The Incentive Value of Physical Attractiveness for Young Children

Abstract

To test the hypothesis that from an early period of social development physical attractiveness has reward properties, young children were individually observed at a task where they illuminated a slide of either a physically attractive or unattractive stimulus child. As predicted, subjects made more stimulus exposures in the attractive versus the unattractive condition. Also, females made more stimulus exposures than males, suggesting that at least certain classes of social stimuli have greater incentive value for females.