Original Article
Different impacts of resources on opposite sex ratings of physical attractiveness by males and females

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2017.12.008Get rights and content

Abstract

Parental investment hypotheses regarding mate selection suggest that human males should seek partners featured by youth and high fertility. However, females should be more sensitive to resources that can be invested on themselves and their offspring. Previous studies indicate that economic status is indeed important in male attractiveness. However, no previous study has quantified and compared the impact of equivalent resources on male and female attractiveness. Annual salary is a direct way to evaluate economic status. Here, we combined images of male and female body shape with information on annual salary to elucidate the influence of economic status on the attractiveness ratings by opposite sex raters in American, Chinese and European populations. We found that ratings of attractiveness were around 1000 times more sensitive to salary for females rating males, compared to males rating females. These results indicate that higher economic status can offset lower physical attractiveness in men much more easily than in women. Neither raters' BMI nor age influenced this effect for females rating male attractiveness. This difference explains many features of human mating behavior and may pose a barrier for male engagement in low-consumption lifestyles.

Introduction

Evolution has played a large role in mating behavior and how we view members of the opposite sex, in terms of their potential as reproductive partners (Buss and Schmitt, 1993, Trivers, 1972). Previous studies (Fan et al., 2004, Faries and Bartholomew, 2012, Lassek and Gaulin, 2016, Singh, 1995, Stephen and Perera, 2014, Tovée and Cornelissen, 1999, Tovée and Cornelissen, 2001, Wang et al., 2015) across multiple cultures have shown that males consistently rate as more physically attractive females that display several physical features including lower levels of body adiposity (body fat percentage (BF %), lower body mass index (BMI)) and lower waist-to-hip ratio (WHR). An evolutionary model (Wang et al., 2015) suggested that these trait preferences are likely related to both female age and reproductive potential (fertility and fecundity). Female’ body adiposity is a genuine signal of reproductive fitness that males use to evaluate potential partners (Buss, 1989, Buss, 2015, Schmitt, 2005). Although in males fertility and fecundity are less clearly linked to traits such as body adiposity and age, females are also strongly sensitive to male physical attributes (Mautz et al., 2013, Souza et al., 2016, Swami et al., 2007, Swami and Tovée, 2005). Greater height, lower body adiposity and greater shoulder-to-waist ratio (SWR) or chest-to-waist ratio (CWR), indicating optimal levels of upper body muscularity are consistently rated by females as more physically attractive (Mautz et al., 2013, Souza et al., 2016 ; Swami et al., 2007 ; Swami & Tovée, 2005).

Mate choice theory suggests that because females invest more energy directly into reproduction than males, they should be more sensitive than males to cues indicating the resources possessed by a putative mate (Buss, 1989, Buss, 2015, Eibl-Eibesfeldt, 1989, Hewlett, 1992, Trivers, 1972). Previous studies (Souza et al., 2016, Swami et al., 2007, Swami and Tovée, 2005) have suggested physical attributes of males rated as more attractive by females are not strongly linked to fertility, but may rather indicate the ability to acquire and retain resources in intra-sexual competition. This model predicts that females should also be more sensitive to direct indicators of resources (wealth). Several previous studies (Buss, 2015, Dunn and Hill, 2014, Dunn and Searle, 2010, Shuler and McCord, 2010, Souza et al., 2016) have indicated that females are sensitive to such cues. For example, in Brazil, a stronger preference by females for mates who had good financial prospects was found (Souza et al., 2016). Other studies also demonstrated that social context alters male attractiveness, such as ownership of luxury possessions like expensive cars or apartments (Dunn and Hill, 2014, Dunn and Searle, 2010, Shuler and McCord, 2010). Based on these previous studies, as predicted, male economic status seems likely to play an important role in mate selection. However, no previous study has quantified and compared the magnitude of this economic status effect in both males and females.

Annual income is an effective way to assess economic status, although the resource capacity is a consequence of several contributory factors like good education, ambition or luck (Von Rueden, Gurven, & Kaplan, 2008). Here we used sets of male and female DXA images that varied in their body adiposity and body shape (waist-to-hip and waist-to-shoulder ratios in females and males respectively) to raters of the opposite sex who had to rank the physical attractiveness of the person in the image either excluding or including the annual income of the person in the image. By comparing the rankings we assessed the sensitivity of male and female attractiveness ratings of the opposite sex to resource cues. Differences in the sensitivity to salary cues may have profound effects on human behaviors that are designed to promote attractiveness to the opposite sex. In the discussion, we explore some of these consequences, for example, in the participation rates in cosmetic surgery procedures, the display of conspicuous consumption behaviour and the uptake of low consumption lifestyles.

Section snippets

Images excluding annual income

Both female and male DXA image were provided by University of Texas at Austin. We used a set of 21 female DXA images (Faries and Bartholomew, 2012, Wang et al., 2015) (Fig. S1) that varied in body adiposity and waist-to-hip ratio (WHR) (7 levels of adiposity × 3 levels of WHR) and 15 male images that also varied in body adiposity and shoulder-to-waist ratio (SWR) (5 levels of adiposity × 3 levels of SWR). Both sets of images are in Fig. S1 and exact details of each image can be found in Table S1.

Economic status has a greater impact on ratings of male attractiveness

We used sets of male and female DXA images that varied in their body adiposity and body shape (waist-to-hip and shoulder-to-waist ratios in females and males respectively) (Fig. S1). These images were presented to raters of the opposite sex who had to rank the physical attractiveness of the person in the image. The images were presented either excluding or including the annual income of the person in the image. The assigned salaries were orthogonal to the body adiposity. By comparing the

Discussion

Our study aimed to evaluate whether females are more sensitive to resources when rating male attractiveness than males are when rating females. Using images that were ranked with and without salary information we found females are roughly one thousand times more sensitive to salary when rating males than are males rating females. Our study confirms the evolutionary expectation that females should be more sensitive to resources than males. This difference between the sexes has major impacts on

Ethical statement

The overall study was approved by Institutional Review Board (IRB), Institute of Genetics and Developmental Biology, Chinese Academy of Sciences (IGDB-2013-IRB-005). In addition, local ethical approval was also obtained at UK site from the University of Aberdeen College of Life Science and Medicine Ethical Review Board (CERB/2014/12/1123). All the participants gave oral informed consent before taking part in the study. This work was registered at the open science framework (OSF: DOI //10.17605/OSF.IO/YJP2V

Acknowledgements

We are grateful to the support of all the volunteers who participated in our study. We also thank Phil Stanforth and Julie Drake at the Fitness Institute of Texas at the University of Texas at Austin for their assistance in providing the DEXA images and relevant data. We are grateful to all the members of the Molecular Energetics Group in IGDB and Energetics Group in UoA for their discussion and constructive comments on this project.

Competing interests

All authors declare no competing financial interests.

Data availability

The data and relevant protocols associated with this research are available at OSF http://10.17605/osf.io/yjp2v.

Authors' contributions

J.R.S. and G.L.W. conceived and designed the project. G.L.W., M.X.C., C.Q.N., J.S., R.B., C.H., L.M.V., and M.H. recruited volunteers from each local site. M.D.F provided the female and male images. G.L.W. and J.R.S. wrote the manuscript. All authors reviewed the manuscript.

Funding

This work was supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC grant 91431102) and International Cooperation Program of Chinese Academy of Sciences (GJHZ1660). John R. Speakman was supported by the 1000 talents program of the Chinese government and a Wolfson merit award from the Royal Society. Guanlin Wang was awarded by the UCAS-UoA dual degree PhD training Program.

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