The Cheerleader Effect: people in groups appear more attractive than on their own. This theory has been around for a while but a recent study has provided some supportive evidence. The study was published in Psychological Science (link).
From an article at Social Student describing the study:
The study showed participants pictures of 100 people and asked them to rate their attractiveness. Sometimes the person being rated was in a group and other times the picture had been cropped to show them alone. Staggeringly, participants rated both male and female subjects more attractive in the group shots than when pictured alone! The rating was not substantially higher, but enough to bounce someone’s attractiveness up by about 2 or 3% and let’s be honest, some of us need all the help we can get!
Now you may be wondering, if a groups looks are averaged, wouldn’t the more attractive people be brought down by their less attractive friends? Well here is the mini cherry on top of the regular cherry on top of the sundae of awesomeness that is this study. It turns out that when we average the faces of a group, whether attractive or unattractive, we actually prefer their ‘new faces’ to the original because their idiosyncrasies have been averaged out. What this means is, “individuals with complimentary facial features — one person with narrow eyes and one person with wide eyes, for example — would enjoy a greater boost in perceived attractiveness when seen together, as compared to groups comprised of individuals who have more similar features.”