What is beautiful is young: the moderating effects of age and physical attractiveness on person perception

In forming a judgment of an individual it is the visual information which is initially available to us. Thus in the absence of any other information. We may simply use the most apparent characteristics about a target to form our opinion, namely their age and appearance. The interactive effects of age and attractiveness on person perception were investigated. Equal numbers of male and female university (under age 30) and elderly (over age 60) subjects rated one of four photos where in the female model was either young and attractive, young and unattractive, elderly and attractive or elderly and unattractive on 40 personality characteristics. The age and sex of the raters contributed to attractiveness and age biases for personality characteristics: namely, sociability, promptness, creativity, materialism and forgetfulness. Facial appearance elicited different social reactions in both males/females and young/old persons.