جذابیت فیزیکی زنان و استراتژی های کوتاه مدت جفت یابی
کد مقاله | سال انتشار | تعداد صفحات مقاله انگلیسی |
---|---|---|
35781 | 2013 | 6 صفحه PDF |
Publisher : Elsevier - Science Direct (الزویر - ساینس دایرکت)
Journal : Personality and Individual Differences, Volume 54, Issue 4, March 2013, Pages 490–495
چکیده انگلیسی
The current study examined the relationship between women’s physical attractiveness – as rated by themselves and a set of third-party raters – and their mating strategy and sexual experience. Male (N = 105) and female (N = 113) undergraduates rated the attractiveness of face and body photographs of 93 female undergraduates. Attractiveness ratings – particularly bodily attractiveness ratings – were significantly related to women’s mating psychology and behavior. More attractive women reported more sexual experience and a less restricted sociosexual orientation. In addition, some traits better predicted women’s perception of their overall attractiveness, and this pattern was further linked to mating strategy: more sociosexually unrestricted women showed a stronger relationship between bodily traits (i.e., body mass index) and overall attractiveness than less sociosexually unrestricted women. Discussion focuses on the findings that a woman’s mating strategy is linked to both her self-perceived and objective measures of attractiveness, particularly bodily attractiveness.
مقدمه انگلیسی
The ubiquity of the “what is beautiful is good” stereotype (Dion, Berscheid, & Walster, 1972) implies that, in addition to attractive women wanting it all (Buss & Shackelford, 2008), attractive women may in fact get it all (e.g., Benson et al., 1976, Luxen and Van de Vijver, 2006 and Udry and Eckland, 1984). But what women want, particularly in the mating domain, is complex. No single goal or strategy is preferred by all women or by the same women at different points in time. Although women, on average, have a stronger preference for long-term mating relationships than men, much variability exists within women about the degree to which they pursue short-term and long-term mateships ( Buss and Schmitt, 1993, Gangestad and Simpson, 2000 and Greiling and Buss, 2000). The current study focused on one variable that was predicted to influence women’s mating strategies – physical attractiveness. Attractiveness is a key predictor of romantic interest and affiliation. Studies consistently document the importance of physical attractiveness in predicting romantic pairings (Asendorpf et al., 2011, Curran and Lippold, 1975 and Luo and Zhang, 2009). And although physical attractiveness is important to both men and women, men across cultures prioritize beauty more in potential mates (Buss, 1989), as men place greater value on traits that reliably predicted youth, health, and fertility throughout human ancestral history (e.g., Sugiyama, 2005 and Symons, 1979). Consequently, a woman’s physical attractiveness is a key component of her overall mate value (Buss, 1994 and Symons, 1979). Women’s faces and bodies simultaneously showcase traits correlated with youth, health, and fertility. Faces can reveal youth via round cheeks, large eyes, and narrow jaws (Cunningham, 1986), health via clear skin and facial symmetry (Rhodes, 2006 and Symons, 1979), and fertility via estrogen-dependent features, such as full lips, small lower face, and a soft brow ridge (Cunningham, 1986 and Rhodes, 2006). Likewise, bodies can reveal youth, health, and fertility through cues such as fluid movement patterns, a rapid gait, body mass index (BMI; Montepare and Zebrowitz-McArthur, 1988 and Symons, 1979), and a low waist-to-hip ratio (WHR; Jasienska et al., 2004, Singh, 1993 and Zaadstra et al., 1993). WHR may even track fertility changes across the menstrual cycle (Kirchengast & Gartner, 2002) and is a key physical trait that can indicate pregnancy, a crucial predictor of a woman’s immediate fertility status. Although there is dispute regarding the relative importance of WHR and BMI to a woman’s physical attractiveness (Singh, 1994 and Swami and Tovée, 2007), WHR may be especially relevant to judgments of fertility and BMI to judgments of health. Thus, both features appear to contribute in distinct ways to overall bodily attractiveness. Although women’s faces and bodies contain overlapping information related to youth, health, and fertility, they differ in their predictive power of each trait. For example, men prioritize bodily information relatively more when making decisions about short-term mating, a context in which immediate fertility is especially important, compared to long-term mating, a context in which cues to reproductive value are especially important (Confer et al., 2010, Currie and Little, 2009 and Lu and Chang, 2012). Although the face communicates much reproductively-relevant information, the body may more effectively communicate information about a woman’s immediate fertility status. Thus, the relative richness of information provided by the face and body may differentially impact men’s short-term and long-term mating decisions. If so, women’s mating psychology may have co-evolved to take men’s preferences into account when assessing their own attractiveness as a long-term or short-term mate. Mating strategies range temporally from short-term (e.g., brief sexual encounters) to long-term (e.g., committed enduring romantic relationships) and can be mixed (Simpson & Gangestad, 1991). Women tend toward a more long-term orientation than men (Buss & Schmitt, 1993) and maintain high standards for mate choice in both short-term and long-term mating contexts, whereas men show lower standards for mate choice in short-term contexts (Kenrick, Sadalla, Groth, & Trost, 1990). Within this overall pattern, however, there are individual differences and conditional adjustments, such as those based on opportunity and quality of available mates (Greiling & Buss, 2000). Women’s decision-making mechanisms are predicted to incorporate information about their own attractiveness in estimates of expected mating interest from men, thereby influencing her pursuit of short-term and long-term mateships. The current study explored the relationship between women’s physical attractiveness and mating strategy. Historically, very beautiful women would have been successful at attracting mates for both short-term and long-term mating, but may have more efficiently increased their reproductive success by prioritizing long-term mating relationships with high quality mates (Buss & Schmitt, 1993). Given the evidence that women’s faces and bodies track slightly different sets of information about reproductive value and fertility, women’s decision-making mechanisms may incorporate the relative levels of their facial and bodily attractiveness to conditionally bias behavior toward the mating strategy that was recurrently more effective (in terms of reproductive success) for that constellation of attractiveness cues. We explored several questions: (1) Are women’s facial, bodily, and overall attractiveness related to particular mating strategies? (2) Do women who perceive themselves as more physically attractive expect more sexual interest from men? (3) Do women with more attractive bodies report greater success in short-term mating? (4) Within women’s bodily attractiveness, what is the relative importance of BMI and WHR to overall attractiveness and mating strategy?