The Increasing Importance of Good Looks.

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In summary, over the decades, both men and women have placed increasing importance on attractiveness when looking for a mate. This trend is likely to continue due to social and technological changes. Additionally, it is important to note that people may be more attracted to a potential mate's personality rather than solely their physical appearance.
  • #1
qspeechc
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I was rather less than surprised to find that over the decades both men and women have placed increasing importance on attractiveness when looking for a mate. You can download the report I read here:
http://www.akst.com/Writings/Looks%20DO%20Matter.pdf [Broken]

In a fascinating cross-generational study of mating preferences, every 10 years different groups of men and women were asked to rank 18 characteristics they might want enhanced in a mate. The importance of good looks rose “dramatically” for both men and women from 1939 to 1989, the period of the study, according to David M. Buss, an evolutionary psychologist at the University of Texas. On a scale of 1 to 3, the importance men gave to good looks rose from 1.50 to 2.11. But for women, the importance of good looks in men rose from 0.94 to 1.67. In other words, women in 1989 considered a man’s looks even more important than men considered women’s looks 50 years earlier. Since the 1930s, Buss writes, “physical appearance has gone up in importance for men and women about equally, corresponding with the rise in television, fashion magazines, advertising, and other media depictions of attractive models.”

In all likelihood this trend will continue, driven by social and technological changes that are unlikely to be reversed anytime soon—changes such as the new ubiquity of media images, the growing financial independence of women, and the worldwide weakening of the institution of marriage. For better or worse, we live now in an age of appearances. It looks like looks are here to stay.

Just another thing to be sad about. Or maybe you think there's nothing wrong with that. Oh, I don't know! If you marry someone you'll eventually both be old and ugly so I suppose you'd like a little more than good looks for a good marriage; then again, if you want fit kids, marry a stunner, wait till the kids grow up then divorce each other. Hm.

What do you think?
 
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  • #2
I can't speak for others of course, but over the decades, I have placed increasing importance on attractiveness when looking for a mate. Just don't tell my wife OK?
 
  • #3
apostate82 said:
I wouldn't be too surprised about this. 50% of people are of below average intelligence, after all.

Err... that's not true. Assuming by average one means the arithmetic mean. IQ scores maybe, I don't know how they scale those, but in general it's not true.
 
  • #4
maverick_starstrider said:
Err... that's not true. Assuming by average one means the arithmetic mean. IQ scores maybe, I don't know how they scale those, but in general it's not true.
I think you're right. I would have expected 50% to be above average, not below.
 
  • #5
Jimmy Snyder said:
I think you're right. I would have expected 50% to be above average, not below.

I realize you're joking but you're still confusing the average (which is the mean) and the median. I have 4 people, 3 of them have 1 marble, the last has 10 marbles. The average number of marbles per person is 13/4 = 3.5 and yet 75% percent of the population has a below average number of marbles. This would of course be a minor point if it wasn't being used to try an mock the intelligence of other people, in which case I think the universe demands that such a mistake be pointed out clearly and publicly ;)
 
  • #6
maverick_starstrider said:
I realize you're joking but you're still confusing the average (which is the mean) and the median. I have 4 people, 3 of them have 1 marble, the last has 10 marbles. The average number of marbles per person is 13/4 = 3.5 and yet 75% percent of the population has a below average number of marbles. This would of course be a minor point if it wasn't being used to try an mock the intelligence of other people, in which case I think the universe demands that such a mistake be pointed out clearly and publicly ;)
So either apostate82 was correct, or I was correct, or we were both correct.
 
  • #7
qspeechc said:
What do you think?
I think people are vastly more attracted to a potential mate's personality than they realize. Because they don't realize this is what's actually working on them, they are likely to rate a person as "physically attractive" when they may not actually be, by standards of symmetry and proportion.

We are highly responsive to people's level of energy, their enthusiasm, positive attitude, sense of humor, confidence, dynamism. Someone with good scores on all those points is likely to get rated as having a hot appearance, when they don't necessarily.
 
  • #8
Jimmy Snyder said:
So either apostate82 was correct, or I was correct, or we were both correct.

What? I can't tell if you're still joking. The probability of the average of a population sample being the same as its median is virtually non-existent for any real world data. Thus you're both wrong... since you were both saying the same thing...
 
  • #9
maverick_starstrider said:
What? I can't tell if you're still joking. The probability of the average of a population sample being the same as its median is virtually non-existent for any real world data. Thus you're both wrong... since you were both saying the same thing...
As for one or the other of us being right, if you can say that a millionaire has a dollar, then you can say that either 50% are below average or 50% are above average. In other words, when you say 50% are below average, you don't exclude the possibility that 51% are below average.

