Heterosexual Men’s Ratings of Sexual Attractiveness of Adolescent Girls: A Cross-Cultural Analysis

In this study we examined ratings of sexual attraction in relation to photographs of (the same) adolescent girls (Tanner stages 3–4) labelled as either 14–15 years or 16–17 years old, women, and men. Ratings were made by Bulgarian heterosexual men by pressing buttons on a response box which recorded the ratings and the time in milliseconds taken to respond. Despite the age of sexualconsent in Bulgaria being 14 years, the pattern of findings was no different to those found in the UK, where the age of consent is16 years. Mean ratings of the sexual attractiveness of the girls labelled as younger were lower than those of the (same) girlslabelled as older, and those of the women. In addition, correlations revealed significantly longer responding times whenyounger girls were rated as more highly sexually attractive. These associations were reversed in response to the photographs of women. We take these findings to indicate an inhibitory effect arising from generalized sexual norms relating to the inappropriateness of sexual attraction to young girls; the greater the attraction, the higher the inhibition. This second replication of our initial findings suggests a robust effect that may be of benefit in exploration of pedophile or sex offender populations