ADVERTISEMENT
  • The Membership Club
  • PT Hausa
  • About Us
  • Advert Rates
  • Careers
  • Contact Us
Wednesday, April 14, 2021
Premium Times Nigeria
  • Home
  • COVID-19
  • News
    • Headline Stories
    • Top News
    • More News
    • Foreign
  • Investigations
  • Business
    • News Reports
    • Financial Inclusion
    • Analysis and Data
    • Business Specials
    • Opinion
    • Oil/Gas Reports
      • FAAC Reports
      • Revenue
  • Opinion
  • Health
    • News Reports
    • Investigations
    • Data and Infographics
    • Health Specials
    • Features
    • Events
    • Primary Health Tracker
  • Agriculture
    • News Report
    • Research & Innovation
    • Data & Infographics
    • Special Reports/Features
    • Investigations
    • Interviews
    • Markets
  • Arts/Life
    • Arts/Books
    • Kannywood
    • Lifestyle
    • Music
    • Nollywood
    • Travel
  • Sports
    • Football
    • More Sports News
    • Sports Features
  • Projects
    • Parliament Watch
    • Panama Papers
    • Paradise Papers
    • AGAHRIN
  • Home
  • COVID-19
  • News
    • Headline Stories
    • Top News
    • More News
    • Foreign
  • Investigations
  • Business
    • News Reports
    • Financial Inclusion
    • Analysis and Data
    • Business Specials
    • Opinion
    • Oil/Gas Reports
      • FAAC Reports
      • Revenue
  • Opinion
  • Health
    • News Reports
    • Investigations
    • Data and Infographics
    • Health Specials
    • Features
    • Events
    • Primary Health Tracker
  • Agriculture
    • News Report
    • Research & Innovation
    • Data & Infographics
    • Special Reports/Features
    • Investigations
    • Interviews
    • Markets
  • Arts/Life
    • Arts/Books
    • Kannywood
    • Lifestyle
    • Music
    • Nollywood
    • Travel
  • Sports
    • Football
    • More Sports News
    • Sports Features
  • Projects
    • Parliament Watch
    • Panama Papers
    • Paradise Papers
    • AGAHRIN
Premium Times Nigeria
BUA Group Ad BUA Group Ad BUA Group Ad
ADVERTISEMENT
Beauty can mean more opportunities – but can it also influence values? Nataliass/Shutterstock.com

Beauty can mean more opportunities – but can it also influence values? Nataliass/Shutterstock.com

How being beautiful influences your attitudes toward sex

byThe Conversation
February 28, 2019
4 min read

By Robert Urbatsch, Iowa State University

People tend to feel strongly about matters of sexual morality, such as premarital sex or gay marriage.

Some sources of these differences are obvious. Religion, media portrayals and parents and peers are big social forces that shape attitudes about sex.

But could something as innocuous as the way we look spark these different outlooks, too? In a recently published article, I studied this question.

Beauty and opportunity

Compared with the rest of us, most beautiful people lead charmed lives.

Studies show that pretty people tend to get favorable treatment. They secure better jobs and earn higher salaries. Others are friendlier toward them. With this extra money and social support, they’re better equipped to fend off any consequences of their actions. For instance, the better-looking can get more benefit of the doubt from juries.

Their lives are most charmed, though, in matters of sex and romance. While many benefits of beauty are small – a slightly higher salary offer here, a better performance evaluation there – the romantic benefits are larger and more consistent. Good-looking people on average have more sexual opportunities and partners.

Could this create a sense, among attractive people, that anything goes when it comes to sex? Could it make them less inclined to value sexual purity? And might sexually experienced people belittle the moral costs of sex in order to feel better about their own past conduct?

If so, we would expect good-looking people to be the most tolerant ones where sex is concerned. They would have less restrictive views on issues like premarital sex, abortion or gay marriage.

RelatedNews

Court hears how Massaquoi ‘butchered pregnant woman to settle bet’

My wife still denies me sex, 80-year-old tells court

Court dissolves 26-year-old marriage over ‘voodoo’

How to avoid online shopping scams

A link to conservatism?

But you could also argue the opposite.

Higher salaries and greater success in the job market might pull good-looking people toward more conservative views when it comes to taxes or economic justice.

Since conservatives, on average, dislike sexual freedom more than liberals do, identifying with conservatives for economic reasons – or simply moving in conservative social circles – might make the beautiful less, not more, tolerant where sex is concerned. Along these lines, studies have found that good looks are associated with conservatism among politicians.

Dangote adbanner 728x90_2 (1)

Attractiveness could then plausibly associate with higher or lower standards for what sexual activities are morally acceptable. Or the two arguments could cancel each other out, as one study of college students suggested.

Digging into the surveys

To further explore this issue, I turned to two large, prominent surveys of Americans’ views: the General Social Survey from 2016 and the American National Election Studies from 1972.

Both surveys were administered face-to-face. And, unusually, both studies asked the person administering the survey to evaluate the respondent’s looks on a one-to-five scale. (The respondent doesn’t see the score. The study’s designers weren’t that heedless of social awkwardness.)

This measure of beauty isn’t rigorous. But it does resemble quick personal judgments made in everyday life. Moreover, the decades-long gap between the studies gives some sense of whether effects persist across a generation’s worth of cultural change.

The surveys also asked about legal and moral standards relevant to sex, such as how restrictive abortion laws should be, whether gay marriage should be legal and about the acceptability of premarital, extramarital and gay sex.

