Women's Hairstyle & Men's Behavior: A Field Experiment

Little research has examined the effect of women's hairstyles on people's behavior. In a field study, male and female passersby, walking alone in the street, were observed while walking behind a female-confederate who dropped a glove and apparently was unaware of her loss. The confederate had long dark hair arranged in three different hairstyles: one with her hair falling naturally on her shoulders and her back, one with her hair tied in a ponytail, and one with her hair twisted in a bun. Results reported that the hairstyle had no effect on female passersby's helping behavior. However, it was found that the hairstyle influenced male passersby with men helping the confederate more readily when her hair fell naturally on her neck, shoulders and upper back.

Although hairstyles or hair characteristics are a common striking and obvious feature of appearance, psychological research focusing on women's hair has received little attention (Hinsz, Matz & Patience, 2001). Most of the research conducted on women's hair has examined hair color. Several studies reported that men but not women helped a woman with blond hair more favorably (Guéguen & Lamy, 2009; Lynn, 2009; Price, 2008) suggesting that hair color is an important factor for men when judging the attractiveness of a woman.

An additional feature of hair appearance studied by scientists is hair length. Several studies have reported that women's hair length influences how they are perceived by an observer. Using photographs of women targets with hair length varying across experimental conditions, Bereczkei and Mesko (2006) reported that males rated the woman target with long hair as more feminine, determined, intelligent, independent and healthy while the target with short hair was perceived to be more honest, caring and emotional. Terry and Krantz (1993) reported that long hair was associated with decreased social forcefulness. These results seem to contradict those reported by Bereczkei and Mesko (2006) but could be explained by cultural or period differences. More than 10 years separated the two studies and the experiment of Terry and Krantz (1993) was conducted in the United States while the experiment of Bereczkei and Mesko (2006) was conducted in Hungary. More recently, Swami, Furnham and Joshi (2008) using line drawings of female bodies reported that short hair targets were rated as significantly more fertile than long hair. The authors also reported an interaction effect between hair length and hair color: males but not females rated a blond target with short hair to be less healthy than a target with long hair, while the reverse effect was reported with a target with dark hair. With more realistic photos of women's faces, Mesko and Bereczkei (2004) reported that long hair was associated with higher ratings of femininity, youth, health and sexiness. These effects were found both with low or high attractive targets. Again this apparent contradiction between the findings could be explained by cultural factors (Mesko and Bereczkei, 2004 for Hungary and Swami et al., 2008 for the United Kingdom) or the targets used (Swami et al., 2008 for drawings of female bodies and Mesko and Bereczkei, 2004 for real photos of women's faces)...

  

Full article at:  http://goo.gl/yURTcr

By:  Guéguen N1.

• 1Université de Bretagne-Sud, Lorient, France. 

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