Home
Blog
San Mateo Influence of Stress on Men Judgments of Female Body Sizes Paper

San Mateo Influence of Stress on Men Judgments of Female Body Sizes Paper

Daniel Kevins

0 comments

TOPIC: Does stress affect men’s judgments of female body sizes?

In 2012, two social psychologists published a paper arguing that the experience of stress had an impact on the sorts of body types that men found attractive in women. They describe their attempt to confirm, through experiment, what they claim is already shown by history and culture: that in times of uncertainty, men are more attracted to bigger women – on the grounds, presumably, that being skinny suggests financial instability.

YOUR TASK: What do you think of this study? You don’t have to agree or disagree with it, or declare yourself convinced or not. Your goal is simply to exercise critical thinking – informed skepticism – by exploring any weaknesses or strengths you perceive in the study’s reasoning, method, language, or conclusion.

CRITICAL THINKING CONTEXT: This assignment asks you to apply the logic ideas you’ve worked on. NOTE: You do not have to include a discussion of all of the below – no word salad! This is just intended to help you see where your logic work applies to what you’re reading.

Standard form: The study describes an experiment designed to put an idea to the test. You can summarize this as a deductive syllogism.

Logical method: An experiment generally puts inductive and deductive reasoning on display.
Induction: The researchers have made a tentative generalization (stress makes men find larger women attractive).
Deduction: They need to put it to a test that it can fail (remember what Rauch says about falsifiability!) to determine whether or not their generalization is sound.
Bearing in mind some of the problems we’ve looked at with other studies (the one on fish oil pills, for instance), what do you think about the generalization? What do you think of the experiment? Does it yield sound conclusions?

Facts, inferences, judgments: This study, like much of human research, deals in facts, inferences, and judgments. As you recall, these require different sorts of support. A fact needs to be established as real; an inference requires establishing the relevant facts, but also making a convincing case for how they’re connected; and a judgment requires that we get others to share, or at least understand, our grasp of subjective terms. — What are the study’s strengths here, and what are its weaknesses?

Language and framing: Because this is not a debate, exactly, the writers aren’t trying to “sell” us their conclusions. But have they approached this question with hidden assumptions? Are there other ways to frame the question that would lead in different directions? They may not present us with metaphors, but have they perhaps failed to make distinctions that would have strengthened their reasoning?

Your response should be

Thoughtful. If you like, you can take a position on the study (it’s good or bad), OR on the issue (of course being stressed out doesn’t make guys like bigger women). You can also NOT take a position (tell us about the strengths and weaknesses of the study without sharing whether you’re persuaded).
Whatever you say, though, your main goal is not to give your opinion as to whether or not stress makes men like bigger women – it’s to highlight the study’s strengths and/or weaknessess: some quality of the experiment, some ambiguous language, some unconsidered generalization or unconvincing inference. Do not simply say that it’s wrong because you don’t agree.

Informed by the logic work we’ve done. As with your first paper, you don’t need to strain yourself to throw in logical terminology. Don’t expect to find each logical flaw that we’ve been discussing neatly represented (no prosecutor’s fallacy, for instance). Start with your common sense! But your common sense should, ideally, reflect your increased ability to notice things: logical structure, missing elements, unsubstantiated inferences, unclarified judgments, questionable framing.

Aimed at an outside reader. Consider yourself addressing a reader who is unfamiliar with the study. You will need to summarize