Men Who Compliment a Woman's Appearance Using Metaphorical Language: Associations with Creativity, Masculinity, Intelligence and Attractiveness.

ABSTRACT: Language may have evolved as a signal of mental fitness. However, it remains unclear what language form and topic men use to covertly signal mate quality. In this study 69 men created compliments to impress unfamiliar women they chose to either date or work with and provided hand scans to compute 2D4D ratio as a proxy for prenatal testosterone exposure and masculinity indicator. Compliments were coded in terms of form (literal vs. metaphorical) and topic (women's appearance vs. non-appearance), with metaphorical ones being subsequently rated by 114 women for psycholinguistic features, indices of intelligence and willingness to have a romantic relationship with the author. Results showed that in a dating context, men produced more metaphorical form compliments targeting appearance compared

SUBMITTER: Gao Z 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5742614 | biostudies-literature | 2017

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature