Sex-Typed May Be Beautiful but Androgynous is Good

Abstract

The effects of a stimulus person's sex-role orientation on both opposite-sex attraction and attribution of physical attractiveness were assessed. Male and female undergraduates, classified as sex-typed or androgynous according to their scores on the Bern Sex-role Inventory, were asked to form impressions of two members of the opposite sex on the basis of some of their responses to the inventory. The protocols were actually bogus and were contrived to represent a feminine female, a masculine male, and an androgynous person (same for both sexes). Each subject was given one sex-typed and one androgynous protocol and was asked to form impressions of both. The results indicated that both androgynous and sex-typed females liked the androgynous male significantly more than the masculine one, although males did not differentiate between the two females. Moreover, significantly greater physical attractiveness was attributed to the sex-typed stimulus person than to the androgynous one.