Word.ws English Dictionary

wedding ring effect

wedding ring effect noun: a phenomenon in which people who are married or otherwise taken are perceived as more attractive.

Noun

wedding ring effect (uncountable)

  1. A phenomenon in which people who are married or otherwise taken are perceived as more attractive.
    • We tested one of the hypotheses, the so-called wedding ring effect-that women would prefer men who are already engaged or married-in a series of live interactions between men and women. The results show that women do not find men signaling engagement, or being perceived as having a partner, more...2003, Tobias Uller, L. Christoffer Johansson, “Human mate choice and the wedding ring effect: Are married men more attractive?”, in Human Nature, volume 14, number 3

Questions about wedding ring effect

What does wedding ring effect mean?
Wedding ring effect means a phenomenon in which people who are married or otherwise taken are perceived as more attractive.
What part of speech is wedding ring effect?
Wedding ring effect is a noun.

Words near wedding ring effect in the dictionary

  1. wedding reception
  2. wedding receptions
  3. wedding registries
  4. wedding registry
  5. wedding ring
  6. wedding ring effect
  7. wedding rings
  8. wedding shirt
  9. wedding shirts
  10. wedding shower
  11. wedding showers

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: wedding ring effect (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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