study only is about looks. But there are some people that found out that the natural smell of a person can even be a big hit or miss on an impression when courting. Good luck on your study!

 

[Mr Thin]

Either I'm missing something, or half the people posting in this thread didn't understand the rules.

You're not giving them all a score out of 20, it's most to least, 20 to 1, stop re-using numbers!

 

[FieryTrainwreck]

Just gonna throw this out there: Charlize Theron is a hard 10. She's not even remotely my type, but I don't believe it is possible to be more attractive than her. There are certainly other flavors of beautiful, but none of them are objectively, measurably superior to hers.

Also, she's an adorable retard.

 

[Sarctastic]

Thanks to everyone who participated, even the ones that did it wrong and re-used numbers. I've got enough results now to (incorrectly) have my sample deemed representative by my college so I can prove I am an absolutely brilliant future psychologist who definately deserves to continue studying psychology at A2.

So, as part of the transition from AS Psychology to A2 (British education, that it is an important transition is all you need to know) I have to conduct a study

Finally, to add something discussable to this topic, how important to do you think physical attractiveness is as a factor in the development of a relationship compared to other factors such as similarity, proximity and power?

Are you someone who I'm going to read about in a news article five years from now when your results are published? I can see the article now "five-year long University-funded study shows that people are more attracted to more attractive people", and a whole bunch of cynical comments after it from Anons along the lines of "so this is what we fund Universities to research, I could have told you that for free"...

I'm not going to participate in the "grading" because the aspect ratio on many of the pictures is wrong, distorting their faces and giving a false impression of what they really look like. Also, these are still pictures, and physical attraction isn't just about how someone looks in a pose, it's also about how someone looks while moving...

No, I'm not someone who you're going to read about in a news article five years from now when my results are published because the results will never be published, only read by my colleges psychology department.
I'm guessing you don't know a lot about British education if you think an AS student is in University or being funded by a university.

Thats a good point about the aspect ratio, I'll have to include that when I point out the numerous flaws while evaluating my study.
It would have been problematic to have done this study with moving people to judge though since not many people are willing to watch 40 clips of people moving around. Still worth mentioning though so good point.

As for your token discussion question, physical attractiveness is obviously a factor in relationships but there's a very high degree of subjectivity in what is considered physically attractive. For instance, from what I can tell from the crooked and in some cases heavily doctored photos, I don't find any of the girls in the female sample to be stunningly attractive, yet they're all models, actresses, singers etc... people who have been chosen for their roles partly because they are supposed to possess a high degree of this "attractiveness" stuff. What other factors come into play of course is also subjective and very much dependent on people's personalities, the cultures in which they were raised, their moral values etc. It's a very complex question and kind of outside the scope of this forum.

Wow, my 'token' discussion question managed to be very complex and even outside the scope of this forum. That is one heck of an impressive 'token' discussion question.

Pretty much as the poster above me pointed out, I would participate in such a study if I believed it presented me with a good enough selection of choices from which I could pick. This set of choices is primarily skewered towards the developed world and hence...whatever results come from it would in the end represent only that part of humanity and would likely be heralded as encompassing the 'whole of humanity', regardless of the fact that many 3rd world countries or even certain European countries do not find anything to relate to within this study.

Hence...I prefer to decline. It is true that the Escapist community has many American and developed European country members...but alas not all like myself. Not to mention that if you took the sum total of it all, it would still account for only about 1/4 of the total world's population and hence could not be called 'indicative of humanity' at the end for practically excluding the possible tastes and desires of the 3rd world, which, I assure you, is far less fixated upon the mythos of Hollywood and moreso concerned with the mythos of their own locale.

I'm guessing you didn't realise from this

I need to get at least 10 participants before my study magically becomes 'representative'.

that I never thought my study would be representative in the first place or encompassing the whole of humanity.
I mean seriously, who aside from a journalist would ever claim 10 people could be representative of or indicative of the whole of humanities views and behaviours?
I do like the idea of something I've written or done being heralded, it sounds so fancy and prestigious.

Sorry if this post seems rather argumentative but I do dislike it when people fail to read a topic completely and then think they are being clever telling somebody their study is flawed when they've already mentioned they think the study is fundamentally flawed.

Thanks again to the people who participated and evaluated, you've been very helpful.