Beauty Isn’t In the Eye of the Beholder
A fascinating little piece of research from the British Psychological Society showing a difference in the way that men and women judge the looks of the opposite sex. As when we looked at sex itself I’d love to know whether our EQSQ personality tests could help to explain this in more detail.
The basic finding was that you get different results when asking the question “hot or not” depending upon whether the picture shows someone else as well, and the expression on their face. So, show a picture of a man to a woman and you’ll get one result. Show the same picture, but with the addition of another woman smiling at it and it is rated as more attractive by women. If the second woman’s expression is neutral it is rated as less attractive. Take the same pictures and show them to men and you get the opposite results. If a woman is smiling at the man then men will rate that man as less attractive.
To be honest I don’t think this really does have anything to do with our personality tests. This is more about sexual competition, something which is determined at a far more basic level of our brains than the differences between the “male” and “female” brain types that we discuss. This isn’t, I think, about systemizing or empathy, but about competition for mates, something determined by quite another part of our brains.
January 29th, 2007 at 8:25 am
I’d like to see more research done here, as it seems pretty unlikely that guys would not be as susceptible as women in judging another’s looks based on the reactions of others’. Also, it seems as if there would be a difference in the responses between age groups. Younger (traditional college-aged and younger) seem more inclined to wanting a significant other (either long-term or short-term) who will be viewed as “hot” by their friends. And don’t you think men here would be more so inclined this way?
Anyway, I thought all the research pointed to symmetry being the overall ‘best’ judge of looks.
February 1st, 2007 at 10:03 pm
I have a feeling that the intelligence to be gained from this is not that men or women are more or less likely to be influenced by the reactions of others. Rather, that the reaction itself is different, although the incidence of the reaction is similar. So when women see a man being admired by another woman they rate him as more attractive. Yet when a man sees a man being admired by a woman, he rates him as less attractive. All about sexual jealousy and competetiveness, I’m sure.
You’re certainly right about the research on symmetry: until just a few weeks ago that was the intelligence I had been receiving as well. There has just recently been an upsurge in an argument I don’t really understand, that it’s more about deviation from averages: I’ll post more on it when I’ve got my head around the new information.