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Effects of Attractiveness and Social Status on Dating Desire in Heterosexual Adolescents: An Experimental Study

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❤ : Social psychology online dating

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While the results were more variable, overall people preferred relatively low-levels of self-disclosure. Human match-making is a complicated process that likely dates back to the bible. Of course, online dating and dating apps have changed where we meet our future partners. An example of a career in psychology is marriage and family therapists, who help to treat couples and families who are going through emotional or behavioral problems. In other words, buffering had immediate benefits, allaying fears and creating a more constructive social psychology online dating dynamic. Love Is Blind But of course, the social context matters as well. Gender differences in mate selection: Evidence from a speed dating experiment. Although previous studies provided valuable knowledge on short-term mate preferences, most studies reviewed here exclusively relied on questionnaires in which respondents explicitly rated the importance of various characteristics.

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The present study examined to what extent adolescent dating desire is based on attractiveness and social status of a potential short-term partner. Further, we tested whether self-perceived mate value moderated the relationship between dating desire and attractiveness of a potential partner. Data were used from a sample of 1,913 adolescents aged 13—18. Participants rated the importance of various characteristics of a potential partner and also participated in an experimental vignette study in which dating desire was measured with either low or high attractive potential partners having either a high or low social status. The results showed that boys rated attractiveness as more important than girls, while social status was rated as relatively unimportant by both sexes. For girls, on the other hand, it appeared that both attractiveness and social status of a potential partner were important for their dating desire. Finally, boys and girls who perceived themselves as having a high mate value showed more dating desire toward an attractive potential partner compared to adolescents who perceived themselves as having a low mate value. The present results extend previous research by showing that attractiveness of a potential partner is important to both adolescent boys and girls, but social status does not strongly affect dating desire during this particular age period. Introduction Evolutionary psychologists propose that men and women have different strategies that underlie short-term mating. While women invest nine months in pregnancies and even more years to raise their offspring e. Consequently, the benefits of short-term mating differ for men and women. The main benefit of short-term mating for men is that it maximizes their number of sexual mates and therefore their number of offspring Schmitt et al. Although previous studies provided valuable knowledge on short-term mate preferences, most studies reviewed here exclusively relied on questionnaires in which respondents explicitly rated the importance of various characteristics. These answers could be biased by social desirability and might not measure actual influences of mate preferences. So far, the vast majority of empirical research focusing on SST has been conducted with adults. Moreover, it is during these years that the human brain undergoes maturational changes that lead to many profound physical changes, such as the development of breasts in girls and the growth of facial hair in boys Spear,. These biological and physical changes are accompanied by psychological changes, such as an increasing interest in relationships with opposite-sex peers and sexual fantasies, which also stimulate the development of active sexual strategies in adolescents Buss,. Consequently, dating goals and desire may be different for adolescents than for adults. For adolescents, for example, dating might primarily be a context in which one experiments with sexual experiences as such Feiring,. In the present study, attractiveness was defined as the global attractiveness of a potential short-term partner for a date. Nevertheless, Eyre, Read, and Millstein found that, compared to girls, boys reported using more dating strategies that emphasized spending of money, which might serve as an indicator of high social status for girls. Thus, although it is known that adult women prefer partners with a high social status, it is unclear whether it is important for adolescent girls as well. In the Netherlands, 35% of the adolescents in the age range of 12—18 reported to have none or very little relationship experience Overbeek,. Possibly, because adolescents do not have much experience with different sexual strategies, they are less skilled in estimating which partners they can attract. Consequently, they may aim for the best partner possible in terms of both attractiveness and social status. We investigated this question based on 1 data from survey questions about their partner preferences and 2 data from an experimental vignette study. Importantly, we scrutinized these hypotheses controlling for potential confounder effects of variation in relationship experiences and current relationship status. All adolescents taking part in the study were enrolled in average or higher-level education i. In this sample, 380 19. In the original sample, five adolescents were involved in homosexual relationships. Due to the very small number, and to perform the analyses on only heterosexual participants, they were omitted from further analyses. In total, 393 20. The remaining 1,140 59. The majority of the relationships 74. Design and Procedure We randomly selected 17 