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.

The Male Warrior Hypothesis (MWH) establishes that men's psychology has been shaped by intergroup competition to acquire and protect reproductive resources. In this context, sex-specific selective pressures would have favored cooperation with the members of one's group in combination with hostility towards outsiders. We investigate the role of developmental testosterone, as measured indirectly through static markers of prenatal testosterone (2D:4D digit ratio) and pubertal testosterone (body musculature and facial masculinity), on both cooperation and aggressive behavior in the context of intergroup conflict among men. Supporting the MWH, our results show that the intergroup conflict scenario promotes cooperation within group members and aggression toward outgroup members. Regarding the hormonal underpinnings of this phenomenon, we find that body musculature is positively associated with aggression and cooperation, but only for cooperation when context (intergroup competition) is taken into account. Finally, we did not find evidence that the formidability of the group affected individual rates of aggression or cooperation, controlling for individual characteristics.

Objectives Strategic Pluralism Theory contends that human mating strategies are calibrated toward short‐term (ST) or long‐term (LT) mating according to the expression of condition‐dependent traits and characteristics of the social and physical environment. Traits reflecting the effects of testosterone have been considered condition‐dependent traits that provide information about the calibration of male mating strategy. We investigated the relationship of muscle mass and facial masculinity with attitudes and behaviors reflecting ST and LT mating tactics. Methods We measured skeletal muscle mass (SMM) through bioelectrical impedance and facial width‐to‐height ratio (fWHR) in a sample of Chilean men (n = 206; mean age = 22.52 ± 4.65 SD), and collected information about sociosexual attitudes and past sexual behavior. Results Our results showed an interaction effect of SMM and fWHR on unrestricted (but not restricted) sociosexual attitudes and past sexual behavior. Individuals with a consistent expression of both traits (ie, high SMM and fWHR or low SMM and fWHR) reported higher levels of unrestricted sociosexual attitudes and a greater number of lifetime and previous‐year sexual partners. Conclusions These findings suggest that the intensity and consistency of expression of body and facial masculinity is important in signaling male mating tactics and sociosexual attitudes.

Intrasexual competition can be defined as the struggle between members of one sex to increase their access to members of the other sex as sexual partners. In our species, height is a sexually dimorphic trait probably involved in both intrasexual and intersexual selective processes. In the present research, we examined the relationship between height and individual differences in intrasexual competitiveness (i.e., the tendency to view same-sex interactions in general in competitive terms) in two populations of adolescents and adults of both sexes in Chile. According to our first prediction, among both adolescent and adult men, height was negatively associated with intrasexual competitiveness. In contrast, among women, height was not linearly nor quadratically related with intrasexual competitiveness as previously reported. Finally, adolescent men and women showed increased levels of intrasexual competitiveness compared to adult same-sex counterparts. Our results suggest that height is a relevant trait in mating competition among men. The lack of relationship between height and intrasexual competitiveness in women may suggest that the role of height in women mating competition may be more complex and mediated by other variables.