2011/07/18 by Paul W. Eastwick, Alice H. Eagly, Eli J. Finkel +1 · 1 citation
Psychology · Business, Management and Accounting · Social Sciences · #Evolutionary Psychology and Human Behavior #Consumer Behavior in Brand Consumption and Identification #Social and Intergroup Psychology
paper · doi:10.1037/a0024061
openalex publication_date 2011/07/18 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/01
Five studies develop and examine the predictive validity of an implicit measure of the preference for physical attractiveness in a romantic partner. Three hypotheses were generally supported. First, 2 variants of the go/no-go association task revealed that participants, on average, demonstrate an implicit preference (i.e., a positive spontaneous affective reaction) for physical attractiveness in a romantic partner. Second, these implicit measures were not redundant with a traditional explicit measure: The correlation between these constructs was .00 on average, and the implicit measures revealed no reliable sex differences, unlike the explicit measure. Third, explicit and implicit measures exhibited a double dissociation in predictive validity. Specifically, explicit preferences predicted the extent to which attractiveness was associated with participants' romantic interest in opposite-sex photographs but not their romantic interest in real-life opposite-sex speed-daters or confederates. Implicit preferences showed the opposite pattern. This research extends prior work on implicit processes in romantic relationships and offers the first demonstration that any measure of a preference for a particular characteristic in a romantic partner (an implicit measure of physical attractiveness, in this case) predicts individuals' evaluation of live potential romantic partners.