secondary schools in the Netherlands, which were sent an introductory letter and who were contacted by telephone shortly after. Classroom assessments were conducted from January to March 2007. Data of the current study were collected as part of a broader survey on social skills and general dating behaviors. We received approval for conducting the present study of the ethical committee of the Faculty of Social Sciences, Radboud University of Nijmegen. Before the onset of the study, information about the study was sent to parents. Parents could refuse to give consent for participation of their child in the study and two explicit refusals of parents were recorded. All pupils consented to participation in the study. Further, all pupils were ensured that their information would not be given to any third party e. Next to the female researcher or a female research assistant one teacher was present during the assessments. The teacher, however, was instructed to keep a low profile during the assessment and only responded to questions if adolescents specifically asked for their teacher. During the assessment, pupils were not allowed to discuss their answers with other pupils. The questionnaires were administered during regular school hours and lasted no more than 50 min i. Part of the questionnaire was the vignette experiment, which had to be completed at the beginning of the questionnaire. Other items in the questionnaires were completed after the vignette part. Adolescents were randomly given either attractive or less attractive pictures of a person of the opposite sex. Above the pictures, a description of either a high or low social status person was provided. We used photographs of faces of attractive and less attractive adolescent boys and girls, which were selected from various sites on the internet, among which websites of modeling agencies. During the selection of the pictures, we carefully matched the pictures on various picture characteristics, such as picture quality, angle of picture, and framing. Our panel of experts consisted of 59 adolescents 26 boys, 33 girls in the same age group as the adolescents from the present sample—between 13 and 18 years old. These adolescents rated the four photographs on a 7-point overall attractiveness scale. The order in which the panel viewed the photographs was balanced, so no order effects could bias the outcome. Regarding the manipulation of social status, the description of either high or low social status was provided together with the attractive or less attractive picture. These descriptions were adapted from a previous experimental study and were known to successfully discriminate between high and low social status Van Straaten et al. In the present study, the high social status person was enrolled in the highest education program in the Netherlands, had more upper-class hobbies i. Adolescents with a relationship were asked to answer the questions as if they were not having a relationship. Adolescents were asked to rate the importance of each characteristic of a potential future partner on a 10-point scale ranging from 1 not important at all to 10 very important. S he does not know many people. Self-perceived Mate Value SPMV This concept was assessed with the Self-Perceived Mating Success Scale Landolt et al. It appeared that the same factors arose for boys and girls. Importance of Personal Characteristics of a Partner To investigate which characteristics of a potential future partner were important for adolescents, t-tests were conducted to test sex differences. Table shows that both boys and girls reported that reliability, honesty, and kindness were the three most important characteristics for a potential partner. Girls, however, generally rated these characteristics as more important than boys. A strong sex difference was found in terms of attractiveness, which was rated as the fourth most important characteristic by boys and only as the tenth most important characteristic by girls. Concerning social status, both boys and girls attached relatively little importance to the characteristics ambitious, finished education, high salary, and good family background. However, girls rated the characteristics ambitious and finished education as significantly more important than boys. There were no significant sex differences for high salary and good family background. Dating Desire: Attractiveness and Social Status In order to examine whether dating desire was related to attractiveness and social status, a 2 Attractiveness: Attractive versus Unattractive × 2 Social Status: High versus Low ANCOVA was performed separately for boys and girls. Dating desire was the dependent variable and age, relationship status, and previous relationship experience were included as covariates. Mean ratings for dating desire of boys and girls for the different conditions are shown in Table and test results for boys and girls are reported in Table. ANCOVA of dating desire on attractiveness and social status For boys, the potential confounder relationship status was not significantly related to dating desire. In contrast, age and relationship experience were significantly related to dating desire, indicating that boys who were older and had more relationship experience reported more dating desire. After controlling for these variables, the significant main effects of attractiveness and social status were qualified by the interaction effect of attractiveness x social status. For girls, the potential confounders age, relationship status, and previous relationship experience were not significantly related to dating desire. After controlling for these variables, significant main effects of attractiveness and social status were found, indicating that girls showed more dating desire in the attractive and in the high social status condition. Self-perceived Mate Value as Moderator Again, a 2 Attractiveness: Attractive versus Unattractive × 2 Social Status: High