Blog Post 10: Barney's "The Cheerleader Effect"

The “Cheerleader effect” — also known as The Bridesmaid Paradox, Sorority Girl Syndrome, and, for a brief window in the mid-90s, The Spice Girls Conspiracy is a theory advanced by the character Barney Stinson on the TV show How I Met Your Mother (although it did not originate with him) that says women look more attractive in a group than they do individually.



The first article that I've read is about "The Cheerleader Effect: How Can You Look Good In A Group" by Miss Cellania, scientists at the University of California, San Diego suggests that people look more attractive when seen in the presence of others than when viewed as individuals, a phenomenon known as the "cheerleader effect".  
 But why does it happen? And what can we do with it?
The California study argues that the cheerleader effect is caused by our tendency to perceive faces in a group as an amalgamated average, rather than separate individual objects, and the fact this "average group face" is more attractive to us than the faces that make it up. (Group influence also affects our perception of how attractive someone is. Studies have shown that if others think someone is attractive, we are more likely to find them attractive too, regardless of how they look.)

The effect has been noticed in pop culture: in the US sitcom How I Met Your Mother, Neil Patrick Harris's character points out a group of girls in a bar who collectively appear attractive, but on closer inspection display serious physical flaws. Likewise, the cheerleaders the effect is named for would look less appealing (and significantly weirder) if they were cheering solo, and a quick glance at any manufactured girl or boy band reveals how the enhanced attractiveness of an ensemble can be used for commercial gain. 


The second article that I've read is about "Barney Stinson's "Cheer Leader Effect" from "How I Met Your Mother" Is Real, Says Science" by Dustin Rowles, researchers claim that the visual system automatically computes ensemble representations of faces presented in a group, individual members of the group are biased toward this ensemble average, and average faces are attractive. Taken together, these phenomena suggest that individual faces will seem more attractive when presented in a group because they will appear more similar to the average group face, which is more attractive than group members’ individual faces.

In other words, when we see people in a group — both men and women — we tend to average them out, and while “average” doesn’t sound like a compliment, in this context, it works: “average faces are more attractive, likely due to the averaging out of unattractive idiosyncrasies,” so says a study researcher from the University of California, San Diego. It is not a huge swing, but the differences are statistically significant.