Hot or Not
Beauty and Status: The Illusion of Exchange in Partner Selection?
Elizabeth Aura McClintock
American Sociological Review, forthcoming
Abstract:
Scholars have long been interested in exchange and matching (assortative mating) in romantic partner selection. But many analyses of exchange, particularly those that examine beauty and socioeconomic status, fail to control for partners' tendency to match each other on these traits. Because desirable traits in mates are positively correlated between partners and within individuals, ignoring matching may exaggerate evidence of cross-trait beauty-status exchange. Moreover, many prior analyses assume a gendered exchange in which women trade beauty for men's status, without testing whether men might use handsomeness to attract higher-status women. Nor have prior analyses fully investigated how the prevalence of beauty-status exchange varies between different types of couples. I use data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health Romantic Pair Sample, a large (N = 1,507), nationally representative probability sample of dating, cohabiting, and married couples, to investigate how often romantic partners exchange physical attractiveness and socioeconomic status, net of matching on these traits. I find that controlling for matching eliminates nearly all evidence of beauty-status exchange. The discussion focuses on the contexts in which beauty-status exchange is most likely and on implications these results have for market-based and sociobiological theories of partner selection.
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Attraction to attachment insecurity: Flattery, appearance, and status's role in mate preferences
Claudia Chloe Brumbaugh, Alison Baren & Peryl Agishtein
Personal Relationships, June 2014, Pages 288-308
Abstract:
Research has shown that people select securely attached individuals as their first choice when asked to choose among secure or insecure partner prototypes. Despite this pattern, not everyone chooses a secure partner in real life. The goal of the reported studies was to examine factors that lead people to select insecure mates. Specifically, the roles of flattery, appearance, and status were assessed. In the first study, we found that flattery increased attraction to insecure partners. Study 2 showed that men preferred physical beauty over security. In Study 3, anxious women were attracted to high-status insecure men. These findings help explain why people may sometimes end up with insecure partners despite their professed preference for secure companions.
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The sweetness of forbidden fruit: Interracial daters are more attractive than intraracial daters
Karen Wu, Chuansheng Chen & Ellen Greenberger
Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, forthcoming
Abstract:
Past research on interracial dating has focused on demographic and adjustment factors while ignoring the traits most valued in romantic partners. We examined whether interracial and intraracial daters differ in the extent to which they possess various desirable attributes. In Study 1, undergraduates estimated their partners' ratings of them on 27 attributes. A factor analysis yielded attractiveness (e.g., physically attractive), cerebral (e.g., intelligent), relational (e.g., compassionate), and vibrancy (e.g., confident) attributes. Compared with intraracial daters, interracial daters reported that their partners saw them more positively on attractiveness, cerebral, and relational attributes (Study 1), rated their partners more positively on attractiveness and cerebral attributes (Study 2), and were rated by independent coders as more physically attractive (Study 3). Implications are discussed.
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Narcissism & Internet Pornography Use
Thomas Edward Kasper, Mary Beth Short & Alex Clinton Milam
Journal of Sex & Marital Therapy, forthcoming
Abstract:
This study examined the relationship between Internet pornography use and Narcissism. Participants (N = 257) completed an online survey that included questions on Internet pornography use and three narcissism measures (i.e., Narcissistic Personality Inventory, Pathological Narcissistic Inventory, and the Index of Sexual Narcissism). The hours spent viewing Internet pornography use was positively correlated to participant's narcissism level. Additionally, those who have ever used Internet pornography endorsed higher levels of all three measures of narcissism than those who have never used Internet pornography.
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Sex differences in the attractiveness of hunter-gatherer and modern risks
John Petraitis et al.
Journal of Applied Social Psychology, June 2014, Pages 442-453
Abstract:
When compared with other demographics, young males are more likely to take a variety of risks (like skateboarding, using drugs) and use risky behaviors to attract romantic partners. This study extended research on risk by assessing the attractiveness of 101 different kinds of risks performed by males and females. As predicted, factor analysis revealed that the attractiveness of diverse risks clustered around two major dimensions: risks like those faced by hunter-gatherer humans (e.g., handling fire and dangerous animals) and risks that are uniquely modern (e.g., driving without seat belts). Additionally, results confirmed that modern risks were rated as unattractive for both sexes, whereas hunter-gatherer risks were rated as especially attractive when performed by males. Discussion focuses on cultural and evolutionary explanations for the link between risk and attractiveness.
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Who Benefits From Casual Sex? The Moderating Role of Sociosexuality
Zhana Vrangalova & Anthony Ong
Social Psychological and Personality Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
Casual sex has become a normative experience among young people, raising concerns regarding its well-being consequences. Prior findings on main effects of casual sex on well-being are mixed, suggesting possible moderating factors. Using longitudinal and weekly diary methodologies, this study examined the moderating influence of sociosexuality, a stable personality orientation toward casual sex, on psychological well-being (self-esteem, life satisfaction, depression, and anxiety) following penetrative (oral, vaginal, or anal) casual sex among single undergraduates. As predicted, sociosexuality moderated the effect of casual sex on well-being on a weekly basis across 12 consecutive weeks, over one semester, and over one academic year. Sociosexually unrestricted students typically reported higher well-being after having casual sex compared to not having casual sex; there were no such differences among restricted individuals. Few gender differences were found. Findings are discussed in terms of authenticity in one's sexual behaviors.
