How intrasexual competitiveness shapes attitudes toward cosmetic surgery recipients

Abstract Cosmetic surgery is extremely popular. Despite this, negative attitudes towards cosmetic surgery recipients prevail. Across two pre-registered studies, we examined whether intrasexual competitiveness explains these negative attitudes. Participants in Study 1 were 343 (Mean age = 24.74) single heterosexual American women and participants in Study 2 were 445 (Mean age = 19.03) female Australian undergraduate students. Participants in both studies were primed for either low or high intrasexual competitiveness. Contrary to our predictions, we found that priming condition did not influence participants’ derogation and social exclusion of cosmetic surgery recipients. We did, however, find evidence for a ‘relative attractiveness’ halo effect: participants engaged in less derogation and social exclusion when they assumed cosmetic surgery recipients were more attractive than themselves. Overall, we concluded that intrasexual competitiveness does not encourage the stigmatisation of cosmetic surgery recipients and examined alternative explanations for this phenomenon.