Your lips are saying Yes, but your eyes are telling me No. ... Maybe?
Okay, first theory. There has to be some integrity, some cohesion to the whole. He'd be the next young Sinatra, except for that Ronald McDonald clown nose. This is my premise, the substandard single feature disintegrates the whole. For instance, note the oft-broken nose on the otherwise perfect face to your right. Is that a problem for you? heh.
But the opposite might well be true - that the beholder makes an assessment, then tacitly accepts, or rejects the person in his or her entirety by pointing to the subject's imperfect feature. Look at that nose! What a clown. Do we make a universal judgement, and then merely seem to base it wholly on a single feature?
Let's test for it.
Control.
Okay, so we'll take an image and place it up for review on Hot or Not (for this experiment, an unflattering snapshot of an overworked me who'd Magic Marker'ed a NO onto his hand as proof against the time-sucking vampires of CanYouOnly - if you must, you can see the original image again above). A sour looking expression on an ordinarily-average looking guy, who's hand is saying something negative. It's little wonder he only rates a 7-point-3, and no one thinks of him as a perfect 10. That the guy is yet hotter than 69% of the men on the site is merely testament to the myriad intangibles of his pervasively positive nature.
Now for the prediction. What if we make a change, one that will only serve to cripple the integrity of the image? If we change that "NO" on the hand to a "YES," would that add dissonance? Why would a sour-faced guy's hand be saying Yes to me like that?
We think it might. The face is telling me No, but the hand is telling me Yes. These cross-messages should disintegrate the image, and disintegration is a bad thing, right? The Theory of Integrity says yes. A bad thing. We predict a score lower than our original 7.3. At least among respondents who don't want sour-looking negative men saying Yes to them. Ewww. That thought gives me shivers.
Let's find out if our Hot or Not panel of judges agrees.
Hmmm.
Okay, so we're right. All that's changed in the image is the message on the hand, from NO to YES. The rating falls on average from 7.3 to 6.1, and note that the poor feller is hammered with a greater number of 1's and 2's. compared to more higher mean numbers than the previous "NO" time. I'm not saying that rating me a 1 or 2 isn't a mean thing, mind you. It stings. It stings, but I am a survivor.
So, our little test seems to indicate that an appealing appearance has something to do with the integrity of the presentation, if only syntactically. Mind that silkscreened message on that shirt of yours; all you former-joggers, throw out those old racing shirts that won't fit over your spare tire now. You don't want to send any unbecoming mixed messages.
Let's do some more interesting Plastic Surgery in experiment 2.
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