The Effects of Physical Attractiveness on Clinical Judgments

Seventy-two social workers were the subjects in a study investigating the effects of two client characteristics, physical attractiveness and verbal expressiveness, upon the clinical perceptions of the social worker. Subjects completed questionnaires containing vignettes experimentally manipulating the two client characteristics. Subjects were randomly assigned one of the vignettes and completed two separate rating scales. The data analysis revealed strong main effects for verbal expressiveness. However, there was no main effect found for physical attractiveness nor any interaction effect for verbal expressiveness and physical attractiveness. The results of this study demonstrate that verbal clients are perceived more favorably by social workers than are nonverbal clients regardless of the physical attractiveness of the client.