Abstract
A growing body of research has shown that women express stronger attraction to more masculine traits when they are tested near ovulation than when tested during other times in the menstrual cycle. Although these effects have been interpreted as increased preferences for markers of elevated testosterone during times in the cycle when conception is most likely, no previous studies have directly demonstrated that women express stronger attraction to higher testosterone men at different times in the cycle. In addition, little research has addressed which hormonal or other physiological mechanisms may regulate temporal shifts in women's attractiveness judgments. In this research, we demonstrate that women with higher estradiol concentrations exhibit stronger preferences for the faces of men with higher testosterone concentrations, and that women's testosterone preference and estradiol curves track one another across days of the cycle. The findings are the first direct demonstration in humans that hormone concentrations in one sex are associated with attraction to cues of hormonal status in the opposite sex. The results support a functional role for estradiol in calibrating women's mating psychology to indices of their current fertility, analogous to similar processes that have been documented in nonhuman species. A strong correlation between estradiol and testosterone preference specifically during the luteal phase further suggests that women's mate preferences may track their fertility between different cycles in addition to being calibrated to the timing of ovulation within individual cycles.
Highlights
Robert Redford and Paul Newman I could understand, but Humphrey Bogart, with his weak chin and crooked smile? Or French heart-throb Jean-Paul Belmondo, with his big mouth and prodigious Gallic nose? Why would a girl want to dote on what seemed to me quite unattractive faces? It is not just the face, that is the attraction in these cases, but the voice, the character, the swagger – the whole package
What features make an attractive face? Do people agree on those features? And why should those particular features be attractive? There is considerable convergence of opinion among behavioral scientists of different stripes on some aspects of these questions
In 1990, Langlois and Roggman reported on a new method for “blending” facial images on a computer to produce composites that averaged the features of the individual faces they were generated from (Langlois and Roggman, 1990)
Summary
Langlois and her colleagues further demonstrated that these “average” faces were preferred by infants and by people of different genetic and cultural background (Langlois et al, 1994). They even suggested as an evolutionary consequence that the preference for average faces serves to prevent Fisherian “runaway selection” for particular facial traits. Jones presented evidence that more neotenous, or “youthful,” facial features than average are considered more attractive (Jones, 1995), while Perrett et al found a preference for more “feminized” faces than average (Perrett et al, 1998).
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