Features of Attractiveness and Aging
Chapter 5 Attractiveness and Aging
The experience of aging is not the same for everyone. Also, gender differences in the experience of aging may exist. A double standard of aging proposes that being old is a more negative experience in women than in men (Sontag, 1979). That is, according to this double standard of aging, men can age more gracefully, gain in status, and become more dignified with age; whereas, women become old, unattractive, and worthless. One reason that there is a double standard is that women may be judged by their appearance more than men. Another explanation is based on the cultural standard that emphasizes women as reproducers. Once a woman has outlived her reproductive potential (or usually once a woman becomes post-menopausal) she has lost one important function in society--that is to bear offspring. This societal norm is strong and not only affects how society perceives women but also how women perceive themselves. For example, society describes women who have never married as old maids or schoolmarms. Others propose that women, usually between the ages of 50-60, experience a "mid-life astonishment" that is marked by a sudden awareness of the acceleration of aging and feel amazement and despair at perceived changes in physical and sexual attractiveness and other losses (Pearlman, 1993). Thus, it seems, that once women have passed their reproductive prime or "when they outlive their ovaries" they are ascribed a number of seemingly useless and unfounded pathologies and syndromes such as the "empty-nest syndrome" or labeled as "reproductive has-beens" (Coney, 1994). For a more enlightened discussion of sex and aging, link to sexuality and aging.
eQuestion#1: After reading the article sexuality and aging, outline what can be expected as we age and indicate where stereotypes about aging and sexuality may be wrong.
Thus, cultural images depict women as becoming old earlier than men, older women as not being sexually active, and older women as not being valued by society (Sherman, 1997). It should be stressed, however, that societal views of older men and women are quite complex. As we found in Chapter 4 , people have positive and negative stereotypes of aging. Older men and women can be perceived as nurturant, benevolent, wise, respected, and powerful or silly, irrational, and powerless (Sherman, 1997).
Cultural standards of aging and beauty reinforce a stereotype of aging and attractiveness. Older adults compared to younger adults have less positive attitudes toward different aspects of their own bodies. Older adults have negative views of the body that are associated with body function (e.g., physical coordination, agility, sex drive, and health) consistent with an implicit theory of age and decline. Older adults also have negative attitudes toward facial attractiveness as people age with regard to the lips, appearance of eyes, cheek bones) all areas that are believed to become particularly unattractive with age (Franzoi & Koehler, 1998). These attitudes reflect a cultural standard of age and beauty. Interesting gender differences are also observed when it comes to age and beauty. With regard to general body attitudes, men do have a more positive body attitude than women but this gender difference becomes less pronounced among older men and women. Also, older women expressed greater satisfaction than younger women toward their appetite, thighs, and weight (Franzoi & Koehler, 1998).
The cosmetic industry has as its goal to make you look good while making a lot of money at the same time. One aspect of the cosmetic industry is to provide products that stave off the ravages of age. A great deal of cosmetic effort and education is devoted to making the skin and hair (http://www.skinbiology.com/) more resistant to the effects of aging.
eQuestion#2: Summarize a topic or chapter from the skin biology link. Provide your thoughts, reactions, reflections.
At this point, read
the Harris (1994) article on Growing Old Gracefully.
Features of Attractiveness and
Aging
There are many benefits to being perceived attractive by others. One well documented finding is that attractive people are also perceived to be more honest, happy, and well-adjusted than less attractive people. This "halo effect" is in a way, a bias in judgment. This bias is based on the assumption that there is a correlation between attractiveness and other positive personality characteristics. One might think that as we become older and gain more experience in the world we would learn that it is not necessarily the case that attractive people are better people in general than less attractive people. However, research seems to show that as we get older we do not gain in wisdom at least in regard to the halo effect. Older adults when looking at pictures of attractive people also believe that these people have more positive personality characteristics than less attractive people (Larose & Standing, 1998).
Gray hair once a negative feature of aging has become more appealing particularly in advertisements. In other words, gray hair has become fashionable. The rise in perceived attractiveness of gray hair (or more accurately, attractive models with gray hair) may be due in part to a growing population of older people and advertising campaigns designed to target older adults who hold a vast amount of discretionary money.
