THE DARK TRIAD, SOCIOSEXUAL ORIENTATION, AND PERCEPTIONS OF MALE ATTRACTIVENESS: INVESTIGATING THE IMPACT OF SOCIAL CONTEXT

Year 2023, Volume: 7 Issue: 3, 37 - 62, 31.12.2023

Ryan Wise , Eylül Değirmencioğlu

Abstract

This study examines the impact of the Dark Triad traits (Narcissism, Psychopathy, and Machiavellianism) and sociosexual orientation on the assessment of an unfamiliar man's attractiveness within three social scenarios: solitary, accompanied by a dog, and accompanied by a baby. A sample of 109 female participants (N=109) contributed attractiveness ratings, with an average age of 21.06 (SD = 3.81). The findings reveal notable discrepancies in attractiveness ratings across conditions, with higher attractiveness ratings given to the dog condition compared to the baby condition. The ANCOVA integrating Dark Triad traits as covariates exhibited statistical significance, with Machiavellianism emerging as a significant covariate with attractiveness ratings, whereas Sociosexual Orientation did not achieve covariate significance. The implications of these results are contextualized within the existing literature, offering insights into the potential influence of Machiavellianism on attractiveness perceptions and the role of contextual cues in the perceptions of others.

Keywords

Attractiveness, Dark Triad, Sociosexual Orientation, Evolution

References

• Abell, L., & Brewer, G. (2016). Machiavellianism, perceived quality of alter-native mates, and resistance to mate guarding. Personality and Individual Differ-ences, 101, 236-239. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2016.06.013
• Bassett, J. F., & Moss, B. (2004). Men and women prefer risk-takers as ro-mantic and nonromantic partners. Current Research in Social Psychology, 9(10), 135-144.
• Botwin, M. D., Buss, D. M., & Shackelford, T. K. (1997). Personality and ma-te preferences: Five factors in mate selection and marital satisfaction. Journal of Personality, 65(1), 107-136. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-6494.1997.tb00531.x
• Brase, G. L. (2006). Cues of parental investment as a factor in attractiveness. Evolution and Human Behavior, 27(2),145-157. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2005.06.003
• Brewer, G., & Abell, L. (2015). Machiavellianism in long‐term relationships: Competition, mate retention and sexual coercion. Scandinavian Journal of Psychol-ogy, 56(3), 357-362. https://doi.org/10.1111/sjop.12200
• Brewer, G., Lyons, M., Perry, A., & O'Brien, F. (2021). Dark triad traits and perceptions of sexual harassment. Journal of Interpersonal Violence, 36(13-14), NP7373-NP7387. https://doi.org/10.1177/0886260519827666
• Brown, M., & Sacco, D. F. (2017). Unrestricted sociosexuality predicts pref-erences for extraverted male faces. Personality and Individual Differences, 108, 123-127. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2016.12.023
• Brown, M., Sacco, D. F., & Medlin, M. M. (2019). Sociosexual attitudes dif-ferentially predict men and women's preferences for agreeable male faces. Person-ality and Individual Differences, 141, 248-251. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2019.01.027
• Burns, E. J., Yang, W., & Ying, H. (2021). Friend effects framework: Con-trastive and hierarchical processing in cheerleader effects. Cognition, 212, 104715. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2021.104715
• Burtăverde, V., & Ene, C. (2021). The influence of environmental and social characteristics on women's mate preferences. Personality and Individual Differ-ences, 175, 110736. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2021.110736
• Buss, D. M. (1985). Human mate selection: Opposites are sometimes said to attract, but in fact we are likely to marry someone who is similar to us in almost every variable. American Scientist, 73(1), 47-51.
• Buss, D. M. (2007). The evolution of human mating. Acta Psychologica Sini-ca, 39(3), 502-512.
• Carragher, D. J. (2022). Examining the cheerleader effect. Nature Reviews Psychology, 1(6), 316-316. https://doi.org/10.1038/s44159-022-00063-x
• Carter, G. L., Montanaro, Z., Linney, C., & Campbell, A. C. (2015). Women's sexual competition and the Dark Triad. Personality and Individual Differences, 74, 275-279. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2014.10.022
• Clarkson, T. R., Sidari, M. J., Sains, R., Alexander, M., Harrison, M., Mefodeva, V., ... & Dixson, B. J. (2020). A multivariate analysis of women's mat-ing strategies and sexual selection on men's facial morphology. Royal Society Open Science, 7(1), 191209. https://doi.org/10.1098/rsos.191209
• Cohen, J. (1977). Statistical power analysis for the behavioral sciences (Rev. ed.). Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.