As for both of us being right, in spite of your virtual non-existent statement, it is actually quite likely. For the statement was not 50.00000%, it was 50% and so must be taken to mean somewhere between 45% and 55%. Since there are 7 billion people or so, there are a great many distributions that would keep the mean that close to the median. That would be the case even if you restricted the meaning to the range 49.5% to 50.5%.
 
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  • #10
Jimmy Snyder said:
As for one or the other of us being right, if you can say that a millionaire has a dollar, then you can say that either 50% are below average or 50% are above average. In other words, when you say 50% are below average, you don't exclude the possibility that 51% are below average.

As for both of us being right, in spite of your virtual non-existent statement, it is actually quite likely. For the statement was not 50.00000%, it was 50% and so must be taken to mean somewhere between 45% and 55%. Since there are 7 billion people or so, there are a great many distributions that would keep the mean that close to the median. That would be the case even if you restricted the meaning to the range 49.5% to 50.5%.

Wow, you should consider entering the Tour de France with all that back-pedaling. You both made a simple confusion of terms/meanings which was only noteworthy because it was said while trying to insult other peoples intelligence (like when someone says "Wow, they don't speak english very good"). As for your back-pedaling in particular the reason why an average is often a poor metric is because it is extremely susceptible to outliers, exceptional bits of data. I've never seen a distribution of unscaled intelligence scores but I imagine outliers play a heavy role (both the brilliant and the mentally handicapped) and the ratio of outliers on either side of the mean is almost certainly not even (my money would be that mentally handicapped are far more common than those with exceptionally high intelligence). Thus, I would certainly not expect any metric of raw intelligence to be symmetric about the mean.
 
  • #11
I don't think it's looks as much as it is taking care of yourself. I think self-respect is the main thing. Are you fit? Clean? Clean-shaven? Do you smell nice, or at least not at all? Do you wear cloths that fit you/that aren't holy/stained?

I think as long as you take care of yourself, that's the most important thing. I can't love someone I don't respect, and I can't respect someone who doesn't respect herself.

It all comes down to self-respect. If you don't respect yourself/your body enough to keep it clean and fit, why should you expect anyone ELSE to respect you, much less love you?

Think about most major turn-offs, most of them have to do with lack of self-respect:

-Smoking/excessive drinking/hard drug usage
-Cutting/self harm
-Not standing up for yourself
-Being unemployed/out of school/having a dead end job
-Being extremely overweight
-Being extremely underweight
-Not being clean/hygienic
-Self-pitying

Just take care of and respect yourself/your body. If you don't respect your body, don't expect anyone else to...
 
  • #12
So, what do you figure? 44%?

They backpedal in the Tour de France?
 
  • #13
I fail to see how studies like this can have much strength. There is no accurate way to measure attractiveness, it's so subjective and varied that generalisations just won't do. You can make a comprehensive study and ask thousands of people over years but there are still millions of people out there constantly interacting with each other. There's no way of measuring even the smallest percentage of interactions let alone trying to gauge if individuals are placing more emphasis on looks over anything else.

Questionnaires are an incredibly weak method of ascertaining truth, people will answer that they think they should. These results are not indicative that looks are more important at all.
 
  • #14
ryan_m_b said:
Questionnaires are an incredibly weak method of ascertaining truth, people will answer that they think they should. These results are not indicative that looks are more important at all.
To the extent people will answer what they think they should (which is very likely true, but how do you prove to a disbelieving third party this is what's actually happening?), then a study like this would, at least, be a useful indicator of the current meme.

In the 1930's, apparently, the notion people taught each other to repeat was something to the effect of: Don't judge a book by its cover. Today it seems to be the opposite, a sort of McLuhan-esque: The cover is the book.

If this is the current meme, then wouldn't it also be true that, to be socially acceptable, people will date others for whom it will be easier to make the case that they fit some "objective" criteria for attractiveness? In other words, if everyone is taught to say looks are important, doesn't that cause their importance?
 
  • #15
qspeechc said:
Oh, I don't know! If you marry someone you'll eventually both be old and ugly so I suppose you'd like a little more than good looks for a good marriage; then again, if you want fit kids, marry a stunner, wait till the kids grow up then divorce each other. Hm.

What do you think?

Sounds like an idea to me. For crying out loud, by time the kids are grown, surely the two of you need something different in life, anyway. People live into their 70's and 80's. Do you really want to spend another 25 to 40 years with that person?!

But good looks are subjective. A look that suggest they know nothing at all about life looks sexy to someone that doesn't know anything about life themselves. A look that suggests they've learned something about life looks a lot sexier if you don't want to get stuck babysitting someone.
 
  • #16
In the 1930's the wife relied on the mans income while the man relied on the womans ability to cook and clean. Today it is just personal attractiveness left, so of course good looks gets more important since it is a big part in how attractive someone is perceived to be.
 
