Do Men Trade Their
Status and Income for an Attractive Wife?
Research says that 'Trophy
wife' Stereotype is Largely a Myth.
Although this study was only done on young couples I wonder what
the research would show about older rich men mate selection. Here is the
research. I have highlighted the interesting sections.
Date: June 17, 2014
Source:
University
of Notre Dame
The
trophy wife stereotype is largely a myth fueled by selective observation that
reinforces sexist stereotypes and trivializes women's careers, researchers
conclude. Research also indicates that, contrary to the trophy wife stereotype,
social class barriers in the marriage market are relatively impermeable. Beautiful women are unlikely to
leverage their looks to secure upward mobility by marriage.
Most people are familiar with the "trophy wife"
stereotype that attractive women marry rich men, placing little importance on
their other traits, including physical appearance, and that men look for pretty
wives but don't care about their education or earnings.
New research, however, by University of Notre Dame Sociologist
Elizabeth McClintock, shows the trophy wife stereotype is largely a myth fueled by selective
observation that reinforces sexist stereotypes and trivializes women's careers.
In "Beauty and Status: The Illusion of Exchange in Partner
Selection?" forthcoming in American Sociological Review,
McClintock resolves the paradox between the trophy wife stereotype and the
evidence that couples
match on both physical attractiveness and socioeconomic status.
Using, for the first time, a nationally representative sample of
young couples in
which both partners were interviewed and rated for physical attractiveness,
McClintock was able to control for matching on attractiveness. She says prior
research in this area has ignored two important factors.
"I find that
handsome men partner with pretty women and successful men partner with
successful women," says McClintock, who specializes in inequality within romantic
partnerships. "So, on average, high-status men do have better-looking
wives, but this is because they themselves are considered better
looking--perhaps because they are less likely to be overweight and more likely
to afford braces, nice clothes and trips to the dermatologist, etc. Secondly,
the strongest force by far
in partner selection is similarity -- in education, race, religion and physical
attractiveness."
McClintock's research
shows that there is not, in fact, a general tendency for women to trade beauty
for money. That is not to say trophy wife marriages never happen, just that
they are very rare.
"Donald Trump and his third wife Melania Knauss-Trump may
very well exemplify the trophy wife stereotype," McClintock says.
"But, there are many examples of rich men who partner with successful
women rather than 'buying' a supermodel wife.
The two men who founded Google (Larry Page and Sergey Brin) both
married highly accomplished women -- one has a PhD and the other is a wealthy
entrepreneur."
McClintock says the trophy wife stereotype is most often
wrongly-applied among non- celebrities.
"I've heard doctors' wives referred to as trophy wives by
observers who only notice her looks and his status and fail to realize that he
is good-looking too and that she is also a successful professional--or was
before she had kids and left her job," McClintock says.
McClintock's research
also indicates that, contrary to the trophy wife stereotype, social class
barriers in the marriage market are relatively impermeable. Beautiful women are
unlikely to leverage their looks to secure upward mobility by marriage.
Story Source:
Journal Reference:
1. E.
A. McClintock. Beauty and Status: The Illusion of Exchange in Partner
Selection? American Sociological Review, 2014; DOI: 10.1177/0003122414536391
University
of Notre Dame. "'Trophy wife' stereotype is largely a myth, new study
shows." ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 17 June 2014.
.
Patti Wood, MA, Certified Speaking Professional - The Body Language Expert. For more body language insights go to her website at www.PattiWood.net. Check out Patti's website for her new book "SNAP, Making the Most of First Impressions, Body Language and Charisma" at www.snapfirstimpressions.com. Also check out Patti's YouTube channel at http://youtube.com/user/bodylanguageexpert.
In 2010, neuroscientists at the Zanvyl Krieger Mind/Brain Institute at Johns Hopkins University joined forces with the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore to conduct an experiment. What shapes are most pleasing, the group wondered, and what exactly is happening in our brains when we look at them? They had three hypotheses. It is possible, they thought, that the shapes we most prefer are more visually exciting, meaning that they spark intense brain activity. At the same time, it could be that our favorite shapes are serene and calm brain activity. Or, they surmised, we very well might gravitate to shapes that spur a pattern of alternating strong and weak activity.
To investigate, the scientists created ten sets of images, which they hung on a wall at the Walters Art Museum in 2010. Each set included 25 shapes, all variations on a laser scan of a sculpture by artist Jean Arp. Arp's work was chosen, in this case, because his sculptures are abstract forms that are not meant to represent any recognizable objects. Upon entering the exhibition, called "Beauty and the Brain," visitors put on a pair of 3D glasses and then, for each image set, noted the their "most preferred" and "least preferred" shape on a ballot. The shapes were basically blobs with various appendages. The neuroscientists then reviewed the museum-goers' responses in conjunction with fMRI scans taken on lab study participants looking at the very same images.
"We wanted to be rigorous about it, quantitative, that is, try to really understand what kind of information neurons are encoding and…why some things would seem more pleasing or preferable to human observers than other things. I have found it to be almost universally true in data and also in audiences that the vast majority have a specific set of preferences," says Charles E. Connor, director of the Zanvyl KriegerMind/Brain Institute.
"Beauty and the Brain Revealed," an exhibition now on display at the AAAS Art Gallery in Washington, D.C., allows others to participate in the exercise, while also reporting the original experiment's results. Ultimately, the scientists found that visitors like shapes with gentle curves as opposed to sharp points. And the magnetic brain imaging scans of the lab participants prove the team's first hypothesis to be true: these preferred shapes produce stronger responses and increased activity in the brain.
As Johns Hopkins Magazine so eloquently put it, "Beauty is in the brain of the beholder."
Now, you might expect, as the neuroscientists did, that sharp objects incite more of a reaction, given that they can signal danger. But the exhibition offers up some pretty sound reasoning for why the opposite may be true.
"One could speculate that the way we perceive sculpture relates to how the human brain is adapted for optimal information processing in the natural world," reads the display. "Shallow convex surface curvature is characteristic of living organisms, because it is naturally produced by the fluid pressure of healthy tissue (e.g. muscle) against outer membranes (e.g. skin). The brain may have evolved to process information about such smoothly rounded shapes in order to guide survival behaviors like eating, mating, and predator evasion. In contrast, the brain may devote less processing to high curvature, jagged forms, which tend to be inorganic (e.g. rocks) and thus less important."
Another group of neuroscientists, this time at the University of Toronto at Scarborough, actually found similar results when looking at people's preferences in architecture. In a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences earlier this year, they reported that test subjects shown 200 images — of rooms with round columns and oval ottomans and others with boxy couches and coffee tables — were much more likely to call the former "beautiful" than the latter. Brain scans taken while these participants were evaluating the interior designs showed that rounded decor prompted significantly more brain activity, much like what the Johns Hopkins group discovered.
"It's worth noting this isn't a men-love-curves thing: Twice as many women as men took part in the study. Roundness seems to be a universal human pleasure," writes Eric Jaffe on Co.Design.
Gary Vikan, former director of the Walters Art Museum and guest curator of the AAAS show, finds "Beauty and the Brain Revealed" to support Clive Bell's postulation on significant form as a universal basis for art, as well as the idea professed by some in the field of neuroaesthetics that artists have an intuitive sense for neuroscience. Maybe, he claims, the best artists are those that tap into shapes that stimulate the viewer's brain.
"Beauty and the Brain Revealed" is on display at the AAAS Art Gallery in Washington, D.C., through January 3, 2014.
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