We propose that physical attractiveness determines whether heterosexual men desire or dismiss romance with high-status women. We tested this ambivalent attraction hypothesis in three increasingly realistic experiments – one involving a hypothetical social interaction (N = 214) and two involving potential and actual interactions with confederates (Ns = 332 and 181). In each experiment, heterosexual men encountered a moderately-attractive or highly-attractive woman who aspired to (or held) a low-status or high-status job. Then they rated their attraction to the woman (Experiments 1 to 3) and were given the opportunity to initiate additional social contact with the woman (Experiments 2 and 3). As predicted, a meta-analysis across all three experiments revealed that higher (vs. lower) status decreased men's attraction to moderately-attractive women (d = -0.20), whereas higher (vs. lower) status increased men's attraction to highly-attractive women (d = 0.47). Women did not exhibit this pattern of reactions to either women or men. These results demonstrate the importance of ecological validity and interactive effects in attraction research.
proxybride on January 1st, 2020 at 20:06 UTC »
So basically if a moderately attractive woman has a high paying job, she is less attractive to men than a moderately attractive woman with a low paying job? And a woman with a high paying job who is highly attractive is seen as more attractive than a moderately attractive woman with a high paying job? What is the purpose of this study? What is one to do with these results?
itsgeemarie02 on January 1st, 2020 at 16:18 UTC »
Not sure if this has been asked yet, but how did they quantify the “attractiveness”? Was it a culmination of multiple opinions of the scientists? Was it the level of symmetry that could be found in their faces? The number of times the golden ratio could be found?
I couldn’t find it in the abstract and I wasn’t going to pay for access...
Edit: I’m referring to how they identified individuals to belong to the two groups of “moderately attractive” and “highly attractive”
impinanotheraccount on January 1st, 2020 at 12:38 UTC »
A Diamond is Forever’ and Other Fairy Tales: The Relationship between Wedding Expenses and Marriage Duration
Is some nice additional insight into this perspective.