In psychology and the academic study of aesthetics, the contrast effect refers to the phenomenon by which the presence of attractiveness stimuli affects a person’s ratings of other attractiveness stimuli.
In other words, if you are looking at a person and someone even more attractive walks into the room, you will rate the first person you were looking at as less attractive than you previously had. Similarly, if you are looking at a person and someone less attractive walks into the room, you will rate the first person you were looking at as even more attractive than you previously had. In both cases, the first person’s looks did not actually change, of course, but the contrast of another person’s appearance impacts how you rate the original person’s looks.
Psychology research suggests that men are more likely to be influenced by the contrast effect than women. In fact, men indicate they are less willing to date an average-looking woman after staring at photographs of very attractive female faces.
This phenomenon accounts for why women frequently dislike their partners gazing at other women (especially in advertisements and pornography) and why beautiful women have more difficulty keeping female friends. As Nancy Etcoff writes in her book, Survival of the Prettiest: The Science of Beauty, “we try to control our social environment to make ourselves look good, or at least better than the other choices, and no one wants her own light dimmed by having a beacon next to her.”
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