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When Romance and Rivalry Awaken

Attractiveness-Based Social Judgment Biases Emerge at Adolescence

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Abstract

Previous research indicates positive effects of a person’s attractiveness on evaluations of opposite-sex persons, but less positive or even negative effects of attractiveness on same-sex evaluations. These biases are consistent with social motives linked to mate search and intrasexual rivalry. In line with the hypothesis that such motives should not become operative until after puberty, 6- to 12-year-old participants (i.e., children) displayed no evidence for biased social evaluations based on other people’s attractiveness. In contrast, 13- to 19-year-old participants (i.e., adolescents) displayed positive and negative attractiveness biases toward opposite- and same-sex targets, respectively. Moreover, these biases increased with the age—and thus the reproductive relevance—of the targets being evaluated. Findings corroborate the relevance of mating-related motives for social judgment and illustrate how such biases can grow during human development. At a broader conceptual level, this research demonstrates the utility of investigating proximate social judgment processes through the lens of adaptationist thinking.

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Notes

  1. Following standard procedures, in this and the subsequent regression analysis all possible lower-order effects (i.e., the main effects as well as the lower-order interaction terms) were included as predictors when examining the hypothesized effect of higher-order interactions. Analyses indicated no problems concerning the application of regression (e.g., no collinearity problems, tolerance values > 0.90, condition indices < 2; approximate normal distribution of residuals, |skewness| < 0.5, |kurtosis| < 0.5).

  2. Although this probably leads to some misclassified participants (e.g., participants with a later onset of puberty now erroneously classified as post-pubescent) there is no evidence that both potential misclassifications (i.e., false positive, false negative) are of different probabilities. Considering that timing of puberty varies between individuals (Marshall and Tanner 1970), a distinction between pre- and post-pubescent individuals results in a rather more conservative test of analyses because respondents who have not yet reached puberty, but are included in the post-pubescent group, should lessen the bias expected to emerge after the onset of puberty. Thus, even though some classification errors might attenuate these analyses, no biases should result from this dichotomization. It should be noted that this dichotomization is based on an empirically confirmed cutoff point indicating the emergence of a qualitatively new status (i.e., puberty). These analyses were also confirmed by regression analysis using participant age as continuous moderator (see Note 3).

  3. Corresponding results were obtained when using participant age as a continuous moderator in regression analyses (i.e., without dichotomizing participant age): The three-way interaction was moderated by participants’ age (i.e., a four-way interaction), β = −0.05, p = 0.002. In order to further elucidate this moderation, we followed the suggested procedures of Aiken and West (1991). In this frequently applied analytical approach one examines the effects of a predictor (in our case: the three-way interaction) at different levels of another predictor serving as the moderator (in our case: participant age). Following common analytical strategies we examined the strength of the three-way interaction effect between participant sex, target sex, and target attractiveness on attributional judgments at three different levels of the moderator, i.e., at low levels of participant age (1 SD below the mean; M = 9.58 years), at moderate levels of participant age (i.e., at the mean age; M = 13.13 years), and at high levels of participant age (1 SD above the mean; M = 16.68 years). The three-way interaction was not observed among young participants, β = 0.01, p = 0.760. However, it was observed among participants of average age, β = −0.04, p = 0.010, and even more strongly among older participants, β = −0.08, p < 0.0001. Consistent with our hypotheses, these analyses corroborate the positive (negative) impact of attractiveness for judgments of opposite-sex (same-sex) targets for adolescent participants, but not for pre-adolescent participants.

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Acknowledgments

The authors wish to express their gratitude to all the persons who supported us during the data collection, particularly to Rebecca Dörfler and Katrin Zweier. The authors also wish to sincerely thank the three anonymous reviewers who provided very valuable feedback on a previous version of the manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Ludwig-Maximilians-University of Munich, Munich, Germany

    Maria Agthe, Dieter Frey & Sabine Walper

  2. University of Applied Management, Erding, Germany

    Matthias Spörrle

  3. Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL, USA

    Jon K. Maner

  4. Department of Psychology, University of Augsburg, Universitätsstr. 10, 86135, Augsburg, Germany

    Maria Agthe

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  1. Maria Agthe
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Correspondence to Maria Agthe.

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Agthe, M., Spörrle, M., Frey, D. et al. When Romance and Rivalry Awaken. Hum Nat 24, 182–195 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12110-013-9166-z

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