tive child.
One of the stereotypes about physically attractive people is that attractive people of both sexes somehow have happier marriages, are kinder, more interesting, more sexually responsive and have better characters than less attractive people (Dion, Berscheid & Walster, 1972). Teachers, for example, perceive attractive children as more intelligent and expect them to perform better than unattractive children (Clifford & Walster, 1973).
Some studies of physical attractiveness and children have not found the variable to be of such a strong impact. For example, Horvath and MacDonald (1989) asked 338 women and 177 men, all of whom were college students, to attribute responsibility for the misbehavior of 2- or 4-year old boys. The authors found that neither the attribution of responsibility for the behavior nor the choice of how to punish the child was effected by the child's level of physical attractiveness.
In another study of physical attractiveness of children and adult punishment, conducted by Dion (1974), males and females viewed videotaped interactions between a child and an adult with the child being made up to look either attractive or unattractive. All subjects were then required to evaluate the child's performance on a picture matching task; subjects were allowed to penalize the child for errors. Penalties involved taking anywhere from one to five pennies away from the child for each mistake on the task.
While the male subjects in Dion's (1974) study were not influenced by either the child's sex or his/her level of physical attractiveness, women were. Specifically, women were more lenient towards attractive boys than towards unattractive boys or attractive girls. In other words, they showed a clear preference for attractive boys.
Berkowtiz and Frodi (1979) examined whether physical attractiveness mediates the punishment levels given to a child when the punisher (all of whom were female) has been provo...