• Davis, A. C., & Arnocky, S. (2020). An evolutionary perspective on appear-ance enhancement behavior. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 1-35. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10508-020-01745-4
• DeBruine, L. M., Jones, B. C., Little, A. C., Boothroyd, L. G., Perrett, D. I., Penton-Voak, I. S., ... & Tiddeman, B. P. (2006). Correlated preferences for facial masculinity and ideal or actual partner's masculinity. Proceedings of the Royal Soci-ety B: Biological Sciences, 273(1592), 1355-1360. https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2005.3445
• Delgado-Rodríguez, R., Cabrera, P. M., Ordóñez-Pérez, D., & Martos-Montes, R. (2023). Dogs can enhance social perceptions: The influence of dogs on women's perceptions of safety in emotional contexts. Anthrozoös, 36(3), 333-348. https://doi.org/10.1080/08927936.2022.2141968
• Faul, F., Erdfelder, E., Buchner, A., & Lang, A.-G. (2009). Statistical power analyses using G*Power 3.1: Tests for correlation and regression analyses. Behav-ior Research Methods, 41(4), 1149-1160. https://doi.org/10.3758/BRM.41.4.1149
• https://doi.org/10.3758/BRM.41.4.1149
• Freyth, L., & Jonason, P. K. (2023). Overcoming agreeableness: Sociosexuali-ty and the Dark Triad expanded and revisited. Personality and Individual Differ-ences, 203, 112009. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2022.112009
• Garza, R., & Byrd-Craven, J. (2021). Effects of women's short-term mating orientation and self-perceived attractiveness in rating and viewing men's waist-to-chest ratios. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 50, 543-551. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10508-020-01846-0
• Geiselman, R. E., Haight, N. A., & Kimata, L. G. (1984). Context effects on the perceived physical attractiveness of faces. Journal of Experimental Social Psy-chology, 20(5), 409-424. https://doi.org/10.1016/0022-1031(84)90035-0
• Goetz, C. D., Easton, J. A., & Buss, D. M. (2014). Women's perceptions of sexual exploitability cues and their link to sexual attractiveness. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 43, 999-1008. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10508-013-0188-8
• Goncalves, M. K., & Campbell, L. (2014). The Dark Triad and the derogation of mating competitors. Personality and Individual Differences, 67, 42-46. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2014.02.003
• Gray, P. B., Volsche, S. L., Garcia, J. R., & Fisher, H. E. (2015). The roles of pet dogs and cats in human courtship and dating. Anthrozoös, 28(4), 673-683. https://doi.org/10.1080/08927936.2015.1064216
• Guéguen, N. (2014). Cues of men's parental investment and attractiveness for women: A field experiment. Journal of Human Behavior in the Social Environ-ment, 24(3), 296-300. https://doi.org/10.1080/10911359.2013.820160
• Hall, J. R., & Benning, S. D. (2006). The "successful" psychopath. Handbook of Psychopathy, 459-478.
• Herzberg, P. Y., Wildfang, S., & Quittschalle, J. (2022). The association be-tween relationship orientation, relationship quality, and sexual satisfaction. Interna-tional Journal of Applied Positive Psychology, 7(3), 439-459.
• https://doi.org/10.1007/s41042-022-00076-0
• Holtzman, N. S., & Strube, M. J. (2010). Narcissism and attractiveness. Jour-nal of Research in Personality, 44(1), 133-136. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jrp.2009.10.004
• Hong, S., Tandoc Jr, E., Kim, E. A., Kim, B., & Wise, K. (2012). The real you? The role of visual cues and comment congruence in perceptions of social at-tractiveness from Facebook profiles. Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Net-working, 15(7), 339-344. https://doi.org/10.1089/cyber.2011.0511
• Hsieh, J. Y., Gwinn, O. S., Brooks, K. R., Stephen, I. D., Carragher, D. J., & Nicholls, M. E. (2021). The "cheerleader effect" in facial and bodily attractiveness: A result of memory bias and not perceptual encoding. Quarterly Journal of Exper-imental Psychology, 74(5), 972-980. https://doi.org/10.1177/1747021820976087 https://doi.org/10.1177/1747021820976087
• Jonason, P. K., Luevano, V. X., & Adams, H. M. (2012). How the Dark Triad traits predict relationship choices. Personality and Individual Differences, 53(3), 180-184. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2012.03.007
• Jonason, P. K., & Davis, M. D. (2018). A gender role view of the Dark Triad traits. Personality and Individual Differences, 125, 102-105. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2018.01.004
• Jonason, P. K., & Sherman, R. A. (2020). Personality and the perception of situations: The Big Five and Dark Triad traits. Personality and Individual Differ-ences, 163, 110081. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2020.110081
