The sound of female shape: a redundant signal of vocal and facial attractiveness

Abstract

There is more to female attractiveness than a pretty face. Human mate choice decisions are guided by different cues, which in combination may give a better estimate of a general condition. We hypothesized that such signal redundancy might be true for vocal and visual cues of human female attractiveness. To test this we used photographs of women's faces, recorded their voices and asked men to rate both types of stimuli on attractiveness. We found a significant relationship between males' ratings of female faces and voices. Moreover, low levels of fluctuating asymmetry of women's bodies and faces were associated with high ratings on facial and vocal attractiveness. Applying the Geometric Morphometric Methodology we performed a multivariate regression analysis of attractiveness ratings with landmark data obtained from women's faces. We found similar facial shape changes for ratings of facial and vocal attractiveness that are both negatively related to facial and body FA. Findings suggest that females with an attractive face also tend to have an attractive voice and that this redundant information is reflected in female facial shape.