There seems to be no downturn in reputably published analyses of the biological underpinnings of human mate choice and sexual behavior. While the conclusions expressed below may seem politically incorrect, it should be noted that women scientists are often the lead authors in these articles, and that ironically, funds designed to promote the research careers of women, or the advancement of women’s study programs, are acknowledged as providing financial support in some of the studies.
These are not studies of consciously held beliefs about morality but of unconscious urges with a basis in reproductive strategies that make sense in the light of evolution
An important point is that most of these studies seek to discover unconscious or “subconscious” propensities; as opposed to polling the deliberately chosen code of conduct of participants. It is often the case that upon interview after-the-fact, participants will articulate well-considered explanations about what constitutes acceptable behavior for themselves, and offer self-descriptions of the kinds of partner they favor, that are in fact, at significant variance what these fairly rigorous scientific studies show about their “gut-level” mate preferences.
What makes doing these studies possible, repeatable & reliable?
Part of the reason these seemingly intrusive and invasive studies are now able to done more, and more often, rests on one major assumption and two related technological advances.
The major assumption is that the reactions or judgments of the people who are doing the looking at faces and facial cues, are a reliable stand-in for their reactions and judgments to the “whole body” or actual person. Thus far, the literature of neuroscience, psychology and anthropology tends to back up this assumption when whole body or waist-up images or live-in-person appearances are used instead of, or alongside, still images of faces.
The technological advances that make these studies are two-fold.
First, advances in facial morphing of photographed images of what is often at its core the face of one real person or one computer generated basic model, now allow for a series of images that can be manipulated in a step-wise fashion so that they can described as progressively masculinized or feminized by independent raters, and be in good agreement. A 2009 study by Roberts showed that in the main, still life images of faces correlate well with videos of the same faces, in terms of unconscious attractiveness ratings by viewers. Men are very consistent with their ratings, rating as attractive the faces of the same women whether they selected them first by still life or by brief video clip. Women also tend to be more consistent than not, but tend to adjust and refine their rating using subtle cues seen in the video that men apparently do not detect.
Second, we now have ways of unobtrusively recording psychological or physiological measures of attention and arousal in patients gazing at these morphed faces, without the patient/subject being very much aware of what is being measured, and how and when it is being recorded.
Women Generally Prefer Strongly Masculine Faces & Related Indicators of Heightened Aggressiveness & High Social & Economic Status for Quick Sex and Short-Term Relationships
A recent study by DeBruine et al. (2010) showed that across 30 economically prosperous countries, the relative national “unhealthiness” index of women was an excellent predictor of the strength their preference for the most “manly faces” in questions relating to potential mates or romantic partners.
The worse off these women were in measures for the ready provision of health services and basic human needs by the state within the countries in which they lived, the more strongly they went with the “alpha-male faces.”
In countries where the overall health of the nation and the subsidized provision of basic necessities and healthcare were higher, the strength of the preference was somewhat diminished, but did not disappear by any means, as might be expected given the reduced need for personal financial support or provision of resources by their male partners.
Women worldwide in relatively straightened circumstances have unconsciously adopted a strategy to preserve their chances of having surviving children by looking for the faces of men who seem particularly virile to father strong healthy children for them as the first and key step to the survival of the next generation, and not necessarily looking for reliable partners in raising any resulting kids. That apparently comes later, when men with lower degrees of masculinity in their facial appearance are sought or tolerated.
This finding is not too surprising in light of other recent papers. An earlier blog http://sla-divisions.typepad.com/dbio/2009/02/the-evolutionary-psychology-of-womens-preferences-for-differing-types-of-men-at-different-times-of-their-reproductive-cycl.html had reported that in a study authored by female psychologists from France, that among a broad cross section of women observed in bistros ( a high proportion of French women in general, and not indicative of “bar fly” status by any means), those women who were in the most fertile phase of their menstrual cycle unconsciously dressed themselves more provocatively and “hit upon” men much more aggressively, and in particular, notably favored physically intimidating, aggressively acting men when doing so.
These same women equally unconsciously “toned down” this behavior and their style of dressing, when they were in they were in their infertile phase of their cycle or they finally had entered menopause. This result is in line with a long series of papers by Gangestad et al (2001, 2004, 2007 all cited below) and has been largely confirmed in terms of facial preferences for more rugged men, etc. by Jones et al. (2008) during times of peak fertility.