  • #17
Klockan3 said:
In the 1930's the wife relied on the mans income while the man relied on the womans ability to cook and clean. Today it is just personal attractiveness left, so of course good looks gets more important since it is a big part in how attractive someone is perceived to be.

Thats right...in those days women were subjected to men and needed them, men had the power. Now the tables have turned and women are very independant and don't need men to be happy :eek:.

In the process, the average joe hasnt learned how to woo the average mary and the average mary is still holding on the romantic idea of the 'boy approaches the girl chat her up' kinda thing despite her increased confidence and independance...Hence the deadlock...and the huge number of singles out there in the world.

I wonder what the stats are in terms of the number of couples/singles for a given age group?
 
  • #18
Klockan3 said:
In the 1930's the wife relied on the mans income while the man relied on the womans ability to cook and clean. Today it is just personal attractiveness left, so of course good looks gets more important since it is a big part in how attractive someone is perceived to be.

I strongly disagree with this. The notion that a 1930's man might look at a woman and think "not attractive but she can cook!" is ludicrous as is the notion that nowadays because we have equal rights "it is just personal attractiveness left". How about how well you work together as a team? How a partner is someone who will help you through things? And don't you think your taking a very http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heteronormativity" [Broken] view on this?

bugatti79 said:
Thats right...in those days women were subjected to men and needed them, men had the power. Now the tables have turned and women are very independant and don't need men to be happy :eek:.

In the process, the average joe hasnt learned how to woo the average mary and the average mary is still holding on the romantic idea of the 'boy approaches the girl chat her up' kinda thing despite her increased confidence and independance...Hence the deadlock...and the huge number of singles out there in the world.

I wonder what the stats are in terms of the number of couples/singles for a given age group?

I don't get this at all. You seem to be suggesting that an increasing number of men cannot talk to women, not to mention your gross misportrayal of the "average woman" who sits daintily waiting for a man. Get real!
 
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  • #19
ryan_m_b said:
I strongly disagree with this. The notion that a 1930's man might look at a woman and think "not attractive but she can cook!" is ludicrous as is the notion that nowadays because we have equal rights "it is just personal attractiveness left". How about how well you work together as a team? How a partner is someone who will help you through things? And don't you think your taking a very http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heteronormativity" [Broken] view on this?
Since heterosexuals vastly outnumbers the others any survey would be mostly influenced by their picks. Also I didn't say that people are just out for looks today, how well you work as a team is also a part of personal attraction.

And no, I did the rational thing of looking at what is different between 1930 and 1970. A major difference is how women got out of the household, so I hypothesize that it would be the major reason for the change in peoples opinions. It is expected that as other factors diminish looks would get more important so I conclude that my hypothesis holds for that argument.

Now, can you please stop assuming that I talked in absolutes and instead understand that when people talk about statistical data they almost always talk about statistical differences. Like if I say that women are better at languages I don't mean that all women are better than all men at it but that on average they are better. The 1930's man probably didn't think like that, no, but he most likely valued cooking higher than the average modern man would.
 
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  • #20
Klockan3 said:
Since heterosexuals vastly outnumbers the others any survey would be mostly influenced by their picks. Also I didn't say that people are just out for looks today, how well you work as a team is also a part of personal attraction.

So everything not physical is still part of personal attraction but cooking is somehow different :uhh:

And no, I did the rational thing of looking at what is different between 1930 and 1970. A major difference is how women got out of the household, so I hypothesize that it would be the major reason for the change in peoples opinions. It is expected that as other factors diminish looks would get more important so I conclude that my hypothesis holds for that argument.

You have nothing to demonstrate that your hypothesis is true. The idea that because one factor goes down others must increase in importance is unsubstantiated. Things can become a non-issue without raising the importance of anything else.

Now, can you please stop assuming that I talked in absolutes and instead understand that when people talk about statistical data they almost always talk about statistical differences. Like if I say that women are better at languages I don't mean that all women are better than all men at it but that on average they are better. The 1930's man probably didn't think like that, no, but he most likely valued cooking higher than the average modern man would.

I see no reason to agree with this considering you have actually demonstrated any statistics at all.
 
  • #21
ryan_m_b said:
So everything not physical is still part of personal attraction but cooking is somehow different :uhh:
The difference is that cooking was her job, in the same way as providing money was the mans job. There is nothing personal about women wanting men with lots of money and men wanting women who can take care of a home. I'd define personal attractiveness as how you feel when you are with the person.
ryan_m_b said:
You have nothing to demonstrate that your hypothesis is true. The idea that because one factor goes down others must increase in importance is unsubstantiated. Things can become a non-issue without raising the importance of anything else.
But there got to be some reason people get together, having someone do household things was a part back then but isn't today. With that reason gone there is less reason overall to do it, so the other reasons get stronger in comparison.
 
