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Research suggests that women make judgments about a man's value as a potential romantic partner based on cues associated with facial masculinity. Such studies have often relied on electronically-manipulated facial [...]

This research examined the effects of naturally occurring appearance-focused social comparisons on women's affect, body satisfaction, and weight-related cognitions. During their daily activities, women reporting body dissatisfaction (n=53) and women reporting body satisfaction (n=34) recorded their reactions to comparison information. Body-dissatisfied women engaged in more comparisons and a greater proportion of upward comparisons than body-satisfied women. Upward comparisons were associated with an increase in negative affect, body dissatisfaction, and thoughts of exercising for both groups; however, body-dissatisfied women experienced a greater increase in thoughts of dieting following upward comparisons. The daily effects of comparison information on body-dissatisfied women were examined; upward comparisons were associated with increases in daily negative affect, body dissatisfaction, and weight-related cognitions.

Researchers have associated minimal dating with numerous factors. The present author tested shyness, introversion, physical attractiveness, performance evaluation, anxiety, social skill, social self-esteem, and loneliness to determine the nature of their relationships with 2 measures of self-reported minimal dating in a sample of 175 college students. For women, shyness, introversion, physical attractiveness, self-rated anxiety, social self-esteem, and loneliness correlated with 1 or both measures of minimal dating. For men, physical attractiveness, observer-rated social skill, social self-esteem, and loneliness correlated with 1 or both measures of minimal dating. The patterns of relationships were not identical for the 2 indicators of minimal dating, indicating the possibility that minimal dating is not a single construct as researchers previously believed. The present author discussed implications and suggestions for future researchers. Key words: attraction, couple relationships, gender differences, personality, BECOMING INVOLVED IN ROMANTIC RELATIONSHIPS is a normal part of life for most individuals. Although individuals experience their share of failed relationships, most pass through the initiation process successfully. If [...]

This manuscript describes the development and preliminary psychometric properties of a 28-item self-report instrument, the Body Influence Assessment Inventory (BIAI). The BIAI taps four dimensions of bodily experiences in the eating disorders area that are linked with suicide-related behaviors. Following the four phases of instrument development, four studies were conducted to examine the psychometric properties of the BIAI. In Study 1 (n = 510 nonclinical participants), exploratory factor analysis identified four factors with item-factor compositions ranging from .30 to .88. In Study 2 (n = 490 nonclinical participants), the four-factor oblique solution provided the best fit to the sample data: Comparative fit index of .95, Tucker-Lewis Index of .93, and root-mean-square error of approximation value of .05. In Study 3 (psychiatric inpatients), estimates of test-retest reliability across a four-week interval (n = 46) ranged from .80 to .89, and estimates of criterion-related validity were strong. In Study 4, Cronbach alpha estimates ranged from .81 to .90 for the BIAI scales. Results provided additional evidence of known-groups and concurrent validity estimates for the BIAI scales. The results suggest that the BIAI has good preliminary psychometric properties. Keywords: body influence; suicide-related behaviors; eating-related suicidality; psychometrics

Physical personality involves perceptible aspects of human appearance (both morphological and expressive) that are reliable cues about human traits and dispositions. Inferences made about personality on the basis of perceiving the cues in appearance may be valid as well as invalid. While the perception of many of such characteristics has been studied before, perception of suggestibility from facial appearance has remained unexplored. Here we present the results of a study where we show that real suggestibility does not correlate with perceived suggestibility. However, there is a significant correlation between perceived suggestibility and some facial characteristics such as babyfacedness and merriness. Keywords Facial appearance * Physical personality * Suggestibility

The purpose of this research was to examine gender and body mass, as factors linked to perceived experiences within the peer appearance culture. The sample included 215 girls and 200 boys who were either in 7th grade or 10th grade. Students provided self-reports on experiences in three domains: appearance culture among friends (appearance conversations and diet/muscle talk), peer evaluations (peer appearance pressure, appearance teasing, and vicarious peer teasing), and peer acceptance concerns (appearance-based acceptance, peer appearance comparison). The results indicated that although girls reported more appearance conversations, boys perceived more appearance pressure and teasing. Boys also admitted that they talked with friends about muscle building at a rate greater than girls talked about dieting. BMI showed distinct gender patterns. BMI was a key attribute that unified the experiences within the appearance culture for overweight girls. Among the boys, BMI was associated with differentiated experiences for underweight and overweight participants. KEYWORDS: body image; adolescent girls and boys; peer appearance culture; gender; body mass.

The present study tested whether theoretically derived risk factors predicted increases in body dissatisfaction and whether gender moderated these relations with data from a longitudinal study of 428 adolescent girls and boys because few prospective studies have examined these aims, despite evidence that body dissatisfaction increases risk for various psychiatric disturbances. Body dissatisfaction showed significant increases for girls and significant decreases for boys during early adolescence. For both genders, parental support deficits, negative affectivity, and self-reported dietary restraint showed significant relations to future increases in body dissatisfaction. Ideal body internalization and body mass index did not demonstrate significant relations to future increases in body dissatisfaction; peer support deficits showed a marginal relation to this outcome. Gender did not moderate these relations, despite adequate power to detect interactive effects. KEY WORDS: body dissatisfaction; adolescence; gender differences.

The purpose of this study was to separate the effects of gender from those of desired weight loss on body satisfaction and eating disordered behavior. Therefore, we explored gender differences in a sample (N = 191) of men and women who wanted to lose weight. We expected that controlling for desire to lose weight would minimize gender differences; this was supported for (a) overall body dissatisfaction, and (b) degree of concern about, effect of, and importance of weight and appearance. Nevertheless, women reported (a) less satisfaction with several body parts, (b) stronger relations between body satisfaction and self-esteem, and (c) use of more weight-loss strategies. Exploratory analyses also were conducted to examine within-group differences among men. Implications are discussed. KEY WORDS: body image; eating disorders; gender differences; weight-loss strategies.

Evidence from developed Western societies is reviewed for the claims that (a) physical attractiveness judgments are substantially based on body size and shape, symmetry, sex-typical hormonal markers, and other specific cues and (h) physical attractiveness and these cues substantially predict health. Among the cues that the authors review, only female waist-to-hip ratio and weight appear to predict both attractiveness and health in the claimed manner. Other posited cues--symmetry and sex-typical hormonal markers among them--failed to predict either attractiveness or health (or both) in either sex. The authors find that there is some indication that attractiveness has an overall relationship with health among women, but little indication that male attractiveness relates to male health. Keywords: attractiveness, health, evolution

This study was designed to examine the role women's husbands may play in determining their body satisfaction. One hundred and seventy-two (172; mean age = 37.53 years) European American women's body satisfaction, their perceptions of their husbands' satisfaction with their bodies, and their husbands' actual satisfaction with their bodies were assessed using the Body Figure Rating Scale; women's weight status was assessed using body mass index (BMI). Results indicated that wives were much more dissatisfied with their bodies than were their husbands and that wives thought their husbands were much more dissatisfied with their bodies than the husbands actually were. Further, findings suggested that wives' BMIs were not as strongly related to husband's satisfaction with their wives' bodies as they were to wives' own satisfaction or perceptions of their husbands' satisfaction with their bodies. KEY WORDS: body image; marriage; women's body satisfaction; weight concerns.