When beauty isn't talent: The influence of physical attractiveness,attitudes toward women,and competence on impression formation

The present study investigated the effect of attitudes toward women, physical attractiveness, and competence on impression formation of women. Male and female undergraduates read a competent or incompetent essay allegedly written by a physically attractive or unattractive female and responded to questions about the essay and its writer. Subjects were classified as traditionals, moderates, or liberals on the basis of their scores on the Attitudes Toward Women Scale. Female subjects' impressions were affected by the competence of the stimulus person and by their sex-role attitudes, but were not influenced by the physical attractiveness of the writer. Males, however, were influenced by all three variables. Evidence was found for a reversal of the physical attractiveness stereotype for liberal males with reference to incompetent women. The implications of these findings for physical attractiveness research are discussed.The authors wish to express their appreciation to Walter Stephan, Judith Langlois, Janet Spence, and Richard Archer for their helpful comments on an earlier draft of this article. Thanks are also due to Richard Roberson for assistance in data collection.     

Affect as a mediator of attributional egotism

A three-stage model of the relationships among achievement outcomes, outcome-related affect, attribution, and emotion is tested in two studies. It is suggested that success and failure elicit positive and negative affective states due to prior conditioning. These affective states then lead to an attribution process that serves to defend and enhance self-esteem. Next, emotional labels are chosen that are consistent with the affective states and the attributions. Two studies were designed to test the proposed relationships among achievement outcomes, affective states, and attributions. In the first study, subjects received information indicating that they were strongly or mildly aroused as a result of receiving outcome feedback on an achievement task. The results indicated that low arousal reduced egotistical attributions to internal factors. In the second study, subjects either succeeded or failed on an achievement task. Half of the subjects were provided with an opportunity to misattribute the arousal elicited by their outcomes to an irrelevant source. Subjects in the misattribution condition made less egotistical attributions to external factors than subjects who were given no opportunity to misattribute their arousal. The results of both studies suggest that outcome-related affect mediates the relationship between outcomes and attributions in achievement situations.     

Thought control and the first amendment

This article explores the application of the free speech clause of the First Amendment to the purported right of an individual to think socially stigmatized thoughts—for example, psychotic or sexually sadistic thoughts. The state may attempt to control such thoughts either by imposing a thought-control technology on the thinker or by prohibiting the thinker from voluntarily using thought-control technology of his own. Thought-control technologies embrace antipsychotic drugs, hallucinogenic drugs, pornography, and other mind-altering devices. Two underlying models of the free speech clause are proposed—a strong model and a weak model. Despite the apparent endorsement of the strong model by the United States Supreme Court, courts in fact vacillate between the two models and are, apparently, reluctant to utilize the First Amendment as a tool to enforce any right to think wicked thoughts. This reluctance, it is proposed, may well have a religious basis in an equation of wicked thoughts with sin.     

Orientations to conflict: Gender, attributions, resolution strategies, and self-monitoring

Gender differences in relationship quality, conflict perceptions, reported conflict strategy use, and self-monitoring orientations were examined in a sample of undergraduates. It was predicted that males and high self-monitoring individuals would see their relationships as less intimate, themselves as less committed, and would endorse more frequent use of uncooperative and avoidant strategies. Participants (n=124) completed the following: a measure of conflict perceptions; a Conflict Strategy Scale measuring frequency of Cooperative, Uncooperative, and Denial-Avoidant strategies; and Snyder’s Self-Monitoring Scale. Compared to females, males scored higher in self-monitoring, saw friendships as less intimate and stable, saw their conflicts as more stable, and endorsed more frequent use of Denial-Avoidant strategies. Masculine orientations to conflict reflected increased self-presentational concerns and perceptions that minimized the personal relevance of conflict.     

Sex differences,sex-role orientation,and reward allocations

In study 1, 52 male and 52 female undergraduates allocated rewards to pairs of children for their performances in team and competitive situations. Males allocated rewards more equitably, especially when allocating to boys in competition, while females allocated rewards more equally. Boys, but not girls, who did more work received more rewards than their partner; and children with greater work inputs under competitive conditions received more rewards than children in team conditions. In study 2, the sex-role orientation of 60 college students was found to be related to their reward allocations. Males and females with a masculine sex-role orientation allocated rewards equitably, while individuals with a feminine sex-role orientation allocated rewards equally. Results indicated that sex and situational differences in reward allocations are affected by sex-role orientation and differential socialization practices by adults.Portions of study 1 were presented at the Midwestern Psychological Association Meeting, Chicago, May 1978.     

ANALYSIS OF THE CONSISTENCY OF OBJECTIVE MEASURES OF SEXUAL AROUSAL IN WOMEN

Eight adult women volunteers viewed the same erotic film in two different sessions. Their resulting genital responses were recorded simultaneously by three different measures: vaginal pressure pulse, vaginal blood volume, and labial temperature change. During the erotic stimulation, the vaginal pressure pulse and labial responses always increased, and the vaginal blood volume response increased on all but two occasions. Although there was considerable intersubject variability in each genital measure, all three measures were found to have some intrasubject consistency over sessions with respect to either their response amplitudes or patterns, with labial temperature being the most consistent on both parameters. The relationship between the response patterns of the three measures during the film was also relatively consistent across sessions, as was the correspondence between subjective ratings of arousal and both vaginal pressure pulse and labial responses but not vaginal blood volume response. To overcome the problem of considerable intrasubject variability of response amplitudes, it was suggested that the inclusion in the data analysis of several parameters of response patterns, which were relatively stable over sessions, might facilitate the evaluation of a treatment.     

Some attitudinal and cognitive consequences of thought

A “reinterpretation of inconsistent cognitions” explanation of the previous finding that thought about an object tends to polarize attitudes toward that object was tested. Under the assumption that ambiguity facilitates reinterpretation, ambiguity of inconsistent information and opportunity for thought were manipulated. Consistent with expectations, (a) thought resulted in attitude polarization and this effect was increased with ambiguity (p < .01) and (b) evaluation (interpretation) of the inconsistent information varied as a function of thought (p < .05) and ambiguity (p < .01).