bims-chumac 2021-05-23 papers

Issue of 2021–05–23
six papers selected by
Thomas Krichel, Open Library Society

Adapt Human Behav Physiol. 2021 May 13. 1-20

Courtney L Crosby, Patrick K Durkee, Anna G B Sedlacek, David M Buss.

Objective: One of the factors that sexual disgust should be calibrated to is the size of the mating pool. This study tested this hypothesis by examining whether perceptions of mate availability explain variance in levels of sexual disgust towards potential mates.
Methods: Participants (N = 853; 373 women) rated how sexually disgusting they found 60 potential mates that have previously been rated on attractiveness by a separate group of raters. We also measured participants' perceptions of mate availability in their local environment, self-perceived attractiveness and mate value, and relevant control variables.
Results: Multilevel models revealed a negative association between sexual disgust towards potential mates and perceived mate availability-the opposite of what we predicted. We found support for our prediction that women had higher levels of sexual disgust than men, but only after addressing the confounding sex difference in target attractiveness. We also found the predicted negative association between target attractiveness and sexual disgust. Finally, as predicted, sexual disgust levels were more strongly related to potential mates' attractiveness in individuals who perceived there to be many available mates in their local environment.
Conclusions: These findings generally bolster functional accounts of sexual disgust while highlighting the need for more evidence to ascertain the role of mate availability in the calibration of sexual disgust. Specifically, future research should examine the extent to which disgust levels may truncate mental representations of the mating pool instead of being calibrated by them.

Keywords: Attractiveness; Evolution; Mate availability; Mating; Sexual disgust

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40750-021-00168-2

Acta Psychol (Amst). 2021 May 14. pii: S0001-6918(21)00081-0. [Epub ahead of print]217 103331

Replicating and reversing the group attractiveness effect: Relatively unattractive groups are perceived as less attractive than the average attractiveness of their members.

Yvette van Osch, Willem W A Sleegers.

The group attractiveness (GA) effect reveals that groups as a whole are perceived as more attractive than the average attractiveness of their members. This effect seems to be driven by selective attention to the most attractive members of a group. We hypothesized that when group members stand out because of their unattractiveness, they would make a group as a whole seem less attractive. In the current study (N = 621), we aimed to replicate the GA-effect as well as reverse it. Indeed, the data replicated a GA effect for relatively attractive groups, while in relatively unattractive groups the group as a whole was perceived as less attractive than the average attractiveness of their members.

Keywords: Cheerleader effect; Group attractiveness effect; Group evaluation; Physical attractiveness; Selective attention; Unattractiveness

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.actpsy.2021.103331

Scand J Psychol. 2021 May 20.

Awareness of societal emphasis on appearance decreases women's (but not men's) career aspiration: A serial mediation model.

Qianying Huang, Fei Teng, Wenjing Yang.

This research examined the association between awareness of societal emphasis on physical appearance and people's career aspiration and the process that linked the two. Specifically, we proposed that perceived societal emphasis on physical attractiveness would decrease women's career aspiration through decreased authenticity and perceived opportunity. A total of 349 college students (227 females) participated in the study. The results revealed that awareness of societal emphasis on physical attractiveness negatively predicted women's authenticity, and authenticity positively predicted perception of opportunity, which in turn predicted their career aspiration. However, this serial mediational model was not found in men. These findings suggest that socially prioritization of attractiveness can undermine women's strive for occupational prospects and add to a better understanding of women's growth and development.

Keywords: Awareness of societal emphasis on appearance; authenticity; career aspiration; perceived opportunity

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/sjop.12740

PLoS One. 2021 ;16(5): e0250151

Sex differences in sexual attraction for aesthetics, resources and personality across age.

Stephen Whyte, Robert C Brooks, Ho Fai Chan, Benno Torgler.

