“Feeling frumpy”: The relationships between body image and sexual response changes in midlife women

This study investigated the relationships between self‐rated attractiveness and self‐reported sexual response changes (over the past decade) and current sexual satisfaction in 307 heterosexual, midlife women. Results indicated that regardless of the woman's specific age, she was more likely to consider herself more attractive when she was 10 years younger, and her self‐perceived attractiveness did not significantly differ based on her menopausal status. The more a woman perceived herself as less attractive than before, the more likely she was to report a decline in sexual desire or frequency of sexual activity. The more she perceived herself as attractive, the more likely she was to experience an increase in sexual desire, orgasm, enjoyment, or frequency of sexual activity. There were no significant statistical relationships between a woman's perception of her own attractiveness as she aged and her current sexual satisfaction.     

Help me Obi-Wan: the influence of facial dominance on perceptions of helpfulness

We all occasionally need the help of others whom we do not know well. In four studies, we studied the influence of the facial appearance of both the potential helper and the help seeker on such a decision. In three studies (1a-1c), across different help domains, participants rated a person with submissive facial appearance as more likely to help. This was mediated via the perception of the submissive person as caring and helpful. The notion that submissive individuals will be perceived as more likely to help when a dominant person asks was only supported in the context of financial help. The preference for a submissive potential helper was also found when participant had to choose a helper for themselves (Study 2). (120 words)     

Body size,physical attractiveness,and body image among young adult women: Relationships to sexual experience and sexual esteem

Although links between women's sexuality and body size, attractiveness, and body image may seem apparent, little empirical work has been conducted on this topic. In the current study, young adult women (N = 192) completed questionnaires and were weighed and rated for facial attractiveness. In general, current body size, experimenter‐rated facial attractiveness, and self‐rated facial and bodily attractiveness were related in some ways to current relationship status and sexual experience. General body dissatisfaction, avoidance of social settings due to appearance concerns, and degree of investment in one's physical appearance were unrelated to relationship status and sexual experience. Higher sexual esteem was related to subjective views of attractiveness, but not to actual body size or experimenter ratings of facial attractiveness.     

Temporal Aspects of Facial Displays in Person and Expression Perception: The Effects of Smile Dynamics,Head-tilt,and Gender

Recent work suggests that temporal aspects of facial displays influence the perception of the perceived authenticity of a smile. In the present research, the impact of temporal aspects of smiles on person and expression perception was explored in combination with head-tilt and gender. One hundred participants were shown different types of smiles (slow versus fast onset) in combination with three forms of head-tilt (none, left, or right) exhibited by six computer-generated male and female encoders. The encoders were rated for perceived attractiveness, trustworthiness, dominance, and the smiles were rated for flirtatiousness and authenticity. Slow onset smiles led to more positive evaluations of the encoder and the smiles. Judgments were also significantly influenced by head-tilt and participant and encoder gender, demonstrating the combined effect of all three variables on expression and person perception.

Fear Attenuated and Affection Augmented: Male Self-Presentation in a Romantic Context

We investigated whether males use facial behavior strategically in order to increase their desirability as romantic partners. Participants were led to believe that a female research assistant who was either attractive or unattractive was observing them. Their task was to watch three short films: an excerpt from a horror film, a video of infants, and a neutral film. Males who thought they were being observed by the attractive assistant frowned less (AU4) while watching the horror film and smiled more (AU12, with and without AU6) while watching the infant film. Assistant attractiveness did not affect males’ facial behavior while they were watching the neutral film.     

Facial appearance,gender, and credibility in television commercials

The facial appearance of television spokespersons and the trustworthiness and expertise of the appeals delivered by them were independently rated. Babyfaced persons and females delivered communications which were less expert, but more trustworthy, than those communications delivered by maturefaced persons and males. These effects were independent of the spokespersons' perceived age, attractiveness, and amount of smiling. The findings are consistent with past research which has demonstrated that babyfaced people are perceived as less knowledgeable, but more honest, than those who are maturefaced.The authors are grateful to Mike Berbaum, Diane Berry, and two anonymous reviewers for helpful comments on an earlier draft. Portions of this research were presented at the 59th Annual Meeting of the Eastern Psychological Association in April, 1988, in Buffalo, N.Y.     

Renaissance beauty = Today’s ugly: What appearance factors determine attractiveness judgments?

