In previous U.S. research, adolescents' social status was found to reflect physical traits but not intelligence. Therefore, a culture in which schoolwork is emphasized, China, was studied using a similar method. A total of 111 Beijing students were ranked by 300 classmates on various measures of social status and their correlates. In China, social status was correlated mainly with intelligence but also with physical attractiveness. Chinese boys' social rank also depended on expected future earning power, as in the United States, and on masculinity, but depended less on athletic ability. For Chinese and U.S. girls, rank was also associated with cheerfulness and femininity. The results suggest that culturally imposed values may interact with the possibly evolved appeal of certain traits, especially physical ones, to constitute the criteria for social success in a given culture. The results are discussed in light of evolutionary considerations.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
Adams, G. R. (1977). Physical attractiveness research: Toward a developmental social psychology of beauty. Human Development, 20, 217-240.
2.
Allen, C. D. , & Eicher, J. B. (1973). Adolescent girls' acceptance and rejection based on appearance. Adolescence, 8, 125-138.
3.
Bronson, W. C. (1966). Central orientations: A study of behavior organization from childhood to adolescence. Child Development, 37, 125-155.
4.
Bums, G. L., & Farina, A. (1989). Physical attractiveness and adjustment. Unpublished manuscript, Department of Psychology, Washington State University.
5.
Buss, D. M. (1994). The evolution of desire. New York: Basic Books.
6.
Cavior, N. , & Dokecki, P. R. (1970, April). Physical attractiveness and interpersonal attraction among fifth-grade boys: A replication with Mexican children. Paper presented at the meeting of the Southwestern Psychological Association, St. Louis, MO.
7.
Chen, C. , & Uttal, D. H. (1988). Cultural values, parents' beliefs, and children's achievement in the United States and China. Human Development, 31, 351-358.
8.
Coie, J. D. , & Kupersmidt, J. B. (1983). A behavioral analysis of emerging social status in boys' groups. Child Development, 54, 1400-1416.
9.
Coleman, J. S. (1961). The adolescent society. Glencoe, IL: Free Press.
10.
Cronin, C. L. , Callaghan, J. W., & Weisfeld, G. E. (1977, June). Sex differences in competitive behavior in children. Paper presented at the meeting of the Animal Behavior Society, University Park, PA.
11.
Cunningham, M. R. (1986). Measuring the physical in physical attractiveness: Quasi-experiments on the sociobiology of female facial beauty. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 50, 925-935.
12.
Daly, M. , & Wilson, M. (1983). Sex, evolution and behavior. Boston: Willard Grant.
13.
Dodge, K. A. (1983). Behavioral antecedents of peer social status. Child Development, 54, 1386-1399.
14.
Eibl-Eibesfeldt, I. (1989) Human ethology. Hawthorne, NY: Aldine de Gruyter.
15.
Eichorn, D. H. (1963). Biological correlates of behavior. In H. W. Stevenson (Ed.), Child psychology. (62nd yearbook of the National Society for the Study of Education, Part 1). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
16.
Eitzen, D. (1975). Athletics in the status system of male adolescents: A replication of Coleman's The Adolescent Society. Adolescence, 10, 267-276.
17.
Ford, C. S. , & Beach, F. A. (1951). Patterns of sexual behavior. New York: Harper.
18.
Freedman, D. G. (1980). Sexual dimorphism and the status hierarchy. In D. R. Omark, F. F. Strayer, & D. G. Freedman (Eds.), Dominance relations: An ethological view of human conflict and social interaction. (pp. 261-271). New York: Garland.
19.
Friesen, D. (1968). Academic-athletic-popularity syndrome in the Canadian high school society. Adolescence, 3, 39-52.
20.
Füurer-Haimendorf, C. von. (1967). Morals and merit: A study of values and social controls in South Asian societies. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson.
21.
Goldstein, A. G. , & Papageorge, J. (1980). Judgments of facial attractiveness in the absence of eye movements. Bulletin of the Psychonomic Society, 15, 269-270.