In both studies, the better-looking seem more relaxed about sexual morality. For instance, in the data from 2016, 51 percent of those whose looks were rated above average said a woman who wants an abortion for any reason should legally be allowed to have one. Only 42 percent of those with below-average looks said the same. This nine-point difference increases to 15 points when accounting for factors like age, education, political ideology and religiosity.

ADVERTISEMENT

This pattern repeated for almost all questions. The one exception was a question that asked when adultery was morally acceptable. Almost all respondents said “never” to that, washing out differences between the more and less attractive.

Are morals opportunistic?

If past experience is what makes beautiful people more tolerant toward issues like abortion and gay marriage, we would not expect them to be notably more tolerant about matters in which looks don’t apply. This proves to be true. Good-looking respondents in these surveys aren’t detectably more open, for example, to a legal right to die or to accepting civil disobedience.

These results are consistent with other findings showing that getting away with violating norms can make you more casual about those norms in the future. Whether in white-collar crime or police violence or international human-rights violations, those who pull off one questionable action often become more willing to justify doing the same, or perhaps even a little more, in the future.

The same could be said for sex. If you’ve have a lot of sexual experiences in the past, it may color your attitudes toward the vast range of sexual possibilities – even those that don’t directly apply to your own sexuality or personal experience.

Robert Urbatsch, Associate Professor of Political Science, Iowa State University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The conversation
  • WhatsApp
  • Tweet
  • Email
  • Print
  • Telegram
  • More
  • Share on Tumblr
  • Pocket

Support PREMIUM TIMES' journalism of integrity and credibility

Good journalism costs a lot of money. Yet only good journalism can ensure the possibility of a good society, an accountable democracy, and a transparent government.

For continued free access to the best investigative journalism in the country we ask you to consider making a modest support to this noble endeavour.

By contributing to PREMIUM TIMES, you are helping to sustain a journalism of relevance and ensuring it remains free and available to all.

Donate


TEXT AD: To advertise here . Call Willie +2347088095401...


JOIN THE CONVERSATION

  • Disqus (0)
premiumtimes



PT Mag Campaign AD

Previous Post

Five parties that came tops at presidential polls

Next Post

Supreme Court to decide Onnoghen’s fate May 17

The Conversation

The Conversation

More News

Zulumoke Oyibo Inkblot Women In Film

Nigerian women in film discuss challenges, proffer solutions at forum

April 13, 2021
Teni the Entertainer

PTMusic: Again, Teni’s “FOR YOU” ft. Davido is most streamed song in Nigeria

April 13, 2021
Bruno Iwuoha

Veteran Nollywood actor, Bruno Iwuoha, is dead

April 10, 2021
DMX [PHOTO CREDIT: @DMX]

Rapper DMX dies at 50

April 9, 2021
Wisekid and Wizkid

How Wizkid’s impersonator reportedly made N30 million monthly from replica album

April 7, 2021
Kim Kardashian

Kim Kardashian officially a billionaire – Forbes

April 6, 2021
Next Post
justice-walter-onnoghen

Supreme Court to decide Onnoghen's fate May 17

Sule Lamido, Former governor of Jigawa state

PDP may boycott governorship election in Jigawa - Lamido

Discussion about this post

Search

#EndSARS: Latest Updates




Polaris Bank


JAIZ Ad


Access Bank Ad


NITDA Ad





Glo Ad

Subscribe to News via Email

Enter your email address and receive notifications of news by email.

Join 1,651,229 other subscribers.

Advertisement






netherland biz school Advert



Zenith Advert

ADVERTISEMENT

Our Digital Network

  • PT Hausa
  • Election Centre
  • Human Trafficking Investigation
  • Centre for Investigative Journalism
  • National Conference
  • Press Attack Tracker
  • PT Academy
  • Dubawa
  • LeaksNG
  • Campus Reporter

Resources

  • Oil & Gas Facts
  • List of Universities in Nigeria
  • LIST: Federal Unity Colleges in Nigeria
  • NYSC Orientation Camps in Nigeria
  • Nigeria’s Federal/States’ Budgets since 2005
  • Malabu Scandal Thread
  • World Cup 2018
  • Panama Papers Game
  • Our Digital Network
  • About Us
  • Resources
  • Projects
  • Data & Infographics
  • DONATE

All content is Copyrighted © 2020 The Premium Times, Nigeria

No Result
View All Result
  • Home
  • COVID-19
  • News
    • Headline Stories
    • Top News
    • More News
    • Foreign
  • Investigations
  • Business
    • News Reports
    • Financial Inclusion
    • Analysis and Data
    • Business Specials
    • Opinion
    • Oil/Gas Reports
      • FAAC Reports
      • Revenue
  • Agriculture
    • News Report
    • Research & Innovation
    • Data & Infographics
    • Special Reports/Features
    • Investigations
    • Interviews
    • Markets
  • Arts/Life
    • Arts/Books
    • Kannywood
    • Lifestyle
    • Music
    • Nollywood
    • Travel
  • Sports
    • Football
    • More Sports News
    • Sports Features
  • Projects
    • Panama Papers
    • Paradise Papers
    • Parliament Watch
    • AGAHRIN
  • Opinion
  • PT Hausa
  • The Membership Club
  • Dubawa
    • Dubawa NG
  • About Us
    • Advert Rates
  • Careers
  • Contact Us
  • Digital Store
  • DONATE

All content is Copyrighted © 2020 The Premium Times, Nigeria

Our website uses cookies. By continuing to use this website you are giving consent to cookies being used. Visit our Privacy and Cookie Policy.
loading Cancel
Post was not sent - check your email addresses!
Email check failed, please try again
Sorry, your blog cannot share posts by email.