Confidence in the eye of the beholder : the influence of physical attractiveness on attitude confidence

Tese apresentada para cumprimento dos requisitos necessários à obtenção do grau de Doutor em Psicologia na área de especialização de Psicologia Social apresentada no ISPA - Instituto Universitário no ano de 2020.Physical attractiveness of a source influences attitudes regarding the attitudinal topic covered in a message. The present thesis aims to test if this attribute is also capable of influencing confidence on attitudes, i.e., the perceived amount of certainty on attitudes towards a topic. We review the literature suggesting the multiplicity of effects of this attribute on attitudes and attitude change, as it is with other persuasive variables, and built on the relevance to approach the influence on attitude confidence. Recent research suggest that judgments of confidence are sensitive to influence from the context, such as the influence of attributes of the source of a message. As it is with attitudes, we test if attitude confidence is sensitive to corrections processes based on the perceived relevance of the source of the message. In this thesis, we test if the influence of physical attractiveness might be dependent on the perception of this attribute as an unwanted source of bias. We start by approaching its impact, as a feature of the source of a message, on judgments of attitude confidence, and build on its relevance as a feature of the recipient of a message. In the first set of studies we demonstrated that the presence of an attractive source, when unrelated with the content of the message, decreases attitude confidence. We show that when asked to report attitude confidence, people seem to correct for the potential influence of physical attractiveness with consequential impact to attitude strength outcomes. In the second set of studies we clarified the role of perceiving the message as contradictory to individuals’ attitudes for the emergence of our effects. Finally, the third set of studies conceptualize the role of physical attractiveness as a self-evaluation from the recipient of the message. We show that this self-evaluation is informative to judgments of attitude confidence, providing an addition mechanism in which physical attractiveness in determining judgments of attitude confidence. We discuss how our findings integrate and expand what was previously known about the influence of physical attractiveness. We highlight the importance of studying features capable of decreasing attitude confidence, regardless of the influence on attitude change