In looking at myself through the lens of a gymnastics judge, as well as an appearance and attraction judge, I feel I have become completely transparent both with unmasking my own insecurities and the potential view of my routine from the judge's table. I know essentially everything there is to know about judging my own gymnastics performance as well as judging other's performances on the basis of technicalities. What I am not as savvy on is the general judgment on basic human attraction and idealized body preferences. Because of my lack of expertise on this, I decided to do some brief research on attraction and understand a bit more of what constitutes "perfection" and appealing attraction to people not associated in the sports world.
General Research on Attraction
General research on attraction helped me understand more about people's judgment of human beings' exteriors. I looked to see if it was just my personal opinion that not everyone admits to judging people solely on attraction when the first get to know them. From the gymnastics world, there is hardly any time to get to know an athlete personally before judging their beam routine because, well, judges are hired to judge the technicalities of a routine, not if they think the athlete is a sweet person. So, do others also just look at people in a strictly physical judgment manner when making numerical judgments about them?
In looking at some research on physical attraction, I found that a lot of studies discuss physical attraction as not being a huge selling point when it comes to romantic relationships. This was more common than not. Tesser and Brody (1971) did a study asking male and female college students to rank the importance of “personality”, “looks”, “intelligence” and “character” as attributes on whether or not to date someone. Surprisingly, the top three characteristics that college students looked at as the most important when determining on a romantic partner were personality, character, and looks. I perked up in interest at these results as I don’t believe that looks were ranked third when college students were looking into determining a partner. Either the students weren’t honest with their own answers or were not fully aware of the question or situation. Nonetheless, these students showed an interesting piece of information that they felt there was more importance in personality and character (two things that become much more evident through verbal interaction) than simply how someone appears from the outside. And that takes me right back to gymnastics--judges rarely get to know much about the gymnasts they judge, unless the athlete is well-known in the gymnastics community and/or they have been judging them for years. The point is, though, that the way these judges judge is strictly based off of how the gymnast looks doing the skills she is performing.
Yet, other studies beg to differ. A study done in 1882 stated, “physical beauty is a sign of interior beauty, a spiritual and moral beauty” (Schiller, 1882). Alright, that study may provide me with information from the dark ages, but it is interesting to note. What is on the outside is to suggest what is on the inside. How is that even fair? Like judging a book by its cover.
Schiller’s interest in how physical beauty indicates a good personality filled with internal warmth and beauty contradicts that of what Tesser and Brody found to be true. Although there was a pretty significant time difference in between these two works, how people choose to look at beauty and attraction clearly differ. Didion et al agreed with Schiller’s ideals, stating “All in all, attractive people were expected to have better prospects for happy social and professional lives and were expected to lead more fulfilling lives in general than were the unattractive”. Thus, people’s personality were based explicitly on their physical appearance.
So what?
Some researchers believe that appearance is the baseline of attraction while others don't. But whether you're team Schiller or team Tesser and Brody, you can't deny that we as humans make judgments about people and situations simply based on how they look. The importance here is understanding the connection. Although never explicitly looked into, sports bring up another layer of baseline judgment. But general judgment of another individual while walking down the street is pretty similar to doing a floor routine and getting a numerical score. Subconsciously, we judge no matter what the situation may be. And that isn't news to you. You are probably judging someone or something right now. It is just how our mind works.
All of this could be fine if we just accepted that everyone judges everyone. But people don't admit that they judge because they're embarrassed of admitting to initial judgment. And our subconscious self may be judging where our conscious self may not be. But despite that, the judgment is still occurring whether we like it or not.
I'm a big visual person, so here is a nice little pie chart I found. This chart is based strictly on what people find physically attractive on a woman. Notice all of the physicalities noted, and then the lone 'other' section of the wheel. My oh my, what must that other be? Do I dare say it...is it...personality?
Much like in gymnastics, that 'other' category is simply unidentifiable. You may look at someone and go 'oh yep, she just looks so stinking nice, so I think she is a better gymnast and an overall more attractive person'. People may do that, but that doesn't justify judgment numerically in sport. Nor does this justify numerical scores people give to others on the basis of physical attraction.
So, does that 'other' category actually help us identify physical attraction, or is it just people's way of saying that someone may be more attractive because they look nicer? What does 'looking nice' even look like?
And let's be even more frank here, no one thinks a girl is hot because she looks like an angel. You don't swipe right on Tinder because the girl looks like she is an innocent little flower.
But we are hybridizing attraction and personality by means of analyzing personality through appearance. We aren't looking at someone's face and commenting on the symmetry of their eyes or their aesthetically pleasing appearance. We're judging their character on their face value appearance. And whether we know it or not, we are judging someone's personality that we know nothing about simply by the way they carry themselves. And there has been research that looks deeper into this.
No study has directly looked at this until Borkeneau and Liebler looked at judging personality through appearance based on video tapes. This 1992 study was a breakthrough for looking into physicality as a way of understanding personality. But even this study had its limitations in allowing sound in a video. This study, although important, doesn't quite mimic what happens in gymnastics when watching a routine. This is where another breakthrough study emerged.
Nauman et al's study looked at how physical appearance can justify ideas of personality. They found the important role that physicality has when determining someone's personality simply by just looking at a still image of an unknown person. The study asked participants to look at 10 photographs of strangers. Each participant was to make a judgment about the photographed person's personality based simply off of their appearance. In looking at personality traits such as extraversion, self-esteem, emotional stability, and openness, participants were successfully able to judge 9 out of 10 participants' personalities based off of their photograph, a staggeringly accurate finding. Simply by looking at full-body photographs of people, participants were able to make judgments about this person as if they knew them personally. Naumen et al notes in the discussion portion of the study that much of the personality judgement occurs far before any interpersonal and face to face interaction.
Back to the Example:
Remember my example of Katelyn Ohashi on the previous page? I looked into some of the comments on Katelyn's viral routine to see how people responded to her. Well, some of them had nothing to do with the technicalities of the routine.
Some comments included:
-"Can we just admire how gorgeous this human being is?"
-"The purest definition of thick"
-"Crap, I told myself I wouldn't fall in love with people I've never met...oh well"
-"Them hips, oh my god..."
-"Not gunna lie, I came here for a totally different reason and was pleasantly surprised by her skills. Nice work!"
-"She just looks like the nicest person! Fun and sassy.."
Assumption of character and judgment of attraction. And what did she get? A big fat 10.0.
Notice in particular the last comment. Why does a viral routine and "thick hips" lead to he assumption of Katelyn being a nice person? The attractive ideal leads to the personality ideal. So, let's assume the opposite. What if people judged Katelyn as unattractive or non-ideal. Would they think she seems nice or a fun person? Probably not.
But I could be wrong.
All we do know, though, is that due to her physical idealistic attributes, people assume she is very nice and enjoyable. Much like when choosing a romantic partner. Interesting...let's learn more!