بیشتر از عمق پوست؟ بررسی آزمایشی یکپارچه سازی عوامل فیزیکی و غیر فیزیکی در درک جذابیت فیزیکی

The perceived beauty of a potential partner has traditionally been explained in terms of physical characteristics such as body weight and the waist-to-hip ratio (WHR), while non-physical characteristics have been neglected. This study looked at the contribution of body weight, WHR and personality to ratings of overall female attractiveness. Seventy-six participants rated 30 line drawings that varied 2 levels of personality (introverted, extraverted), 3 levels of body weight and 5 of WHR. Effect sizes were largest for body weight (0.58), followed by personality (0.25) and finally WHR (0.10). There were significant interactions between all three variables, with effect sizes ranging between (0.3 and 0.4). These results highlight the importance of examining non-physical characteristics when studying perceptions of human beauty, a finding consistent with the notion that beauty is more than just skin-deep.

The topic of human beauty continues to be one that attracts considerable debate and controversy both within psychological and popular circles (e.g., Swami, in press and Swami and Furnham, 2006). In the past decade, a productive field of research has examined perceptions of male and female bodily attractiveness (e.g., Singh, 1993, Tovée, Maisey, et al., 1998, Tovée, Hancock, et al., 2002 and Wilson et al., 2005), with some recent studies taking a cross-cultural perspective (e.g., Sugiyama, 2004, Swami and Tovée, 2005a, Swami, Antonakopoulos, et al., 2006 and Swami, Caprario, et al., 2006). These studies have typically examined the relative contribution of body shape and weight measures to ratings of female physical attractiveness. In one of the earliest studies of physical attractiveness, Singh (1993) argued that the waist-to-hip ratio (WHR), a measure of body shape, is a better predictor of female attractiveness judgements than overall body weight. He presented evidence showing that a low WHR is associated with higher levels of fertility, and went on to argue that the WHR acts a first-pass filter, excluding women who are unhealthy or have low reproductive capability. Evidence for this has been reported in a number of countries using line-drawn stimuli developed by Singh (e.g., Furnham, Tan, & McManus, 1997). However, some investigators have argued that such findings are an artefact of the experimental design. The line drawings and photographic stimuli used in these studies appeared to confound body weight and shape measures. When researchers have investigated the relative importance of body shape and weight (the latter quantified as the body mass index, or BMI) using photographs of real women (e.g., Puhl and Boland, 2001, Tovée, Maisey, et al., 1998, Tovée, Hancock, et al., 2002 and Tovée and Cornelissen, 2001) and three-dimensional images (Fan, Liu, Wu, & Dai, 2004), variation in BMI appears to be the greater predictor of female attractiveness than WHR. These effects cannot simply be explained by the stimuli not adequately capturing shape cues, as when pictures of men are used in the same format, attractiveness is typically determined by shape cues rather than BMI (Maisey et al., 1999 and Swami and Tovée, 2005b), thus demonstrating that shape cues are salient in this format. These results also hold when cross-cultural data sets are examined (e.g., Swami and Tovée, 2005a, Swami, Antonakopoulos, et al., 2006 and Swami, Caprario, et al., 2006), and psychosocial explanations for these have been postulated (e.g., Swami & Tovée, 2006). Of course, the relative ranges of BMI and WHR in these studies are unequal, and the WHR seems to be a more important predictor of attractiveness within a normal or average BMI range (cf. Streeter and McBurney, 2003 and Wilson et al., 2005). More recent conceptualisations of the WHR hypothesis of attractiveness have also shifted away from the notion of it being a first-pass filter (e.g., Marlowe and Wetsman, 2001 and Marlowe et al., 2005). Sugiyama (2004), for example, has presented evidence of a male preference for WHRs lower-than-the-local-female-average WHR, which takes into account the effect of parasitic loads and nutrition in increasing or decreasing local WHRs ranges. Within this paradigm, the WHR is one of several factors influencing physical attractiveness, with such factors as body weight, skin colour and facial attractiveness all also playing major roles. The theoretical background behind most such studies stems from the evolutionary psychological idea that human physical attractiveness should be seen as an assessment of fitness value, indexed by such factors as fecundity or health (Buss, 1994 and Buss, 1999). Within this view, the most fitness-enhancing trait (for example, a curvaceous female body) is perceived as the most attractive and individuals are drawn to what is regarded as most attractive by definition. Typically, however, researchers have assumed that the assessment of physical attractiveness will be based on purely physical traits, to the exclusion of non-physical factors. When non-physical factors are considered within the evolutionary psychological paradigm, it is usually as an epiphenomenon of physical characteristics. That is, individuals may be attracted to others because of physical attributes (a slender body weight or a curvaceous body shape), with non-physical virtues merely enhancing desirability as a secondary consideration. Kniffin and Wilson (2004), however, have argued that a more rounded evolutionary psychology should allow for assessments of physical attractiveness to be based on overall fitness value, including non-physical traits. Indeed, a large body of social psychological research has emphasised the influence of non-physical characteristics on judgements of physical attractiveness (e.g., Feingold, 1992, Felson and Bohrenstedt, 1979, Gross and Crofton, 1977 and Nisbett and Wilson, 1977). More recent studies inspired by evolutionary psychology show that social status ( Townsend & Levy, 1990) and prosocial orientation ( Jensen-Campbell, Graziano, & West, 1995) enhance perceptions of physical attractiveness. In their study, Kniffin and Wilson (2004) also demonstrated that non-physical factors have a very potent effect in the perception of physical attractiveness. In general, women were more strongly influenced by non-physical factors than men and there were also large individual differences within each gender. These studies highlight the importance of examining non-physical factors in research questions (Kniffin & Wilson, 2004). To this end, we designed a simple experimental study to compare the relative effects of body weight, WHR and personality, the latter acting as a basic non-physical attribute. The study used a selection of modified line drawings reported in Furnham, Swami, and Shah (2006), with the final set combining three body weight categories, five WHR levels, and two levels of personality. This manipulation allowed us to investigate the contribution of a target’s personality on judgements of physical attractiveness.