I first read Elaine Hatfield's (et al.) book after being referred to it by a nationally used Intro to Psychology Textbook. Her book reveals, through objective experiments, how the human race interprets appearances and judges people based on looks. Quite intriguing.
One of the classical experiments discussed involved comparing pictures of similar-looking men with women of various attractiveness levels. Apparently people think higher of a man that is alone than one with an unattractive female. Interesting.