The Social Transmission of Attractiveness Stereotypes: An Investigation of Parental Expectations of Children\u27s Behavior

Abstract

Eighty-six children from the Utah State University Child Development Laboratories and Hillcrest Elementary School and their parents participated in the study. The study focused on the use of attractiveness stereotyping used by children across four age groups. The study also analyzed the social transmission of attractiveness stereotypes from parents to their children. The study included two parts: 1) a play-preference measure, and 2) a social attribution measure. The stimuli were sketches of twelve children, six toys and six girls. The sketches of children included attractive, unattractive, mesomorphic, endomorphic, handicapped and nonhandicapped children. In the study we found that parents and children use attractiveness stereotypes. Further, parents and children utilized a beauty-is-good assumption when evaluating the children\u27s personalities and social tendencies from the sketches. Finally, we found that parents in this study expected their children to use a similar physical attractiveness hypothesis in their Social judgement