It is a natural human impulse to want to be attractive, and many people take steps, whether minor or major, to improve their physical appearance. A study published in Evolution and Human Behavior explores how beauty-enhancing behaviors differ based on culture, gender, socioeconomic status, marital status, and more.
The desire to be attractive is seen throughout the world and has been around throughout time. Being desirable to the opposite sex is of evolutionary importance and can encourage more and better choices in romantic partners. Because of this, humans have a long history of taking steps to improve their physical attractiveness. Thousands of years ago this may have looked like wearing shells as jewelry, but in today’s world it comes in more modern forms, such as having plastic surgery. Even today, different groups are likely to engage in different self-improvement behaviors, and this study seeks to explore these discrepancies.
“Many scholars have called for a large-scale study on primarily non-Western samples to comprehensively examine the predictors of attractiveness-enhancing activities in humans,” Marta Kowal and colleagues write in their new study.
“The present multinational investigation addressed this central need by testing evolutionarily driven hypotheses, along with several other influential hypotheses regarding beauty-enhancing behaviors that have not been jointly and empirically verified in large-scale global research.” .
The researchers used data from 93,158 adult participants in 93 countries. Participants were recruited and completed their survey online. Participants completed measures of beauty-enhancing behaviors, including the amount of time per day they spent doing activities to improve their physical attractiveness. In addition, participants completed measures on gender roles, individualism, pathogen history, and demographics. Country data was also collected, including GDP and gender equality.
The results showed that both men and women spent approximately 4 hours per day engaging in self-improvement behaviors, with an average of 23 more minutes per day for women than men. While women engaged in behaviors like putting on makeup, men displayed higher levels of exercise to increase attractiveness. The findings are in line with previous research, which has indicated that women and men engage in a similar level of beauty-enhancing behaviors.
Women’s self-enhancing behavior drops to a minimum around midlife and is significantly more prevalent during the reproductive and old age years. “To put this in perspective, 18-year-old women spent 63 more minutes per day improving their appearance than 44-year-old women, while 60-year-old women spent 30 more minutes per day than 44-year-old women, on average. This effect size was large compared to other predictors,” the researchers said.
Surprisingly, people in committed relationships spent more time improving their appearance than single people, which may be related to partner retention.
The results also revealed cultural and individual differences. Women from countries with lower levels of gender equality and women who adhered more strictly to traditional gender roles probably spent more time on their appearance. People who scored high on individualism are likely to have higher scores, but individualistic versus collectivist countries were not shown to make a significant difference.
Additionally, people who spent more time using social media or watching television were more likely to spend a greater amount of time on beauty-enhancing behaviors, likely due to the unrealistic beauty standards that the media often portrays.
Kowal and colleagues concluded that “beauty-enhancing behavior is a universal phenomenon,” noting that “99% of the nearly 100,000 people in our cross-cultural sample report spending more than 10 minutes a day improving their appearance.” physical”.
This study took important steps toward looking at a more complete picture of beauty-enhancing behavior by making a cross-cultural and diverse study. Despite this, there are limitations to be aware of. One of those limitations is that the survey was administered online, which can lead to inattention from participants. Furthermore, cultures with limited or no access to the Internet were not represented in this study.
“The main strength of this research is its cross-cultural nature and large sample size, which allows the claims of different theories to be weighed and the factors that explain the greatest variation in appearance-enhancing activities to be examined,” the researchers said. “We believe that a more nuanced understanding of the phenomenon of beauty enhancement can translate into the development of more effective ways to counter the negative influence of the uncontrolled pursuit of beauty.”
The study, “Predictors of Enhanced Human Physical Attractiveness: Data from 93 Countries,” was published on September 6, 2022.
Source: news.google.com