Smile and the whole world smiles with you is not just a line in a song but may have important perceptual implications. Smiling may affect negative images of aging. Smiling may enhance a halo effect in that smiling suggests happiness and might imply other traits such as friendliness and kindness. Also, smiling may tighten wrinkles or sagging skin around the jaw. Wrinkles, drooping around the eyes, and sagging skin around the jaw are age related changes due to changes in collagen levels (Hummert, Garstka, & Shaner, 1997). Thus, a smiling older individual may be perceived more attractive and likeable than an older individual who is not smiling.
In a study by Hummert, Garstka, and Shaner (1997) participants looked at photos of older adults. In one pose the older adults were smiling and in another pose the same older adults were not smiling. Participants were asked to look at the pictures and to sort the pictures into positive and negative stereotypes such as those found by Hummert and her colleagues in earlier studies (e.g., John Wayne conservative, golden ager, shrew; see Chapter 4). Hummert and colleagues found that for photographs of older women the number of positive stereotypes dropped sharply if the women was middle-old (i.e., 70-79 years of age) than if she was young -old (i.e., 60-69 years of age). However, stereotypes of the photographs of the old-old women (greater than 80 years of age) were more positive than the photographs of middle-old women regardless of facial expression. For photographs of smiling older men, positive stereotypes remained high and declined only for the photographs of old-old men. For men who were not smiling, participant's stereotypes became more negative across the three ages of young-old, middle-old, and old-old. Another interesting finding was that photographs of smiling women at the old-old age were associated with more positive stereotypes than smiling faces of men at the old-old age. Hummert and colleagues suggest that women are stereotyped more negatively than men at an earlier age but at a more advanced age, men may be stereotyped more negatively than women.
Baby-facedness (large rounded eyes, high eyebrows, and a small chin) affects perception. When facial characteristics of photographs are varied in experiments, people perceive faces that show stronger baby-facedness characteristics to be more warm and honest but also more naïve and being physically weak. Also, a baby-face is judged more appealing on a woman than on a man (Berry & McArthur, 1986).
If one has baby faced features this may create a self-fulfilling prophecy in that the person as an older adult may exhibit the characteristics associated with baby-facedness. Although more research is needed, studies have shown that women who were highly baby-faced from adolescence to their late 50s showed more baby-faced personalities in their 50s but not in adolescence. This evidence is suggestive of a link between facial characteristics and self-fulfilling prophecies regarding personality (See Zebrowitz & Collins, 1997).
Bazzini and colleagues (1997) examined 100 motion pictures from 1940-1980 and found evidence of ageist and sexist stereotypes. Older female movie characters were more underrepresented than their male counterparts and were portrayed as unattractive, unfriendly, and unintelligent. On the other hand, films do exist such as Cocoon or Waking Ned Devine that portray older adults in more positive ways. Even Modern Maturity magazine did not escape the scrutiny of researchers and was found to lean toward stereotyping older adults. Baker and Goggin (1994), for example, analyzed how older adults were depicted in advertisements in Modern Maturity magazine. Of the people depicted in the ads only 42.4% were older adults and only 3.5% were people of color. The ads portrayed old age as decreasing sexual attractiveness and intimacy. Older adults were portrayed as being dependent upon children for love and purpose in life. Most of the products advertised were designed to minimize the effects of aging.
Being the president of the United States takes its toll on one's looks. Several presidents, such as Johnson, Carter, Reagan, and Clinton seem not to have aged very well during their tenure in office. Bags under the eyes, furrows in the brow, puffy skin, and gray hair tend to be viewed as unwanted features and are consistent with many stereotypes of aging. As discussed previously, alterations in facial expressions and physical features can affect how people perceive others. The effects of physical features on how people perceive political figures is only beginning to receive research attention.
As an example of how subtle changes in physical features affect people's perceptions of political figures, Keating, Randall, and Kendrick (1999) using digitized facial images of Presidents Clinton, Reagan, and Kennedy varied how these presidents looked by making them look more baby-faced or more mature. The presidents were made to look more baby-faced by enlarging the eyes and lips and made to look mature by reducing the size of the eyes and lips. These researchers found that varying the images of these presidents affected perceiver's ratings. When Clinton's features were adjusted to look more baby-faced, participants perceived him to be more honest, attractive, and powerful. On the other hand, giving Reagan and Kennedy more baby-faced features made them seem less powerful; whereas making these presidents look more mature made Kennedy seem more cunning and Reagan seem less warm and again, less powerful.
