Abstract
Judgments of female body attractiveness can be based on both structural and dynamic information. Structural information is specified by sizes of crucial female body characteristics, such as waist-to-hip ratio (WHR), breasts and buttocks: the lower the WHR and the larger the breasts and buttocks, the higher the femininity level. Dynamic information is specified as either implicit dynamics, such as pose, or explicit dynamics, such as walk. The purpose of the present experiment was to investigate the effects of both structural and dynamic factors on the judgments of female body attractiveness. Stimuli were generated using the DAZ 3D program for computer animation. In two sessions twenty-five male participants rated the attractiveness of figures with five levels of femininity in a beautiful, a neutral and an ugly pose (session 1) or walk (session 2). Five female figures, poses and walks were specified in preliminary experiments. The main effect of femininity level was significant: post hoc tests indicated that the third (medium) and the forth femininity levels were most attractive, the fifth (highest) and the second femininity levels were less attractive and the first (lowest) femininity level was least attractive. The main effect of pose/walk was obtained as well: post hoc tests indicated that attractiveness increased in an expected way, i.e. ugly-neutral-beautiful pose/walk. However, interactions and post hoc tests indicated that the effects of pose/walk are largest for most attractive figures (medium and higher femininity levels) and then they decrease in both directions (towards highest and lowest femininity levels). In case of the least feminine figure factors pose/walk had no effects on attractiveness at all. These results suggest that beautiful and ugly poses/walks are effective (positively or negatively, respectively) for the attractive figures, whereas they don’t change the judgments of the least attractive (least feminine) figure.
Meeting abstract presented at VSS 2015