Message from the author: Before we get started, I want to make it very clear that this is not an academic article. Yes, I have a Masters of Science Degree in Psychology (California Southern University), and yes, I have an undergraduate degree in counseling (California State University).Also, yes, I have conducted two research studies that were peer reviewed ,and wrote a thesis about Language Acquisition and ESL. But, I got sick of the fucking academic, “holier than thou” attitude, of some of the people involved in academia land. No, I didn’t go to an Ivy league school. If that’s what you’re looking for, you can slither your way, the fuck back, to your ivory academic tower. I write these articles to get people thinking, and hopefully not bore them to death with academic jargon. If you like what you read, let me know (thesocialgelo@gmail.com) and I’ll do a podcast on YouTube and dive deeper into the subject. Thanks for reading!
Angelo Ferrer (Aka Social Gelo
I was browsing though my Facebook feed, when I came across this video. (Spoiler alert)I was surprised to find, that the majority of the women in the video, chose body type D, as the type of body they found the sexiest (“I’m too sexy for my shirt, too sexy for my shirt , so sexy it hurts”).
Personally, I’m a gym junkie and an MMA coach(amongst many other occupations). I workout 6 days a week and alternate my schedule to fit in MMA, Jiu-Jitsu, kickboxing, Kajukenbo(Hawaiian Kenpo), weight training and running.
I’ve met plenty of guys that wanted to get as shredded as they could (“like bro, you think benching 300lbs is enough, I don’t think it’s enough”), not realizing that girls don’t give a fuck about how shredded they are(or what their max bench press is). In fact, according to a research study conducted by Wang et al.(2018), women find men more attractive when they have a higher salary.
This got me thinking, what would happen if we added salary to the YouTube body experiment?
I don’t think women can be shallower than men. I personally know plenty of guys, that care more about looks(and breast size),more than anything else (even personality). I want to make it clear, that this isn’t about one gender being more shallow than the other. I was genuinely curious, if men would consider a women’s(or men’s) salary, when rating who they found attractive.
So my research predictions(hypotheses) were as follows:
A)When presented with rating women by their bodies and salaries, men will pick a body type over salary
B)When presented with rating men by their bodies and salaries, women will pick salaries over body type
Methods(How the fuck did I ask people about this?)
I went on Facebook and posted the following posts in public and private groups with these pictures:
Quick Social Experiment
Just checking the similarities and differences for men and women.
If you want to participate feel free to chose a letter and explain why you chose that person. Each letter has a yearly salary attached, so be sure to read carefully before choosing.
Who would you choose as a suitable life partner and why?
*later changed to: who do you find the most attractive?
Men picture
A-$200,000 a year
B- $100,000 a year
C- $40,000 a year
D- $30,000 a year
E- $100,000 a year
F- $200,000 year
Female Picture
A-$200,000 a year
B-$100,000 a year
C- $40,000 a year
D- $20,000 a year
E- $100,000 a year
*I’ll post the results in a week or so along with my hypothesis
Later, I switched the question to “who do you find the most attractive”? I also removed the salaries to see if more people would respond. (they didn’t, in fact less participated in that version)
Results (What did I find out?)
Prediction(hypothesis) A-When presented with rating women by their bodies and salaries, men will pick a body type over salary (Partially true)
Prediction(hypothesis) B-When presented with rating men by their bodies and salaries, women will pick salaries over body type (false)
First of all I found out people hate responding to this kind of shit online. The first few comments were mostly criticizing the research question and sarcastic remarks (“I could never make this kind of decision based on headless torsos!”).There were 34 participants (N=34 this represent total number of participants)7 female and 27 male .Only 21 participants (61%)actually gave an answer. 33% of the men mentioned they didn’t care about the income of their future life partner.Only three women(42%)gave an answer to thequestion with the income attached (there just wasn’t that many women who participated).
Female #1: “I've already got what I want, but no E or F for the male section. It would be a marriage, so not platonic.”
Female #2: “Interesting. I picked D on both the men and women.”
Female #3: “Salary is meaningless to me. It'd be an added bonus. For ladies, I like A. For dudes, I like F. They both look like real people.”
On the question with no salaries. Two women chose C&D (similar to YouTube video result).One woman chose F. The last two women were angry about the selection.
One female participant said “first of all, they’re all white”.
