Are attractive men's faces masculine or feminine? The importance of type of facial stimuli.

Abstract

The authors investigated whether differences in facial stimuli could explain the inconsistencies in the facial attractiveness literature regarding whether adults prefer more masculine- or more feminine-looking male faces. Their results demonstrated that use of a female average to dimorphically transform a male facial average produced stimuli that did not accurately reflect the relationship between masculinity and attractiveness. In contrast, use of averages of masculine males and averages of feminine males produced stimuli that did accurately reflect the relationship between masculinity and attractiveness. Their findings suggest that masculinity contributes more to male facial attractiveness than does femininity, but future research should investigate how various combinations of facial cues contribute to male facial attractiveness.

Women’s Preferences for Male Facial Features

“…However, subsequent research on women's preferences for male masculinity has shown considerable variation. While this variation is sometimes attributed to differences in methodology (Rennels, Bronstad, & Langlois, 2008;Rhodes, 2006), even studies using the same computer-graphic methods have variously observed general preferences for masculinity Johnston, Hagel, Franklin, Fink, & Grammer, 2001;Little, Cohen, Jones, & Belsky, 2007;, general preferences for femininity (Little, Burt, PentonVoak, & Perrett, 2001;Little, Jones, PentonVoak, Burt, & Perrett, 2002;Penton-Voak et al, 1999Perrett et al, 1998;Rhodes et al, 2000;Welling et al, 2007;, Study 1), and no significant preference for masculinity or femininity (Cornwell et al, 2004;Swaddle & Riersen, 2002;Welling et al, 2008, Study 2).…”

“…Methodological issues are frequently cited as possible sources of variable general masculinity preferences (Rennels et al, 2008;Rhodes, 2006;Scott et al, 2013). However, several lines of evidence suggest that methodological differences between studies contribute little to reports of systematic variation in women's masculinity preferences.…”

“…Another example of methodological critique is a study comparing manipulated and perceived masculinity (Rennels et al, 2008). In this study, preferences for an average male face that had manipulated along a vector representing the two-dimensional shape differences between an average male face and an average female face (similar to those in Fig. 14.1) were compared with preferences for composite faces of men who had been rated as high or low in masculinity (similar to those in Fig.…”

Visión y olfato en las evaluaciones de atractivo que hacen hombres homosexuales

“…Las Visión y olfato en las evaluaciones de atractivo pruebas directas realizadas para comprobar esta hipótesis muestran que el grado de parecido de un rostro al promedio es suficiente para predecir su atractivo, sin importar su grado de simetría (DeBruine, Jones, Unger, Little & Feinberg, 2007;Rennels, Bronstad & Langlois, 2008). La masculinidad es el ras go que mejor predice el atractivo en un rostro de hombre.…”

“…La masculinidad es el ras go que mejor predice el atractivo en un rostro de hombre. Sin embargo, también se encontró que los extremos en masculinidad no son agradables (Rennels et al, 2008).…”