Perceptions of rape victims and assailants: Effects of physical attractiveness,acquaintance, and subject gender

Subjects read different versions of a rape case in which the victim was walking alone at night and the defendant was obviously guilty. Female subjects saw the crime as more debilitating for the victim and were more punitive than male subjects. Female subjects considered the victim less responsible when the defendant was unattractive than when the defendant was attractive. Presence or absence of prior casual acquaintance between the victim and assailant interacted with other factors. With prior acquaintance, male subjects considered the victim more responsible than female subjects, unattractive victims were considered more responsible than attractive victims, and unattractive defendants were considered more likely to engage in future antisocial behavior than attractive defendants. Although biased by other factors, level of victim blame was low overall. Yet subjects seemed reluctant to believe the rapist and his victim were unacquainted and seemed to consider the rape as sexually, rather than aggressively, motivated.The authors gratefully acknowledge the helpful comments of Andrea R. Halpern and T. Joel Wade. Portions of this paper were presented at the meetings of the Eastern Psychological Association, Buffalo, New York, April 1988.     

Pretty pleases: The effects of physical attractiveness,race, and sex on receiving help

The major purpose of this study was to investigate whether favoritism for the physically attractive, a phenomenom demonstrated amost exclusively on the basis of rating scales, generalizes to nonreactive, behavioral helping responses. Four hundred and forty-two males and 162 female white adult callers in public phone booths in a large metropolitan airport found a completed graduate school application form, a photograph of the applicant, and an addressed, stamped envelope. The picture was used to convey information as to the physical attractiveness (attractive vs. unattractive), race (black vs. white), and sex of the applicant. As predicted, delivery of the application was facilitated more for attractive than unattractive persons. There was also a significant race effect, with whites receiving more help than blacks. Implications of these findings for the physical attractiveness literature are discussed.     

Intelligence and physical attractiveness

This brief research note aims to estimate the magnitude of the association between general intelligence and physical attractiveness with large nationally representative samples from two nations. In the United Kingdom, attractive children are more intelligent by 12.4 IQ points (r = .381), whereas in the United States, the correlation between intelligence and physical attractiveness is somewhat smaller (r = .126). The association between intelligence and physical attractiveness is stronger among men than among women in both nations. The association remains significant net of a large number of control variables for social class, body size, and health.     

Personality goes a long way: The malleability of opposite‐sex physical attractiveness

This study tested the influence of personality information on judgments of physical attractiveness. Employing a within‐subject design, 56 female and 22 male college students rated attractiveness of opposite‐sex photos; participated in a distraction task; viewed each photo again, along with personality information (desirable, undesirable, none); and then rated the photos for physical attractiveness, desirability as a friend, and desirability as a dating partner. Personality information produced significant changes in ratings of physical attractiveness for attractive, neutral, and unattractive targets. The pattern of results is consistent with a model in which desirability of the target’s personality leads to greater desirability as a friend, leading to greater desirability as a dating partner, leading to the target being judged as more physically attractive.     

An extrapolation of the physical attractiveness and sex variables within the Byrne attraction paradigm

Memory & Cognition - Twenty male and 20 female volunteer general psychology students were assigned to one of four treatment conditions in a totally randomized 2 by 2 ANOVA to test the...     

Perceptions of the physical attractiveness of the self, current romantic partners, and former partners

This study examined ratings of physical attractiveness of the self and former and current partners. A total of 304 participants completed measures of attractiveness, relationship satisfaction, love dimensions, self-esteem and sociosexual orientation. Consistent with previous work, results showed that participants rated their current partners as more attractive than themselves and their former partners. However, results also showed that former partners were rated as more attractive than the self on a number of bodily characteristics. Finally, results showed that ratings of former partner physical attractiveness were associated with passion for the former partner, self-esteem, sociosexual orientation, and attributions of relationship termination. These results are discussed in relation to the available literature on positive illusions in intimate relationships.     

Effects of reciprocity on attraction: The role of a partner's physical attractiveness

Two studies examined whether expectations of reciprocal desire had a greater impact on people's desire for a potential partner the more the partner was physically attractive. Study 1 showed that a reciprocity manipulation had a greater impact on participants' desire for attractive, relative to moderately attractive, and relatively unattractive potential partners. In Study 2, after learning of a potential partner's desire, desire for highly attractive, relative to attractive, potential partners increased to a larger extent. Mediation analyses showed that this effect was due to the participant's initial expectations of reciprocal desire. In contrast, after learning of a potential partner's lack of desire, participant's desire for highly attractive and attractive potential partners decreased to a similar extent.     

Effects of counselor sex,student sex,and student attractiveness on counselors' judgments

Thirty-two male and thirty-two female high school counselors in a large metropolitan school district were provided with routine student profile data and asked to make predictions about the student's potential for post-high school education and to suggest occupations for the student to explore. All data reviewed by the counselors were identical except for a photograph of the student attached to the profile. Within counselor sex groups, counselors were randomly assigned to one of the following four photograph conditions: (a) attractive female; (b) unattractive female; (c) attractive male; and (d) unattractive male. Male subjects were found to discriminate on the basis of student sex when they suggested occupations for the student to explore. Predictions of post-high school education and the social status of suggested occupations were not found to be related to counselor sex, student sex, or student attractiveness.     

