The ideal man and woman according to university students.(Report)

The present study determined if the ideal man has changed over the years and who and what the ideal woman is. We asked students at Cameron University to rate the importance of character traits that define the ideal man and woman. Subjects also provided examples of famous people exemplifying the ideal, good, average, and inferior man and woman. We found that men and woman consider Jesus Christ and Martin Luther King Jr. ideal men based on characteristics such as love, caring, and leadership abilities. The most frequently cited ideal women were Mother Theresa and Oprah Winfrey. The most frequently cited inferior men were Adolf Hitler and Bill Clinton. The most frequently cited inferior women were Martha Stewart and Pamela Anderson. These results suggest that the individuals exemplifying the ideal and inferior man have not changed significantly in the past two decades.

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Keen and Zur (1989), using a free response survey, determined that both men and women frequently listed Jesus Christ, Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. as ideal men due to characteristics of caring and leadership. The most frequently cited inferior man for both genders was Adolf Hitler due primarily to violent tendencies and immoral behavior. The present study decided to determine if the ideal man has changed and who the ideal woman is. We were also interested in determining the characteristics of ideal and inferior woman chosen. We asked subjects at Cameron University to rate the importance of character traits that define the ideal man and woman they chose.

Method

Participants and Procedure

Participants in this study consisted of 177 students (50 male, 120 female, and 7 unspecified) at a regional university in southwest Oklahoma. For those reporting, mean age of the sample was 29.39 years and mean GPA was 3.24 on a 4 point scale. The sample included 44 freshmen (24.9%), 35 sophomores (19.8%), 38 juniors (21.5%), 50 seniors (28.2%), and 10 graduate Masters students (5.6%). A majority (61.9%) of the participants reported their marital status as single and most participants (94.4%) reported their sexual orientation as heterosexual. Ethnicity of the sample was predominantly Caucasian (63.8%) and African American (19.2%). Religion was predominantly Protestant (56.5%) and Catholic (13.6%). Finally, for those reporting a political orientation, 53 identified themselves as Conservative (36.1%), 57 as Liberal (38.8%), and 37 as Moderate (25.2%). All participants were compensated in the form of extra credit in a psychology course. The participants were asked to complete a short demographics questionnaire and a survey rating the character traits of the ideal and inferior man and woman. Subjects were asked to provide the names of fictional or real ideal and inferior men and woman.

Results