In human mate choice, sexually dimorphic faces and voices comprise hormone-mediated cues that purportedly develop as an indicator of mate quality or the ability to compete with samesex rivals. If preferences for faces communicate the same biologically relevant information as do voices, then ratings of these cues should correlate. Sixty participants (30 male and 30 female) rated a series of opposite-sex faces, voices, and faces together with voices for attractiveness in a repeated measures computer-based experiment. The effects of face and voice attractiveness on face-voice compound stimuli were analyzed using a multilevel model.Faces contributed proportionally more than voices to ratings of face-voice compound attractiveness. Faces and voices positively and independently contributed to the attractiveness of male compound stimuli although there was no significant correlation between their rated attractiveness. A positive interaction and correlation between attractiveness was shown for faces and voices in relation to the attractiveness of female compound stimuli. Rather than providing a better estimate of a single characteristic, male faces and voices may instead communicate independent information that, in turn, provides a female with a better assessment of overall mate quality. Conversely, female faces and voices together provide males with a more accurate assessment of a single dimension of mate quality.

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Copyright:Middlesex University Research Repository makes the University's research available electronically.Copyright and moral rights to this work are retained by the author and/or other copyright owners. No part of the work may be sold or exploited commercially in any format or medium without the prior written permission of the copyright holder(s). A copy may be downloaded for personal, noncommercial, research or study without prior permission and without charge. Any use of the work for private study or research must be properly acknowledged with reference to the work's full bibliographic details.This work may not be reproduced in any format or medium, or extensive quotations taken from it, or its content changed in any way, without first obtaining permission in writing from the copyright holder(s).If you believe that any material held in the repository infringes copyright law, please contact the Repository Team at Middlesex University via the following email address: eprints@mdx.ac.ukThe item will be removed from the repository while any claim is being investigated. (Herz & Inzlict, 2002). Olfactory characteristics were declared to be extremely important during mate selection, more so than almost all other characteristics, but did not significantly differ between the sexes. Olfaction and human mate choiceThere were significant differences concerning the odour source that individuals attend to, with greater preferences observed for a potential mate's body odour as opposed to artificial fragrances they use. These findings suggest the body odour characteristics of a potential mate are perceived to be an important factor during mate choice.

Men's body odor influences women's mate choice, and individual variation among traits affect hedonic perceptions of this odor (e.g., immune system characteristics; Wedekind & Füri, 1997). Previous research by Sergeant (2002) indicated that one such characteristic is sexual orientation: body odor from homosexual men was perceived by heterosexual women as more hedonically pleasing than that of heterosexual men. The current study re-examined the influence of men's sexual orientation on women's perceptions of body odor. Homosexual (n = 10) and heterosexual (n = 9) men produced samples of body odor using T-shirts under equivalent environmental conditions. Heterosexual women (n = 35) rated these samples, and a set of unused T-shirts, using a series of hedonic scales. Women rated the body odor of homosexual men as being comparatively more pleasant, sexier, and more preferable than that of heterosexual men but not significantly different to the unused T-shirts. This finding is consistent with contemporary research demonstrating that an individual's sexual orientation significant impacts their olfactory function, both in terms of body odor production (Martins et al., 2005) and olfactory perceptions of certain compounds (Savic et al., 2005).

Abstract. Heterosexual males are reported to display higher levels of physical aggression and lower levels of empathy than homosexual males. A characteristic linked to both aggression and empathy is social dominance orientation (SDO). A significant sex difference has been reported for SDO, with heterosexual males scoring higher than heterosexual females. The precise relationship between dominance and aggression is currently contested. Given the association between SDO, aggression and empathy, and the differences between heterosexual and homosexual males, an analysis of how sexual orientation co-varies with SDO might help to clarify the association between aggression and dominance. SDO scores were derived from heterosexual males (n = 60), heterosexual females (n = 60) and homosexual males (n = 60). Heterosexual males reported higher levels of SDO than heterosexual females and homosexual males, while heterosexual females scored higher than homosexual males. These differences were analogous for physical aggression. More work is required to thoroughly understand the aetiology of these effects as well as the strategic value of the behaviours, but for now we have reason to further investigate the organizational hormone hypothesis put forward in this paper.

an open access repository of Middlesex University research http://eprints.mdx.ac.uk Dickins, Thomas E.; Sergeant, Mark J.T., 2009. Two more things for consideration: sexual orientation and conduct disorder (commentary).