Nick Yee has an interesting post over on Terra Nova called “Beauty is Pixel Deep” (Link). This clip is from the beginning of the piece:

From PlayOn analysis: In World of Warcraft, there is a higher percentage of female characters in Alliance than Horde. On Alliance side, 1 out of 3 characters is female. On Horde side, 1 out of 5 characters is female. Most players would probably also agree that Alliance female characters are far more attractive than Horde female characters.

Behavioral Confirmation: The psychological phenomenon where a perceiver’s expectations of a target causes the target to behave in a way that confirms the perceiver’s expectations.

It’ll help to understand that last part if you read his relatively short entry. I didn’t read any conclusions, but I suspect his intent is to start developing some method for arriving at statistically-based information that might support the Snyder, Tanke, & Berscheid study to which he refers. While I don’t remember the name of it, I do recall that study (from a behavior modification instructor at Notre Dame). I’m looking forward to reading his conclusions. I suspect we all kinda figure what the answer will be, but it’ll be fun to see it confirmed.