The Influence of Self-Esteem and Gender on Judgments of Sociosexuality and Romantic Desirability in a Hypothetical Dating Context

In forming first impressions of others, people may notice and attend to cues about the others’ self-esteem, argued to function as a “proxy trait” that can influence inferences of other traits, including relationship desirability (Cameron et al., 2016 ). Our study provided a further test of this lay theory of self-esteem by examining how information about a hypothetical person’s self-esteem not only affects participants’ judgments of the romantic desirability of the target (from a third person perspective), but also estimates of the target’s sociosexuality (degree of being restricted vs. unrestricted in sexual attitudes and behaviors). Using a vignette experimental design, we manipulated the self-esteem (low or high) and gender (man or woman) of a hypothetical target in an online dating profile. Results indicated that a high self-esteem (HSE) target was estimated to be more attractive and desirable to online daters, and also assumed to have higher sociosexuality compared to a low self-esteem (LSE) target. Our study also contributes to the literature on gender stereotypes related to sexuality; a male target was assumed to be more unrestricted in their sociosexuality than a female target. However, the gender of the target did not interact with the self-esteem of the target to affect impressions of targets’ sociosexuality. Beyond extending past research, our results provide implications for interventions in clinical, educational, and relational contexts.