22.
Hansell, S. , Sparacino, J., & Ronchi, D. (1982). Physical attractiveness and blood pressure: Sex and age differences. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 8, 113-121.
23.
Ho, D.Y.F. (1986). Chinese patterns of socialization: A critical review. In M. H. Bond (Ed.), The psychology of the Chinese people. (pp. 1-37). New York: Oxford University Press.
24.
Hold, B. (1977). Rank and behaviour: An ethological study of pre-school children. Homo, 28, 158-188.
25.
Horvath, T. (1981). Physical attractiveness: The influence of selected torso parameters. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 10, 21-24.
26.
Jackson, L. A. (1992). Physical appearance and gender: Sociobiological and sociocultural perspectives. Albany: State University of New York Press.
27.
Jones, M. C. , & Bayley, N. (1950). Physical maturing among boys as related to behavior. Journal of Educational Psychology, 41, 129-148.
28.
Kagan, J. , & Moss, H. A. (1962). Birth to maturity: A study in psychological development. New York: Wiley.
29.
Kane, J. E. (1970). Personality and physical abilities. In G. S. Kenyon & T. M. Grogg (Eds.), Contemporary psychology of sport. Chicago: Athletic Institute.
30.
Keating, C. F. (1985). Human dominance signals: The primate in us. In S. Ellyson & J. Dovidio (Eds.), Power; dominance, and nonverbal behavior. (pp. 89-108). New York: Springer.
31.
Keelan, J.P.R. , Dion, K. K., & Dion, K. L. (1992). Correlates of appearance anxiety in late adolescence and early adulthood among young women. Journal of Adolescence, 15, 193-205.
32.
Kemper, T. D. (1990). Social structure and testosterone. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.
33.
Kuhlen, R. G. , & Lee, B. J. (1943). Personality characteristics and social acceptability in adolescence. Journal of Educational Psychology, 34, 321-340.
34.
Langlois, J. H. , Roggman, L A., Casey, R. J., Ritter, R. J., Rieser-Danner, L. A., & Jenkins, V. Y (1987). Infant preferences for attractive faces: Rudinments of a stereotype?Developmental Psychology, 23, 363-369.
35.
Langlois, J. H. , & Stephan, C. (1981). Beauty and the Beast: The role of physical attractiveness in the development of peer relations and social behavior. In S. S. Brehm, S. M. Kassin, & F. X. Gibbons (Eds.), Developmental social psychology. New York: Oxford University Press.
36.
Lerner, R. M. , & Iwawaki, S. (1975). Cross-cultural analyses of body-behavior relations: II. Factor structure of body build stereotypes of Japanese and American adolescents. Psychologia, 18, 83-91.
37.
Marks, J. B. (1957). Interests and leadership among adolescents. Journal of Genetic Psychology, 91, 163-172.
38.
Masters, R. D. , & McGuire, M. T. (1994). The neurotransmitter revolution. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press.
39.
Mazur, A. (1985). A biosocial model of status in face-to-face primate groups. Social Forces, 64, 377-402.
40.
Omark, D. R. , Omark, M., & Edelman, M. S. (1975). Formation of dominance hierarchies in young children: Attention and perception. In T. Williams (Ed.), Psychological Anthropology. (pp. 289-315). The Hague, Netherlands: Mouton.
41.
Patzer, G. L. , & Burke, D. M. (1988). Physical attractiveness and child development. In B. B. Lahey & A. E. Kazkin (Eds.), Advances in clinical child psychology. (Vol. 11, pp. 325-368). New York: Plenum.
42.
Rajecki, D. W. , & Flannery, R. C. (1981). Social conflict and dominance in children: A case for a primate homology. In M. E. Lamb & A. Brown (Eds.), Advances in developmental psychology. (Vol. 1, pp. 87-129). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
43.