Because sexual attraction is a key driver of human mate choice and reproduction, we descriptively assess relative sex differences in the level of attraction individuals expect in the aesthetic, resource, and personality characteristics of potential mates. As a novelty we explore how male and female sexual attractiveness preference changes across age, using a dataset comprising online survey data for over 7,000 respondents across a broad age distribution of individuals between 18 and 65 years. In general, we find that both males and females show similar distribution patterns in their preference responses, with statistically significant sex differences within most of the traits. On average, females rate age, education, intelligence, income, trust, and emotional connection around 9 to 14 points higher than males on our 0-100 scale range. Our relative importance analysis shows greater male priority for attractiveness and physical build, compared to females, relative to all other traits. Using multiple regression analysis, we find a consistent statistical sex difference (males relative to females) that decreases linearly with age for aesthetics, while the opposite is true for resources and personality, with females exhibiting a stronger relative preference, particularly in the younger aged cohort. Exploring non-linearity in sex difference with contour plots for intelligence and attractiveness across age (mediated by age) indicates that sex differences in attractiveness preferences are driven by the male cohort (particularly age 30 to 40) for those who care about the importance of age, while intelligence is driven by females caring relatively more about intelligence for those who see age as very important (age cohort 40 to 55). Overall, many of our results indicate distinct variations within sex at key life stages, which is consistent with theories of selection pressure. Moreover, results also align with theories of parental investment, the gender similarities hypothesis, and mutual mate choice-which speaks to the fact that the broader discipline of evolutionary mate choice research in humans still contains considerable scope for further inquiry towards a unified theory, particularly when exploring sex-difference across age.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0250151

Perception. 2021 May 18. 3010066211015542

Chinese Aesthetic Mask: Three Forehead and Five Eyes-Holistic Processing and Facial Attractiveness.

Jia Lin, Guomei Zhou.

Human face processing has been attributed to holistic processing. Here, we ask whether humans are sensitive to configural information when perceiving facial attractiveness. By referring to a traditional Chinese aesthetic theory-Three Forehead and Five Eyes-we generated a series of faces that differed in spacing between facial features. We adopted a two-alternative forced-choice task in Experiment 1 and a rating task in Experiment 2 to assess attractiveness. Both tasks showed a consistent result: The faces which fit the Chinese aesthetic theory were chosen or rated as most attractive. This effect of configural information on facial attractiveness was larger for faces with highly attractive features than for faces with low attractive features. These findings provide experimental evidence for the traditional Chinese aesthetic theory. This issue can be further explored from the perspective of culture in the future.

Keywords: Marquardt; Three Forehead and Five Eyes; composite face effect; configural processing; facial attractiveness; golden ratio; holistic processing; inversion effect

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/03010066211015542

Psychol Sex Orientat Gend Divers. 2020 Mar;7(1): 101-112

Exploring the Q in LGBTQ: Demographic characteristic and sexuality of Queer people in a U.S. representative sample of sexual minorities.

Shoshana K Goldberg, Esther D Rothblum, Stephen T Russell, Ilan H Meyer.

Although queer identity has been used among sexual minorities for decades, little is known about the population of queer-identified people in the U.S. We compared people who identify as queer (unweighted n = 88; weighted % = 5.8%) with those who identify as lesbian/gay (n = 833; 46.9%), bisexual (n = 493; 40.6%) or other sexual minority identities (n = 93; 6.7%), in order to describe queer-identified people as a distinct sexual minority group. The study is the first to estimate demographic characteristics and sexuality of queer-identified people using a U.S. nationally representative sample. We found that queer people are overwhelmingly cisgender women and genderqueer/ nonbinary (GQNB), younger, and more highly educated than other groups. After stratifying by gender identity (cisgender women; cisgender men; GQNB), survey-weighted descriptive differences in attraction, sexual partnering, and relationship patterns show that queer individuals are more likely to report attraction to, and sexual relationships with, transgender and GQNB people, though differences by respondent gender identity were noted: The majority of queer women are attracted to and partnered with both women and men, and were more likely than other groups to be attracted to and partnered with cisgender and transgender people. In contrast, queer men are split in their attractions-about half were attracted exclusively to men, and half to men and women-but the majority partnered with men only. Of all groups, queer men are the most likely to partner with transgender men, but none had partnered with transgender women. GQNB people are more likely than cisgender people to identify as queer (25.9%) and are attracted to both cisgender and transgender women and men, yet predominantly partnered with cisgender people. The results provide support for queer as a distinct sexual identity.

Keywords: Gender and sexuality; Generations Study; Queer identity; Sexual identity self-identification; Sexual orientation measurement

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1037/sgd0000359