Although you may disagree, in my opinion, country music does seem to reflect many "truisms" in American culture. Country music lyrics present a variety of common situations and themes. Some may believe that these themes only cover pickup trucks, mama, trains, or prison; but these themes can also cover a broad range of human experience, such as life review, loneliness, nostalgia, and attractiveness. One area that has received a great deal of research attention is the relationship between attractiveness and country music lyrics.
Pennebaker and colleagues (1979), for example, investigated the relationship between physical attractiveness of members of the opposite sex and the closer it gets to closing time in a bar using as there theoretical source a country and western song by Mickey Gilley (1975). In this song, all the "girls get prettier at closing time," with the idea being that as closing time approaches members of the opposite sex become more attractive (i.e., "they all get to look like movie stars."). Pennebaker and colleagues tested this idea by asking 52 men and 51 women in various drinking establishments to rate members of the opposite sex who were in the bar on a 1 to 10 scale where 1 indicates "not attractive" and 10 indicates "extremely attractive." They had patrons rate the attractiveness of opposite sex patrons at three different times (9:00pm, 10:30pm, and at closing time 12:00 midnight). They found, consistent with the song, that perceived attractiveness of the patrons increased as closing time approached. In other words, the highest ratings for attractiveness were found at closing time compared to earlier in the evening. Before you comment that the patrons may have had on "beer goggles" when they made their ratings, other studies have found that alcohol consumption was not the reason for this "closing time effect" on perceived attractiveness (Gladue & Delaney, 1990; Sprecher, et al.,1984).
One explanation of the "closing time effect" has to do with how we change our perception of the alternatives from which we can choose as we feel pressured to make a decision. A theory of cognitive dissonance proposes that once we decide on something (whether it is a partner for the evening or buying a toaster), we do not want to experience the undesirable feeling that we have made a wrong decision. This undesirable feeling becomes particularly strong if we initially had a number of alternatives from which to choose. Making a wrong decision is inconsistent with our self-concept that we are good decision makers. Therefore, in order to reduce dissonance, we tend to change our perception of the chosen alternative by making it more attractive. When we are pressured to make a decision, in this case, as closing time approaches, we perceive a threat to our freedom to choose alternatives (i.e., selecting a different partner or not selecting at all). As time to choose draws near (at closing time), the magnitude of this threat increases. To reduce the threat to one's decision freedom, the discrepancy (i.e., attractiveness) between the alternatives is reduced by the perceiver. In other words, the choices that are left become very attractive to us. A later study by Madey, Simo, Dillworth, Kemper, Toczynski, and Perella (1996) found that perceived attractiveness of opposite sex patrons increased at closing time but only for those patrons who were not already in a relationship. People who were already dating or in a relationship with someone did not increase their perceptions of attractiveness of the other patrons at closing time. Presumably there is little threat to their decision freedom at closing time because they already have a partner for the evening or someone to go home to.
As we see, the above research was generated by the lyrics of a song. We can also investigate how country music lyrics portray the relationship between attractiveness and aging. Aday and Austin investigate aging in the lyrics of country music songs. Interestingly, the double standard of aging is reversed in country music lyrics. These researchers found that country music lyrics generally portray aging as something positive in women but negative in men.
eQuestion#3:
Aday and Austin not only talk about attractiveness and aging in their analysis
of country music lyrics but also talk about many other topics relevant
to aging. Pick any one of the topics they discuss and summarize what they
found using a few of their examples. Is the double standard of aging reversed?
What is your opinion?
In closing, I primarily discussed country music in this section. However, a rich data base that looks at attractiveness and aging is probably in other forms of music as well (e.g., blues, jazz, rock, hip-hop) but has yet to be tapped by researchers.
If you are presently dating someone or have a partner take a look at that person and think about what attracted you to that person. You might be surprised that you picked that person more on how similar you are to each other than how different you are. In particular, you may have chosen someone who closely matches you in attractiveness. Although most people indicate that they like to pick someone more beautiful than they, people tend to pick someone who is about as attractive as they are. Several reasons are offered as to why we pick people similar to us (See Taylor, Peplau, & Sears, 2000). One reason is that a partner similar to us is more likely to agree with us and have similar viewpoints. This is rewarding to people and increases the possibility that the couple will pick activities that both like and can share. A second explanation involves cognitive dissonance. As the theory proposes people seek cognitive consistency. Cognitive consistency is achieved by liking people who are similar to us and disliking dissimilar people. Finally, expectancy-value theory proposes that people consider the rewards of a particular choice of partner but also the expectancy of how successful they will be in actually going out with that person. Although people may prefer going out with the most beautiful person possible, expectancy value theory would propose that they eventually pick the person that they can realistically attract.
