|
[UCLA Body Matrices] [Conference Paper Presentations] [Conference Poster Presentations] [Curriculum Vita] [Research Assistants] [Current Projects] [Evolutionary Psychology] |
|
|
My undergraduate training is in Animal Behavior and in Psychology. My graduate training is in social psychological and evolutionary approaches to understanding physical attraction, body image dissatisfaction, and sexuality in close relationships. Below I describe my work on evolutionary approaches to the mind and physical attractiveness (link), to understanding body dissatisfaction (link), and to understanding sexuality and close relationships processes (link). [CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD FILE] 1. EVOLUTIONARY PSYCHOLOGY AND PHYSICAL ATTRACTIVENESS Evolutionary psychologists propose that evolved mechanisms play an important role in our behaviors and in how we process social information (Barrett, Frederick, Haselton, & Kurzban, 2006). Our bodies have a number of specialized modules that handle distinct functions (eyes are for vision, the heart is for pumping blood, etc.). These systems have their own specialized functions, but they also interact with and work in concert with each other. Thus, rather there being just one general process or organ that handles every function, there are many little organs and processes that are adapted to handle different processes. They are "functionally specialized". We reason that evolutionary processes favored a mind is also composed of these functionally specialized mechanisms. Having only one general learning mechanism would be less adaptive than having a large number of specialized mechanisms that process information related to problems that were recurring during our evolutionary history. In the general "sociocultural" viewpoint, the mind contains one large operating system such as Windows, which accepts and processes information from the Internet. Evolutionary psychologists reason that simply having Windows on your computer is less adaptive than having a computer that comes loaded with a wide variety of programs that each handle different tasks (Microsoft word, powerpoint, calculator, SPSS, etc.). All of these specialized programs rely heavily on the general operating system and on input from the Internet, but they were selected for because they can be adaptively deployed to solve specific problems more efficiently than a large general processor could. Similarly, it would have been more adaptive for the mind to come equipped with a wide variety of mechanisms that are functionally specialized to handle certain tasks (e.g., mate selection, cooperation, processing social information, etc.) rather than relying solely on one general purpose learning mechanism. Some people mistakenly believe that evolutionary psychologists propose that the mind is full of very rigid genetically determined mechanisms that are insensitive to cultural information. Certainly some evolutionary psychologists have proposed that some preferences will be "highly canalized." That is, they will develop in similar ways across cultures (e.g., it's always most adaptive to develop two arms instead of one, Singh's proposal that relatively low WHR signals reproductive viability). However, it is important to note that these same evolutionary psychologists also propose that there are many evolutionary mechanisms that are completely dependent on environmental and social input. We do not believe in "cultural" vs. "biological" causes of behavior. This distinction makes little sense to an evolutionary psychologist. The capacity for culture and the ability to imitate others and to attend to social information is viewed as an extremely important evolved adaptation. The question for evolutionary psychologists is identifying which evolved mechanisms rely heavily on socially transmitted information, how evolved mechanisms influence what becomes the subject of socially transmitted information, how different evolved mechanisms become evoked by different environmental conditions, and which evolved mechanisms rely on this social information and which evolved mechanisms develop in similar ways across contexts. My research focuses on these "condition dependent" adaptations and how evolutionary mechanisms influence how we attend to the physical features of others. For example, I am interested in how individuals recognize their kin members and how this influences cooperation and investment decisions. Given that males recurrently faced the problem of cuckoldry (investing in genetically unrelated offspring), have males evolved mechanisms to detect physical resemblance in offspring? In one experiment, we invited men and women into the lab and presented them with an array of photographs of babies. Some of these photographs had been computer-morphed to incorporate the facial features of the participant. Participants were asked which of the babies they would most like to adopt, play with, give money to, etc. Men but not women consistently chose the face that resembled them. Interestingly, the participants were completely unaware that we had morphed the photographs, suggesting their choices were guided by unconscious mechanisms. More generally, I am interested consider how evolved preferences for certain traits might influence the body types that are represented as attractive in popular media, and examine an evolutionary perspective on how traits linked with prestige might come to be viewed as physically attractive (Frederick, Fessler, & Haselton, 2005). Further, I examine how women's evolved motives might influence their feelings about their attractiveness. From an evolutionary perspective, women should be most interested in sex during ovulation because this is when they are most likely to conceive. In the modern environment, this increased desire for sex might produce externally observable behaviors, such as wearing sexier clothes during ovulation. In an experiment I assisted with, women were photographed during high fertility phases versus low fertility phases of the menstrual cycle. Consistent with the hypothesis, women were rated as wearing more attractive clothing and showing more skin during high fertility (Haselton, Mortezaie, Bleske, Pillsworth, & Frederick, in press). As a further example, my