Is Male Nonverbal Shame Attractive?
Christopher Philip
In previous studies University of British Columbia researchers Alec Beall and Jessica Tracy found that women reported attraction to men displaying the nonverbal expression of shame.
To explore this curious and non-intuitive idea further the researchers conducted two studies. In the first study, American women, at either high or low-conception risk, were polled on their relative attraction to men displaying the shame nonverbal expression. The second study sampled Indian women across the same criteria of pride to verify if the preferences were culturally driven.
Results showed that only American women at low-fertility found the men displaying nonverbal shame as attractive. Both the Indian women and the American women in high-fertility found the shame-displaying men less attractive.
Overall, they say, and as expected “male shame displays indicate poor genetic fitness — American women’s tendency to find shame-displaying men attractive is
likely due to local socio-cultural factors rather than to universal genetically encoded
predispositions.”
Thus, previously found data suggesting that the male shame display is attractive likely results from cultural rather than biological factors.
That said, it is quite interesting to see that women find men displaying shame as more attractive than displaying, for example, happiness. Though, it is not surprising that men were found to be more attractive when displaying pride as it is universally associated with higher status.
As a side-note to this study, there exists specific gender differences between what men and women find attractive in the opposite sex.
For example, happiness which is believed to signal femininity and sexual receptivity is far more attractive when displayed by women than by men. Shame also scores lower than female happiness, but higher than female pride as well as neutral displays. For women, pride is a signal that may, according to the research, reduce the perception of approachability.
In short, men benefit most when displaying the pride expression consisting of an expanded chest, a larger more expansive posture with chin held up. Women, it seems do not benefit from the pride display and should demonstrate happiness instead. Shame should be avoided generally by men whereas women do better with shame than with neutral postures.
Resources
Beall, Alec and Jessica L. Tracy. The Puzzling Attractiveness of Male Shame. Manuscript submitted to Evolutionary Psychology. www.epjournal.net – 2019. 12(x): 1-39