Does social proof make you more attractive?

Social proof / pre-selection (mate-choice copying) raises a man's attractiveness to women, but the effect is modest and asymmetric. A 2018 systematic review and meta-analysis (Gouda-Vossos et al.) found women rate male targets as more desirable when presented alongside a female, with no obvious parallel effect for male choice of women — though that sex difference narrows in studies that use cues to "augment" desirability, and the literature shows high heterogeneity and moderate publication bias toward positive reports. Experiments (Rodeheffer et al. 2016) show men shown with an attractive current romantic partner are judged more desirable, mediated by women's belief that such men possess unobservable positive qualities. However, the mechanism appears to be domain-general social conformity rather than a specialized adaptation: women's ratings of men's faces shift toward others' opinions by roughly the same small amount (~0.13 on a 100-point scale) as for hands and abstract art (Street et al. 2018). Net direction is positive, but magnitude is small and easily swamped by the target's own attractiveness.

Evidence & sources

• Gouda-Vossos, Nakagawa, Dixson & Brooks 2018, Adaptive Human Behavior and Physiology (systematic review & meta-analysis)

  Confirmed. 'Women were more likely to rate male targets as more desirable when presented alongside a female while no obvious effects were detected with male choice.' Caveat: sex differences disappeared in 'augment' studies where both sexes rated targets higher near more desirable others; authors note high heterogeneity and moderate publication bias favoring positive MCC reports.

• Street, Morgan, Thornton, Brown, Laland & Cross 2018, Scientific Reports (domain-general social learning)

  Confirmed. Social influence shifted ratings: faces 0.13 [0.04,0.21], hands 0.13 [0.04,0.22], abstract art 0.14 [0.06,0.23], with no substantive differences; authors conclude no face-specific or mate-choice-specific mechanism is needed (general conformity).

• Rodeheffer, Proffitt Leyva & Hill 2016, Evolutionary Psychology

  Confirmed via independent search (URL bot-blocks automated fetch with 403, but article is real and on-topic). Title: 'Attractive Female Romantic Partners Provide a Proxy for Unobservable Male Qualities.' Two experiments support that the desirability boost emerges when the woman is the man's current partner and is mediated by women's belief that such men possess valued unobservable qualities.

• NeuroscienceNews coverage of Cross et al. 2018 (St Andrews)

  Confirmed. Reports women found men's faces more attractive when other women rated them highly, but the same effect appeared for abstract artwork, supporting general peer influence over a partner-specific mate-choice adaptation.