Third-Party Perceptions of Male and Female Status: Male Physical Strength and Female Physical Attractiveness Cue High Status

Abstract

Status is a universal feature of human sociality. A lesser-studied adaptive problem surrounding status is assessing who has which levels of status in a given group (e.g., identifying which people possess high status). Here, we integrate theory and methods from evolutionary social science, animal behavior, and social psychology, and we use an emotion inference paradigm to investigate what cues render people high status in the eyes of social perceivers. This paradigm relies on robust associations between status and emotion display—particularly the anger display. If a target is expected to enact (but not necessarily feel) anger, this would suggest that social perceivers view that target as higher status. By varying target attributes, we test whether those attributes are considered status cues in the eyes of social perceivers. In two well-powered, pre-registered experiments in the United States (N = 451) and India (N = 378), participants read one of eight vignettes about a male or female target—described as high or low in either physical strength or physical attractiveness (possible status cues)—who is thwarted by another person, and then reported expectations of the target’s felt and enacted anger. We find that people expected physically stronger (versus less strong) men and more (versus less) physically attractive women to enact greater anger when thwarted by a same-sex other. Strength had no significant effect on estimations of female status and attractiveness had no significant effect on estimations of male status. There were no differences in expectations of felt anger. Results suggest that people use men’s strength and women’s attractiveness as status cues. Moreover, results underscore the notion that focusing on male-typical cues of status might obscure our understanding of the female status landscape. We discuss how this paradigm might be fruitfully employed to examine and discover other unexplored cues of male and female status.

Too strong to care? Investigating the links between formidability, worldviews, and views on climate and disaster

“…As noted previously, patterns for women were directionally consistent but weaker. This conceptually mimics patterns of previous studies examining physical formidability as a predictor of other traits, which have typically found effects of formidability that are stronger in or unique to men (see, e.g., Krems et al, 2022; Petersen & Laustsen, 2019). However, past research has also found formidability to be a significant mediator of sex differences in some traits, like anxiety (see, e.g., Kerry & Murray, 2021; Manson et al, 2022).…”

“…Current results of Study 2 provide evidence that handgrip and chest grip may predict some worldviews (and potentially climate and disaster views) but should be treated with caution until a larger sample is collected. It is also possible in this case that rather than formidability, other traits more ancestrally important to women's social status (e.g., physical attractiveness; Krems et al, 2022;wealth) might be more predictive of beliefs that preserve unequal social systems benefiting high-status individuals and in turn, environmental beliefs. Proximately, it is possible that men's greater motivation to maintain existing hierarchies and resources (than women) may shape climate skepticism and reluctance to socially intervene to mitigate disaster risk via other mediating processes like loss aversion or perceived cost (and resistance) to social change (see, e.g., Bush & Clayton, 2022).…”

“…Evidence suggests that formidability remains a salient social signal; people rapidly judge formidability and infer its behavioral correlates, especially when evaluating men (e.g., benefit-provisioning and cost-inflicting abilities, self-interest-promoting attitudes, high status; see Brown et al, in press; Durkee et al, 2018; Durkee et al, 2020; Krems et al, 2022; Lukazewski et al, 2016; Sell, Cosmides, et al, 2009). Accordingly, formidability has historically been intertwined with human hierarchies: highly formidable men have enjoyed relative advantages in status, resource allocation, coalition building, and mate acquisition (see e.g., Eisenbruch et al, 2016; Lukaszewski et al, 2016; Price et al, 2015; Sell, Lukazsweski & Townsley, 2017; Zeng et al, 2022).…”

Behavioral and neural responses to social exclusion in women: the role of facial attractiveness and friendliness

“…Attractive women are at risk of being targeted by other women because of intrasexual competition 21 , but attractiveness still benefits women in social and mating domains in relation to accessing resources and increased social status and influence 37 – 40 . For example, Buss et al 17 found that attractiveness was more closely linked to the social status of women than of men cross-culturally, and Krems et al 41 found that women’s physical attractiveness was used to infer status (for men, physical strength was used 42 , 43 ). In another study, Haas and Gregory 42 found that physical attractiveness was associated with higher social status and interactional power.…”

“…Because attractiveness gives women desired status 17 , 41 , it might be especially beneficial to be accepted and socially included by more physically attractive same-sex peers. Similarly attractive women should be more threatening than less attractive women because attractive women can more readily inflict costs such as debasing potential rivals.…”