The Effects of Women's Age and Physical Appearance on Evaluations of Attractiveness and Social Desirability

Abstract

Younger people are perceived as possessing a host of socially desirable attributes, some of which are the same traits attributed to attractive people. In the present study, 160 younger and older White Canadians rated the attractiveness and personality traits of 1 of 4 target women. The results indicated an interaction between the participant's age and gender and the age and attractiveness of the target person. Both younger and older judges showed an attractiveness bias and downrated the social desirability of younger unattractive targets. Younger judges rated younger and older attractive targets as equal in social desirability. Older male judges rated older attractive targets as less socially desirable than younger attractive targets. Results are discussed in terms of cultural expectations of beauty.

Customers’ perceptions of service quality: Do servers’ age stereotypes matter?

“…These results indicated therefore that employing a young server might raise the perceived service quality of the customers. The findings confirmed the stereotypes described by Perlini et al (1999): "What is age is less good." Fischer et al (1997) indicated that server gender stereotype can influence perceptions of service quality.…”

“…Age-based stereotypes and service quality "What is aged is less good" was coined to describe an age stereotype (Perlini et al, 1999). Traditional views of age stereotyping suggest that older people are judged by younger people to be less active and sociable than their younger counterparts, evoking concepts of frailty, slowness, irritability, dependency, withdrawal, vagueness, and stagnation (Braithwaite et al, 1985(Braithwaite et al, -1986.…”

The Effects of Images of African American Women in Hip Hop on Early Adolescents’ Attitudes Toward Physical Attractiveness and Interpersonal Relationships

“…This may explain why girls in the present study often referenced what boys liked in conjunction with what they liked, a pattern that did not emerge among the boys' responses. This phenomenon may occur because of the added value men give to physical traits over psychological traits when considering dating processes, findings that have been consistently found in mate selection research (e.g., Feingold, 1990;Perlini, Marcello, Hansen, & Pudney, 2001;Regan & Joshi, 2003). Studies of African American populations have shown that men's interpretations of women's physical appearance, including body shape and dress, are an important part of mate selection and relationship quality (Landolt, Lalumiere, & Quinsey, 1995;Lundy, Tan, & Cunningham, 1998).…”

Physical attractiveness of the service worker in the moment of truth and its effects on customer satisfaction

“…Third, it is also necessary to examine more closely the notion of physical attractiveness vis-à -vis other possible types of attractiveness (e.g., sexual attractiveness and attractiveness as a potential ally), because different kinds of attractiveness may have different affective and motivational consequences (Rhodes, 2006). Moreover, ambitious research on physical attractiveness needs to take into account that also other appearance-related factors may contribute to the customer's evaluation process, such as the stimulus person's age (Perlini et al, 1999) and most likely also his/her ethnicity (Martin et al, 2004).…”

“…This, however, would be needed in future research to better understand the details of evaluation process. Second, some customer characteristics may moderate the effects of a physically attractive stimulus-such as the customer's vanity (Watson et al, 1999), age (Perlini et al, 1999), and his/her own level of physical attractiveness (Gallucci and Meyer, 1984). Third, it is also necessary to examine more closely the notion of physical attractiveness vis-à -vis other possible types of attractiveness (e.g., sexual attractiveness and attractiveness as a potential ally), because different kinds of attractiveness may have different affective and motivational consequences (Rhodes, 2006).…”