If you're dressing up for Halloween, you may want to get together with friends and make it a group costume because, according to one study, being part of a group will make you seem more attractive.
According to new research out of the University of California San Diego, published the “Psychological Science” journal, people appear more attractive to others when they’re part of a group.
Thus, by this theory, dressing up as a group of pirates for that Halloween party may be better than sporting a costume as a lone scallywag.
In the study – authored by Drew Walker and Edward Vul of UC San Diego’s psychology department – undergrad students from UC San Diego were rounded up and asked to rate the attractiveness of people in 100 group photographs.
Then, the study participants rated each person in the group photographs in individual, cropped pictures.
On average, the participants rated the people in the groups as being 5.5-percent more attractive than those same people when presented alone in individual photos.
The authors of the study say that “individual faces will seem more attractive when presented in a group because they will appear more similar to the average group face, which is more attractive than group members’ individual faces.”
The authors say their findings are consistent with something called the “cheerleader effect,” a theory on group attractiveness made famous on the hit TV series, “How I Met Your Mother.”
