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In my previous blog post, I tackled the question: What is the sexiest emotion for men to display? I summarized research I had conducted with my colleague Jessica Tracy suggesting that pride is the most attractive male emotion-expression and happiness is one of the least.
As part of that same research, we also asked men to rate the sexual attractiveness of women displaying either pride, shame, happiness, or neutrality. We noted some pronounced gender differences in the emotions men and women find attractive. (Full article can be found here: Tracy & Beall, 2011.) What is the sexiest emotion for women to display? Here’s what we found:
Female Happiness is Very Attractive
First, across samples and studies, we found that happiness was consistently rated as the most sexually attractive female emotion expression; findings documenting the attractiveness of female happiness have also been noted in previous peer-reviewed, published research (Mueser, Grau, Sussman, & Rosen, 1984; Penton-Voak & Chang, 2008; Schulman & Hoskins, 1986). This robust finding appears to be consistent with both evolutionary and gender-normative explanations for heterosexual attraction.
Past evolutionary psychology research has shown that men are typically attracted to female indicators of apparent youth and sexual receptivity (e.g., Buss, 2008)—both of which may be communicated through a smile.
Socio-cultural explanations for this finding suggest that individuals whose behavior and appearance is consistent with local gender norms tend to be considered more attractive (Brown, Cash, & Noles, 1986; O’Doherty et al., 2003); from this perspective, happiness may be particularly attractive in women because smiling invokes perceptions of femininity. Indeed, past research suggests that women smile more frequently than men (LaFrance, Hecht, & Paluck, 2003) and that happy displays are typically associated with femininity. For example, when participants in one study were instructed to clear their minds and imagine a happy face, 76% of men visualized that the sex of their imagined face was female (Becker, Kenrick Blackwell, Neuberg, & Smith, 2007).
Female Pride Is Somewhat Less Attractive
In our investigation, we found that pride was consistently rated as less attractive than certain other female emotion expressions.
Displaying pride is an automatic cue of high status (e.g., Shariff & Tracy, 2009) but previous research suggests that this quality is more valuable to the sexual attractiveness of men than it is women (e.g., Buss, 2008).
Further, emerging work in the stereotype and prejudice literature suggests that women who appear competent (e.g., smart, powerful, independent women) may be more likely to be automatically perceived as particularly cold and unfriendly (see Fiske, 2012). Perhaps these unconscious perceptions are what lead some men to regard pride displaying women as less approachable and therefore less attractive than women displaying other expressions.
Female Shame Is Pretty Attractive
In general, female shame displays fell between female happy and female pride (and above neutral) on attractiveness ratings across studies and samples in our investigation.
The generally positive impact of shame displays on female attractiveness may be due to shame’s signaling that the expresser has a respect for social norms and an awareness that she has violated them (Gilbert, 2007). This appeasement message may indicate trustworthiness, a trait previously found to increase attractiveness when conveyed by facial expressions (Todorov, Said, Engell, & Oosterhof, 2008).
DISCLAIMER
The studies I cite have all been published in peer-reviewed scientific outlets; this means an editor (usually a Ph.D. holder themselves) has contacted academic experts in the field who have scrutinized the research for appropriateness of theory, methods, and statistics. Still, the results discussed will not represent every individual’s preferences and I do not wish to imply that they should.
Thanks for reading! I want to know your thoughts, please feel free to comment below:
- What do you think is the sexiest female emotion expression?
- Do you agree/disagree with the findings?
- Did I miss some important research?
References
Becker, D., Kenrick, D., Neuberg, S., Blackwell, K., & Smith, D. (2007). The confounded nature of angry men and happy women. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 92, 179–190.
Brown, T., Cash, T., & Noles, S. (1986). Perceptions of physical attractiveness among college students: Selected determinants and methodological matters. The Journal of Social Psychology, 126, 305–316.
Ekman, P. (2003). Emotions revealed: Recognizing faces and feelings to improve communication and emotional life. New York: Times Books/Henry Holt and Co.
Fiske, S.T. (2012) Managing ambivalent prejudices: smart-but-cold and warm-but-dumb stereotypes. The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 639, 33–48.
Gilbert, P. (2007). The evolution of shame as a marker for relationship security: A biopsychosocial approach. In J. L. Tracy, R. W. Robins, & J. P. Tangney (Eds.), The self-conscious emotions: Theory and research (pp. 283–309). New York: Guilford Press.
LaFrance, M., Hecht, M., & Paluck, E. (2003). The contingent smile: A meta-analysis of sex differences in smiling. Psychological Bulletin, 129, 305–334.
Martens, J. P., Tracy, J. L., & Shariff, A. F. (2012). Status signals: Adaptive benefits of displaying and observing the nonverbal expressions of pride and shame. Cognition & Emotion, 26, 390-406.
Mueser, K., Grau, B., Sussman, S., & Rosen, A. (1984). You’re only as pretty as you feel: Facial expression as a determinant of physical attractiveness. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 46, 469–478.
O’Doherty, J., Winston, J., Critchley, H., Perrett, D., Burt, D., & Dolan, R. (2003). Beauty in a smile: The role of medial orbitofrontal cortex in facial attractiveness. Neuropsychologia, 41, 147–155.
Penton-Voak, I., & Chang, H. (2008). Attractiveness judgements of individuals vary across emotional expression and movement conditions. Journal of Evolutionary Psychology, 6, 89–100.
Schulman, G., & Hoskins, M. (1986). Perceiving the male versus the female face. Psychology of Women Quarterly, 10, 141–153.
Todorov, A., Said, C. P., Engell, A. D., & Oosterhof, N. N. (2008). Understanding evaluation of faces on social dimensions. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 12, 455–460.
Tracy, J. L., & Beall, A. T. (2011). Happy guys finish last: The impact of emotion expressions on sexual attraction. Emotion, 11, 1379-1387.
Tracy, J. L., & Robins, R. W. (2004). Show your pride: Evidence for a discrete emotion expression. Psychological Science, 15, 194-197.
Tracy, J. L., & Robins, R. W. (2007). The prototypical pride expression: Development of a nonverbal behavioral coding system. Emotion, 7, 789-801.