One limitation with some of these studies is that they depended on women’s self-reports of where they were in their menstrual cycles, and as such, might be inaccurate by a matter of days or a week from time to time. But in a study by Roney & Simmons (2008) actual laboratory measurements of hormones (particularly estradiol) which indicated peak fertility were used and these new results not only confirmed previous studies, but an important corollary was discovered: the preference of peak fertility women for these “macho” men’s faces, happened to coincide with the men’s actual testosterone levels which was separately calibrated. In a confirming study, those men with the highest levels of testosterone as determined by laboratory tests, also showed the strongest preference for the most highly feminized (i.e. most fertile) faces, according to Welling et al. 2008.
In other words the facial characteristics on which women subconsciously focus actually do provide an excellent biological indicator of the level of virility or libido of a potential male sex partner, at least in the short run, while men with raging hormones return the favor by seeking out the most feminine of female faces.
Curiously enough, a certain measure of the predominantly male hormone testosterone is also necessary for women themselves to have an optimum level of libido and women whose testosterone as measured by saliva tests is highest also show the strongest unconscious preference for highly masculinized faces (see Welling et al. 2007).
This last study also shows once again that women are willing to settle for less in terms of the masculinity of the faces of their potential male partners, when their own levels of estradiol are less. This is presumably after they have been impregnated by the more masculine-faced men, or when the chances of actually conceiving a child by the men with the more feminized face are minimal or nonexistent.
Women’s efforts in terms of making themselves more attractive and behaving in a sexually provocative manner do not go unnoticed, particularly by the sensation-seeking, high-risk-taking aggressive men women seek to attract during their most fertile phase of the menstrual cycle. Studies by Jones et al. (2007) pretty clearly document the strong attractiveness rankings such men give to the most highly feminine female faces, as opposed to neutral or modestly masculinized female faces. The very men with whom highly fertile females seek to have a fling are the very men who will be most highly able to detect, calibrate, and act upon the receptivity suggested by the more highly feminized facial appearance and “forward” behavior of the women and have sex and possibly impregnate them.
In an intriguing corollary, women also predictably rate the faces of men as more romantically/sexually attractive based on cues to their economic and social status indicated by the car they appear to be driving in a staged photograph (Dunn & Searle 2010).
Welsh female university students showed a distinct and persistent preferences for the faces of young men driving a luxury British sports car, the Bentley Continental GT, over the same faces shown driving a Ford Fiesta. In a particularly clear-cut and characteristically British understatement of their findings in this regard with men viewing faces of the women driving the different status cars, the authors state “males, unlike females, remain oblivious to such cues relating to opposite-sex attraction.” They like the faces of women they deem desirable with no particular attention paid, consciously or unconsciously, to the cars they appeared to be driving.
Women also more intensely favor the tallest men in an array of photos when they are at peak fertility and when they are interested in sexually intense but relatively short term encounters according to Pawlowski & Jasienka (2005) and in this case, height tends also to correlate with the relative masculinity of their faces as well.
When Do Short Men with More Feminized “Good Dads” Faces Win in Unconscious Female Facial Preference Rankings?
Women unconsciously tend to prefer facial images of more feminized males, termed “Good Daddy Faces” by Fhionna Moore et al. ------and tolerate shorter men -------only when they are considering having many children over the course of a long term relationship (Moore et al. 2009). This is no guarantee that the children that apparently result will actually be his biological children, however. Cuckoldry (termed “male parental discordance” in the scientific literature, by the way) is, in many ways, the ideal strategy for women who want to have kids by the men that excite them the most, but not have to depend on those men actually to help her raise them.
What about men who pick up underage girls wearing heavy makeup in bars? Did the alcohol diminish their ability to judge age relative to when they were sober?
In an intriguing study by Egan & Cordan (2009), men and women were shown pictures of girls and boys and men and women of differing ages. Using morphing, some of the women and girls were shown with heavy makeup, presumably replicating the oft-reported claim that underage girls can readily deceive innocent, unawares men, through their use of adult makeup. The accuracy of scores of both men and women age-estimators was recorded while they drank and their level of alcohol consumption was repeatedly gauged using breathalyzers. Women drinkers showed some impairment in their accuracy of age estimation of both genders with increasing amounts of alcohol consumed, but on the whole and at any level of their sobriety or of the photo’s make-up levels, they were more accurate age-guessers than were the men. The men as a group consistently overestimated the age of the girls and women, with or without makeup, by 3.5 years on average. The men’s drinking did not, however, decrease their age guessing ability. They did not get worse in their ability (or rather comparative disability) to spot girls and younger women and guess their correct age. What did change was that the drunker the men got, the more sexually attractive they found heavily-made-up older women.
