Silvia Palmaccio (Bocconi University)
Maria Laura Di Tommaso, Silvia Mendolia and Giulia Savio
Little is known about whether an individual's level of attractiveness plays a role in the likelihood of perpetrating sexual violence. Using U.S. data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Add Health), we examine the relationship between attractiveness and sexual violence perpetration against one's partner. To operationalize beauty, we use physical attractiveness scores assigned by interviewers to survey respondents between the ages of 12 and 17. Our results show that within the sample of men, a 1-point increase in beauty rating (on a scale of 1-5) reduces the likelihood of having perpetrated sexual violence on the partner in adulthood by 13 percent. We also find that parental investment -- proxied by birth order -- mitigates this association, as very unattractive men who received high levels of parental investment have substantially lower predicted probabilities of perpetrating sexual violence compared to their counterparts who received low levels of parental investment.