Men Who Compliment a Woman's Appearance Using Metaphorical Language: Associations with Creativity, Masculinity, Intelligence and Attractiveness

Abstract

Language may have evolved as a signal of mental fitness. However, it remains unclear what language form and topic men use to covertly signal mate quality. In this study 69 men created compliments to impress unfamiliar women they chose to either date or work with and provided hand scans to compute 2D4D ratio as a proxy for prenatal testosterone exposure and masculinity indicator. Compliments were coded in terms of form (literal vs. metaphorical) and topic (women's appearance vs. non-appearance), with metaphorical ones being subsequently rated by 114 women for psycholinguistic features, indices of intelligence and willingness to have a romantic relationship with the author. Results showed that in a dating context, men produced more metaphorical form compliments targeting appearance compared to the working context and they were associated with men's art creativity and negatively with 2D4D ratio (i.e., positively with masculinity). Women preferred establishing a romantic relationship with a higher proportion of the men producing metaphorical compliments in a dating than a working context. Furthermore, in the dating but not the working context, women perceived men producing such compliments as being more intelligent, and importantly this correlated with the men's actual verbal intelligence. Overall, findings suggest that men may use metaphorical language compliments targeting women's appearance in a dating context to signal covertly their mate quality.

Physical cues of partner quality

“…These findings support the hypothesis of male supply and female evaluation of creative products (i.e. the 'art as sexual display' hypothesis) that arises from the theory of sexual selection (Crocchiola, 2014;Gao, Yang, et al, 2017;Lange & Euler, 2014) (for a broader discussion, readers may refer to Varella et al, 2017;Winegard et al, 2018). We note that more research is needed in this area to provide more robust evidence of sex differences in how art is evaluated within a mate choice context.…”

Oxytocin Reduces the Attractiveness of Silver-Tongued Men for Women During Mid-Cycle

“…For example, cognitive processing of metaphors has been well documented to rely on different neural networks from that of literal expressions ( Rapp et al, 2012 ; Diaz and Eppes, 2018 ) due to the degree of novelty ( Schmidt and Seger, 2009 ). In a recent study ( Gao et al, 2017a , b ), we have also found that women rate men who used metaphorical compliments to praise them as more attractive than ones using literal expressions. The perceived courtship motive was also found to vary with the topic or linguistic figurativeness of men’s compliments ( Bale et al, 2006 ; Hall et al, 2008 ; Hendon, 2012 ; Gao et al, 2017b ).…”

“…In a recent study ( Gao et al, 2017a , b ), we have also found that women rate men who used metaphorical compliments to praise them as more attractive than ones using literal expressions. The perceived courtship motive was also found to vary with the topic or linguistic figurativeness of men’s compliments ( Bale et al, 2006 ; Hall et al, 2008 ; Hendon, 2012 ; Gao et al, 2017b ).…”

The strategies used by English department students in giving and receiving compliments

“…It's no surprise, then, that beauty is praised (Doohan & Manusov, 2004) because it's been proved that every culture evaluates a person's physical and aesthetic features, particularly women (Buss, 1989). Face, hair, smile, voice, and other aspects of the body are among the more significant categories of appearance subject complement classified by Gao et al (2017). The researchers discovered that the topic appearance compliment was the most frequently utilized by the informants as a consequence of this study.…”