dissertation project focuses on how hunger affects a wide variety of social behaviors and mating preferences (Frederick, in preparation). I am particularly interested in applying costly signaling theory to understand physical attraction. Most people are familiar with the proposal that extravagant peacock's tails are attractive because only males with certain genetic propensities and with stable development can afford the metabolic costs necessary to generate these traits. I have proposed that women should be attracted to costly signals in human males. In particular, traits that rely heavily on testosterone for development should be attractive because testosterone imposes heavy costs on immune system function and raises metabolic rates. Only males in good condition can display these traits. These males should be particularly attractive to women in contexts where the only contribution of the male to offspring is genetic (e.g., in a short-term sexual affair). Because these males are attractive to many women, they can afford a short-term sexual strategy, making them a riskier choice for mates. This may cause women to shift their preferences when considering a male as a long-term partner rather than a short-term partner. Consistent with this proposal, women prefer men who are more muscular than average (Frederick & Sadeghi-Azar, in preparation) and men believe that women prefer men who are more muscular than average in the U.S., Ukraine, and Ghana (Frederick et al., in press). They also report that their ideal short-term partner is more muscular than their ideal long-term partner (Frederick & Haselton, in preparation; Frederick & Sadeghi-Azar, in preparation), and reports of their past sexual partners confirm that they perceive that their past short-term partners were more muscular than their long-term partners (Frederick & Haselton, under revision). Consistent with the mating trade-off proposal, women rate muscular men as sexier but also as more volatile, more dominant, and less likely to remain committed to their partner In parallel, men who are more muscular report more sex partners, more short-term affairs, and more affairs with women who had a partner at the time of the affair (Frederick & Haselton, under revision). In support of the inverted-U hypothesis of masculine traits, women's preferences for muscularity follow a strong inverted-U pattern, where both non-muscular and extremely muscular men are dispreferred. This may suggest that women perceive a trade-off between the positive attributes of muscularity and the perceived volatility and direct threat that extremely muscular men may pose (Frederick & Haselton, under revision). Future research will examine how different contexts shape the degree to which muscularity is desired. Further, because taller height requires a great deal of energy to develop, I am interested in whether height may be a costly signal in males, and how preferences for height in a partner depend on one's own height and endorsement of traditional gender roles (Salska, Frederick, Pawlowski, Reilly, Laird, & Rudd, in preparation). Consistent with this proposal, in a study of over 70,000 men and women, taller men reported more sex partners, as did men with somewhat larger body masses (Frederick, in preparation). One of the major limitations of much current research is that the vast majority of research done to date has been a detailed ethnography on how individuals in the U.S. and Western Europe behave. This limits our ability to examine how different contextual factors differentially evoke evolved mechanisms and preferences. To correct for this limitation, Dr. Viren Swami and I have organized the International Body Project. Currently, participants in over 35 countries are rating the attractiveness of the images on Male Fat Silhouette Measure and Male Muscle Silhouette measure (Frederick et al, in press). These measures contain silhouettes of men varying in body fat and muscularity. This will allow us to identify the extent to which preferences for these traits vary across cultures and whether they are linked to important environmental variation (e.g., resource scarcity) and sociocultural input (e.g., degree of exposure to Western media). Similarly, participants also rate the attractiveness of images of women varying in body fat, which will allow us to test similar hypotheses (Frederick & Swami et al., in preparation; Swami & Frederick et al., in preparation). Interestingly, there appear to be many of these "sexually dimorphic" physical features ? features that differ between the sexes. This suggests that natural selection or sexual selection processes have favored the maintenance of these physical differences, and researchers have examined how these traits influence judgments of attractiveness. One feature that has recently been of interest is foot size. Interestingly, women have smaller feet relative to their body size than do men, even though this would appear to interfere with locomotion. This suggests that men have some sensory bias that leads them to select smaller footed women as mates despite these costs. In collaboration with Dan Fessler and others, we are testing whether men have a preference for smaller-footed women in several countries across the world using a series of computer morphs that vary in foot size. Further, I am assisting with a study on whether or not waist-to-hip ratio is actually an important predictor of physical attractiveness relative to other traits in collaboration with Viren Swami and Adrian Furnham. Note that I am not claiming that natural selection crafted rigid criteria to always prefer individuals displaying a certain level of a trait. That position would be highly inconsistent with the evident historical and cross-cultural variation in body ideals. However, in all human societies, people compete for prestige (Henrich & Gil-White, 2001), and the body form constitutes an arena for prestige competition. Given the importance of mate choice for reproductive success, natural selection and sexual selection likely endowed the minds of our ancestors with propensities to attend to particular attributes of the bodies of members of the opposite sex, and to the preferences displayed by such individuals with regard to the bodies of members of one's own sex. The degree and distribution of female body fat is likely one such feature because of its role in female fertility (Jones, 1996). Likewise, male muscularity, a determinant of male success in hunting and combat in ancestral populations, can be expected to have special psychological salience (see discussion section of Frederick, Fessler, & Haselton, 2005). 