The article is based on the book «Social Psychology» by David Myers
Seeing a super attractive person of their own gender makes people feel like less attractive than after seeing a person with an ordinary, nondescript appearance. The above applies primarily to women. However, men also begin to evaluate their own attractiveness lower when they see more successful and powerful representatives of their own sex. The existence of such a «contrast effect» is also confirmed by laboratory experiments. After viewing glossy magazines with photographs of beautiful women, men considered less attractive not only average women, but their own wives. Pornographic films have a similar effect: by arousing sexual emotions, they devalue their own partners in the eyes of the audience.
Systematic visual perception of top-ten beauties or handsome men or unrealistic sex scenes will certainly turn your own partner into a less attractive average.
Thanks to television, we can see in an hour «dozens of people more attractive or successful than ourselves — more than any of our ancestors saw in a year or even throughout their entire lives.» Such inflated standards of comparison push us to devalue our potential partners and spend billions on cosmetics, diets and plastic surgery.