Generally, participants judged heavier bodies as being associated with more negative traits, such as being lazy and careless they judged lighter bodies as having more positive traits, such as being self-confident and enthusiastic.įurthermore, the participants perceived classically feminine (e.g., pear-shaped) and classically masculine (e.g., broad-shouldered) bodies as being associated with “active” traits, such as being quarrelsome, extraverted, and irritable. The researchers analyzed whether participants consistently associated specific traits with certain types of bodies. The trait words reflected dimensions of the Big Five personality traits (a common measure of personality used in psychology research) typically seen as positive (e.g., enthusiastic, extraverted, dominant) or negative (e.g., quiet, reserved, shy). Using these models allowed the researchers to know the precise physical measurements of each body shown in the study.Ī total of 76 undergraduate participants viewed a set of models - they saw each body from two angles and indicated whether 30 trait words shown on screen applied to that body. The three-dimensional renderings were generated from random values along 10 different body dimensions, using data from laser scans of actual human bodies. Hu and colleagues created 140 realistic body models, of which 70 were female and 70 male. “That is, do people look at a person’s body and make snap judgments about whether the person is lazy, enthusiastic, or irritable?” “We wanted to know whether we could link personality descriptor words to body shape in predictable ways,” explains Hu.
Previous research has shown that we infer a considerable amount of social information by looking at other people’s faces, but relatively little research has explored whether body shapes also contribute to these judgments. Understanding these biases is important for considering how we form first impressions.” “Stereotypes based on body shape can contribute to how we judge and interact with new acquaintances and strangers. “Our research shows that people infer a wide range of personality traits just by looking at the physical features of a particular body,” says psychological scientist Ying Hu of the University of Texas at Dallas, first author on the research. When we meet new people, our first impressions of their personality may depend, at least in part, on their body shape, according to research published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.
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