Women feel more attractive before ovulation: evidence from a large-scale online diary study.

Julie C. Driebe,Lars Penke,Tanja M. Gerlach,Lara Schleifenbaum,Ruben C. Arslan

doi:10.1017/ehs.2021.44

Julie C. Driebe, Lars Penke + Show 3 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1017/ehs.2021.44

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Abstract

How attractive we find ourselves decides who we target as potential partners and influences our reproductive fitness. Self-perceptions on women's fertile days could be particularly important. However, results on how self-perceived attractiveness changes across women's ovulatory cycles are inconsistent and research has seldomly assessed multiple attractiveness-related constructs simultaneously. Here, we give an overview of ovulatory cycle shifts in self-perceived attractiveness, sexual desirability, grooming, self-esteem and positive mood. We addressed previous methodological shortcomings by conducting a large, preregistered online diary study of 872 women (580 naturally cycling) across 70 consecutive days, applying several robustness analyses and comparing naturally cycling women with women using hormonal contraceptives. As expected, we found robust evidence for ovulatory increases in self-perceived attractiveness and sexual desirability in naturally cycling women. Unexpectedly, we found moderately robust evidence for smaller ovulatory increases in self-esteem and positive mood. Although grooming showed an ovulatory increase descriptively, the effect was small, failed to reach our strict significance level of .01 and was not robust to model variations. We discuss how these results could follow an ovulatory increase in sexual motivation while calling for more theoretical and causally informative research to uncover the nature of ovulatory cycle shifts in the future.

Highlights

There is an ongoing debate about whether the fertile phase in a woman’s ovulatory cycle warrants being called an oestrus, a phase of fertility which is typically characterised by heightened sexual proceptivity, receptivity and attractiveness (Beach, 1976; Gangestad & Thornhill, 2008)
Attractiveness We found ovulatory increases in self-perceived attractiveness for NC women
Analysing 25,187 observations, self-ratings of attractiveness rose significantly with increasing probability of being in the fertile window (PBFW) (b = 0.25, t(1132.65) = 5.3, p < .001, 99% CI [0.13, 0.36])

Summary

Introduction

There is an ongoing debate about whether the fertile phase in a woman’s ovulatory cycle warrants being called an oestrus, a phase of fertility which is typically characterised by heightened sexual proceptivity, receptivity and attractiveness (Beach, 1976; Gangestad & Thornhill, 2008) Alongside other aspects such as increased sexual motivation when fertile that might indicate an oestrus-like phase (Arslan, Schilling et al, 2018; Jones et al, 2018; Roney & Simmons, 2013), it appears that women’s attractiveness increases around ovulation as a possible cue to fertility (Haselton & Gildersleeve, 2011). Understanding how women’s selfperceived attractiveness changes across the cycle is crucial, during the fertile window when conception is possible and mating decisions have a direct impact on reproductive fitness

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