2. UNDERSTANDING BODY DISSATISFACTION Given that evaluating physical appearance is a critical component of mate selection in both human and non-human animals, it is important to examine how individuals feel about their own bodies. This is especially true in cultures where physical attractiveness is tightly linked with social prestige, as is clearly the case in the U.S. Although some social constructionists see the "sociocultural" approach to being in conflict with the "evolutionary" approach, I have a different approach. I propose that humans come into the world with evolved mechanisms designed to attend to social information and to indicators of prestige. Body dissatisfaction can result when one perceives that certain body types are linked with prestige and that they do not possess this prestigious body type. My research on body dissatisfaction focuses on the question: Why are so many people dissatisfied with their bodies and dieting, and who is most at risk? Although there has been a great deal of research on the experiences of young heterosexual white women, the concerns of older adults, ethnic minorities, men, sexual minorities, and tall women have been relatively neglected. Further, I examine how different theoretical perspectives can be integrated to better understand who is most at risk. Because of the negative consequences of body dissatisfaction, several theories have been developed or applied to explain why body dissatisfaction exists and who is most at risk: Self-Discrepancy Theory, Social Comparison Theory, Objectification Theory, and Perceived Social Pressures Theory. One major limitation of the existing research, however, is that most investigations consider only one of these theories in a given study. This approach limits our ability to identify the relative usefulness of each theory. Currently I am conducting two projects to isolate which factor best predicts body dissatisfaction and dieting in large samples of men and women. Further, I intend to build a sophisticated model that integrates these four perspectives to more adequately identify factors promoting risk for poor body image (Frederick & Forbes, in preparation; Frederick, Niles, & Jarcho, in preparation). Further, one limitation of past research is that few studies have examined which theory best predicts how people respond when faced with a "body image threat." Body image threats occur when an individual is placed in a situation that might increase body dissatisfaction. For example one common body image threat is exposure to media images of attractive slender women or attractive muscular men. I am currently conducting a large scale study in which I examine how well these different theories predict negative responses to exposure to these images (Frederick, Niles, & Jarcho, in preparation). In collaboration with the news site MSNBC.com, I assisted with a large scale study of the appearance concerns of over 50,000 men and women between the ages of 18-65. This collaboration allowed me to examine which factors best predict body dissatisfaction among adults and how this affects their everyday lives. Strikingly, many women and men felt dissatisfied with their weights (63%, 48%), felt physically unattractive (21%, 11%), and were so uncomfortable with their bodies that they avoided wearing bathing suits in public (31%, 16%). These percentages were dramatically higher among overweight and obese individuals (Frederick, Peplau, & Lever, 2006). Further, using this large sample, I also examined how these concerns relate to desires for extreme body modification techniques such as cosmetic surgery (Frederick, Lever, & Peplau, in press), and attitudes towards breast size and penis size (Lever, Frederick, & Peplau, 2006; Frederick, Peplau, & Lever, under review). My research conducted at UCLA has allowed me to examine predictors of body satisfaction among Asian, White, Black, and Latino/a men and women. Minority participants in this sample consistently report poorer body satisfaction than White participants. This may suggest that popular White ideals represented as prestigious in the media may have a particularly negative effect on minorities (Frederick & Forbes, under review; Frederick, Forbes, Grigorian, & Jarcho, under revision). In particular, being high in "surveillance" appears to be a specific risk factor for ethnic minorities. That is, ethnic minorities who attend to how others evaluate their appearance and who focus on their appearance report more body dissatisfaction than Whites who report high surveillance. This may suggest that being high in surveillance is a particular risk factor for ethnic minorities because it increases concerns regarding how others are judging their ethnic physical features (Frederick, Forbes, Grigorian, & Jarcho, under revision). Currently I am investigating how acculturation relates to body satisfaction and interest in cosmetic surgery among ethnic minorities (Frederick & Forbes, in preparation). In addition to examining the concerns of adults and ethnic minorities, I also examine men's concerns with their bodies. For many years it was assumed that few men have poor body image because anorexia, bulimia, and dieting are much less common among men than women. Neglected, however, is research on the intensity of pressure that some men feel to be muscular and athletic, which can lead to a wide array of unhealthy behaviors including protein supplement abuse, steroid abuse, and obsessive exercising? In one of the first cross-cultural studies of male body image, I found that dissatisfaction with muscularity was widespread in the U.S., Ukraine, and Ghana (Frederick et al., in press). Further, body mass is an important moderator of the sex difference in body satisfaction between men and women. Specifically, thin women who approximate conventional ideals report better body satisfaction than thin men, who diverge from the popular powerful and