Financial prosperity adds to sex appeal, study suggests
Gee, chicks dig good-looking guys with fat wallets? Wow, that would certainly explain why I could never get a date, no?? And to think that all these years I'd thought it was because I was wearing the wrong cologne or drinking the wrong beer.... Now I find that out that men are just as shallow and biologically deterministic as women. Whodathunkit?
Social scientists have known for years that men and women tend to be more tolerant of uninvited sexual advances if the perpetrators are good-looking members of the opposite sex. They call this the "beauty bias." But two researchers wondered if we're also more tolerant if the unsolicited approach comes from someone who looks as if he or she has money.
The answer: Yes, and it's men rather than women who are more likely to accept these come-ons from prosperous members of the opposite sex, claim psychologist Katherine Black of the University of Hartford and her student David Gold in a recent issue of the journal Sex Roles....
Men in particular seemed more welcoming to uninvited advances from women who appeared to be wealthier, perhaps because guys were generally more willing to fool around, the researchers suggested.
"Participants rated advances by wealthy individuals as more acceptable, pleasing and flattering than advances by poor individuals," Black and Gold wrote.
"One reason may be that we assume that appearance reflects something about a person's abilities or personality," they said, citing other studies showing that attractive people are viewed by others as more intelligent, warm and friendly.
Of course, now that I'm married I can go back to being slovenly and unkempt, no?? If nothing else, at least I now know why I could never get a date in college, right? Man, THIS is science....