• Jones, M. (1998). Sociosexuality and motivations for romantic involvement. Journal of Research in Personality, 32(2), 173-182. https://doi.org/10.1006/jrpe.1997.2212
• Jones, D. N., & Paulhus, D. L. (2011). The role of impulsivity in the Dark Triad of personality. Personality and Individual Differences, 51(5), 679-682. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2011.04.011
• Ka, W. L., Bottcher, S., & Walker, B. R. (2020). Attitudes toward consensual non-monogamy predicted by sociosexual behavior and avoidant attachment. Cur-rent Psychology, 1-9. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-020-00941-8
• Keldal, G. (2022). The relationships between personality traits and mate selec-tion strategies of Turkish young adults. Current Psychology, 41(8), 5258-5263. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-020-01044-0
• Lei, Y., He, X., Zhao, T., & Tian, Z. (2020). Contrast effect of facial attrac-tiveness in groups. Frontiers in Psychology, 11, 2258. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.02258 Maneiro, L., Navas, M. P., Van Geel, M., Cutrín, O., & Vedder, P. (2020). Dark triad traits and risky behaviours: Identifying risk profiles from a person-centred approach. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 17(17), 6194. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph17176194
• McCain, J. L., Borg, Z. G., Rothenberg, A. H., Churillo, K. M., Weiler, P., & Campbell, W. K. (2016). Personality and selfies: Narcissism and the Dark Triad. Computers in Human Behavior, 64, 126-133.
• https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2016.06.050
• McHoskey, J. W. (2001). Machiavellianism and personality dysfunction. Per-sonality and Individual Differences, 31(5), 791-798. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0191-8869(00)00187-2
• Moore, K. E., Ross, S. R., & Brosius, E. C. (2020). The role of gender in the relations among dark triad and psychopathy, sociosexuality, and moral judgments. Personality and Individual Differences, 152, 109577. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2019.109577
• Muris, P., Merckelbach, H., Otgaar, H., & Meijer, E. (2017). The malevolent side of human nature: A meta-analysis and critical review of the literature on the dark triad (Narcissism, Machiavellianism, and Psychopathy). Perspectives on Psy-chological Science, 12(2), 183-204. https://doi.org/10.1177/1745691616666070s
• Ostovich, J. M., & Sabini, J. (2004). How are sociosexuality, sex drive, and lifetime number of sexual partners related? Personality and Social Psychology Bul-letin, 30(10), 1255-1266. https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167204264754
• Peng, C., Mao, Y., Pagliaro, S., Roberts, S., & Livi, S. (2020). Are Individu-als Perceived as More Attractive within a Group? A Confirmative Study of Group Attractiveness Effect and the Cheerleader Effect in China. Healthcare (Basel, Swit-zerland), 8(3), 344. https://doi.org/10.3390/healthcare8030344
• Penke, L. (n.d.). Translations of the revised Sociosexual Orientation Inventory (SOI-R). Retrieved from: https://larspenke.eu/en/translated-soi-r.html
• Penke, L., & Asendorpf, J. B. (2008). Beyond global sociosexual orientations: A more differentiated look at sociosexuality and its effects on courtship and roman-tic relationships. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 95, 1113-1135. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.95.5.1113
• Price, M. E., Pound, N., Dunn, J., Hopkins, S., & Kang, J. (2013). Body shape preferences: Associations with rater body shape and sociosexuality. PloS one, 8(1), e52532. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0052532
• Provost, M. P., Kormos, C., Kosakoski, G., & Quinsey, V. L. (2006). Soci-osexuality in women and preference for facial masculinization and somatotype in men. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 35, 305-312. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10508-006-9029-3
• Rogoza, R., Żemojtel-Piotrowska, M., Jonason, P. K., Piotrowski, J., Camp-bell, K. W., Gebauer, J. E., ... & Włodarczyk, A. (2021). Structure of dark triad dirty dozen across eight world regions. Assessment, 28(4), 1125-1135. https://doi.org/10.1177/1073191120922611
• Roney, J. R., Hanson, K. N., Durante, K. M., & Maestripieri, D. (2006). Reading men's faces: Women's mate attractiveness judgments track men's testos-terone and interest in infants. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sci-ences, 273(1598), 2169-2175. https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2006.3569
