Document Type

Article

Publication Title

Sexuality & Culture

Publication Date

2026

Keywords

self-esteem, sociosexuality, proxy trait, romantic desirability

Abstract

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.

Funding Source

Kenneth and Mary Ann Shaw teaching award granted the first author from Illinois State University was used to help fund data collection. This article was published open access thanks to a transformative agreement between Milner Library and Springer Nature.

Comments

First published in Sexuality & Culture (2026): https://doi.org/10.1007/s12119-026-10642-2

DOI

10.1007/s12119-026-10642-2

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