Manipulated luxury-apartment ownership enhances opposite-sex attraction in females but not males

Dünn, Michael J.; Hill, Alexander K.

doi:10.1556/jep.12.2014.1.1

Cited by 41 publications

(28 citation statements)

References 57 publications

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“…The FWHR is not the sole facial metric associated with masculine dominance and aggressiveness; studies have implicated jaw width [ 69 ], brow height, eye length, and mouth width [ 70 ]. However, the FWHR is well-situated in the upper face, where humans preferentially extract information about threat [ 71 ].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Evidence from Meta-Analyses of the Facial Width-to-Height Ratio as an Evolved Cue of Threat

et al. 2015

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The facial width-to-height ratio (FWHR) is the width of the face divided by the height of the upper face. There is mixed evidence for the hypothesis that the FWHR is a cue of threat and dominance in the human face. We conducted a systematic review and meta-analyses of all peer-reviewed studies (and 2 unpublished studies) to estimate the magnitude of the sex difference in the FWHR, and the magnitude of the relationship between the FWHR and threatening and dominant behaviours and perceptions. Studies were eligible for inclusion if the authors reported an analysis involving the FWHR. Our analyses revealed that the FWHR was larger in men than in women ( = .11, n = 10,853), cued judgements of masculinity in men ( = .35, n of faces = 487; n of observers = 339), and was related to body mass index ( = .31, n = 2,506). Further, the FWHR predicted both threat behaviour in men ( = .16, n = 4,603) and dominance behaviour in both sexes ( = .12, n = 948) across a variety of indices. Individuals with larger FWHRs were judged by observers as more threatening ( = .46, n of faces = 1,691; n of observers = 2,076) and more dominant ( = .20, n of faces = 603; n of observers = 236) than those with smaller FWHRs. Individuals with larger FWHRs were also judged as less attractive ( = -.26, n of faces = 721; n of observers = 335), especially when women made the judgements. These findings provide some support for the hypothesis that the FWHR is part of an evolved cueing system of intra-sexual threat and dominance in men. A limitation of the meta-analyses on perceptions of threat and dominance were the low number of stimuli involving female and older adult faces.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Evidence from Meta-Analyses of the Facial Width-to-Height Ratio as an Evolved Cue of Threat

et al. 2015

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“…Perhaps the cheerleader effect also occurs through a process of social inference, wherein observers use the presence of other faces in the group to infer that the evaluated individual likely possesses desirable characteristics, such as being friendly or kind, which consequently increases their perceived favourability to the observer 62 . Importantly, this type of social learning is not specific to mate selection 63 , or even to the presence of human faces, since favourable characteristics, including attractiveness, are attributed to faces shown with possessions that signal wealth or social status [64][65][66][67][68][69][70] . Therefore, a social inference mechanism could also explain why a small increase in attractiveness is found for faces shown among groups of houses.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Limited evidence of hierarchical encoding in the cheerleader effect

Carragher¹,

Gwinn²,

Nicholls³

2019

Preprint

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“The cheerleader effect” refers to the increase in attractiveness that an individual face experiences when seen in a group of other faces. It has been proposed that the cheerleader effect occurs because (a) the visual system rapidly summarises a group of faces into an ensemble representation, (b) which is hypothesised to be highly attractive because of its average facial characteristics, and (c) observers remember individual faces to be more alike the ensemble representation than they were, due to hierarchical structure of visual working memory. Across three experiments, we investigated whether the cheerleader effect is consistent with hierarchical encoding, by asking observers to give attractiveness ratings to the same target faces shown in groups and alone. Consistent with hierarchical encoding, the largest attractiveness increases of 1.5 - 2.0% occurred when target faces were presented in groups of faces that could be mentally summarised to create an ensemble representation with average facial characteristics. Surprisingly, smaller cheerleader effects still occurred in conditions that were incompatible with hierarchical encoding (i.e., groups with non-human images). Together, these results offer only limited evidence for the role of hierarchical encoding in the cheerleader effect, suggesting that alternative mechanisms must be explored in future research.

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“…In humans, men are particularly selective when seeking a mate for a long-term relationship (Geary et al, 2004), which implies that women should also engage in the signaling process. However, Griskevicius et al (2007) and Sundie et al (2011) found women did not spend more money on conspicuous luxuries in a mating context compared to a neutral context, and Sundie et al (2011), Dunn andSearle (2010), and Dunn and Hill (2014) found that men's judgments of a woman's attractiveness were independent from her conspicuous consumption patterns. Instead, a more plausible explanation for women's conspicuous consumption behavior is female intrasexual competition for status (Miller, 2009;Wang and Griskevicius, 2014).…”

Section: Female Luxury Consumptionmentioning

confidence: 97%

The Rival Wears Prada: Luxury Consumption as a Female Competition Strategy

et al. 2014

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Abstract:Previous studies on luxury consumption demonstrated that men spend large sums of money on luxury brands to signal their mate value to women and, thus, increase their reproductive success. Although women also spend copious amounts of money on luxuries, research focusing on women's motives for luxury consumption is rather scarce. Relying on costly signaling and intrasexual competition theory, the goal of the current study was to test whether female intrasexual competition in a mate attraction context triggers women's spending on luxuries. The results of the first experiment reveal that an intrasexual competition context enhances women's preferences for attractiveness enhancing, but not for non-attractiveness related luxuries such as a smartphone. This finding indicates that women may use luxury consumption as a self-promotion strategy during within-sex competitions, as these luxuries improve their advantages against samesex rivals for mates. A follow-up study shows that compared to women who do not consume luxuries, women who do so are perceived as more attractive, flirty, young, ambitious, sexy, and less loyal, mature and smart by other women. These results suggest that luxury consumption may provide information about a women's willingness to engage in sex, as well as her views about other women, and consequently, her success in intrasexual competitions.

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Manipulated luxury-apartment ownership enhances opposite-sex attraction in females but not males

Cited by 41 publications

References 57 publications

Evidence from Meta-Analyses of the Facial Width-to-Height Ratio as an Evolved Cue of Threat

Evidence from Meta-Analyses of the Facial Width-to-Height Ratio as an Evolved Cue of Threat

Limited evidence of hierarchical encoding in the cheerleader effect

The Rival Wears Prada: Luxury Consumption as a Female Competition Strategy

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