The Impact of Physical Attractiveness on Women's Social Status and Interactional Power

This article tests hypotheses derived from status-generalization theory and communication-accommodation theory that behaviors resulting from status inequalities emerge when attractiveness differentiates dyads. Relying on unobtrusive acoustic analysis of 24 women's voices, we test the extent to which (1) women adjust nonverbal behavior to one another; (2) more attractive women exert more influence than less attractive partners; and (3) the effects of attractiveness on influence are stronger if a greater relative difference exists between partners. Findings suggest that if two interacting women are similarly attractive, then they compete dynamically for status, which informs recent developments in the expectation-states research program. An earlier version of the paper was presented at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association in Washington, DC in August 2000.     

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.     

Peer‐Perceived Admiration and Social Preference: Contextual Correlates of Positive Peer Regard Among Suburban and Urban Adolescents

The primary purpose of this study was to understand further the heterogeneity of popularity, by exploring contextual correlates of two dimensions of positive peer regard among seventh graders within two highly disparate sociodemographic groups: affluent suburban and low‐income urban (N=636). Three sets of attributes were examined, all consistently linked to social status in past research: rebellious behaviors (aggression, academic disengagement, delinquency, and substance use), academic application (effort at school and good grades), and physical attributes (attractiveness and athletic ability). The data provide empirical validation for the conceptual distinctions among peer‐perceived admiration and social preference with adolescents from diverse contexts. More specifically, results showed that within each socioeconomic context (a) some forms of rebellious behaviors are clearly admired, (b) prosocial attributes are linked with peer‐perceived admiration and social preference, (c) physical attractiveness and athletic skills are important for positive peer regard, the former particularly for suburban girls and the latter for suburban boys, and (d) aggression elicits admiration among early adolescents, but can also generate their disdain (i.e., lowered social preference). In the urban context, results provided evidence for the salience of distinct forms of rebellious and achievement oriented behaviors among different racial/ethnic groups as well.     

Social Sources of Information in the Development of Self*

Interpersonal and cultural sources of information in the development of self are compared. Specifically, this involves the comparison of the effects of the appraisals of significant others and self-perception using shared criteria. Factors that affect the importance of these two processes, such as the presence of institutionalized indicators, the visibility of the behavior for others, and normative barriers to evaluative communication, are discussed. Finally, empirical evidence is presented on the relative effects of significant others' appraisals and cultural shared indicators of academic ability and physical attractiveness on corresponding self-ratings for children in grades 4–8 and grade 12. Self-appraisals of ability are found to be more highly related to objective variables than are self appraisals of physical attractiveness, suggesting that culturally-based self-perception is more important when there are institutionalized indicators for an attribute. The relationship between others' appraisal and self-appraisals of ability are largely spurious, casting doubt on previous research that relied only on zero-order correlations. Significant others' appraisals are not important for either self-ratings of ability or physical attractiveness.     

The European Union in the flows of international students: attractiveness and inconsistency

This paper aims to describe the overall pattern of flows of international students and to determine the factors that can explain the variation of countries' attractiveness. In a second step, it assesses the position of the European Union as a whole in these flows at the global level. Is the EU strong enough in the global competition to attract the best brains? Besides, it shows how attractiveness factors can vary according to the profile of a sample of European Union member countries. In the third section of the paper, we raise some reflexions on the relations of the EU with its neighbourhood with respect to the flows of international students. In fact, the EU may not be able to maintain its status as a major power if it does not better regulate its relations with neighbour countries, especially in the domain of higher education and students' mobility.     

“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.     

Attraktivität, Reziprozität und Lehrveranstaltungsevaluation

In this article we investigate the relationship between academic teachers’ attractiveness and their students’ evaluations of teaching. Furthermore it is examined, whether teachers’ grading influences students’ evaluations of teaching. Using data from an experimental design, hypotheses about attractiveness effects, frog-pond-effects, moderating gender effects and influences of grading are empirically tested. Controlling for confounding factors we find a very weak attractiveness effect, which can partly, but not only be ascribed to beauty’s productivity enhancing influence. Thereby, independently from the raters’ sex, female teachers profit from their looks. In contrast to that attractive male teachers are even sanctioned more strongly by their students for difficult tests than unattractive teachers. The frog-pond-hypothesis cannot empirically be supported: the attractiveness of teachers’ colleagues has no influence on the attractiveness effect. However, reciprocal evaluation behavior can consistently be found in the theoretical expected manner. It is substantially more relevant for students’ evaluations of teaching than attractiveness effects are. Alternative explanations for this grading effect can be excluded.     

