A New Viewpoint on the Evolution of Sexually Dimorphic Human Faces

Abstract

Human faces show marked sexual shape dimorphism, and this affects their attractiveness. Humans also show marked height dimorphism, which means that men typically view women's faces from slightly above and women typically view men's faces from slightly below. We tested the idea that this perspective difference may be the evolutionary origin of the face shape dimorphism by having males and females rate the masculinity/femininity and attractiveness of male and female faces that had been manipulated in pitch (forward or backward tilt), simulating viewing the face from slightly above or below. As predicted, tilting female faces upwards decreased their perceived femininity and attractiveness, whereas tilting them downwards increased their perceived femininity and attractiveness. Male faces tilted up were judged to be more masculine, and tilted down judged to be less masculine. This suggests that sexual selection may have embodied this viewpoint difference into the actual facial proportions of men and women.

Facial Structure Predicts Sexual Orientation in Both Men and Women

“…For example, previous research has identified that male faces generally have longer and wider jaws, whereas female faces generally have smaller jaws and fuller lips (Burke & Sulikowski, 2010;Rhodes, 2006), but the heterosexual women in our sample had smaller lips, thinner lips, and a thinner mouth than heterosexual men. The mouth region was one of the regions that differed between lesbian and heterosexual women, andwe cannot rule out the Type II error explanation conclusively.…”

“…Sexual differentiation, however, is a common mechanism used to explain the development of facial structure because men and women differ in facial structure. Male faces generally have longer jaws, wider jaws, smaller eyes, larger noses, and more prominent brow ridges, whereas female faces generally have larger eyes, smaller brow ridges, smaller jaws, smaller chins, and fuller lips (Burke & Sulikowski, 2010;Rhodes, 2006). The development of the sexual dimorphism of faces is guided by both prenatal and postnatal factors (Bulygina, Mitteroecker, & Aiello, 2006;Enlow, 1982;Meindl, Windhager, Wallner, & Schaefer, 2012;Verdonck, Gaethofs, Carels, & de Zegher, 1999).…”

Is There an Own-Race Preference in Attractiveness?

“…Whether this is a genuine difference in femininity or simply a perceived difference due to our participants' lack of familiarity with African faces (and with the features that distinguish male and female African faces) is impossible to tell from the current data, but it does provide a potential explanation for the lower attractiveness ratings given to female African faces, since lower perceived femininity is known to correlate with lower attractiveness ratings (e.g., Burke and Sulikowski, 2010). To properly tease out the factors…”

Eye Gaze and Head Posture Jointly Influence Judgments of Dominance, Physical Strength, and Anger

“…Recently , Schneider, Hecht and Carbon (2012) showed that persons with upward faces were perceived as heavier than persons with downward faces. Additionally, an upward posture increases the perceived masculinity of male targets (Burke & Sulikowski, 2010).…”