Interestingly, very little research has looked at these explanations across the life span. What are the variables that someone uses to select a partner who has been a widow or widower for a number of years and then subsequently remarries? How do older adults form relationships with other older adults? What features do people use to perceive the attractiveness of older adult couples? How does attractiveness of couples change over time?
eQuestion#4: Think about these last set of questions. Based on what you read, what are your thoughts?
eQuestion#5:
In the context of babyfacedness, discuss the relative attractiveness of
George.W. Bush and Al Gore?
References
Aday, R., & Austin, B. S. (2000). Yesterday's wine: Depictions of aging and the elderly in the lyrics of country music. Available: http://www.mtsu.edu/~baustin/aging.htm
Baker, J. A., & Goggin, N. L. (1994). Portrayals of older adults in Modern Maturity advertisements. Educational Gerontology, 20, 139-145.
Bazzini, D. G., McIntosh, W. D., Smith, S. M., Cook, S. et al (1997). The aging women in popular film: Underrepresented, unattractive, unfriendly, and unitelligent. Sex Roles, 36, 531-543.
Berry, D. S., & McArthur, L. Z. (1986). Perceiving character in faces: The impact of age-related craniofacial changes on social perception. Psychological Bulletin, 100. 3-18.
Coney, S. (1994). The menopause industry: How the medical establishment exploits women.
Franzoi, S. L., & Koehler, V. (1998). Age and gender differences in body attitudes: A comparison of young and elderly adults. International Journal of Aging and Human Development, 47, 1-10.
Gladue, B. A., & Delaney, H. J. (1990). Gender differences in perception of attractiveness of men and women in bars. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 16, 378-391.
Hummert, M. L., Garstka,T. A., & Shaner, J. L. (1997). Stereotyping of older adults: The role of target facial cues and perceiver characteristics. Psychology and Aging, 12, 107-114.
Keating, C. F., Randall, D., & Kendrick, T. (1999). Presidential physiognomies: Altered images, altered perceptions. Political Psychology, 20, 593-610.
Larose, H., & Standing, L. (1998). Does the halo effect occur in the elderly? Social Behavior and Personality, 26, 147-150.
Madey, S. F., Simo, M., Dillworth, D., Kemper, D., Toczynski, A, & Perella, A. (1996). They do get more attractive at closing time, but only when you are not in a relationship. Basic and Applied Social Psychology, 18, 387-393.
Pearlman, S. F. (1993). Late mid-life astonishment: Disruptions to identity and self-esteem. Women and Therapy, 14, 1-12.
Pennebaker, J. W., Dyer, M. A., Caulkins, R. S., Litowitz, D. L., Ackreman, P. L., Anderson, D. B., & McGraw, K. M. (1979). Don't the girls get prettier at closing time: A country and western application to psychology. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 5, 123-125.
Sherman, S. R. (1997). Images of middle-aged and older women: Historical, cultural, and personal. In Coyle, J. M. (Ed.), Handbook on women and aging (pp. 14-28).
Sprecher, S., DeLamater, J., Neuman, N., Neuman, M., Kahn, P., Orbuch, D., & McKinney, K. (1984). Asking questions in bars: The girls (and boys) may not get prettier at closing time and other interesting results. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 10, 482-488.
Taylor, S. E., Peplau, L. A., & Sears, D. O. (2000). Social Psychology. (10th Edition). NJ: Prentice Hall.
Zebrowitz, L. A.,
& Collins, M. A. (1997). Accurate social perception at zero acquaintance:
The affordances of a Gibsonian approach. Personality and Social Psychology
Review, 1, 204-223.
eQuestion#1: After reading the article sexuality and aging, outline what can be expected as we age and indicate where stereotypes about aging and sexuality may be wrong.
eQuestion#2: Summarize a topic or chapter from the skin biology link. Provide your thoughts, reactions, reflections.
eQuestion#3:
Aday and Austin not only talk about attractiveness and aging in their analysis
of country music lyrics but also talk about many other topics relevant
to aging. Pick any one of the topics they discuss and summarize what they
found using a few of their examples. Is the double standard of aging reversed?
What is your opinion?
eQuestion#4: Think about these last set of questions. Based on what you read, what are your thoughts?
eQuestion#5:
In the context of babyfacedness, discuss the relative attractiveness of
George.W. Bush and Al Gore?
