Sexually selective cognition: beauty captures the mind of the beholder

Across 5 experimental studies, the authors explore selective processing biases for physically attractive others. The findings suggest that (a) both male and female observers selectively attend to physically attractive female targets, (b) limiting the attentional capacity of either gender results in biased frequency estimates of attractive females, (c) although females selectively attend to attractive males, limiting females ’ attentional capacity does not lead to biased estimates of attractive males, (d) observers of both genders exhibit enhanced recognition memory for attractive females but attenuated recognition for attractive males. Results suggest that different mating-related motives may guide the selective processing of attractive men and women. Think back to the last time you walked across a college campus or down a crowded city street. Did you find yourself looking at some people more than others, and are there some people in particular you could now pick out of a line up? Are the answers to these questions determined merely by random characteristics of the people you passed or are the ways we selectively process others linked to theoretically important constraints on how th