'Girl Next Door' Transformed Into Cruel 'Maneater' After Handsome Male Rejection, Love Study

Getting rejected can be tough. According to a new study, researchers found that women who get turned down by handsome men are more likely to be cruel to other men.

"Participants rejected by the attractive man also derogated the unattractive man even when the unattractive man offered acceptance," the psychologists from the University of Toronto concluded. "Social psychologists theorize that individuals seek connection following rejection. However, accepting connection from a low status other may imply that one is of similarly low status, which may call into question one's prospects for future acceptance."

In this study, the research team created dating profiles for 126 single women. Each participant was informed that two men would look at their profile and a potential meet up could take place at the end of the experiment. The women were then allowed to read the two men's profiles, which were also created by the researchers. The researchers selected one attractive man and an unattractive one.

At the end, the women were told if they were rejected and by whom.

The researchers found: "Participants who were rejected by one of the men distanced themselves from and derogated him as indicated by less interest in meeting him and lower ratings of attractiveness, responsiveness, and romantic appeal compared to those in the acceptance and control conditions. Of greatest interest, participants who were rejected by the attractive man were also relatively uninterested in meeting the unattractive man and derogated him even when he was accepting."

The researchers carried out the same experiment with a new set of female participants and yielded the same results.

"Being rejected by the attractive man appeared to make participants less willing to affiliate with the unattractive man and more inclined to evaluate him harshly," the researchers wrote. "This is consistent with our hypothesis that individuals distance themselves from unattractive others following rejections that call into question their attractiveness."

The study was published in the Journal of Social Psychological and Personality Science.