versus Low ANCOVA was conducted separately for boys and girls. Dating desire was the dependent variable and age, relationship status, and previous relationship experience were included as covariates. This time, however, self-perceived mate value SPMV was included in the models as a moderator. For boys, no significant effects were found for the control variables relationship status and relationship experience. For girls, no significant effects were found for the control variables age, relationship status, and relationship experience. Discussion Research on SST has been dominated by studies using young adult samples. When explicitly asked to rate various characteristics of a potential partner, boys rated attractiveness as more important than girls. Social status was not very important for both boys and girls. Finally, we found that self-perceived mate value moderated the relationship between attractiveness and dating desire for both boys and girls. Specifically, adolescents who perceived themselves as having a high mate value showed more dating desire if the other person was attractive compared to adolescents who perceived themselves as having a lower mate value. This might imply that previous findings on sexual strategies that were exclusively based on self-report ratings had underestimated the importance of attractiveness, in particular for girls. Ample studies on adult samples also indicated that both men and women strive for attractive short-term mates Buunk et al. Our study showed that the tendency to seek attractive partners for short-term mating can also be found in adolescents who are at the beginning of their relationship career and still have little experience with dating. For boys, on the contrary, social status of the potential partner would be less important due to their minimal parental investment. The present results supported this hypothesized sex difference partly. For boys, however, social status was important only when the potential partner was attractive. Although in comparison to the importance of attractiveness for adolescent dating desire, social status was a minor short-term strategy. Apparently, adolescents do not attach much importance to finding a partner who has a high social status. This may be explained by the fact that, in adolescence, sexual behaviors are just beginning to emerge and adolescents still live at home with parents. Hence, it is possible that social status will become increasingly important during the transition into adulthood, when individuals need to become independent and have to take care of themselves. Moreover, it is not until then when differences between indicators of social status of a potential short-term partner become clear e. For example, Kenrick, Gabrielidis, Keefe, and Cornelius showed that, if adolescents were asked who they would ideally date, both boys and girls would prefer older partners. Moreover, it has been shown that girls indeed dated older boys Connolly et al. Thus, it could be that sex differences will occur as older potential partners perhaps will elicit the importance of social status. In line with SST, evidence emerged for the moderating role of self-perceived mate value emerged from our study see also Landolt et al. Our results indicated that adolescents did not generally aim for the best partner possible, but that they choose a partner that fits their own mate value. It is important, however, to interpret this moderator effect in the light of its small effect size. That is, although significant, the moderating effect of self-perceived mate value was rather weak and seems to play only a minor role in the light of the overriding importance of physical attractiveness of a potential partner. Interestingly, we found that girls generally showed more dating desire compared to boys in the context of short-term mating. Furthermore, girls have larger other-sex friendship networks compared to boys and start developing these friendships at a younger age, which allows the earlier establishment of romantic relationships Connolly et al. Despite the fact that we extended previous studies on SST by means of correlational and experimental paradigms using a large adolescent sample, some limitations should be addressed. First of all, we adapted the descriptions of social status from previous research on adults and older adolescents. However, the cues that potential partners display referring to either high or low social status might differ for adolescents and adults. For adults, being highly ambitious is an indicator of high social status. For adolescents, this may be less clear and perhaps other characteristics of potential partners are more accurate to measure social status e. Thus, future research is needed to test whether the same results would be found if more appropriate descriptions of social status were provided. In addition, the indicators of the low status condition should be formulated more comparable as in the low status condition the vignette person was fatherless and in the high status condition father had a high social status occupation. Further, we found support for the association between self-perceived mate value and adolescent dating desire. Adolescents who perceived themselves as having a high mate value showed more dating desire with attractive potential partners compared to adolescents who perceived themselves as having a lower mate value. Therefore, the present results reveal that SST is at least partly applicable to adolescents dating desire, but needs further attention in terms of how social status might be defined in this age group. Thao Ha was supported by a Mozaiek grant and Geertjan Overbeek by a VENI grant, both from the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research, during the preparation of this article. Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial License which permits any noncommercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author s and source are credited. However, the present study focused on adolescent dating desire and is, therefore, framed within the context of short-term mating. For more information on long-term mating, see Gangestad and Simpson. The impact of puberty. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry. The evolutionary psychology of physical attractiveness: Sexual selection and human morphology. Physical attractiveness and dating choice: A test of the matching hypothesis. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology. The role of pubertal processes. In: Elliott GR, Feldman S, editors. At the threshold: The developing adolescent. Cambridge: Harvard University Press; 1990. Sex differences in human mate preferences: Evolutionary hypotheses tested in 37 cultures. Behavioral and Brain Sciences. Evolutionary psychology: A new paradigm for psychological science. Sexual strategies theory: An evolutionary perspective on human mating. Age and gender differences in mate selection criteria for various involvement levels. The attraction hypothesis: Do similar attitudes affect anything? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. More than a myth: The developmental significance of romantic relationships during adolescence. Journal of Research on Adolescence. The role of peers in the emergence of heterosexual romantic relationships in adolescence. Sex differences in jealousy: Evolutionary mechanism or artifact of measurement? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. The role of ego-identity status in mating preferences. Journal of Adolescent Health. Gender differences in effects of physical attractiveness on romantic attraction: A comparison across five research paradigms. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Gender differences in mate selection preferences: A test of the parental investment model. Concept of romance in 15-year-old adolescents. Journal of Research on Adolescence. Other-sex friendship networks and the development of romantic relationships in adolescence. Journal of Youth and Adolescence. Speed-dating as an invaluable tool for studying romantic attraction: A methodological primer. Gender differences in mate selection: Evidence from a speed dating experiment. Quarterly Journal of Economics. Measuring relationship beliefs: An individual differences scale. Journal of Research in Personality. Toward an evolutionary history of female sociosexual variation. The evolution of human mating: Trade-offs and strategic pluralism. Behavioral and Brain Sciences. Human sexual selection and developmental stability. In: Kenrick DT, Simpson JA, editors. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates; 1997. Facial attractiveness, developmental stability, and fluctuating asymmetry. Personality and Individual Differences. Evolution and Human Behavior. Pubertal timing, sexual behaviour and self-reported depression in middle adolescence. HurryDate: Mate preferences in action. Evolution and Human Behavior. Sex differences and intra-sex variations in human mating tactics: An evolutionary approach. Sex similarities and differences in preferences for short-term mates: What, whether, and why. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. The changing importance of romantic relationship involvement to competence from late childhood to late adolescence. Ideal partner preferences among adolescents. Social Behavior and Personality. Universal sex differences in the desire for sexual variety: Tests from 52 nations, 6 continents, and 13 islands. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. The effects of sex and temporal context on feelings of romantic desire: An experimental evaluation of sexual strategies theory. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. The adolescent brain and age-related behavioral manifestations. Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews. Liking some things in some people more than others: Partner preferences in romantic relationships and friendships. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships. The body and face of woman: One ornament that signals quality? Evolution of Human Behavior. Different cognitive processes underlie human mate choices and mate preferences. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA. Sexual attractiveness: Sex differences in assessment and criteria. Evolution and Human Behavior. Parental investment and sexual selection. In: Campbell B, editor. Sexual selection and the descent of man. Sex differences in short-term mate preferences and behavioral mimicry: A semi-naturalistic experiment. Archives of Sexual Behavior. Evolution and sex differences in preferences for short-term mates: Results from a policy capturing study. Evolution and Human Behavior. Sense of humor 7. Can go along with friends 7. Wants to have children in future 5. Good family background 5. Has experiences with relationships 4.

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While the results were more variable, overall people preferred relatively low-levels of self-disclosure. Human match-making is a complicated process that likely dates back to the bible. Of course, online dating and dating apps have changed where we meet our future partners. An example of a career in psychology is marriage and family therapists, who help to treat couples and families who are going through emotional or behavioral problems. In other words, buffering had immediate benefits, allaying fears and creating a more constructive social psychology online dating dynamic. Love Is Blind But of course, the social context matters as well. Gender differences in mate selection: Evidence from a speed dating experiment. Although previous studies provided valuable knowledge on short-term mate preferences, most studies reviewed here exclusively relied on questionnaires in which respondents explicitly rated the importance of various characteristics. Dating mr d Free dating apps in australia Start dating app