Beauty Work: Individual and Institutional Rewards, the Reproduction of Gender, and Questions of Agency

Physical attractiveness is associated with a number of positive outcomes, including employment benefits such as hiring, wages, and promotion, and is correlated with social and personal rewards such as work satisfaction, positive perceptions of others, and higher self-esteem. As a result, individuals perform various forms of beauty work, thus reproducing and strengthening a social system that privileges youth and attractiveness. In this article, we explore the beauty work practices that people perform. We begin with an examination of the cultural context in which beauty work occurs, including the individual, social, and institutional rewards accompanying physical attractiveness, and then review the practices themselves. Because these rewards and practices contribute in part to the reproduction of social relations and norms, we then turn to the gender dimensions of beauty work, along with its unique racial embodiment. Throughout, we raise the issue of individual agency in beauty work. Finally, we conclude with suggestions for future research.     

Beautiful stereotypes: the relationship between physical attractiveness and mixed race identity

The idea that mixed race individuals are physically attractive is a commonly accepted stereotype. Past research in which whites (Australians and British) and Asians (Japanese) were asked to rate the attractiveness of a racially heterogeneous group of faces has shown that mixed race phenotype was judged the most attractive. In this study, I examine whether there is empirical evidence for this Biracial Beauty Stereotype in the United States. Using the data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Adolescent Health, I examine self and interview ratings of respondents' physical attractiveness and, in an extension of the previous literature, conduct multinomial logistic regressions to ascertain whether level of attractiveness is associated with different racial identification choices for mixed race individuals. My results indicate that there is in fact a belief in mixed race individuals' superior beauty in America; but, with regard to identity, beauty is not associated with identity for all mixed race groups.     

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.     

Symmetry in Motion: Perception of Attractiveness Changes with Facial Movement

Facial symmetry is an index of developmental stability and shows a positive correlation with attractiveness assessment. However, the appearance of one’s facial symmetry is not always static and may change when there is facial movement while a person is speaking. This study examined whether viewing a dynamic image of a person speaking (where facial symmetry may alter) would elicit a different perception of attractiveness than viewing a static image of that person as a still photo. We examined changes in both measured and perceived facial symmetry in relation to attractiveness perception. We found that when facial movements created an appearance of overall greater facial symmetry while a person was speaking in a video, the person was rated as being more attractive than as a still photo. Likewise, those with facial movements measured and perceived as less symmetrical while speaking were rated as less attractive in a video clip than still photo. By examining the perception of faces in motion as we typically encounter others in real life rather than considering only static photos, we have extended the ecological validity of the study of the perception of bilateral symmetry in humans as it relates to attractiveness.     

Mating strategies of young women: role of physical attractiveness

The female physical attractiveness stereotype has been reported to contain both desirable (sociable, poised, interesting) and undesirable (snobbish, likely to request divorce and have extra-marital affairs) personal qualities. To investigate whether such an attractiveness stereotype is cross-cultural, I asked men and women from Azore Island, Guinea-Bissau, Indonesia, and the U.S. to judge the attractiveness of female figures differing in body weight and waist-to-hip ratio (WHR) and to rank these figures according to perceived personal attributes. There was a strong cross-cultural consensus for attractiveness; figures with low WHR were judged to be more attractive than figures with high WHR within each weight category. Participants also judged attractive figures as less faithful than less-attractive figures. To explore the basis of a possible 'darker side ' of the attractiveness stereotype, behavior tactics of young U.S. women were examined. Compared to women with high WHRs, low-WHR women reported engaging in more flirting to make dates jealous, suggesting some truth to the attractiveness stereotype. Taken together, these findings suggest that female attractiveness influences the type of mating strategies employed by women.     

Relational message interpretations of touch,conversational distance,and posture

According to a social meaning model of nonverbal communication, many nonverbal behaviors have consensually recognized meanings. Two field experiments examined this presumption by investigating the relational message interpretations assigned to differing levels and types of touch, proximity, and posture. Also examined were the possible moderating effects of the communicator characteristics of gender and attractiveness and relationship characteristics of gender composition and status differentials. Results showed that touching typically conveyed more composure, immediacy, receptivity/trust, affection, similarity/depth/equality, dominance, and informality than its absence. The form of touch also mattered, with handholding and face touching expressing the most intimacy, composure, and informality; handholding and the handshake expressing the least dominance, and the handshake conveying the most formality but also receptivity/trust. Postural openness/relaxation paralleled touch in conveying greater intimacy, composure, informality, and similarity but was also less dominant than a closed/tense posture. Close proximity was also more immediate and similar but dominant. Proximity and postural openness together produced differential interpretations of composure, similarity, and affection. Gender initiator attractiveness was more influential than status in moderating interpretations.An earlier version of this paper was presented to the Interpersonal Communication Interest Group, Western States Communication Association convention, Phoenix, Arizona, February 1991. The author wishes to thank Leesa Dillman for her assistance on that version.     

