Gender and Women's Studies Prasad D, et al., Gender and Women’s Studies. 2020, 2(3):5. 1 of 11 RESEARCH ARTICLE Gauging Eve: A Study on the Effect of Appearance Cues on the Attitude towards Women Ahana Lahiri, Deepshikha Prasad*, Mrittika Chatterjee, Nayanika Kamaraj, and Sidra Aaisha Siddiqui *Department of Psychology, Loreto College, Kolkata, India. Open Access Citation: Prasad D, Lahiri A, Chatterjee M, Kamaraj N, Siddiqui SA. Gauging Eve: A Study on the Effect of Appearance Cues on the Attitude towards Women. Gender and Women’s Studies. 2020; 2(3):5. Received: August 25, 2019 Accepted: February 13, 2020 Published: March 23, 2020 Copyright: © 2020 Prasad D. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Corresponding author: Deepshikha Prasad, Department of Psychology, Loreto College, Kolkata, India. E-mail: prasad.deepshikha97@gmail.com Keywords Gender roles; stereotypes; attitudes; prejudice; dressing. Introduction The 1960s and 1970s saw the development of various theories on gender development. Money and Ehrhardt (1972) on questioning intersex parents, found social factors to be more important than biological factors in the formation of gender identity and gender roles and brought the nature-nurture debate to the forefront. At the core of gender differences in behaviour are the societal stereotypes about gender (Eagly & Wood, 2012). Stereotypes are considered to be based on kernels of truth (Prothro & Melikian, 1955) and participants are surprisingly accurate at judging gender differences that are found and supported in meta- analyses (Hall & Carter, 1999). Biological arguments have long been made to justify gender inequality (Shields, 1975) and are often interpreted as deterministic. Current biological approaches instead emphasize the ways in which biological and social factors interact to produce behavior. Some of the most active research in this area has been on girls with Congenital Adrenal Hyperplasia (CAH), a genetic disease in which the foetus is exposed to elevated levels of androgens. Researchers have found that girls with CAH tend to be masculinized in some aspects of their preferences and behaviour (Berenbaum and Snyder, 1995). Studies of prenatal exposure to normal variations in hormones such as testosterone (Cohen-Bendahan, van de Beek & Berenbaum, 2005), and cross-species comparisons (Alexander and Hines 2002; Wallen, 1996) are gaining ground. As the originally bipolar view through the biological lens shifts towards a more inclusive theory of gender, it echoes sociological theories by Constantinople (1973) and Bem (1974) which propose that both men and women have masculine and feminine qualities. Bem (1974) further argues that being psychologically androgynous was optimal for psychological adjustment. Abstract This study aims to determine the effect of appearance cues (clothes, cosmetics and hair length) on the attitudes towards women. Young unmarried Indian adults of 18-25 years were divided into groups of males (N=30) and females (N=30). Their general attitudes towards women were assessed using the Attitudes towards Women Scale. They were shown photographs of female models dressed in formal and informal clothes, with and without make-up and with short and long hair. On the basis of these photographs, participants were asked to indicate the valency of their attitude towards them in the familial, social and employability domains. After the Pearson correlation coefficient and t-test were conducted, higher scores on AWS scale, indicating egalitarian beliefs, were found to be associated with higher acceptance of different clothing, hair and makeup styles. Other significant correlations between clothing, hair and makeup were found.