Evaluating self and partner physical attractiveness

This study used a novel questionnaire to examine ratings of self and partner physical attractiveness. Seventy-two men and 83 women estimated their own and their opposite-sex partner's overall physical attractiveness and the attractiveness of various body parts and measures. They also answered six simple questions concerning physical attractiveness. Results showed significant gender differences in self-estimates of overall facial attractiveness and upper body features. In general, and regardless of gender, participants rated their opposite-sex partners as being significantly more attractive than themselves. In addition, the results showed that body weight and facial attractiveness were the best predictors of overall physical attractiveness. Implications of these results in terms of social biases are considered.     

An empirical test of sex differences in the emphasis on physical attractiveness in mate selection

Within a context provided by social structural theory, social evolutionary theory, and physical attractiveness stereotyping, the importance of physical attractiveness in heterosexual mate selection was explored by presenting 50 male and 50 female psychology students (M age = 22.5 yr.) during a scheduled class with an opposite sex personals advertisement, wherein the advertiser was described as 'average' or 'good-looking'. Dependent variables consisted of a written paragraph and measures of evaluation (Semantic Differential), attraction, advertisement appeal, and success. An interaction for sex x looks on the qualitative measure showed no effect for men, but the good-looking female advertiser was evaluated more positively. However, for quantitative data, the advertisement was seen as more appealing and likely to be successful when the advertiser was good looking as opposed to average looking, irrespective of sex of advertiser. Findings are discussed in relation to theoretical perspectives.     

Self-consciousness,evaluation of physical characteristics,and physical attractiveness

Results from an investigation of the relationship between habitual awareness of oneself as a social object (Public self-consciousness) and speed of processing information about the overt self are reported. Since high public self-consciousness subjects report themselves to be concerned about their physical appearance, they were expected to have more readily retrievable evaluative judgments concerning their physical characteristics. Consistent with this prediction, high compared to low public consciousness subjects required significantly less time to report their evaluations of eleven of their physical features. In a second study, high public self-consciousness was shown to be positively related to judged physical attractiveness in two geographically diverse samples. The quicker evaluations of the high public self-consciousness group were discussed in terms of information processing model recently described by Markus (1977).     

Rape and physical attractiveness: judgments concerning likelihood of victimization

Subjects in two studies were shown portraits of 32 young women who varied widely in physical attractiveness. Subjects were told that half of these women had been victims of a crime and half had not. Their job was to sort the portraits correctly into those two categories. In both studies, attractive women were more often categorized as victims of rape. In Study 2, attractive women were not more likely to be categorized as having been beaten and robbed. Correlation analyses showed that the association between physical attractiveness and presumed criminal victimization was significantly higher for rape than for being beaten and robbed.     

Effects of sexual attitudes and physical attractiveness on person perception of men and women

A sample of 180 males and 180 females completed person perception measures for stimulus women who varied in physical attractiveness and permissiveness of sexual attitudes. The results indicated that both physical attractiveness and sexual attitudes had strong effects on peson perception. Physically attractive stimulus women were rated higher than the unattractive stimulus women on a physical appeal factor and an item measuring interpersonal attraction. The sexually conservative women were rated higher on an evaluative factor, lower on a personability factor, and higher on the interpersonal attraction item than the sexually permissive stimulus women. It was also found that the effects of physical attractiveness were greater for males than for females and that women rated the sexually permissive stimulus women less favorably than did men.     

Recognition bias and the physical attractiveness stereotype

Previous studies have found a recognition bias for information consistent with the physical attractiveness stereotype (PAS), in which participants believe that they remember that attractive individuals have positive qualities and that unattractive individuals have negative qualities, regardless of what information actually occurred. The purpose of this research was to examine whether recognition bias for PAS congruent information is replicable and invariant across a variety of conditions (i.e. generalizable). The effects of nine different moderator variables were examined in two experiments. With a few exceptions, the effect of PAS congruence on recognition bias was independent of the moderator variables. The results suggest that the tendency to believe that one remembers information consistent with the physical attractiveness stereotype is a robust phenomenon.     

Attractive but guilty: deliberation and the physical attractiveness bias

The current study examined the effect of jury deliberation on the tendency for mock jurors to find attractive defendants guilty less often. It was expected that there would be an interaction between group deliberation (yes or no) and defendant's appearance (plain-looking or attractive). It was hypothesized that mock jurors who did not deliberate would be more likely to find a plain-looking defendant guilty and that deliberation would mitigate this effect. The study was a 2 x 2 between-subjects factorial design. Participants were assigned randomly to one of four conditions: attractive defendant/deliberation, attractive defendant/no deliberation, plain-looking defendant/deliberation, and plain-looking defendant/no deliberation. A total of 172 undergraduates from a small, rural college in Vermont contributed to this study: mock jurors were 70 men and 52 women, ages ranged from 18 to 52 years (M=20.5, SD=4.9). The hypothesis was supported. Mock jurors who did not deliberate were more likely to find the plain-looking defendant guilty, whereas mock jurors who deliberated were more likely to find the attractive defendant guilty.     

Effects of victim's and defendant's physical attractiveness on subjects' judgments in a rape case

Physical attractiveness of the victim and defendant in a rape case were varied along with sex of subject in a 2×2×2 factorial design. It was found that both the attractive defendant and the rapist of an unattractive victim were less likely to be seen as guilty and that the attractive defendant received a shorter recommended prison term than the unattractive defendant. Victim attractiveness had no effect on attributions of her degree of responsibility. Females were more likely to see the defendant as guilty and recommended longer prison terms than males. Results are discussed in terms of specificity of victim and defendant and the beauty is good stereotype.