No abstract

No abstract

Sexually dimorphic physical traits are important for mate choice and mate preference in many species, including humans. Several previous studies have observed that women's preferences for physical cues of male masculinity in different domains (e.g., visual and vocal) are correlated. These correlations demonstrate systematic, rather than arbitrary, variation in women's preferences for masculine men and are consistent with the proposal that sexually dimorphic cues in different domains reflect a common underlying aspect of male quality. Here we present evidence for a similar correlation between men's preferences for different cues of femininity in women; although men generally preferred feminized to masculinized versions of both women's faces and voices, the strength of men's preferences for feminized versions of female faces was positively and significantly correlated with the strength of their preferences for feminized versions of women's voices. In a second study, this correlation occurred when men judged women's attractiveness as long-term, but not short-term, mates, which is consistent with previous research. Collectively, these findings (1) present novel evidence for systematic variation in men's preferences for feminine women, (2) present converging evidence for concordant preferences for sexually dimorphic traits in different domains, and (3) complement findings of correlations between women's facial and vocal femininity.

Listeners associate low voice pitch (fundamental frequency and/or harmonics) and formants (vocal-tract resonances) with large body size. Although formants reliably predict size within sexes, pitch does not reliably predict size in groups of same-sex adults. Voice pitch has therefore long been hypothesized to confound within-sex size assessment. Here we performed a knockout test of this hypothesis using whispered and 3-formant sine-wave speech devoid of pitch. Listeners estimated the relative size of men with above-chance accuracy from voiced, whispered, and sine-wave speech. Critically, although men's pitch and physical height were unrelated, the accuracy of listeners' size assessments increased in the presence rather than absence of pitch. Size assessments based on relatively low pitch yielded particularly high accuracy (70%-80%). Results of Experiment 2 revealed that amplitude, noise, and signal degradation of unvoiced speech could not explain this effect; listeners readily perceived formant shifts in manipulated whispered speech. Rather, in Experiment 3, we show that the denser harmonic spectrum provided by low pitch allowed for better resolution of formants, aiding formant-based size assessment. These findings demonstrate that pitch does not confuse body size assessment as has been previously suggested, but instead facilitates accurate size assessment by providing a carrier signal for vocal-tract resonances.

No abstract