Your revealing photos show you are incompetent

What you need to know:

  • Apparently, the pressure to post a myriad of photographs is inspired by the pressure on younger women to show off as sexy and attractive.
  • However, when these photos are viewed by older women, the younger women are seen as immature, less competent, less intelligent and unattractive.

Many young women post lots of photos on social media pages, some more revealing than sexy.

Apparently, the pressure to post a myriad of photographs is inspired by the pressure on younger women to show off as sexy and attractive.

However, when these photos are viewed by older women, the younger women are seen as immature, less competent, less intelligent and unattractive.

This is according to the results of a new study conducted by professors from University of California and University of Colorado.

 Attention-seeking gimmicks

According to the research, these sexualised photos are seen by older women as an unintelligent attention-seeking gimmick.

Says lead researcher Dr. Eileen Zurbriggen, a psychology professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz, “Not only do other older women perceive younger women in non-sexualised photographs as more competent, but also see them as prettier and more desirable friends.”

Fake Facebook accounts

The researchers assessed how women view a younger woman who presented on Facebook in both sexualised and non-sexualised contexts.

The study included 58 young women and 60 older women. Professor Zurbriggen and Dr. Elizabeth Daniels, an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Colorado in Colorado Springs, created two fake Facebook profiles for a fictitious 20-year-old woman named Amanda Johnson.

The profiles were practically identical except for the main profile photo. In the first photo, a young woman was seen wearing a low-cut red dress with a slit up one leg to mid-thigh and a visible garter belt.

She was perceived as less pretty, unattractive and incompetent. In the other, the same lady was seen wearing a pair of jeans, a short sleeved shirt, and a scarf around her neck that covered her chest.

The participants were then asked to evaluate the two photos and rate them based on physical attractiveness, social attractiveness and task competence on a scale of 1-7. In the scores, the lady in the non-sexualised photo was thought to be more likely to complete an assignment at work and more able to make a reliable friend than the persona in the sexualised picture.

Also, sexualised younger women were considered less physically attractive, less socially attractive, and less competent to complete tasks. According to the researchers, the biggest disparity was in the area of competence.