ABSTRACT

By comparing photos of portraits of the faces of Renaissance courtesans to photos of attractive contemporary women’s faces this study estimates the importance of sociocultural factors in the personal perception of faces. Physical attractiveness is an important causal factor in choosing a sex partner, so the difference between averaged attractiveness judgments, a focus of attractiveness research, and individual attractiveness judgment, most relevant to choosing a sex partner, is important. Except for modesty and faithfulness, 13 normally attractive contemporary models were rated much more positively by college student participants (N = 189) than were eight celebrated Renaissance courtesans, both in attractiveness (contemporary stimuli 63%; Renaissance courtesans 31%) and in personality traits. All of the Renaissance courtesan trait ratings showed more variability than the contemporary stimuli. This study supports the view that once a relatively low baseline level of biological attractiveness is surpassed, latent and explicit sociocultural factors, culturally relative gender role appearance expectations, culturally relative aesthetic judgment factors, individual differences, and interpersonal dynamics are major determining factors of judgments of pretty and/or beautiful showing large subcultural and cultural individual differences. Pretty and beautiful may be discrete concepts, with beautiful strongly culturally determined. These data suggest that sociocultural and subcultural factors are important determiners of attractiveness.     

Is the beautiful always so good? Influence of physical attractiveness on the social perception of sexual harassment / ¿Es lo bello siempre tan bueno? Influencia del atractivo físico en la percepción social del acoso sexual

Research has shown that the perception of sexual harassment depends on factors such as gender, the situational context, the type of harassment, the ideology of the perceiver, the physical attractiveness of the harasser and victim and the relationship between them. This study focuses on examining the influence of physical attractiveness in the perception of a situation like sexual harassment. Through a questionnaire, 205 participants read a scenario in which a male worker (attractive vs. unattractive) engaged in gender harassment against a female colleague (attractive vs. unattractive). The participants then answered the measurements on the perception of harassment, responsibility, motivation and ideology. The main results were that the situation was more often perceived as sexual harassment when the victim of the harassment was physically attractive than when she was unattractive. Furthermore, the higher the participants’ acceptance of harassment myths the more they tended to blame the victim. We can conclude from this study the importance of the influence of certain myths or preconceived ideas about sexual harassment, which are found in both men and women, on how these situations are perceived.     

Vocal and Physiological Changes in Response to the Physical Attractiveness of Conversational Partners

We examined how individuals may change their voices when speaking to attractive versus unattractive individuals, and if it were possible for others to perceive these vocal changes. In addition, we examined if any concurrent physiological effects occurred when speaking with individuals who varied in physical attractiveness. We found that both sexes used a lower-pitched voice and showed a higher level of physiological arousal when speaking to the more attractive, opposite-sex target. Furthermore, independent raters evaluated the voice samples directed toward the attractive target (versus the unattractive target) as sounding more pleasant when the two voice samples from the same person presented had a reasonably perceptually noticeable difference in pitch. These findings may have implications for the role voice plays in mate selection and attraction.     

Newborn Infants' Preference for Attractive Faces: The Role of Internal and External Facial Features

Several previous experiments have found that newborn and young infants will spend more time looking at attractive faces when these are shown paired with faces judged by adults to be unattractive. Two experimental conditions are described with the aim of finding whether the “attractiveness effect” results from attention to internal or external facial features, or both. Pairs of attractive and less attractive faces (as judged by adults) were shown to newborn infants (mean age 2 days, 9 hours), where each pair had either identical internal features (and different external features) or identical external features (and different internal features). In the latter, but not the former, condition the infants looked longer at the attractive faces. These findings are clear evidence that newborn infants use information about internal facial features in making preferences based on attractiveness. It is suggested that when newborn (and older) infants are presented with facial stimuli, whether dynamic or static, they are able to attend both to internal and external facial features.     

Are There Affordances of Suggestibility in Facial Appearance?

Physical personality involves perceptible aspects of human appearance (both morphological and expressive) that are reliable cues about human traits and dispositions. Inferences made about personality on the basis of perceiving the cues in appearance may be valid as well as invalid. While the perception of many of such characteristics has been studied before, perception of suggestibility from facial appearance has remained unexplored. Here we present the results of a study where we show that real suggestibility does not correlate with perceived suggestibility. However, there is a significant correlation between perceived suggestibility and some facial characteristics such as babyfacedness and merriness.     