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Body symmetry and physical strength in human males
Bernhard Fink et al.
American Journal of Human Biology, forthcoming
Objectives: Body symmetry and physical strength in males have been related to aspects of mate "quality" - women seem to prefer men who display both "good genes" (as indexed by high symmetry/developmental health) and fighting ability (as indexed by physical strength). Here we show that fluctuating asymmetry (FA) of the body and physical strength are negatively correlated.
Methods: Body FA (from 12 paired traits) and handgrip strength (HGS; a measure of muscular power and force) were measured in a sample of 69 heterosexual, right-handed men (18-42 years).
Results: There were positive correlations of body symmetry with HGS after controlling for the effect of body-mass-index.
Conclusions: We conclude that in males, body symmetry and physical strength are correlated such that symmetric individuals tend to develop higher strength, which may contribute to their success in inter- and intra-sexual selection.
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Opportunities to Meet: Occupational Education and Marriage Formation in Young Adulthood
David McClendon, Janet Chen-Lan Kuo & Kelly Raley
Demography, forthcoming
Abstract:
Explanations for the positive association between education and marriage in the United States emphasize the economic and cultural attractiveness of having a college degree in the marriage market. However, educational attainment may also shape the opportunities that men and women have to meet other college-educated partners, particularly in contexts with significant educational stratification. We focus on work - and the social ties that it supports - and consider whether the educational composition of occupations is important for marriage formation during young adulthood. Employing discrete-time event-history methods using the NLSY-97, we find that occupational education is positively associated with transitioning to first marriage and with marrying a college-educated partner for women but not for men. Moreover, occupational education is positively associated with marriage over cohabitation as a first union for women. Our findings call attention to an unexplored, indirect link between education and marriage that, we argue, offers insight into why college-educated women in the United States enjoy better marriage prospects.
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Joseph Nedelec & Kevin Beaver
Evolution and Human Behavior, forthcoming
Abstract:
Evolutionary explanations regarding the differential preference for particular traits hold that preferences arose due to traits' association with increased potential for reproductive fitness. Assessments of physical attractiveness have been shown to be related to perceived and measured levels of health, an important fitness-related trait. Despite the robust association between physical attractiveness and health observed in the extant literature, a number of theoretical and methodological concerns remain. Specifically, the research in this area possesses a lack of specificity in terms of measures of health, a reliance on artificial social interactions in assessing physical attractiveness, a relatively infrequent use of non-student samples, and has left unaddressed the confounding effects of raters of attractiveness. Using these concerns as a springboard, the current study employed data from the National Longitudinal Study for Adolescent Health (N ? 15,000; aged 25 to 34 years) to assess the relationship between physical attractiveness and various specific and overall measures of health. Logistic and OLS regression models illustrated a robust association between physical attractiveness and various measures of health, controlling for a variety of confounding factors. In sum, the more attractive a respondent was rated, the less likely he or she was to report being diagnosed with a wide range of chronic diseases and neuropsychological disorders. Importantly, this finding was observed for both sexes. These analyses provide further support for physical attractiveness as a phenotypic marker of health. The findings are discussed in reference to evolutionary theory and the limitations of the study and future research suggestions are also addressed.
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Michal Kandrik et al.
Archives of Sexual Behavior, July 2014, Pages 965-971
Abstract:
Previous research suggests that people's perceptions of own-sex individuals can change according to within-individual variation in their romantic partners' sexual strategies. For example, men are more likely to perceive other men's faces as looking particularly dominant during the fertile phase of their partner's menstrual cycle, when women tend to be more open to uncommitted sexual relationships. By contrast, little is known about how relatively stable between-individuals differences in partners' openness to uncommitted sexual relationships (i.e., their sociosexual orientation) predict perceptions of own-sex individuals. The revised Sociosexual Orientation Inventory (SOI-R) assesses individuals' openness to uncommitted sexual relationships and shows high test-retest reliability over long periods of time. Consequently, we tested whether the SOI-R scores of men and women in heterosexual romantic couples predicted their perceptions of own-sex faces displaying exaggerated sex-typical cues. Men's, but not women's, SOI-R was positively correlated with the extent to which both the man and woman within a couple ascribed high dominance and attractiveness to own-sex faces with exaggerated sex-typical cues. In other words, individuals in couples where the man reported being particularly open to uncommitted sexual relationships were more likely to ascribe dominance and attractiveness to own-sex individuals displaying a putative cue of good phenotypic condition. These findings suggest that both men's and women's perceptions of potential competitors for mates are sensitive to the male partner's sexual strategy. Such individual differences in perceptions may benefit men's ability to compete for extra-pair and/or replacement mates and benefit women's mate guarding behaviors.