Tobias Vogel (University of Mannheim) is visiting Basel to give a talk on Thursday 5 April . . .

Do we really like the average guy? Prototype preferences and their reversals

Theoretically, average stimuli should be easier to process and in turn liked better than outliers. Substantiating this notion, previous studies showed that a category´s central tendency is more fluent and attractive than the category’s exemplars. Yet, under some conditions the effect has not been observed. Here, I propose and demonstrate conditions for which such beauty-in-averageness effects (or prototype preference effects) level off, or even reverse. In a first set of studies, I show that averages are disliked depending on properties of the stimulus distribution. That is, averages can be relatively atypical members of a category, and in turn disfluent and unattractive. In a second set of studies, I demonstrate that averages can be unattractive depending on the valence of the category they belong to.Together, the results of the present paper indicate that the well-established phenomenon of beauty-in-averageness is not universal, but depends on clearly defined features of the context. Rather than questioning the existence of the phenomenon, the present approach allows for a theoretical integration of seemingly contradictory results. These findings will be discussed against the background of prominent theorizing in social cognition on the one hand (e.g., Gawronski & Bodenhausen, 2006; 2011), and theorizing on cognitive fluency on the other (e.g., Reber, Schwarz, & Winkielman, 2004).