What the research paper says about "Men rate themselves as more attractive than they really are"

The Psychology Today article posted recently makes some claims about men over-estimating their own attractiveness. Some of the claims made in the article:

"They found that men’s ratings of self-perceived attractiveness were higher than women’s ratings; however, looking at others ratings, women were rated overall as more attractive than men."
...

"Regardless of the reason, an interesting fact stands: Women have better insight when it comes to judging attractiveness. They don’t overestimate their own level of attractiveness (like men do), nor do they let their own level of attractiveness bias their ratings of the attractiveness of others."

"Perhaps women are the more rational sex after all?"

The article alludes to some earlier research showing that men over-rate themselves, but the actual research paper he's writing about provides no support for this claim. Here's what the researchers did and what the results were:

The goal of the research was to determine if someone's self-opinion of their own attractiveness influenced their opinion of other people's attractiveness, and also determine if this varied by gender.

They took 159 college students (57 men, 102 women) and asked them to rate their own "natural beauty" on a scale from 1-7. They broke everyone into small groups and had them rate the "natural beauty" of 4-6 other (male and female) students on a scale from 0-72.

So, these are mostly students between the ages of 18-22, and almost twice as many women as men in the class.

On average, men rated themselves at 3.35 on a 1-7 scale. (Keep in mind that "4.0" is exactly in the middle of the 1-7 scale.) So males rated themselves a little below the mid-point. There was only one guy out of 57 who rated himself at "6 out of 7" and there were two guys who rated themselves at "1 out of 7".

On average, women rated themselves at 2.56 on a 1-7 scale. There were three women who rated themselves at 6 or higher, and there were 14 women who rated themselves at "1 out of 7". 40% of the women rated themselves at 2 or less on the 1-7 attractiveness scale!

The researchers had this to say about the low ratings:

"It is notable that whereas only 2 males gave themselves the lowest self-perceived attractiveness rating on the scale, 14 females rated themselves that low (see Figures 2 and 3). These findings are consistent with past studies that report that men tend to overestimate their attractiveness".

That statement is absolutely bizarre. College men rate themselves as below average, but college women rate themselves as significantly below average. Instead of reaching the reasonable conclusion that everyone has low opinions of themselves, and college women especially have very low opinions of their own beauty, they reach the bizarre conclusion that "men tend to overestimate their attractiveness". Whaaaaaaat?

Was there any data showing that men's opinions of themselves were higher than everyone else's opinions of them? No. The ratings received were not broken out by gender.

So what were the ratings of other people?

Overall, males rated everyone else as generally above average. They gave an average rating of 41.57 out of 72 (which would be 58 on a 100-point scale). They gave about 25% of their classmates ratings of 50 or less out of 100. Keeping in mind that males were rating themselves as below average (3.35 on a 1-7 scale), so males were generally rating other people (men and women) higher than themselves.

Women rated everyone else (men and women) as quite a bit above average. They gave an average rating of 46.27 (which would be 64 on a 100-point scale). They gave only about 10% of their classmates ratings of 50 or less out of 100. No women gave anyone a score below 28 out of 72 (i.e. 39 out of 100). It looks like these women felt bad giving any of their fellow students a low rating. This also means that they weren't giving any men low ratings, either (read: men's opinions of themselves were not higher than everyone else's opinions of them).

You cannot reach any conclusions about men "overrating themselves" based on this data. Here's what the data shows:

• The large majority of women in college psych courses have unrealistically low opinions of their attractiveness.
• These women are very generous in their ratings of other people - both male and female. (Although that doesn't necessarily mean they would date their male classmates.) My guess is that these women were being extremely agreeable by rating their classmates attractiveness so highly, and likely felt bad about giving anyone a bad rating. Those ratings look dishonest, but "nice".
• The majority of men in college psych courses have a below-average opinion of their own attractiveness, but not nearly as negative as their female classmates.
• These men were much rating their classmates with some generosity (rating them mostly above average) but were also more realistic (giving some classmates low ratings).

As a side-note, the data also showed that men who thought they were attractive tended to rate other people as more attractive. Whether a woman thought she was attractive had no effect on her ratings of other people. However, intelligent women tended to rate other people as less attractive. But intelligent men showed no bias towards rating other people as more/less attractive.

The Psychology Today article was mostly wrong about what they said:

"They found that men’s ratings of self-perceived attractiveness were higher than women’s ratings"

TRUE. But only because women's opinions of their attractiveness was mostly awful.

"looking at others ratings, women were rated overall as more attractive than men."

FALSE. This was not measured in the study. There was no data on the ratings that men versus women received.

Women have better insight when it comes to judging attractiveness.

FALSE. Women gave themselves abysmally and unrealistically low ratings of their own attractiveness.

They don’t overestimate their own level of attractiveness (like men do)

FALSE. Men and women were both giving themselves low ratings. I don't know what the "correct" number should be, but I'm doubtful women are really at "2.56 on a 1-7 scale" or that men are at "3.35 on a 1-7 scale". It seemed clear that men were closer to realistic about their own attractiveness.

nor do [women] let their own level of attractiveness bias their ratings of the attractiveness of others."

I'm not sure if that's supposed to be perceived as a male flaw. But, they neglect to mention that women's intelligence does affect their ratings of other people's attractiveness.

"Perhaps women are the more rational sex after all?"

Yeah, because 40% of the women rating themselves at 2 or less on a 7-point attractiveness scale is "rational". /sarcasm

Conclusion: Summaries of research papers are sometimes dishonest and awful.