Thinking about Fashion Models' Looks: A Multidimensional Approach to the Structure of Perceived Physical Attractiveness

Abstract

A functional framework for the perception of female physical attractiveness suggests that, at the least, perceivers should differentiate sexual (sexy), youthful, nonsexual (cute), and up-to-date clothed and groomed (trendy) dimensions. Further, it was hypothesized that these content-specific varieties of good looks would covary with physical features (the stimulus cues used by perceivers to decode particular attractiveness continua) and also with psychological inferences (the stereotypic expectations linked to each appearance dimension). Using 96 photographs of female professional fashion models as stimuli, a free-sorting method coupled with a multidimensional scaling analysis provided support for both of these expectations. Also, the results suggest areas of both convergence and divergence in how college student males and females view physical attractiveness in women.