Abstract
Men’s perceptions of women’s sexual interest were studied in a sample of 250 male undergraduates, who rated 173 full-body photos of women differing in expressed cues of sexual interest, attractiveness, provocativeness of dress, and the social-environmental context into which the woman’s photo had been embedded. Environmental context significantly influenced men’s judgments of sexual interest, independently of the affective cues of sexual interest themselves and of provocativeness of dress and attractiveness. Cue usage was moderated by men’s risk for sexual aggression, as measured by a rape-myth inventory, with higher-risk men (relative to lower-risk men) relying significantly less on affective cues, relying significantly more on attractiveness, and showing a non-significant tendency to rely more on environmental cues. Men exhibited a moderate degree of insight into individual differences in their cue usage. Analysis of individual differences in cue usage suggested that men’s judgments of women’s momentary sexual interest varied along two dimensions: (1) men who relied more on affective cues were less likely to rely on women’s attractiveness (r = −0.73); and (2) men who were influenced more by provocativeness of dress were also likely to rely more on environmental context (r = 0.49). Results suggest that variation in contextual variables should be included in cognitive-training programs designed to improve the accuracy of men’s judgments of women’s affective responses. Ultimately, such training programs may prove useful as an adjunct to prevention programs for sexual aggression.
Highlights
Sexual perception—that is, perceiving someone’s level of sexual interest in a particular person at a particular point in time—is a common, difficult, and potentially consequential task
The current study extends prior research by rigorously evaluating the role of the social-environmental context in sexual perception while controlling for women’s nonverbal affect, the perceived provocativeness of women’s clothing, and women’s normative attractiveness, as well as their interactions
College men judging women’s current sexual interest rely on nonverbal information in women’s facial expressions and body language and on the perceived provocativeness of women's clothing and women’s normative attractiveness. Of these more woman-specific influences, men rely on the sexual relevance of the environmental context to draw inferences about women’s momentary sexual interest
Summary
Sexual perception—that is, perceiving someone’s level of sexual interest in a particular person at a particular point in time—is a common, difficult, and potentially consequential task. A man’s misperception of a woman’s level of sexual interest will be a minor but potentially embarrassing social error, in which he either perceives a woman to be more interested than she is or perceives a woman to be less interested than she is. Standardized social-perception tasks using numerous, well-characterized, full-body photographs of college women allow examination of both nomothetic and idiographic aspects of sexual perception—that is, both average (i.e., nomothetic) sexual perception and individual differences in (i.e., idiographic) sexual perception—under highly controlled conditions. Work under these conditions has focused primarily on characteristics of the women being perceived and of the men doing the perceiving when accounting for variability in sexual perception. The current study extends prior research by rigorously evaluating the role of the social-environmental context in sexual perception while controlling for women’s nonverbal affect, the perceived provocativeness of women’s clothing, and women’s normative attractiveness, as well as their interactions
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