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The identification of the physical attractiveness stereotype – initially encapsulated as “what is beautiful is good” (Dion et al. 1972) – and a seminal qualitative review of the then emerging physical attractiveness literature (Berscheid & Walster 1974) engendered a tsunami of multidisciplinary research on physical appearance over the past four decades. Unsurprisingly, meta-analysis has been commonly used to review findings from the thousands of studies of physical attractiveness. Meta-analyses have examined the attractiveness stereotype (Eagly et al. 1991; Feingold 1992a), correlations between attractiveness and other characteristics (Feingold 1992a; Jackson et al. 1995; Langlois et al. 2000), and the effects of attractiveness on decision making in mate selection (Feingold 1988; 1990), employment (Hosoda et al. 2003), and the courtroom (Mazzella & Feingold 1994).
In these meta-analyses, many of which were cited in the target article, investigators began by specifying methods for study retrieval (e.g., databases searched) and study inclusion criteria. Although these steps should be taken for narrative (qualitative) and for meta-analytic reviews, they were rarely used for the former until their importance was highlighted by pioneering meta-analysts critical of traditional reviews. In addition, meta-analyses focus on effect sizes (including moderators of effect sizes) and their confidence intervals for findings, rather than on null hypothesis significance tests. The former approach is now widely recognized as preferable and is supplanting the latter, even in empirical research (Cumming 2013; Feingold 2015).
The target article is an old-school qualitative review in the mold of Berscheid and Walster (1974). The authors...