General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: With all the anti-pornography talk, can we have a sex positive thread? [View all]Kurska
(5,739 posts)Empirical evidence says men and women both suffer from attractiveness bias.
I'm also not trying to be condescending. I'm literally saying the only part you could read about them would probably be the abstract, because the rest is behind a paywall. I wasn't saying you are incapable of reading them, academic journal articles in social sciences are rarely that difficulty to read. If you're really going to insist on me doing this though.
http://guilfordjournals.com/doi/abs/10.1521/soco.22.6.637.54819
"A theme that emerges in life is that it is advantageous to be good looking. Corroborating this observation, an expansive literature has documented the benefits of facial attractiveness on a range of explicit measures. What is not yet known, however, is whether this association between beauty and positivity also exerts an implicit influence on people's responses. That is, does the beautiful is good stereotype operate when attention is not explicitly directed to a person's appearance? Using a modified Stroop task, we explored this issue in the current investigation. The results revealed that facial stereotypes do indeed exert an automatic influence on people's responses, an effect that is elicited by targets of either sex and displayed by both male and female respondents. In addition, female faces elicited positive evaluative responses (i.e., femalepositivity effect). We consider the implications of these findings for issues in person perception.
http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/2787149?uid=3739600&uid=2&uid=4&uid=3739256&sid=21103005576811
"Meta-analysis was used to test hypotheses about the relationship between physical attractiveness and intellectual competence. In support of status generalization theory and implicit personality theory, attractive people were perceived as more competent than less attractive people. Attractiveness effects were stronger for males than for females, and stronger when explicit information about competence was absent than when it was present, in keeping with status generalization theory. In partial support of status generalization theory and expectancy theory, attractiveness was related to actual competence in children, but not in adults. Direct measures of competence were influenced strongly more by attractiveness than were indirect measures, as predicted by status generalization theory. Implications for theory, organizational policy, and future research are discussed."
I don't really feel like looking up more research on this tonight, so let me just phrase it simply. You can find some research where the effect is stronger for men, you can find some research where the effect is stronger for women and in most research the effect doesn't seem to depend on gender. The universal part of this all is that men and women both suffer from unfair judgement based on their attractiveness. Again, whether the effect is technically stronger for men or women is immaterial. I certainly never expressed the view that it was stronger for men. I imagine in most things, but not all things, it is slightly stronger for women; so I have no idea why you are arguing against that. I said the effect was significant and impacting for both men and women, which is the case.
I really don't know why you're talking about actors, there is a ton of actual research out there drawing real conclusions about the way people view and process information. I really couldn't be less interested in whatever anecdotes you want to come up with.
So to summarize what I've actually said. Attractiveness bias is something that effects both men and women. I think that in most cases attractiveness bias probably effects women more, but not in every instance (one possible example being in regards to associating beauty with intelligence). There is no denying though that it does effect both men and women to a significant extent, to say otherwise is just silly.
bolded for emphasis.
So tie this all back to your original framing of the question, before you, as you like to say, moved the goals posts, was
"Are men judged on the basis of their sexual attractiveness, in Western culture? By and large?"
Yes they are.
"Is their value inherent in their looks and sexual appeal? Yes, or no? "
Yes, it isn't the only thing but it is a consistent observed effect for men where their value is judged partly by their looks or sexual appeal.
I'm glad we had this opportunity to learn together. I've never really studied attractiveness bias that much before this, so it was nice getting a little more familiar with it.