Beauty and the Beast: Not a happy ending!

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• Department of Political and Social Sciences

Little is known about whether an individual's level of attractiveness plays a role in the likelihood of perpetrating sexual violence. Using U.S. data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Add Health), the authors of 'Beauty and the Beast: Not a happy ending! Physical Unattractiveness and Sexual Violence Perpetration' examine the relationship between attractiveness and sexual violence perpetration against one's partner. To operationalise beauty, they use physical attractiveness scores assigned by interviewers to survey respondents. Their results show that within the sample of men, a 1-point increase in beauty rating (on a scale of 1-5) reduces the likelihood of having perpetrated sexual violence on the partner by 13 percent. They also find that parental investment -- proxied by birth order -- mitigates this association, as very unattractive men who received high levels of parental investment have substantially lower predicted probabilities of perpetrating sexual violence compared to their counterparts who received low levels of parental investment.

Authors: Maria Laura Di Tommaso, Silvia Mendolia, Silvia Palmaccio, and Giulia Savio