Two studies were conducted to investigate the supposed physical attractiveness bias against supporters of the women's movement and to test a possible explanation for this reported bias. An attitude-similarity-mediated error (AS-ME) hypothesis was tested that proposes that people rate similar others as more physically attractive than dissimilar others, regardless of the attitudinal issue involved. Experiment I employed Byrne's attraction paradigm and had 235 males and 237females evaluate a same-sex stranger who had either similar or dissimilar attitudes related to either the women's movement or censorship. In Experiment 2, 176 males and 237 females evaluated opposite-sex strangers. The AS-ME explanation was supported in both experiments.
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