Reese, H. W. (1962). Sociometric choices of the same and opposite sex in late childhood. Merrill-Palmer Quarterly, 8, 173-174.
44.
Savin-Williams, R. C. (1987). Adolescence: An ethological perspective. New York: Springer-Verlag.
45.
Sidanius, J. , Pratto, F., & Rabinowitz, J. L. (1994). Gender, ethnic status, and ideological asymmetry: A social dominance interpretation. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 25, 194-216.
46.
Simmons, R. G. , Blyth, D. A., & McKinney, K. L. (1983). The social and psychological effects of puberty on White females. In J. Brooks-Gunn & A. C. Petersen (Eds.), Girls at pubert. (pp. 229-272). New York: Plenum.
47.
Singh, D. (1993). Body shape and women's attractiveness: The critical role of waist-to-hip ratio. Human Nature, 4, 297-308.
48.
Stevenson, H. W. , Lee, S. Y., Chen, C., Stigler, J. W., Hsu, C. C., & Kitamura, S. (1990). Contexts of achievement. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development, 55(1-2), Serial No. 221.
49.
Stralko, J. , & Kaszycka, K. A. (1993). Physical attractiveness: Interpersonal and intrapersonal variability of assessments. Social Biology, 39, 170-176.
50.
Tanner, J. M. (1978). Foetus into man: Physical growth from conception to maturity. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
51.
Tryon, C. M. (1939). Evaluation of adolescent personality by adolescents. Monographs of the Society for Research on Child Development, 4(4).
52.
Weisfeld, G. E. , & Beresford, J. M. (1982). Erectness of posture as an indicator of dominance or success in humans. Motivation and Emotion, 6, 113-131.
53.
Weisfeld, G. E. , Bloch, S. A., & Ivers, J. W. (1983). A factor analytic study of peer-perceived dominance in adolescent boys. Adolescence, 18, 229-243.
54.
Weisfeld, G. E. , Bloch, S. A., & Ivers, J. W. (1984). Possible determinants of social dominance among adolescent girls. Journal of Genetic Psychology, 144, 115-129.
55.
Weisfeld, G. E. , & Linkey, H. E. (1985). Dominance displays as indicators of a social success motive. In J. Dovidio & S. Ellyson (Eds.), Power; dominance, and nonverbal behavior. New York: Springer-Verlag.
56.
Weisfeld, G. E. , Muczenski, D. M., Weisfeld, C. C., & Omark, D. R. (1987). Stability of boys' social success among peers over an eleven-year period. In J. A. Meacham (Ed.), Contributions to human development. (Vol. 18, pp. 58-80). Basel, Switzerland: Karger.
57.
Weisfeld, G. E. , Omark, D. R., & Cronin, C. L. (1980). A longitudinal and cross-sectional study of dominance in boys. In D. R. Omark, F. F. Strayer, & D. G. Freedman (Eds.), Dominance relations: An ethological view of human conflict and social interaction. (pp. 205-216). New York: Garland.
58.
Weisfeld, G. E. , Russell, R.J.H., Weisfeld, C. C., & Wells, P. A. (1992). Correlates of satisfaction in British marriages. Ethology and Sociobiology, 13, 125-145.
59.
Weisfeld, G. E. , Weisfeld, C. C., & Callaghan, J. W. (1984). Peer and self perceptions of Hopi and Afro-American third- and sixth-graders. Ethos, 12, 64-84.
60.
Wheeler, D. K. (1969). Popularity among adolescents in Western Australia and in the United States of America. School Review, 69, 67-81.
61.
Yan, W. , & Gaier, E. L. (1994). Causal attributions for college success and failure. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 25, 146-158.
62.
Yang, K. (1986). Chinese personality and its change. In M. H. Bond (Ed.), The psychology of the Chinese people. (pp. 106-170). New York: Oxford University Press.
63.
Yee, A. H. (1992). Asians as stereotypes and students: Misperceptions that persist. Educational Psychology Review, 4, 95-132.