• Sacco, D. F., Jones, B. C., DeBruine, L. M., & Hugenberg, K. (2012). The roles of sociosexual orientation and relationship status in women's face preferences. Personality and Individual Differences, 53(8), 1044-1047. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2012.07.023
• Schmitt, D. P., Long, A. E., McPhearson, A., O'Brien, K., Remmert, B., & Shah, S. H. (2017). Personality and gender differences in global perspective. Inter-national Journal of Psychology, 52, 45-56. https://doi.org/10.1002/ijop.12265
• Stiff, C. (2019). The dark triad and Facebook surveillance: How Machiavelli-anism, Psychopathy, but not Narcissism predict using Facebook to spy on others. Computers in Human Behavior, 94, 62-69. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2018.12.044
• Stower, R. E., Lee, A. J., McIntosh, T. L., Sidari, M. J., Sherlock, J. M., & Dixson, B. J. (2020). Mating strategies and the masculinity paradox: How relation-ship context, relationship status, and sociosexuality shape women's preferences for facial masculinity and beardedness. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 49, 809-820. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10508-019-1437-2
• Swami, V., Miller, R., Furnham, A., Penke, L., & Tovée, M. J. (2008). The in-fluence of men's sexual strategies on perceptions of women's bodily attractiveness, health and fertility. Personality and Individual Differences, 44(1), 98-107. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2007.07.017
• Szabó, E., & Jones, D. N. (2019). Gender differences moderate Machiavellian-ism and impulsivity: Implications for Dark Triad research. Personality and Individ-ual Differences, 141, 160-165. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2019.01.008
• Thomas, A. G., Jonason, P. K., Blackburn, J. D., Kennair, L. E. O., Lowe, R., Malouff, J., ... & Li, N. P. (2020). Mate preference priorities in the East and West: A cross‐cultural test of the mate preference priority model. Journal of Personality, 88(3), 606-620. https://doi.org/10.1111/jopy.12514
• Thornhill, R., & Gangestad, S. W. (1999). Facial attractiveness. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 3(12), 452-460. https://doi.org/10.1016/S1364-6613(99)01403-5
• Tifferet, S., Kruger, D. J., Bar-Lev, O., & Zeller, S. (2013). Dog ownership increases attractiveness and attenuates perceptions of short-term mating strategy in cad-like men. Journal of Evolutionary Psychology, 11(3), 121-129. https://doi.org/10.1556/JEP.11.2013.3.2
• Utz, S. (2010). Show me your friends, and I will tell you what type of person you are: How one's profile, number of friends, and type of friends influence im-pression formation on social network sites. Journal of Computer-Mediated Com-munication, 15(2), 314-335. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1083-6101.2010.01522.x
• Valentova, J. V., Junior, F. P. M., Štěrbová, Z., Varella, M. A. C., & Fisher, M. L. (2020). The association between Dark Triad traits and sociosexuality with mating and parenting efforts: A cross-cultural study. Personality and Individual Differences, 154, 109613. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2019.109613
• Visser, B. A., Pozzebon, J. A., Bogaert, A. F., & Ashton, M. C. (2010). Psy-chopathy, sexual behavior, and esteem: It's different for girls. Personality and Indi-vidual Differences, 48(7), 833-838. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2010.02.008
• Walker, D., & Vul, E. (2014). Hierarchical encoding makes individuals in a group seem more attractive. Psychological Science, 25(1), 230-235. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797613497969
• Wang, S. S., Moon, S. I., Kwon, K. H., Evans, C. A., & Stefanone, M. A. (2010). Face off: Implications of visual cues on initiating friendship on Facebook. Computers in Human Behavior, 26(2), 226-234. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2009.10.001
• Webster, G. D., Laurenceau, J. P., Smith, C. V., Mahaffey, A. L., Bryan, A. D., & Brunell, A. B. (2015). An investment model of sociosexuality, relationship satisfaction, and commitment: Evidence from dating, engaged, and newlywed cou-ples. Journal of Research in Personality, 55, 112-126. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jrp.2015.02.004
• Wu, W., Wang, H., Zheng, C., & Wu, Y. J. (2019). Effect of Narcissism, Psychopathy, and Machiavellianism on entrepreneurial intention-the mediating of entrepreneurial self-efficacy. Frontiers in Psychology, 10, 360. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.00360
• Zinck, M. J., Weir, L. K., & Fisher, M. L. (2021). Dependents as signals of mate value: Long-term mating strategy predicts displays on online dating profiles for men. Evolutionary Psychological Science, 1-15. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40806-021-00294-w