The Contrast Effect - Are you Attractive, Ugly, or Both?

 

The Contrast Effect Defined

Did you know that research says that you will seem more attractive to others if you surround yourself with less attractive people? Despite this, the opposite is also true, where you may seem less attractive to others if the people around you are perceived to be more attractive. Why is this, you may ask? Well, research shows that the human mind is highly susceptible to a simple yet potent cognitive bias called the Contrast Effect.

 

 

According to cognitive psychology, the Contrast Effect refers to the enhancement or reduction of perception of a given object or person due to its successive exposure to a contrasting object or person of either greater or lesser value – A mouthful, right? Simply put, the Contrast Effect is the human tendency to judge things in comparison to another element of reference instead of judging them individually.

 

Essentially, when two things are placed in proximity to each other, instead of being judged individually, the Contrast Effect will always cause someone to judge the object of interest in relation to its contrasting counterpart and vice versa. Unfortunately, due to the changes in perception that result from this, the Contrast Effect has severe ramifications in multiple areas of human functioning, such as mental health. Due to the unconscious tendency for people to compare their lives with those around them, mental health issues such as depression arise as people’s perceptions are strongly influenced by the glamorous lives portrayed through social media. Hence, even if their life would be considered bountiful if judged from their individual point of view, once it is put in relation to others’ lives on social media, the positive perception of their own life diminishes.

 

What is the Contrast Effect?

Due to the high prevalence of the Contrast Effect, it is difficult to ascribe a single mechanism to explain this phenomenon. However, the universality of the Contrast Effect demonstrates that it has something to do with how our cognitive processing systems use comparative thinking when it evaluates new information. More specifically, it shows how humans are biologically wired to evaluate the contents of newly learned information by comparing it to previously learned information that has already been learned and understood. This means that our mind requires comparison to process information, and the Contrast Effect seems to be a weird side-effect of this biological process.

 

 

For example, job recruitment officers often fall victim to this effect when reviewing resumes or undertaking interviews. Suppose one candidate does an interview and does a relatively good job. In that case, their performance may seem diminished if they were followed by an exceptional candidate. No matter how well the previous candidate did, due to our brain’s instinctual comparative thinking, it will be extremely challenging for the recruitment officer to separate their judgment from either candidate.

 

“The greater the contrast, the greater the potential. Great energy only comes from a correspondingly great tension of opposites”
- Carl Jung

 

If we go deeper into the details, we will see that there are many variations of the Contrast Effect. Some range from simple variations that influence our visual perception of objects and images, whereas other variations are rooted within social and emotional aspects of human behavior. These include:

 

Simultaneous Contrast: An example of this is when two distinct colors (e.g., Green and Brown) are placed directly adjacent to each other, leading to the enhancement of both sides’ color properties.

 

Metacontrast: This is when people from an ingroup (i.e., people who associate with each other) find themselves to have many similarities with each other while perceiving people from an outgroup (i.e., people not from the ingroup) to possess widely different characteristics.

 

Paracontrast: This is when an object is made to look highly insignificant by contrasting it with more prominent objects. Parents do this often when they try to make children eat their vegetables by pretending that it is flying like an airplane.

 

Perceptual Contrast: This is when our perception of an object is influenced by the successive presentation of another object. The tendency for recruitment officers to misjudge candidates is an example of this.

 

 

History of the Contrast Effect

The Contrast Effect first emerged into mainstream thought when 17th-century philosopher, John Locke (1632–1704), observed that lukewarm water could be felt as either hot or cold depending on whether his hand had been previously dipped in hot or cold water. If his hand was hot from the hot water, then the lukewarm water would feel cold, but if it was previously dipped in cold water, the lukewarm water would feel hot. In any case, the lukewarm water always remained at the same temperature. Yet, Locke’s perception of it would change depending on the initial water exposure, leading to an unconscious cognitive comparison.

 

The Contrast Effect began gaining popularity in the early 20th century when German psychologist Wilhelm Wundt (1832–1920) discovered that the Contrast Effect was not simply a psychological trick but a universal principle of human perception that could be observed in many circumstances. For example, he found that he could generate a Contrast Effect through visual qualities such as colors and brightness and other perceptive processes such as weight and depth perception. From this, the Contrast Effect received significant scrutiny from research that aimed to see how far this effect could affect human perceptive abilities, with research discovering its impacts on music perception, its influence on a person’s attractiveness, and even height!

 

 

Case Examples of the Contrast Effect

 

Case 1: The world of academia and education is permeated with examples of the Contrast Effect. In 2010, researchers Franzis Preckel and Matthias Brull investigated the mechanisms behind the Contrast Effect in students. They found that some students tended to significantly downplay their own intelligence when they were in the presence of other students whom they perceived to be smarter. Essentially, the presence of other, more intelligent individuals made them feel dumb when they had no grounds to think in such a way. To study this, Preckel and Brull provided standardized questionnaires that would measure intelligence in a sample of 722 students. Based on the results, the experimenters grouped the high scorers together and administered additional questionnaires to see how students of this group perceived their own academic abilities relative to the rest of their class. They found that most students scored themselves much lower than the results on their intelligence tests suggested. Moreover, this study also highlighted the implications of this Contrast Effect as it would have the potential to influence how students behaved within these classes. Effectively, if a group of intelligent students believed that they were less intelligent than their peers, they would behave in a way that is congruent with that belief, not to their full potential. This is one area where the Contrast Effect poses serious ramifications, as it can be observed to hinder a student’s educational trajectory.

 

Case 2: In a study investigating the Contrast Effect’s impact on self-esteem and perceived self-attractiveness, researchers Bill Thornton and Scott Moore aimed to see how individuals would rate themselves after seeing pictures of physically attractive versus non-physically attractive people. Depending on what picture they were shown, participants would undergo either a negative Contrast Effect (i.e., when something is perceived as worse than before) or a positive Contrast Effect (i.e., when something is perceived as better than before). Accordingly, when people are presented with a picture of highly attractive people, they would undergo a negative Contrast Effect, leading their self-esteem to drop and making them think of themselves as ugly. However, after seeing photos of people deemed ‘ugly,’ their self-esteem immediately increased, resulting in them having a positive Contrast Effect where they looked at themselves as more attractive than before. This is a great example that shows how our self-esteem and, ultimately, our mental health are at risk of being damaged due to our exposure to irrelevant things such as pictures of other people. It also shows how we will always compare ourselves to others and fail to judge ourselves individually without thinking we are better or worse than others. This must be considered when using social media platforms such as Instagram and TikTok, which thrive on people posting pictures of their most attractive selves leading to toxic comparisons among other viewers.

 

 

Case 3: Due to the significant yet subtle power of the Contrast Effect, it has been extensively used within sales contexts to influence clients into buying a particular service or product. In his book “Influence”, Robert Cialdini outlines what he referred to as the Contrast Principle, a sales method intended to trick a buyer into thinking that a price previously considered costly is less than it actually is. To do this, sellers would begin by exposing a buyer to more expensive products, which would normalize the price of each of these products before finally showing off the actual product of interest, which would be at a much lower price. Once they have made the unconscious comparison of the price difference, the seller will discuss how much money they will be saving, ultimately tricking the buyer into thinking they are getting a great deal. Essentially, this method directly leverages the unconscious comparative mechanisms triggered during the Contrast Effect, making it extremely difficult for the buyer to disengage from it and think through things individually. However, there is a way to not fall victim to this trick, but it takes a lot of mental fortitude. Since your mind is taking a quick mental shortcut, you must keep your attention to your conscious and rational thinking patterns and think your way through this dilemma instead of letting the thinking be done for you!