I just noticed a study that might be relevant here cited in a classic Social psychology book I was reading (Baron, Byrne). The article they refer to is Graziano et al. "Social influence, sex differences, and judgments of beauty : putting the Interpersonal back in interpersonal attraction", 1993 and the result relevant here is that when women are shown an assessment of a man by some other woman, their own assesment moves towards it. This would make the result discussed here just a corollary of a self-fulfilling prophecy. I do not have time to read either of the articles at the moment but it would probably do some good if someone looked over the Graziano paper and verified whether or not it is relevant?