But it is all only about the faces?
No, in one of the most unsurprising studies ever published (Gueguen, 2007) female confederates of an observing psychologist wore inflatable bras. Those women with the largest and most prominently projecting inflated breasts, were in fact, “hit upon” significantly more by men, than when they were wearing the same outfit with the same facial makeup, but showing un-inflated, or under-inflated smaller and less prominent breasts. This study doubtlessly provides scientific underwiring for all those Victoria’s Secret push-up bra ads.
Tony Stankus, FSLA, [email protected] , Life Sciences Librarian, Science Coordinator & Professor
Univesity of Arkansas Libraries MULN 233E
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DeBruine, Lisa M., Bendict C. Jones, John R. Crawford, Lisa L.M. Welling & Anthony C. Little. 2010. The health of a nation predicts their mate preferences: Cross-cultural variation in women’s preferences for masculinized male faces. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B: Biological Sciences 277: 2405-2410.
Dunn, Michael J., and Robert Searle. 2010. Effect of manipulated prestige-car ownership on both sex attractiveness ratings. British Journal of Psychology 101 (1) (02): 69-80.
Egan, Vincent, and Giray Cordan. 2009. Barely legal: Is attraction and estimated age of young female faces disrupted by alcohol use, make up, and the sex of the observer? British Journal of Psychology 100 (2) (05): 415-27.
Gangestad, S. W., and A. J. Cousins. 2001. Adaptive design, female mate preferences, and shifts across the menstrual cycle. Annual Review of Sex Research 12 : 145-85.
Gangestad, S. W., C. E. Garver-Apgar, J. A. Simpson, and A. J. Cousins. 2007. Changes in women's mate preferences across the ovulatory cycle. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 92 (1) (Jan): 151-63.
Gangestad, S. W., J. A. Simpson, A. J. Cousins, C. E. Garver-Apgar, and P. N. Christensen. 2004. Women's preferences for male behavioral displays change across the menstrual cycle. Psychological Science : A Journal of the American Psychological Society / APS 15 (3) (Mar): 203-7.
Gueguen, N. 2007. Women's bust size and men's courtship solicitation. Body Image 4 (4) (Dec): 386-90.
Jones, B. C., L. M. DeBruine, D. I. Perrett, A. C. Little, D. R. Feinberg, and M. J. Law Smith. 2008. Effects of menstrual cycle phase on face preferences. Archives of Sexual Behavior 37 (1) (Feb): 78-84.
Jones, Benedict C., Lisa M. DeBruine, Anthony C. Little, Claire A. Conway, Lisa L. M. Welling, and Finlay Smith. 2007. Sensation seeking and men's face preferences. Evolution and Human Behavior 28 (6) (11): 439-46.
Moore, Fhionna, Miriam Law Smith, Clare Cassidy, and David Perrett. 2009. Female reproductive strategy predicts preferences for sexual dimorphism in male faces. Journal of Evolutionary Psychology 7 (3) (09): 211-24.
Pawlowski, Boguslaw, and Grazyna Jasienska. 2005. Women's preferences for sexual dimorphism in height depend on menstrual cycle phase and expected duration of relationship. Biological Psychology 70 (1) (09): 38-43.
Roberts, S. C., Tamsin K. Saxton, Alice K. Murray, Robert P. Burriss, Hannah M. Rowland, and Anthony C. Little. 2009. Static and dynamic facial images cue similar attractiveness judgements. Ethology 115 (6) (06): 588-95.
Roney, James R., and Zachary L. Simmons. 2008. Women's estradiol predicts preference for facial cues of men's testosterone. Hormones and Behavior 53 (1) (01): 14-9.
Welling, L. L., B. C. Jones, L. M. DeBruine, C. A. Conway, M. J. Law Smith, A. C. Little, D. R. Feinberg, M. A. Sharp, and E. A. Al-Dujaili. 2007. Raised salivary testosterone in women is associated with increased attraction to masculine faces. Hormones and Behavior 52 (2) (Aug): 156-61.
Welling, L. L., B. C. Jones, L. M. DeBruine, F. G. Smith, D. R. Feinberg, A. C. Little, and E. A. Al-Dujaili. 2008. Men report stronger attraction to femininity in women's faces when their testosterone levels are high. Hormones and Behavior 54 (5) (Nov): 703-8.
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