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A major summer goal for some, your obsession with tanning may be linked to your personality, according to a recent study. Here’s what it reveals.
The UV rays produced by the sun are extremely harmful to the skin, especially in the case of prolonged exposure. However, every year many people are keen to return from vacation with a beautiful tan. A result that requires long hours of exposure and significant damage to the skin, which preventive campaigns continue to highlight. Faced with this behavior mainly observed in women, a new study published in Evolutionary Behavioral Sciences aims to highlight the reasons that push some women to adopt behaviors likely to improve their physical attractiveness, even though they are aware of the potential risks to their health. Tanning is a concrete example of this type of behavior since it is often perceived as an indicator of beauty, although it is also known to increase the risk of skin cancer.
Tanning is an attractive factor for some women
Previous studies have shown that men tend to prioritise physical appearance when choosing a partner. This therefore leads most women to want (at all costs) to improve their appearance. But is this the reason why they are so keen on their tan, a skin condition perceived as more attractive? This is what our study seeks to determine. To carry out this work, the researchers conducted two experiments with heterosexual women living in the United Kingdom.
The first experiment aimed to understand how perceptions of a potential mate and rivalry with other women influenced participants’ prolonged sun exposure. This first experiment involved 93 participants. They answered a series of questions assessing their habits regarding prolonged sun exposure, how they think men perceive them, and their level of rivalry with other women. To measure these factors while ensuring the reliability of the data, the researchers used established scales.
Results? Researchers found that women who perceived themselves as more attractive partners were less likely to spend long periods of time in the sun to tan and improve their appearance.
Women who perceive themselves as “less attractive” expose themselves to the sun more often
The second study aimed to expand on the first by examining women’s actual tanning behavior. The researchers wanted to know how many days women spent in the sun with the intention of tanning. This study involved a larger group of 193 participants. The same psychological factors were measured, but it was mainly the frequency of tanning that was highlighted by the researchers, rather than attitudes.
Similar to sun exposure or not, the researchers found that the amount of time women spent in the sun with the intention of tanning was influenced by how they perceived themselves as a romantic partner as well as their rivalry with other women. For example, the less attractive a woman was to a man, the more days she would spend intentionally exposing herself to the sun.
Feeling good in your body, feeling good in your head!
When rivalry rhymes with danger
The results revealed by these two studies highlight that rivalry between women and the desire to please could lead them to adopt behaviors with significant health risks. Indeed, since people who score higher in terms of intrasexual rivalry spend more time sunbathing to get a tan, they expose themselves more to the dangers of the sun (skin cancer, sunstroke, etc.).
Given the importance of the risks associated with UV exposure, the results of this study could help to adapt prevention campaigns to make them more impactful. If these can address not only the risks associated with tanning but also the underlying psychological factors, they could be more effective in encouraging safer behaviors. However, it would be interesting to expand the study by taking into account women of all sexual orientations, and by targeting more specific age groups. This would allow awareness campaigns to be adapted even better.
Slide: Diseases that worsen with the sun