Vocal types and stereotypes: Joint effects of vocal attractiveness and vocal maturity on person perception

Subjects rated the power, competence, warmth, and honesty of stimulus persons whose voices systematically and independently varied along the dimensions of vocal attractiveness and vocal maturity. The results revealed that the effects of vocal attractiveness on person perception can be attenuated or augmented by variations in vocal maturity; and that the effects of vocal maturity on impressions can be similarly modified by level of attractiveness. Implications of the data for the understanding of vocal stereotypes are discussed.     

Differential Status Evaluations and Racial Bias in the Chilean Segregated School System

Although there is growing interest in studying the long‐ignored relationship between stratification and race in Chile, racial bias in person perception remains unknown. We hypothesize that the segregation of the Chilean school system generated a prestige order in which pupils are differentiated by status characteristics according to the type of school they attend, and that these evaluations are based on racial traits. To test this hypothesis, we study whether facial appearance is sufficient to impute the type of school a pupil is attending, and whether these categorizations evoke different status evaluations of wealth and morality based on race. Results confirm that participants’ perceptions of facial appearance allow them to situate pupils in the Chilean social structure. Faces categorized as studying at different types of schools varied in their perceived wealth. However, the relationship between moral traits and types of schools was weak. We also found evidence of racial bias in the participants’ perceptions of pupils’ faces: faces categorized as enrolled in municipal schools (low status) were judged with Amerindian or mestizo racial traits, while faces categorized as attending private fee‐paying schools (high status) were judged with white racial traits. We did not find a relationship between race and morality.     

An analysis of the encoding and decoding of spontaneous and posed smiles: The use of facial electromyography

Twenty subjects judged 80 video segments containing brief episodes of smiling behavior for expression intensity and happiness of the stimulus person. The video records were produced under instructions to (a) pose, (b) experience a happy feeling or (c) to both experience and show a happy feeling. An analysis of the integrated facial electromyogram (EMG), recorded over four muscle regions (zygomaticus major, depressor anguli oris, corrugator supercilii, andmasseter), showed that judgments of happiness and of intensity of expression could be predicted in a multiple regression analysis (multipleR = .64 for perceived happiness and .79 for perceived expression intensity). The perception of happiness was affected by EMG activity in regions other thanzygomaticus major. The use of parameters other than the mean of the integrated EMG, namely variance, skewness, kurtosis and properties of the amplitude distributions across time, provided accurate classification of the elicitation conditions (pose happiness versus experience happiness) in a discriminant analysis. For the discrimination of posed and felt smiles variables describing aspects of facial activity in the temporal domain were more useful than any of the other measures. It is suggested that facial EMG can be a useful tool in the analysis of both the encoding and decoding of expressive behavior. The results indicate the advantage of using multiple-site EMG recordings as well as of using amplitude and temporal characteristics of the facial EMG measures.The research was supported in part by funds associated with the John Sloan Dickey Third Century Professorship (Kleck) and in part by grant BNS-8507600 from the National Science Foundation (Lanzetta). Ursula Hess and Arvid Kappas were supported by stipends from the Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst (German Academic Exchange Service).     

Sensitivity to “Bad Genes” and the Anomalous Face Overgeneralization Effect: Cue Validity, Cue Utilization, and Accuracy in Judging Intelligence and Health

The bad genes and anomalous face overgeneralization accounts of facial preferences were tested by examining cue validity, cue utilization, and accuracy in judging health and intelligence from faces in the upper and lower halves of the distributions of attractiveness and its components: averageness, symmetry, and masculinity. Consistent with the bad genes hypothesis, facial attractiveness, averageness, symmetry, and male face masculinity each provided valid cues to intelligence and/or health for faces in the lower but not the upper halves of the distributions of these facial qualities. Consistent with the anomalous face overgeneralization hypothesis, attractiveness and its components were utilized as cues not only for faces in the lower halves of the distributions, but also for those in the upper halves. Intelligence and health were judged accurately for faces in the lower but not the upper half of the attractiveness distribution, and attractiveness mediated this accuracy at all ages except adolescence. Since adolescence is the prime mating age, the latter finding raises questions about the utility of attractiveness as an evolved mechanism to ensure the selection of high quality mates.     

