Facial Attractiveness, but not Facial Masculinity, is Used as a Cue to Paternal Involvement in Fathers

Abstract

Purpose Facial femininity in men is purportedly used as a cue by women as a signal of paternal involvement. However, evidence for this claim is questionable. Previous findings have shown that paternal involvement is linked to testosterone, but have not investigated facial masculinity directly, while other studies have found that facial masculinity is negatively associated with perceptions of paternal involvement but do not assess the accuracy of this judgement. Here, we assess whether facial masculinity in men is used as a cue to paternal involvement, and whether this cue is accurate. Methods We collected facial photographs of 259 men (156 of which were fathers) who also completed self-report measures of paternal involvement. Facial images were then rated by a separate group of raters on facial masculinity, attractiveness, and perceived paternal involvement. Shape sexual dimorphism was also calculated from the images using geometric morphometrics. Results We found that facial masculinity was not associated with perceptions of paternal involvement, nor was it related with self-reported paternal involvement. Interestingly, facial attractiveness was negatively associated with perceptions of paternal involvement, and we found partial evidence that facial attractiveness was also negatively associated with self-reported paternal involvement. Conclusion These findings challenge the hypothesis that sexual dimorphism is used as a cue to paternal involvement, and perhaps indicate that facial attractiveness is more important for this judgement instead.

Assessing the Roles of Symmetry, Prototypicality, and Sexual Dimorphism of face Shape in Health Perceptions

“…Second, many studies have assessed symmetry, prototypicality, and sexual dimorphism of faces using perceptual ratings, rather than objective measures of these characteristics (i.e., employed ratings of symmetry, prototypicality, or sexual dimor-phism, rather than facial-metric assessments of these characteristics, e.g., Gray & Boothroyd, 2012;Foo et al, 2017;Rhodes et al, 2003). Using perceptual ratings to assess physical characteristics of faces in this way may be somewhat problematic, since such ratings can be influenced by factors other than the physical characteristic researchers wish to assess (see, e.g., Bartlome & Lee, 2023;Dong et al, 2023;Scott et al, 2010). However, evidence that this issue necessarily has a material effect on the conclusions made from studies employing both approaches (i.e., studies that assessed face shape using both perceptual ratings and objective measures and analysed these two types of assessment separately) is somewhat mixed.…”