The Impact of Physical Attractiveness on Women's Social Status and Interactional Power

Abstract

This article tests hypotheses derived from status-generalization theory and communication-accommodation theory that behaviors resulting from status inequalities emerge when attractiveness differentiates dyads. Relying on unobtrusive acoustic analysis of 24 women's voices, we test the extent to which(1) women adjust nonverbal behavior to one another; (2) more attractive women exert more influence than less attractive partners; and (3) the effects of attractiveness on influence are stronger if a greater relative difference exists between partners. Findings suggest that if two interacting women are similarly attractive, then they compete dynamically for status, which informs recent developments in the expectation-states research program. KEY WORDS: physical attractiveness; status accommodation; status characteristics.Individual physical attractiveness is a variable attribute, resource, and status characteristic that has evaluative meaning if people who are more attractive are more highly rewarded. Past research has found that perceptions of, or expectations for, certain desirable traits or outcomes vary with the attractiveness of people being judged. In particular, looks influence inferences about character traits, abilities, sociability, and intellectual competence (e.g., Jackson et al., 1995). Moreover, being attractive elicits social, psychological, and economic consequences (see Sullivan, 2001 for review). Such findings probably reflect the stereotyped expectation that "what is beautiful is good" (Dion, 1972:285).

Gender and the returns to attractiveness

“…Our findings add detail to previous research suggesting that attractiveness matters more for women than men (Haas & Gregory, 2005;Heilman & Stopek, 1985;Jaeger, 2011), showing that the returns to attractiveness operate in a more nuanced manner for women: women experience little in the way of attractiveness premia once grooming has been taken into account. While this might lead one to conclude that grooming has become more closely linked with attractiveness for women than for men, supplementary analyses reveal that this is not the case (p = 0.53).…”

Pretty faces, marginal races: Predicting election outcomes using trait assessments of British parliamentary candidates

“…Perceptions of physical attractiveness have been shown to increase electoral success cross-nationally (e.g., Sigelman et al, 1987;King and Leigh, 2007;Rosar et al, 2008;Lutz, 2010). 9 These findings coincide with those from social psychologists, which indicate that physically attractive individuals tend to be evaluated more positively and are more successful professionally (Marlowe et al 1996;Haas and Gregory 2005). With respect to British politics, empirical findings are mixed, and appear to depend on the electoral context.…”

Auditory perception bias in speech imitation

“…Next to its linguistic functions, pitch is also the most important vocal source of information regarding emotions, stands and attitudes of the speaker (Juslin and Laukka, 2003; Ververidis and Kotropoulos, 2006). The F 0 region provides acoustic information for imitation exploited in promoting social convergence and status accommodation (Gregory and Hoyt, 1982; Gregory, 1983; Gregory et al, 1993; Gregory and Webster, 1996; Gregory et al, 1997; Haas and Gregory, 2005; Pardo, 2006) and expressing ingroup–outgroup bias (Babel, 2009; Pardo et al, 2012). Speakers who are perceived as attractive, likable and/or dominant influence listeners' pitch output, and pitch convergence can be seen as an indicator of cooperative behavior in communication dyads (Nilsenová and Swerts, 2012; Okada et al, 2012).…”