Another female participant, felt she was being“coerced into making a decision”and chose not to participate. The women’s results were too mixed to come to any solid conclusions.
67% of men who participated mentioned that income wasn’t a deciding factor.
One male participant said “the yearly income of my partner doesn't really matter to me unless she doesn't have a job at all. 40k and up is fine.”
One male participant chose B for the mens picture and said: “Without looking at the salaries I chose B. Then I looked at the salaries and I'm still good with B”.
Another male participant that chose D said: “A man who makes me laugh will have my heart and if you have a decent body and Tattoos you will have my big dick up your butt”.
34% of the men chose the female picture C (making this body type the most chosen),14% chose the female picture A (making it the second most chosen)and the remaining answers were mixed between other choices or not choosing one in particular.
Discussion (what does all this mumbo jumbo mean?)
Overall,there weren’t enough participants to come to any solid conclusions. One of the biggest problems was that the women just didn’t like the selection of men in the survey (“bro she’s just not that in to you”).
According to the women’s comments, the men were either too muscular, too white, or “not skinny” enough , for them to choose any of them (this is the most surprising find because I thought I would get more complaints from the guys on this topic).
I think the other issue, was that this was done on Facebook. I’m not sure if a women would feel comfortable sharing her thoughts, with the majority of men in the group, dominating the discussion. There’s something to be said about being anonymous and not having people criticize your choice. Most of the women that commented, felt that the survey was flawed (and they were right about that), and that they could never decide their “life partner”, based on these two factors.
All this leaves a lot of shit to say about the guys
Apparently, most of the guys had no problem making a choice based off these factors. Not only did they not care about income (34%), the remaining 66% didn’t mention if they cared or not. They mostly made comments about their preferences of body type.
To give some credit to the guys, 22% of the participants mentioned that they would be more concerned about the woman’s personality (fuck us guys seem pretty shallow when I look at this stat).
It’s funny, because some of the female participants, felt it would be shallow to pick a guy based on income. But the majority of the men, had no problem basing their decision only using“torsos” (as one of the participants that didn’t choose a picture put it).
Another find, was that the larger body type A, placed second. One participant said: “she looks the healthiest out of all of them”.
I say this is a find, because in the male study, done on YouTube, the larger body type F was not chosen by any of the female participants in that study. In my study a few women chose the F body type for the mens picture. This might be related to the older age demographics of the participants in my study (20-60 years of age).
Warning Will Robinson! Don’t take this shit too seriously!
Honestly, I think the guys saw this as a game, so I wouldn’t take these results too seriously. Things can easily get heated online. For example, one of the guys complained about the selection in the survey saying:“None of the females are Asian, or short, so not interested in any of them.” This prompted another participant to argue saying: “Lol you have no idea how tall they are, or what the race is. There's no depth to your shallowness.”
In the end , I was actually surprised there wasn’t more arguing going on. Especially considering how trollish people can be online. Now, beforeI get too many comments, bashing how shallow men can be. I would like to end with some of the best comments, coming from people who did not choose any picture.
Female participant: “Neither body nor money matter.Sweet, loving, and protective men are the most attractive. Feeling safe in their arms, and in their presence, is the most important thing.”
Male participant: “The value of a human isn't rooted in the shape of their body or the money that they make. Some of the most wealthy and physically appealing people have the most rotten, fetid, rancid character traits and personalities. Some of the most poor and physically unappealing have the most radiant, loving, selfless, beautiful souls.”
Thanks for playing!
I want to thank everyone who participated and shared their thoughts (good and bad). It can get easy to hear opinions you don’t agree with and just lash out at people online. But just because you don’t agree with how someone thinks, doesn’t mean they don’t exist. Being able to get passed a difference of opinion, is what I believe, helps us grow as individuals. Ignoring them and calling them names(racist,sexist, bigots, fembots, libtards, trash etc.), isn’t going to make them go away. You might be surprised who you can win over (if you’re not an asshole first).
All the best! Until next time!
Social Gelo with Angelo
Angelo Ferrer (M.S. Psychology)
If you like what you read or have an idea for a research topic contact me thesocialgelo@gmail.com
References
Wang, G., Cao, M., Sauciuvenaite, J., Bissland, R., Hacker, M., Hambly, C., ... & Speakman, J. R. (2018). Different impacts of resources on opposite sex ratings of physical attractiveness by males and females. Evolution and Human Behavior, 39(2), 220-225.