Bald and Bad?

Abstract

According to (a) the beauty ideal of a full head of hair and (b) the physical attractiveness stereotype (PAS; "what is beautiful is good"), bald men should appear less attractive than nonbald men, not only physically but also socially. To explain inconsistent results on this prediction in previous research, we suggest two antagonistic processes: the automatic activation of the PAS at the implicit level and its suppression at the explicit level, the latter process selectively triggered by individuating information about the target person. In line with this account, we only found negative social attractiveness ratings for bald men by same-aged women when individuating target information was lacking (Experiment 1). In contrast, irrespective of whether individuating information was available or not, we reliably found evidence for the PAS in different implicit paradigms (the implicit association test in Experiment 2 and a source monitoring task in Experiment 3). We conclude that individuating information about bald men suppresses PAS application, but not PAS activation.

Keywords: implicit measures; individuating information; male hair loss; physical attractiveness stereotype; social perception.

Figure 1. Two sample target prototypes used in the present research.

Figure 2. Means and standard errors of physical and social attractiveness ratings of Experiment 1.

Figure 3. Four sample screens of the implicit association test (IAT) used in Experiment 2. All screens stem from a double-discrimination block (3, 4, 6, or 7; see Table 1). (A) and (B) require target group categorizations; (C) and (D) attribute valence categorizations. (A) and (C) require IAT responses that are congruent with the physical attractiveness stereotype (PAS; nonbald-positive and bald-negative, respectively, are linked to the same response key); (B) and (D) require IAT responses that are incongruent with the PAS (nonbald-negative and bald-positive, respectively, are linked to the same response key). The correct response for the sample screen (A) is given by the left response key (“D”); correct responses for the other sample screens (B) to (D) are given by the right response key (“K”).

Figure 4. Means and standard errors of physical and social attractiveness ratings of Experiment 2.

Figure 5. Means and standard errors of physical and social attractiveness ratings of Experiment 3.

Figure 6. The version of the two-high threshold multinomial model of source monitoring (Bayen et al., 1996) used in Experiment 3. A and B denote target attributes of the nonbald and the bald target, respectively; N denotes new attributes not processed before. “A”, “B”, and “N” are the corresponding responses of the participants. The italicized parameters in-between denote probabilities of cognitive processes (see text) that mediate between encoding of test attributes and the response in the source monitoring task; indices “n” and “p” denote negative and positive attributes, respectively.