Individuals with body modifications, such as tattoos, have been shown to differ from nonmodified individuals in sensation-seeking personality characteristics and sociosexuality. This study examined possible differences in peoples attributions of those characteristics toward virtual human characters varying in body modification. Some 287 participants rated tattooed and nontattooed bodies of avatars on aspects of sensation seeking and number of previous sexual partners. Tattooed stimuli were rated as more experience, thrill, and adventure seeking as well as more likely to have a high number of previous sexual partners and as less inhibited when compared to nontattooed stimuli, and this was particularly true for male stimuli. It was concluded that people with body modifications, such as tattoos, are perceived differently compared to nontattooed individuals in terms of sensation seeking and previous sexual partner number, this being particularly true for men. Findings are discussed with reference to the evolutionary model of human sexual selection.
Signaling mate quality through visual adornments is a common phenomenon in animals and humans. However, humans are probably the only species who applies artificial ornaments. Such deliberate alterations of the skin, e.g., tattoos and scarring patterns, have been discussed by researchers as potential handicap signals, but there is still very little information about a potential biological signaling value of body modification. In this study eye-tracking was employed to investigate the signaling value of tattoos and other body modification. Measurement of gaze duration of 50 individuals while watching plain, scarred, accessorized, and tattooed bodies of artificial human images indicated that participants looked significantly longer at tattooed than at scarred, accessorized, and plain bodies. Generally, male participants paid more attention to tattooed stimuli of both sexes. More detailed analyses showed that particularly female tattooed stimuli were looked at longer. These findings are discussed within an evolutionary framework by suggesting that tattoos might have some signaling value which influences the perception of both male and female conspecifics and may hence also affect mating decisions.
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