Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Miscellaneous/2018 December 6

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December 6

Do people know how physically attractive they are?

I'm wondering if there's research on people's ratings of their own attractiveness vs those of strangers, how accurate they are, and whether this differs between genders. Temerarius (talk) 03:06, 6 December 2018 (UTC)

"Attractiveness" by what standard? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 04:41, 6 December 2018 (UTC)

Our article at Physical attractiveness does mention self knowledge of attractiveness. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 05:15, 6 December 2018 (UTC)

I may be on the same page as someone else concerning my assessment of my attractiveness but my self-opinion can be at odds with another person's assessment of me. "Strangers" are not all of one unified opinion on the attractiveness of any individual. Bus stop (talk) 16:09, 6 December 2018 (UTC)

I'm reminded of Joe Namath's book, titled something like, "I Can't Wait Until Tomorrow, 'Cause I Get Better-Looking Every Day!" ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 16:52, 6 December 2018 (UTC)

Temerarius proposes an interesting experiment, though. Ask 100 people what they think of their own "attractiveness" on a scale of 1 to 10. Leave it entirely up to them to decide what that word mean, no need to define it for them. Then ask them to rate the other 99 people on that same scale, also leaving it entirely up to them to define it however they like. You now have 100 data points for each person.

Statistically, would the 99 strangers agree with the person who is assessing herself/himself? Would they only agree with people of the same gender as themselves? the opposite gender? Would they disagree more often with the mean when the standard deviation is larger? I think this is the kind of research the OP is asking references for. If you don't know any such research, no need to clutter this page with opinions of how useless such research would be, because that is not the question. --Lgriot (talk) 16:14, 7 December 2018 (UTC)

I'm pretty certain Trump thinks he is the most attractive person in the world, the most absolutely!, [1] shows we mostly share the delusion that we're more attractive than we are. Which I was surprised about as I thought I'd read the opposite a while ago. Dmcq (talk) 20:10, 7 December 2018 (UTC)

Well I might be careful but I'm not deluded enough to think I'm a good driver. In particular I'm awful at parking. Dmcq (talk) 10:32, 9 December 2018 (UTC)

I figured out the secret to parallel parking a long time ago: Get there early enough so that there are at least three consecutive empty spaces. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 18:45, 9 December 2018 (UTC)

That method will never work in London :-) Alansplodge (talk) 19:26, 9 December 2018 (UTC)

Bowle, John (2001).

Bowle, John (2001). "A letter to the Reverend Dr. Percy : concerning a new and classical edition of Historia del valeroso cavallero Don Quixote de la Mancha" (PDF). Cervantes (journal of the Cervantes Society of America). 21 (1). London. pp. 95–146. First edition 1777.

https://www.h-net.org/~cervantes/csa/artics01/bowle2.pdf What is (2001) meant to mean? Its next to the link in john bowle an 18th century scholar? 1777 was when first edition of a letter to dr percy was originally published. What is (2001) meant to mean?

2001 is, surely, the year in which the Journal of the Cervantes Society of America published its issue Volume 21 No.1 that contains this reprint, re-edited and introduced by Daniel Eisenberg, of the original letter. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 90.202.210.56 (talk) 13:35, 6 December 2018 (UTC)