THE EFFECTS OF ETHNICITY AND PHYSICAL ATTRACTIVENESS ON RATINGS ON SELECTED TRAITS AMONG MSU-MARAWI STUDENTS

The study aimed to determine whether ethnicity and facial attractiveness affect students ratings on selected traits, which may then imply stereotypes. the study was conducted in Mindanao State University - Main campus, Marawi City, where students from different ethnic groups are taking up different degree programs. An experimental design was employed to examine whether participants would give different ratings to stimulus persons representing different ethnicities (Cebuano and Meranao) and at different attractiveness level. This is to test the assumption of physical attractiveness stereotype that states: Attractive individuals are believed and stereotyped to have positive traits than Unattractive counterparts, and the cognitive theory on Categorization that posits that people categorizes and formulate different stereotypes to different ethnic groups, in line with ethnic stereotyping. 80 students were gathered and selected to different treatment conditions. Data were analyzed usingmixed factorial analysis of variance to examine the significant main and interaction effects of the variables to peoples ratings and stereotypes. Findings revealed that Ethnicity has a significant main effect to peoples ratings and stereotypes (F(1,77)= 6.914, p = 0.002, ɳ2 = .152), which imply ethnic stereotyping and ethnocentrism. Meanwhile, physical/facial attractiveness also found to have significant and large main effect to peoples ratings and stereotypes (F(1,77) = 78.239, p = .000, ɳ2 = .504), and that attractive stimulus person (M = 4.558) indeed got higher trait ratings than unattractive stimulus person (M = 3.529) in all treatment conditions. Furthermore, results also suggest that there was a significant interaction effect between these variables to peoples ratings and stereotyping (F(1,77) = 31.172, p = .000, ɳ2 = .447).