Abstract
Trust is essential in initiating social relationships. Due to the differential evolution of sex hormones as well as the fitness burdens of producing offspring, evaluations of a potential mating partner’s trustworthiness likely differ across sexes. Here, we explore unknown sex-specific effects of facial attractiveness and threat on trusting other-sex individuals. Ninety-three participants (singles; 46 women) attracted by the other sex performed an incentivized trust game. They had to decide whether to trust individuals of the other sex represented by a priori-created face stimuli gradually varying in the intensities of both attractiveness and threat. Male and female participants trusted attractive and unthreatening-looking individuals more often. However, whereas male participants’ trust behavior was affected equally by attractiveness and threat, female participants’ trust behavior was more strongly affected by threat than by attractiveness. This indicates that a partner’s high facial attractiveness might compensate for high facial threat in male but not female participants. Our findings suggest that men and women prioritize attractiveness and threat differentially, with women paying relatively more attention to threat cues inversely signaling parental investment than to attractiveness cues signaling reproductive fitness. This difference might be attributable to an evolutionary, biologically sex-specific decision regarding parental investment and reproduction behavior.
Highlights
Trust is essential in initiating social relationships
On the basis of the evolutionary biological assumption that sexual selection has shaped distinct strategies for assessing attractiveness and threat in males and females, we further hypothesized that threat cues would carry higher relative importance than attractiveness cues in women compared to men
There was no significant interaction between facial threat and facial attractiveness (F1, 91 = 2.636, p = 0.108, ηp2 = 0.028)
Summary
Trust is essential in initiating social relationships. Due to the differential evolution of sex hormones as well as the fitness burdens of producing offspring, evaluations of a potential mating partner’s trustworthiness likely differ across sexes. Our findings suggest that men and women prioritize attractiveness and threat differentially, with women paying relatively more attention to threat cues inversely signaling parental investment than to attractiveness cues signaling reproductive fitness This difference might be attributable to an evolutionary, biologically sex-specific decision regarding parental investment and reproduction behavior. We try to close this gap by investigating whether the facial attractiveness of other-sex individuals may modulate trust behavior displayed towards them Another facial feature that is key to assessing a potential partner’s trustworthiness is threat. Participants took part in an incentivized trust game with individuals of the other sex represented by photos revealing the low- or high-intensity facial features attractiveness and threat, respectively By using these face stimuli, our research approach aims to expand upon previous research studying incentivized social behavior in interactions between anonymous individuals (e.g.,62–64, and see[65]). On the basis of the evolutionary biological assumption that sexual selection has shaped distinct strategies for assessing attractiveness and threat in males and females, we further hypothesized that threat cues would carry higher relative importance than attractiveness cues in women compared to men
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