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  • #22
Klockan3 said:
But there got to be some reason people get together, having someone do household things was a part back then but isn't today. With that reason gone there is less reason overall to do it, so the other reasons get stronger in comparison.

Emphasis mine, I see no reason why other things are necessarily stronger if the other factors are no longer relevant.

You don't need to agree, you just have to stop coming up with nonsense arguments. We are discussing statistical data, I am coming up with a hypothesis to why the data looks like it does, you criticize it by talking in absolutes like a moron.

You haven't produced any statistical data. You are simply asserting things that you believe to be true, I have not taken what you mean to be absolute and I still disagree. You have not come up with any hypothesis to fit any data because you haven't presented any data.
 
  • #23
ryan_m_b said:
Emphasis mine, I see no reason why other things are necessarily stronger if the other factors are no longer relevant.
So let's say that people like to do an activity, call it A. There are two factors to why they do this, B and C. People rate B as being of importance 8 to why they do this and C as 4. Now let say that for some reason B is no longer a factor. Would you expect people to keep C as a 4?
ryan_m_b said:
You haven't produced any statistical data. You are simply asserting things that you believe to be true, I have not taken what you mean to be absolute and I still disagree. You have not come up with any hypothesis to fit any data because you haven't presented any data.
The OP has statistical data, I commented on that, you replied with "he notion that a 1930's man might look at a woman and think "not attractive but she can cook!" is ludicrous". How is that not an idiotic reply? We are talking about statistical data here, every statement is thus about statistical differences, hypothesized or not. And if you consider the statement "attractive but she can't cook" it isn't as ludicrous any more.
 
  • #24
I did not say that always other factors may become more important but that it is not necessary. For example; If I have a list of priorities and the first few are knocked off the rest may become more important. However if I have a list of things that I want the fact that I get one doesn't mean I want the others more.

And has already been discussed, the survey in question is hardly a conclusive study. I've stated that the claim is ludicrous because even if the data were conclusive your proposed claim has no evidence, it's based on your pre-conceived notions of a culture you haven't even outlined. And by the way, whilst I may have disagreed strongly with your claim I have not insulted you. I hardly think it is appropriate for you to act so rudely, on this basis expect no more replies from me :smile:
 
  • #25
I think this has more to do with judging what answers people perceive as culturally acceptable then with actual changes per ce.
 
  • #26
Galteeth said:
I think this has more to do with judging what answers people perceive as culturally acceptable then with actual changes per ce.
I agree that such polls are probably best understood as polls of what people feel it is socially acceptable to believe.

But that gives rise to the question, "Don't 'actual' changes follow changes in cultural acceptability?"

The link asserts:

Since the 1930s, Buss writes, “physical appearance has gone up in importance for men and women about equally, corresponding with the rise in television, fashion magazines, advertising, and other media depictions of attractive models.”

After years of the media bringing our attention to looks, aren't we now paying more attention to looks? And, if we are, aren't looks, de facto, more important?

Or, are you suggesting that people are publicly giving lip support to one set of criteria while privately acting on another?

It's my perception that people are authentically attracted to other's personalities first, and that that attraction is then sent through an internal social censor for editing. A person with a personality you find exiting might end up being rejected because you'd be unable to justify them to your social circle. If everyone's internal censor is culturally set to screen for "looks" then "looks" are, suddenly, important.
 
  • #27
For some reason these relationship threads are mostly what is coming up in my RSS feed.
 

1. What is the correlation between good looks and success?

Studies have shown that there is a positive correlation between good looks and success in various areas such as career advancement, salary, and overall happiness. This can be attributed to the "halo effect" where attractive individuals are perceived to have other positive qualities, leading to more opportunities and advantages.

2. How does the media influence our perception of good looks?

The media plays a significant role in shaping our beauty standards and ideals. Advertisements, TV shows, and social media often promote a narrow definition of what is considered attractive, causing individuals to strive for unrealistic beauty standards and placing a higher value on physical appearance.

3. Is there a difference in the importance of good looks for men and women?

While good looks are generally considered important for both men and women, society places a higher emphasis on physical appearance for women. Women are often judged more harshly and face more pressure to conform to societal beauty standards, which can have a significant impact on their self-esteem and opportunities.

4. Can someone's good looks change over time?

Yes, physical appearance can change over time due to various factors such as aging, health, and lifestyle choices. However, the perception of good looks is subjective and can also change depending on cultural and societal norms.

5. How can the increasing importance of good looks impact individuals and society?

The increasing emphasis on good looks can lead to negative consequences such as body image issues, low self-esteem, and discrimination based on appearance. It can also perpetuate a superficial and materialistic society where individuals are judged primarily on their physical appearance rather than their character and abilities.

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