The morphometrics of "masculinity" in human faces.

Philipp Mitteroecker,Sonja Windhager,Katrin Schaefer,Gerd B Müller,Pasquale Raia

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0118374

Philipp Mitteroecker, Sonja Windhager + Show 3 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0118374

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Journal: PloS one	Publication Date: Feb 11, 2015
Citations: 99	License type: CC BY 4.0

Affiliation: University of Vienna

Abstract

In studies of social inference and human mate preference, a wide but inconsistent array of tools for computing facial masculinity has been devised. Several of these approaches implicitly assumed that the individual expression of sexually dimorphic shape features, which we refer to as maleness, resembles facial shape features perceived as masculine. We outline a morphometric strategy for estimating separately the face shape patterns that underlie perceived masculinity and maleness, and for computing individual scores for these shape patterns. We further show how faces with different degrees of masculinity or maleness can be constructed in a geometric morphometric framework. In an application of these methods to a set of human facial photographs, we found that shape features typically perceived as masculine are wide faces with a wide inter-orbital distance, a wide nose, thin lips, and a large and massive lower face. The individual expressions of this combination of shape features—the masculinity shape scores—were the best predictor of rated masculinity among the compared methods (r = 0.5). The shape features perceived as masculine only partly resembled the average face shape difference between males and females (sexual dimorphism). Discriminant functions and Procrustes distances to the female mean shape were poor predictors of perceived masculinity.

Highlights

Many studies have investigated whether the phenotypic “masculinity” of men, especially in facial appearance, plays a role in human mate preference and social perception (e.g., [1,2,3])
On average, had thicker and lower positioned eyebrows, relatively smaller eyes, thinner lips, and a more massive and angulated lower jaw than women. These dimorphic shape features, as a vector in shape space, accounted for 15.4% of total variation across all male face shapes, and the individual maleness shape scores along this vector had a correlation with the masculinity rating of 0.26
In the investigation of social inference and human mate preference, a wide but inconsistent array of tools for computing scores of facial masculinity has been devised. Several of these approaches implicitly assumed that the individual expression of dimorphic shape features, which we refer to as maleness, resembles shape features perceived as masculine

Summary

Introduction

Many studies have investigated whether the phenotypic “masculinity” of men, especially in facial appearance, plays a role in human mate preference and social perception (e.g., [1,2,3]). In these contexts, masculinity is assumed to be determined by the expression of steroid hormones, such as testosterone, in development. Masculinity is assumed to be determined by the expression of steroid hormones, such as testosterone, in development Since these hormones are immunosuppressive, a masculine phenotype is considered an honest signal of immunocompetence and mate quality (e.g., [4]). Facial allometry—aspects of face shape reflecting body size—is likely to contribute to the perception of facial masculinity [13]

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