The phrase "superficial appearance" is correct and commonly used in written English.
It refers to the outward or surface appearance of something or someone, without delving deeper into its true nature or qualities. Example: Despite her elegant and put-together superficial appearance, she was struggling with deep insecurities that she kept hidden from the world.
Our brains bestow character and motive to anything that has the superficial appearance of autonomous agency.
Health standards are not as high as superficial appearance may lead one to believe.
My genome can tell you probabilistic information about me, such as my superficial appearance, health conditions, and ancestry.
Voter ID requirements at least have the superficial appearance of addressing the integrity of elections, although in practice the justification is bogus.
The megaspores of Selaginella, containing female gametophytes with still-attached juvenile sporophytes, have the superficial appearance of germinating seeds, from which, however, they differ in many significant respects.
Earlier this year, scientists managed to cryogenically freeze the brain of a rabbit and recover it in an "excellent" state – although it is not clear if the brain's functions would have been preserved as well as its superficial appearance.
Leonardo — the "most relentlessly curious man in all history", as the art historian Sir Kenneth Clark described him — was less interested in capturing superficial appearances than in probing the secrets under the skin.
If one was to disavow common sense, history, evidence and truth, and, instead, rely purely on hysteria and hearsay created out of conjecture, then perhaps superficial appearances do conclusively prove Obama is a Muslim.
Like Hillary Clinton's scrunchies – which were much maligned by glossy, perma-tanned Republican commentators – Corbyn's clothing signals that he's got more on his mind than superficial appearances.
Superficial appearances may be deceptive: just because the circumstances that produce learning in two cases, along with the consequences of that learning, appear quite different, it does not follow that the processes underlying learning are different.
Psychologists tell us that subtle changes in framing — in the names we call things, the context in which we observe them, and their superficial appearances — can bring major changes in perception.
