Visual Stimuli

• Two dimensional

• Line drawings

• Realistic? Representative? Valid?

Henss (2000)

• Facial attractiveness research

• Differences between line drawings and photographs

• Artifacts and/or validity re: WHR using line drawings?

Method

• Colour photographs, digitally manipulated by tightening or widening hips

• Original, smaller WHR, wider WHR• Between-subjects design (each subject only

saw one picture)• Standard type of rating questions (e.g.,

attractiveness, fecundity, youthfulness, etc.) and personality

Images

Range of WHRs

• Quite inconsistent

• Different poses of figures

Stimulus 1 2 3 4 5 6

Smaller 0.74 0.73 0.68 0.72 0.71 0.68

Original 0.77 0.76 0.70 0.79 0.76 0.72

Wider 0.82 0.81 0.71 0.85 0.80 0.74

Results

• Only attractiveness was significantly affected by manipulation of WHR

• Smaller WHR was most attractive, then original, and lastly wider

• Tightening hips makes woman appear taller– Lower 175.5cm, original 174.2cm, wider

173.6cm

• Smaller WHR, smaller BMI; related to height

Overall

• In general, confirms Singh’s WHR findings• Still, valid arguments against line drawings• Why use single individual as varied stimuli?

– Issue of generalization

• Different individuals were given different ratings on personality dimensions in this study

• Consistent with facial research, showing that personality judgments influence attractiveness ratings

Puhl & Boland (2001)

• Computer manipulated full figure photographs• Selected from a number of women to get two

models with WHR of 0.72 and 0.86, both in healthy BMI range

• Width of figures reduced and increased by 20%– Assumption that this would correspond to underweight

and overweight BMI conditions

• Between subjects design

Images

Results

• Underweight significantly more attractive• Model B more attractive than model A• Fecundity differences• Subjects distinguished weight levels• Females rated figures more attractive than males

Interpretation

• Strongly within the sociocultural perspective

• Model B has higher WHR (more “tubular”), therefore, must support media preference for thin (i.e., “tubular”) models

• However…

Swami et al. (2008)

• Not just WHR literature utilizing line drawings

• Vast majority of body image studies has traditionally relied on 2D line drawing representations

• Photographic Figure Rating Scale (PFRS)– 10 photographic images of real women varying

in BMI

• Is this a valid scale?

Images

Measures

• Rank figures from thinnest to heaviest

• Identify any figures that were emaciated or obese

• Body Appreciation Scale– 13 items measuring body image

• Demographic measures of subjects

Findings and Implications

• PFRS shows good construct validity

• BMIs from images can be successfully and consistently rank ordered

• Further testing of this type for future (and even current) image banks would be beneficial

• Can apply same approach to 3D images

Fan et al. (2004)

• Body scanned 31 Caucasian females

• 3D “wire frame” figures

• Blue figures on grey background

• Rotated 360°

• Hong Kong Chinese male and female raters– Mostly students in fashion and textile department

• Rate for attractiveness

Images

Results

Results

• Linear regression: BMI and WHR accounted for 75.8% of variance– BMI (72.7%), WHR (1.4%)

• Log regression: now BMI and WHR account for 82.1%– BMI (80.4%), WHR (1.7%)

Smith, Cornelissens & Tovee (2007)

• Evaluating assessment of health in mate choice• Colour video clips of 43 actual women showing

360° rotational views of their figures• Mean age = 20.7• BMIs from 18.4 to 26.7 (mean=22.4)• Percent body fat from 21.1-34.2% (mean=27.7%)• Cardiovascular fitness (VO2)• WHR (0.72-0.84, mean=0.74), WCR, torso-to-leg

ratio, leg length• Caucasians, but differences in skin tone

Example Image

Results

• No significance relationships between attractiveness and cardiovascular fitness or WHR

• Significant relationships between attractiveness and % body fat and skin tone index

Role of Characteristics

• With these stimuli, attractiveness judgments best explained by % body fat– WHR and WCR both co-vary with body weight

• Darker skin tone given higher attractiveness ratings– Social hierarchy of tanning? – Seems largely specific to Caucasians in

Western culture

Fitness• More realistic images than any earlier 3D

representations• Cardiovascular fitness is good predictor of long-

term health• Perhaps only assessed during physical activity

– Brown et al. (2005) dancing study

• Ancestrally, body fat may have been closely linked to cardiovascular health– In modern industrial society, body fat and

cardiovascular fitness can be decoupled– Makes fitness judgments more difficult

18 Years Later…

• Initial implications of universal preference for WHR=0.7 not supported

• However, with a few exceptions, findings support male preference for lower WHRs over higher WHRs

Shape and Weight

• A consistent, ongoing issue of confounds

• Difficult to successfully separate

• Camps of shape supporters and weight supporters

WHR as First Pass Filter?

• Probably not

• Weight (BMI, volumetric estimations, etc.) probably account for greater variability in attractiveness judgments

• Facial features

• Personality

• Complex interactive function

Effects of Weight Removed

• Does WHR make significant predictions of attractiveness with effects of weight removed

• Seems to be “yes”• Both empirical and theoretical support for

importance of WHR in judgments• Both shape and weight predictors of health

and fertility

Environmental Parameters

• Local resource hypothesis

• Recent work showing that adaptations may be more rapid than previously believed

• Evolved adaptations are generally predispositions, especially at the level of complex behaviour

• Intersection with learning

Limitations of Studies re: EEA

• University students (age, socioeconomics, enculturation)

• Culture (1st world, 3rd world, hunter-gatherer)

• Comparisons back to actual EEA• E.g., consider the ambiguities of the role of

clothing…

Progression in Science

• Started as a rather simple, but testable, EP hypothesis

• Good scientific theories are “fruitful”

• Nearly 20 years on

• A lot of research has been generated