The Psychology of Attractiveness

the correlation between perceived mate attractiveness uh with regards to women perceiving men the correlation between socioeconomic status and perceived attractiveness is about 0.6 which is a higher correlation than the correlation between General cognitive ability and grades and I use that as an example because that's one of the most robust and Powerful findings in the social sciences whereas the correlation between socioeconomic status and perceived mate attractiveness for women by men is zero or slightly negative so it's a walloping difference and that's associated with the proclivity of women to preferentially mate across hierarchies and up and men

to meet across hierarchies in down that's relatively well established cross-culturally and the proclivity doesn't ameliorate much in say the Scandinavian countries it ameliorates slightly and then there are other Hallmarks of attractiveness on the female side and this is where I want to go with the beauty myth we know that babies for example will gaze much longer even as newborns at symmetrical faces and there is this doll-like aspect that you described so one of the Hallmarks of sexual attractiveness is neotenic faces and so there's a proclivity for organisms to evolve towards their juvenile forms that's neotni

and it's such a pervasive tendency that it even characterizes animated characters as uh Stephen J Gould was at pains to establish it's quite comical but one of the Hallmarks of cuteness is of babyishness of face and you can see that in the like plush toys and the sorts of things that are often bought as dolls for kids or or for sentimental adults have very large eyes very small noses very symmetrical faces there's all sorts of Hallmarks of Beauty from a biological perspective many of them seem to be associated with fecundity um particularly on the female

side and that is very harsh it's a very very harsh standard and when I read the beauty myth which was a long time ago by the way because it was published in what 91 93 93 yeah 93 93. um I was curious about what you made of the biological markers of beauty and what you how you think that plays into what did you describe the Iron Maiden straitjacket that's placed on women in terms of the what the ideal of their sexual self-presentation Nation right so thank you for asking you may be right it may actually

have been 91 um came out first in Britain and then in the United States so respectfully I'm familiar with these arguments and uh respectfully I'm very familiar with David buss's work and I I think that it's fundamentally flawed and I'll I'll get to why um so first let me concede um you know of course uh it's it's thoroughly documented that there are markers of um health and attractiveness uh Health infertility that are often cross-cultural um and certainly symmetrical features um you know Rosy Skin showing good circulation you know youth uh all of those are kind

of transcendental um markers for attractiveness however one giant intellectual flaw respectfully in um pretty much all of the studies that I've seen of The evolutionary biologists is that they focus on these markers in women and they don't um test for what women find attractive in men they they project or they construct kind of experiments or surveys that prove tendentiously in my view that women find wealth uh or professional accomplishment attractive and that that kind of substitutes for physical Beauty but they don't ask women who are heterosexual um what are the markers for you of Beauty

in men or attractiveness in men and if they did and they don't they would find broad shoulders they would find you know symmetry they would find maybe you know sorry penis size um you know they would find maybe a a muscle tone that shows that they can kind of effectively you know impregnate a woman they they would probably find height as a marker right and it's notable to me like they they have they have investigated that I mean there is a fair bit of overlap in the biomarkers let's say for what men and women find

mutually physically attractive although the way that's manifested varies to some degree as you pointed out shoulder to waist ratio for example is a marker as you can see in superhero portrayals of men for example and the the the the Cardinal difference seems to be too though you know it's also not the sophisticated evolutionary psychologists don't assume that women are after wealth what they assume is that women will use markers of wealth as indicators of productive competence right but tonight because to me that's also a conceptual flaw um I'll get to why in just a minute

but I know I have to note for the record as a feminist analyst that I have literally never seen a study that asks women if they find penis size a marker for sexual attractiveness and I think scientists don't want to run that study male scientists don't want to run that study because it would be unpopular conclusions um so I I guess to me the whole field of evolutionary biological studies that conclude that um sexual attractiveness is a is is kind of um gendered female and uh and that for males there are other proxies for sexual

attractiveness is really convenient for men um because they don't have to come up against the raw brief fact that there are you know physical things women evaluate men for if they're heterosexual just like their physical things men let me ask you about that a little bit too because you say that it's convenient for men and so I mean I'm I'm never certain what form of differential perception on the part of each sex is convenient for which sex I mean the entire sexual Battlefield let's say is fraught with catastrophe an opportunity for both sexes I mean

one of the things you do see for example is that women are much harsher in the evaluations of attractiveness of men than men are of women so women men rate women 50 percent of women as below attractive below average in attractiveness and women rate 80 percent of men as below average in physical attractiveness and well and and like I am I I want to be absolutely 100 crystal clear here that I am not blaming women for this I understand why this is I believe now it's in the interest of a woman biologically and practically to

find a partner who is as competent as competent as she is or more competent because fundamentally what she's trying to do is redress the differential burden that reproduction places on women and so totally the reason that women totally disagree with you I think that's out of date respectfully but I'll wait for you to finish okay well okay well so I'm curious about why you would why you would consider that because consider that out of date because first of all one of the definitions of what constitutes female biologically is the female sex biologically speaking is almost

invariably the sex that devotes more biological time and energy to reproduction than the alternative sex so you see that even at the level of sperm and Aid because the egg has a volume that is multiple thousands of times larger than the sperm and even at that level there's more resources being devoted to the difficult job of reproduction of the female level and of course women have a nine month gestation period which is very onerous and then they do they are charged with primary responsibility for infant caregiving especially during the first year and we know perfectly

well that the differential burden of reproduction on women is such that single women who have a child are much more likely to descend into poverty and the reason for that at least in part is well it's actually very difficult to have a child and it's a 40 hour a week job at minimum and to add the necessity of working and providing on top of that means an 80-hour work week and so it isn't obvious to me why the hypothesis that women would be motivated to redress that fundamental biological differential I don't understand why that would

be an objectionable hypothesis even from the feminist perspective well let me just recognize that women are more at risk on the sexual and reproductive front I mean I recognize what you're saying there um I guess what I would say is there are as many I like get first let me say I think the whole field of evolutionary biology being presented to explain contemporary 21st century gender roles or expectations or Norms is respectfully uh I think it has almost no intellectual Merit I'm sorry I don't mean to be rude because you can I mean I've read

the whole range of evolutionary biologists biologists who are usually invoked right and they're always 10 dashes and they're always talking about circumstances that no longer exist