What sounds beautiful is good: The vocal attractiveness stereotype

Two studies examined the effects of attractiveness of voice and physical appearance on impressions of personality. Subject-senders were videotaped as they read a standard-content text (Study 1) or randomly selected texts (Study 2). Judges rated the senders' vocal attractiveness from the auditory portion of the tape and their physical attractiveness from the visual portion of the tape. Other judges rated the senders' personality on the basis of their voice, face, or face plus voice. Senders with more attractive voices were rated more favorably in both the voice and face plus voice conditions; senders with more attractive faces were rated more favorably in both the face and face plus voice conditions. The effects of both vocal and physical attractiveness were more pronounced in the single channels (voice condition and face condition, respectively) than in the multiple channel (face plus voice condition). Possible antecedents and consequences of the vocal attractiveness stereotype are discussed. p]Her voice was ever soft, gentle, and low, an excellent thing in woman.Shakespeare (King Lear, Act V, Sc. 3)This research was supported in part by National Institute Mental Health Grant RO1 MH40498-01A2. The authors would like to thank Thomas J. Hernandez, James R. Laguzza, Andrea Lurier, and Mary Elizabeth Sementilli for running the videotaping sessions in Study 1, and Craig B. Partyka, Kimberly A. Radoane, and Kelly B. Sanborn for running the videotaping sessions in Study 2. Grateful acknowledgment is extended to Kate Johnson and Michael Zygmuntowicz for running rating sessions in Study 2, to BiancaMaria Penati for running rating sessions and coding data in Study 2, and to Bradley C. Olson for his assistance with data analysis.     

Race and the beauty premium: Mechanical Turk workers’ evaluations of Twitter accounts

ABSTRACT

Race, gender, and physical attractiveness strongly affect perceptions of trustworthiness and subsequent face-to-face interactions. This study examines how social media users’ perceived gender, race, and physical attractiveness can impact their standing online. We test these broad hypotheses by having Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk) workers evaluate a sample of 816 Twitter accounts. Our results show a ‘beauty premium,’ where MTurk workers say they are more likely to follow Twitter accounts with attractive pro?le photos, and attractive photos are positively associated with evaluations of trust. However, very attractive Black male and female Twitter accounts are associated with lower evaluations of trust compared to their White counterparts. These findings suggest that social media users’ social characteristics, perceived from their username or profile image, can replicate offline inequality online.     

The Effects of Average Fundamental Frequency and Variance of Fundamental Frequency on Male Vocal Attractiveness to Women

This paper employs a cue synthesis experimental method to examine the effects of pitch and intonation on male vocal attractiveness to women. Voices were acoustically manipulated to yield nine combinations of three levels of average fundamental frequency and three levels of variance of fundamental frequency. Strong main effects were obtained for the average fundamental frequency manipulation, with high voices rated as significantly less attractive to women than either medium or low voices, which do not differ in attractiveness. The main effects of manipulations of variance of fundamental frequency on vocal attractiveness and benevolence did not reach significance, but there was a significant interaction on the benevolence factor, with high or low average fundamental frequency manipulations being rated particularly low for voices with low variance of fundamental frequency.     

Mein(schöner)Prof.de

Evaluations of academic teaching have become an instrument for the quality management in universities of constantly growing importance. This process is unproblematic as long as the quality of teaching is rated validly by the evaluations of students. The validity of the rating, however, becomes questionable as an influence of the teaching staffs’ physical attractiveness on the evaluation of teaching has been proved. This effect would only be compatible with an assumed valid rating of the teaching performance if attractive teachers would in fact show a better performance in academic teaching and are not just better rated for their attractiveness. We analyzed data from the German online platform MeinProf.de for the evaluation of academic teachers. The results show that attractive teachers very probably do not perform better. The attractiveness of female teachers does not have the expected influence on the evaluation of their teaching.     

The Stability of Facial Attractiveness: Is It What You’ve Got or What You Do with It?

Physical attractiveness is suggested to be an indicator of biological quality and therefore should be stable. However, transient factors such as gaze direction and facial expression affect facial attractiveness, suggesting it is not. We compared the relative importance of variation between faces with variation within faces due to facial expressions. 128 participants viewed photographs of 14 men and 16 women displaying the six basic facial expressions (anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, surprise) and a neutral expression. Each rater saw each model only once with a randomly chosen expression. The effect of expressions on attractiveness was similar in male and female faces, although several expressions were not significantly different from each other. Identity was 2.2 times as important as emotion in attractiveness for both male and female pictures, suggesting that attractiveness is stable. Since the hard tissues of the face are unchangeable, people may still be able to perceive facial structure whatever expression the face is displaying, and still make attractiveness judgements based on structural cues.