14 DAY TRIAL // According to a new scientific study, men exhibit much more consensus when it comes to rating attractiveness than women do. The paper, authored by Wake Forest University Assistant Professor of Psychology Dustin Wood, and co-authored by Queens College expert Claudia Brumbaugh, shows that women fail to agree on whether another person is attractive or not in the way men do. Disagreement and dissension appear among them, the experts have found. The study appears in the June issue of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.
“Men agree a lot more about who they find attractive and unattractive than women agree about who they find attractive and unattractive. This study shows we can quantify the extent to which men agree about which women are attractive and vice versa,” Wood explains. His study comprised over 4,000 participants, which were all shown photos of men and women between the ages of 18 and 25, and asked to rate their attractiveness levels on a scale from 1 (not at all) to 10 (very). The participants who rated the photos (the “raters”) were between 18 and 70 years old.
The experts themselves separated a number of markers for each picture, including seductiveness, confidence, thinness, sensitivity, style, curves (women), muscles (men), class, overall appearance, cleanliness, and the emotions they showed in the photos. These reference points were useful because they allowed the investigators to carefully determine which aspects raters looked for when determining a person's attractiveness level.
In the male group, the participants showed an increased preference towards women who looked seductive and thin, focusing their attention primarily on physical aspects. Also, the researchers learned that the pictures of women who were perceived as looking confident also scored high on the attractiveness chart. In the female group, things were a bit different. While looking at the pictures, the women rated photos of thin and muscular men higher, but only to a limited extent. Conversely, they couldn't agree whether a certain subject was attractive or not. While some rated a photo as highly attractive, others rated it with a 1.
“As far as we know, this is the first study to investigate whether there are differences in the level of consensus male and female raters have in their attractiveness judgments. These differences have implications for the different experiences and strategies that could be expected for men and women in the dating marketplace,” Wood says.
“The study helps explain why women experience stronger norms than men to obtain or maintain certain physical characteristics. Women who are trying to impress men are likely to be found much more attractive if they meet certain physical standards, and much less if they don't. Although men are rated as more attractive by women when they meet these physical appearance standards too, their overall judged attractiveness isn't as tightly linked to their physical features,” he concludes.