Body attractiveness: Difference between revisions

The authors also conducted a principle components analysis (PCA) on the relative contributions of face and body to overall attractiveness for men. This analysis revealed that facial and body attractiveness were distinct components for both men and women, indicating that they mainly contribute uniquely to overall attractiveness. The multiple regression also found no significant interaction between facial and body attractiveness in men, and the Pearson correlation coefficient for facial and body attractiveness in men was insignificant (while there was a significant correlation between facial and body attractiveness among female subjects).  

This finding is different than the later analyses by Currie & Little (2009), mentioned above, as they did find facial attractiveness and body attractiveness interacted in men, albeit more in the unexpected direction of facial attractiveness being limited by low body attractiveness.  

One explanation for this would be that, even though independent face and body ratings do not interact, people rate individuals more holistically when they see their entire bodies in a way that can't be simply explained by interaction effects or additive variance. This argument is supported by the fact that Peters et al. found that the correlation between facial and body photos was moderate in their sample, explaining less than half of the variance in overall attractiveness (Peters et al., 2007, p. 940). Alternately, there could be a lot of measurement error when one measures the respective contribution of face and body to overall attractiveness, which could explain the limited additive prediction.