The puzzling attractiveness of male shame

Abstract

Two studies examined the mechanisms underlying North American women's previously documented attraction to men displaying the nonverbal expression of shame (Tracy and Beall, 2011). In Study 1, American women at high-conception risk were found to be less attracted to men displaying shame compared to women at low-conception risk, suggesting that male shame displays indicate poor genetic fitness. In Study 2, Indian women were found to be less attracted to men displaying shame than American women, suggesting that American women's tendency to find shame-displaying men attractive is likely due to local socio-cultural factors rather than to universal genetically encoded predispositions. Together, findings suggest that the attractiveness of male shame displays, previously documented in several North American samples, is best explained by cultural rather than biological factors.