Transgender people tend to be viewed as less attractive —regardless of their actual appearance

Psy Post: People who are labeled as transgender are viewed as less attractive dating partners, according to new research published in Social Psychological and Personality Science. The new study, which was conducted with heterosexual college students, indicates that gender identity affects perceptions of attractiveness.
“As a social psychologist, I have long been interested in person perception. This topic (perception of people and how it may change depending on their gender and transgender identity) is timely, as many social network and dating websites are now allowing users to select from a wide variety of identity labels beyond just ‘male’ and ‘female,’” explained study author Eliot R. Smith of Indiana University.“Anecdotal evidence suggests that some transgender people find that others seem less sexually or romantically attracted to them once they learn of their transgender status, so we decided to study that issue rigorously.”In the study, 342 cisgender students rated 48 potential partners of the opposite sex. Each partner was presented as an online dating profile, which included a facial photograph, a gender identity label, and a racial label.The researchers found that potential partners who were labeled as cisgender were rated as more attractive than those who were labeled as transgender, regardless of their physical appearance.