People tend to assign higher attractiveness to an individual viewed from the back than head on. This tendency is pronounced when males rate the attractiveness of women. This study investigated reasons for the previously observed gender difference in this bias, focusing on the social relationship between raters (participants) and rated models (stimuli). To manipulate the assumed social relationship, we explicitly instructed participants in advance to rate the front/back view of an opposite-gender individual as a romantic partner (romance-based condition) or as a friend (friend-based condition). The back-view bias was robustly observed in both male and female raters under every condition. More importantly, male raters showed an enhanced back-view bias under the romance-based condition compared to the friend-based condition, whereas female raters showed less bias, irrespective of the assumed social relationship. We discuss these results in terms of gender differences in criteria used to form judgments of attractiveness.

人们倾向于赋予从背面看而不是正面看的个人更高的吸引力。当男性对女性的吸引力进行评估时，这种趋势就很明显。这项研究调查了以前在这种偏见中观察到的性别差异的原因，重点是评估者（参与者）和评级模型（刺激）之间的社会关系。为了操纵假定的社会关系，我们明确指示参与者预先将异性恋者的前/后视图评价为浪漫伴侣（基于浪漫的条件）或作为朋友（基于朋友的条件）。在每种情况下，男性和女性评估者均强烈观察到后视偏差。更重要的是，与基于朋友的情况相比，在基于浪漫史的情况下，男性评分者的后视偏见有所增强，而女性评估者则显示出较少的偏见，而与假定的社会关系无关。我们根据性别差异来讨论这些结果，这些标准用于形成吸引力判断标准。