Affectionless, uncommitted sexual behavior was formerly interpreted in psychology as a function of individual decisions, a kind of intrapsychic variable. Sociosexual orientation is directly linked to reproductive success, so among other issues, measuring sociosexual orientation has been of great interest for evolutionary scientists. Most recently Penke and Asendorpf (2008) prepared the revised version of Sociosexual Orientation Inventory (SOI-R), which has been used in dozens of studies since its publication. The aim of the current study was to test the usability of the Hungarian version and to analyze the factor structure and internal reliability of the inventory. It was translated and the structure was analyzed on a Hungarian sample (n = 1345, females = 832, males = 513; age: M = 26.37 years, SD = 8.75, range: 16-74). Our results show that the Hungarian version has the same three-factor structure as proposed by Penke and Asendorpf (2008) and is a reliable inventory for further studies of sociosexuality. The sociosexual scores of the two sexes statistically differ in the expected direction: women show lower SOI scores than men. Sociosexual desire decreases with age, whereas older participants report less restricted sociosexual behavior. Sociosexual attitude is uneffected by age. Results are discussed from both evolutionary and life-span developmental points of view.

Over the last ten years, Oosterhof and Todorov’s valence-dominance model has emerged as the most prominent account of how people evaluate faces on social dimensions. In this model, two dimensions (valence and dominance) underpin social judgments of faces. Because this model has primarily been developed and tested in Western regions, it is unclear whether these findings apply to other regions. We addressed this question by replicating Oosterhof and Todorov’s methodology across 11 world regions, 41 countries, and 11,570 participants. When we used Oosterhof and Todorov’s original analysis strategy, the valence-dominance model generalized across regions. When we used an alternative methodology to allow for correlated dimensions we observed much less generalization. Collectively, these results suggest that, while the valence-dominance model generalizes very well across regions when dimensions are forced to be orthogonal, regional differences are revealed when we use different extraction methods, correlate and rotate the dimension reduction solution.

Empirical studies present considerably consistent data about human mate choice, from which we may infer that it tends to be homogamous for various traits. However, different experiments on facial resemblance led to contradictory results. To obtain additional data about the preference for self-resembling potential mates, male and female composite faces were modified in a manner to resemble subjects. Volunteers were asked to choose a potential partner from three images in different situations: self-resembling faces, non-resembling faces (both with the same degree of other-rated attractiveness), and images which were rated by others as more attractive than the self-resembling faces. Women did not show any preference for similarity; they preferred the most attractive male and female faces. In contrast, men preferred the most attractive images of the opposite sex to self-resembling faces and the self-resembling to non-resembling faces. The self-resemblance of same-sex faces was preferred by neither men nor women. Our results support the hypothesis that both facial similarity (i.e., cues of shared genes) and observer-independent features of attractiveness (i.e., honest signals of genetic quality) play an important role in males' mate choice. The lack of choice for self-resemblance on the female side in this particular study might reflect their more complex decision-making rules that are probably based on other cues beside visual stimuli.

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BackgroundSeveral studies showed that facial attractiveness, as a highly salient social cue, influences behavioral responses. It has also been found that attractive faces evoke distinctive neural activation compared to unattractive or neutral faces.ObjectivesOur aim was to design a face recognition task where individual preferences for facial cues are controlled for, and to create conditions that are more similar to natural circumstances in terms of decision making.DesignIn an event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) experiment, subjects were shown attractive and unattractive faces, categorized on the basis of their own individual ratings.ResultsStatistical analysis of all subjects showed elevated brain activation for attractive opposite-sex faces in contrast to less attractive ones in regions that previously have been reported to show enhanced activation with increasing attractiveness level (e.g. the medial and superior occipital gyri, fusiform gyrus, precentral gyrus, and anterior cingular cortex). Besides these, females showed additional brain activation in areas thought to be involved in basic emotions and desires (insula), detection of facial emotions (superior temporal gyrus), and memory retrieval (hippocampus).ConclusionsFrom these data, we speculate that because of the risks involving mate choice faced by women during evolutionary times, selection might have preferred the development of an elaborated neural system in females to assess the attractiveness and social value of male faces.

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Generalization has been suggested as a basic mechanism in forming impressions about unfamiliar people. In this study, we investigated how social evaluations will be transferred to individual faces across contexts and to expressions across individuals. A total of 93 people (33 men, age: M = 29.95; SD = 13.74) were exposed to facial images which they had to evaluate. In the Association phase, we presented one individual with (1) a trustworthy, (2) an untrustworthy, (3) or an ambiguous expression, with either positive or negative descriptive sentence pairs. In the Evaluation phase participants were shown (1) a new individual with the same emotional facial expression as seen before, and (2) a neutral image of the previously presented individual. They were asked to judge the trustworthiness of each person. We found that the valence of the social description is transferred to both individuals and expressions. That is, the social evaluations (positive or negative) transferred between the images of two different individuals if they both displayed the same facial expression. The consistency between the facial expression and the description, however, had no effect on the evaluation of the same expression appearing on an unfamiliar face. Results suggest that in social evaluation of unfamiliar people invariant and dynamically changing facial traits are used to a similar extent and influence these judgements through the same associative process.

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