Does Human Facial Attractiveness Honestly Advertise Health? Longitudinal Data on an Evolutionary Question

Abstract

Inspired by the evolutionary conjecture that sexually selected traits function as indicators of pathogen resistance in animals and humans, we examined the notion that human facial attractiveness provides evidence of health. Using photos of 164 males and 169 females in late adolescence and health data on these individuals in adolescence, middle adulthood, and later adulthood, we found that adolescent facial attractiveness was unrelated to adolescent health for either males or females, and was not predictive of health at the later times. We also asked raters to guess the health of each stimulus person from his or her photo. Relatively attractive stimulus persons were mistakenly rated as healthier than their peers. The correlation between perceived health and medically assessed health increased when attractiveness was statistically controlled, which implies that attractiveness suppressed the accurate recognition of health. These findings may have important implications for evolutionary models.