muscular ideals. In heavier weight groups, however, the difference between men and women becomes very large, presumably because greater body mass can be viewed as increasing a man's physical power but takes women away from the thin ideal (Frederick, Peplau, & Lever, 2006; Frederick, Forbes, Grigorian, & Jarcho, under revision). Fourth, I have examined whether participation in the sexual minority community has a protective effect on body satisfaction among gay and lesbian individuals using two online data sets. Many researchers have proposed that gay men experience more social pressure than heterosexual men to achieve a slender and toned body. Researchers have proposed contrasting ideas on whether lesbians would differ in body dissatisfaction than heterosexual women. Those favoring the sexual minority culture hypothesis reason that the lesbian community is more likely to reject prominent body ideals emphasizing slenderness and be more accepting of a wide variety of body types. Those favoring the dominant culture hypothesis reason that lesbian and heterosexual women are both exposed to tremendous pressure to be slender while growing up, so they likely experience similar levels of body dissatisfaction. Unfortunately, most studies testing these proposals have relied on small convenience samples recruited from gay community groups. Using two large online samples, I found consistent evidence that gay men report worse body satisfaction than heterosexual men across a wide variety of measures. However, there were few differences between lesbian and heterosexual women, even when controlling for group differences in BMI. In fact, there were few consistent differences between gay, lesbian, and heterosexual women, suggesting a relatively equal level of risk among these three groups (Frederick et al., in preparation). Finally, I have also investigated the body and height concerns of very tall women (> 5'11"). This is a critical group to study because pediatricians routinely proscribe estrogen to young girls projected to grow above 5'11 in order to purposely stunt their growth. Although this treatment was most popular in the 1960s and 1970s, currently 33% of pediatricians still offer this treatment. This treatment is done solely out of the belief that tall women are unlikely to find marriage partners because of the strong social norms favoring men being taller in relationships and fears that tall women will be highly dissatisfied with their bodies. This is done despite the lack of research on the actual psychosocial outcomes of tall women and despite the fact that these treatments can cause infertility and other negative consequences. My research, however, shows that the vast majority of very tall women are satisfied with their height and they do not differ from shorter individuals in terms of likelihood of being married (Lever, Frederick, Laird, & Sadeghi-Azar, in press). 3. SEXUALITY AND CLOSE RELATIONSHIPS Over the past two years I have collaborated with MSNBC.com to conduct two large studies of human sexuality. In the first study, I examined predictors of sexual and relationship satisfaction among over 70,000 men and women. Although past research has clearly documented that sexual satisfaction and frequency declines over time, this study was conducted to examine what factors keep some couples satisfied. In particular, this study focused on how sexual communication, sexual variety, orgasm frequency, sexual frequency, and frequency of using sex help books predict sexual satisfaction differently for men and women (Lever, Frederick, & Strachman, in preparation). Further, this study also allows us to examine how relationship cognitions effect sexual satisfaction and relationship satisfaction (Strachman, Frederick, & Lever), in preparation. One question on this survey asked about whether or not individuals had cheated on their partner and why they cheated. As one might expect from an evolutionary perspective, men were more likely than women to report cheating because they were seeking sexual variety, but many interesting reasons were given (Frederick & Haselton, in preparation. This year we are focusing our collaboration with MSNBC.com on who cheats, why they cheat, and how they cheat. This survey will enable us to also test Rusbult's commitment model, Buss's proposal regarding sex differences in jealousy mechanisms, and the mating trade-off proposal which suggests that women raise their standards in terms of the physical appearance of their affair partner while men lower their standards. More generally, I am interested in the factors that shape sexuality. One running debate in the relationship literature is whether men actually do desire a larger number of sex partners than women do. One problem with this research is that how the question is framed can sharply effect the conclusion one comes to. My research shows that although most men and women report that "ideally" they would have one more sex partner, men are much more willing than women express interest in having a large number of sex partners (Frederick, in preparation). Further, I am interested in the flexibility of sexual preferences. Several different theoretical models have proposed that women's sexual preferences are more flexible than men's sexual preferences. One way to test this is to examine the sexual preferences of in a large sample of gay and lesbian individuals. Consistent with this sexual flexibility hypothesis, lesbian women were much more likely than gay men to report feeling attraction to members of the other sex. Similarly, in a sample of college students, women identifying as "heterosexual" were more likely than heterosexual men to express interest in same-sex sexual relations (Frederick, in preparation). COLLABORATORS I am particularly fortunate to have the opportunity to collaborate with very talented and productive researchers who have influenced the way I approach the science of sexuality and attractiveness. These include: Clark Barrett, Dan Fessler, Gordon Gallup, Gordon Forbes, Martie Haselton, Janet Lever, Anne Peplau, Steve Platek, and Viren Swami. Further, I have had the opportunity to mentor very talented and motivated undergraduates who have assisted with this program of research (see RA section of this website). |
|