Investigating the Task Dependency of Viewing Time Effects

The viewing time method (VT) is an indirect measure of sexual interest in which participants are usually asked to rate the sexual attractiveness of target stimuli while their response latencies are unobtrusively measured. Higher response latencies for a certain group of depicted individuals indicate sexual interest in that group. Contrary to the general assumption that the picture content accounts for this effect by eliciting affect- or attention-based response delays, we hypothesized that the attractiveness rating task might be responsible for the VT effect. To test this hypothesis, we used two different tasks. Our heterosexual and homosexual male participants (N = 50) were instructed to rate the attractiveness or the sex of the depicted individuals. As expected, VT effects only emerged in attractiveness rating trials. Based on these findings, we conclude that VT effects are task dependent and are unlikely to be caused by affective or attentional processes (at least when participants are instructed to rate the attractiveness of target stimuli). We argue that rating tasks in VT measures cause participants to use affect independent response strategies. These response strategies seem to undermine stimulus-driven processes (like increased attention directed toward salient stimuli) which were thought to cause VT effects according to previous hypotheses.     

Refugees: On the Economics of Political Migration

Unless literally forced to leave, prospective refugees have a choice between staying and flight, subject to constraints, particularly the willingness of a country to grant asylum. Although all options may be unpleasant, they nonetheless represent alternatives amenable to economic analysis. The incentive to flee is a function of threat severity and credibility, and the attractiveness of available safe havens. The theoretical analysis suggests that restrictive asylum policies have little impact on demand for asylum, except in the interplay with other factors, such as costs of flight and retribution against unsuccessful refugees. While the case of bogus refugees has received much attention in the popular literature, this article shows that threatened individuals may choose emigration instead of flight if there are repercussions associated with refugee status. The article also analyzes the case of bogus refugees.     

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.     

Social status and personality traits

We provide direct evidence on the relationship between social status and personality traits. Using survey data from the 2006–2012 waves of the US Health and Retirement Study, we show that self-perceived social status is associated with all the “Big Five” personality traits, after controlling for observable characteristics that arguably reflect one’s actual status. We also construct an objective status measure that in turn is associated with personality traits. Objectively measured status is positively but not highly correlated with its subjective counterpart. When incorporated in a regression specification, it still leaves room for significant correlations between personality traits and status perception: traits such as openness, conscientiousness and extraversion predict a higher self-positioning on the social ladder, while agreeableness and neuroticism predict a lower one.     

Race,Gender, and Social Exchange in Young Adult Unions

Abstract

Social scientists often conceptualize romantic partner selection as an asymmetric exchange in which partners of different race or gender offer different desired qualities. For example, white women might leverage racial status into upward mobility by marrying socioeconomically advantaged minority men, or minority women might exchange beauty, sexual access, and domestic services for white men’s higher racial status and income. However, such approaches frequently assume gender and race asymmetry in preferences—for example, that men attach greater value to potential partners’ physical attractiveness than women do. These assumptions may be unwarranted, especially among contemporary young couples. In turn, assuming asymmetry in exchange can generate misleading results if partnering patterns are actually symmetric. Accordingly, we use data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Add Health), including a supplementary sample of romantic partners, to reconsider recent findings with an emphasis on evaluating (a)symmetry.     

The attractive voice: What makes it so?

Previous research has shown that more attractive voices are associated with more favorable personality impressions. The present study examined which acoustic characteristics make a voice attractive. Segments of recorded voices were rated on various dimensions of voice quality, attractiveness, and personality impressions. Objective measures of voice quality were obtained from spectrogram analysis. Overall, the subjective ratings of voice quality predicted vocal attractiveness better than the objective measures. When vocal attractiveness was regressed onto both subjective and objective measures, the final regression equation included 8 subjective measures, which together accounted for 74% of the variance of the attractiveness scores. It also was found that the measures of voice quality accounted for variance in favorableness of personality impressions above and beyond the contribution of vocal attractiveness. Thus, attractiveness captures an important dimension of the voice but does not cover all aspects of voice quality.This research was supported by National Institute of Mental Health Grant MH40498.     

Emotional Expressivity and Trustworthiness: The Role of Nonverbal Behavior in the Evolution of Cooperation

Previous research has found that high emotional expressivity contributes to interpersonal attraction independently of and on par with the contributions of physical attractiveness. Using an evolutionary perspective, we argue that emotional expressivity can act as a marker for cooperative behavior or trustworthiness. Theoretical and empirical work from social dilemma research pointing to the advantages of having a signal for cooperation is considered, as well as research from the limited number of studies that have looked at expressive behavior within a social exchange context. We also argue that we need to inject nonverbal emotional behavior into the social dilemma paradigm, which has downplayed or ignored its role in the communication processes associated with cooperation. Finally, we offer an outline for testing our theory and expanding the role of nonverbal emotional processes within research on cooperation and social exchange.