Facial masculinity is related to perceived age but not perceived health

Abstract

Publisher's copyright statement:Additional information: Use policyThe full-text may be used and/or reproduced, and given to third parties in any format or medium, without prior permission or charge, for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-prot purposes provided that:• a full bibliographic reference is made to the original source • a link is made to the metadata record in DRO • the full-text is not changed in any way The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders.Please consult the full DRO policy for further details. ABSTRACTVariation in women's preferences for male facial masculinity may reflect variation in attraction to immunocompetence or to maturity. This paper reports two studies on a) the inter-relationships between women's preferences for masculinity, apparent health and age in male faces and b) the extent to which manipulating each of these characteristics affects women's attributions of the remaining characteristics.Both studies were carried out with a large sample of the general public (Studies 1a and 2a) and independently in a lab environment with smaller undergraduate samples (Studies 1b and 2b). In both samples, masculinity and age preferences were positively related and masculinity preferences were not associated with preferences for apparent health. There was also a positive relationship between perceived age and perceived masculinity in both samples, but evidence for a link between perceptions of masculinity and health was equivocal. Collectively these findings suggest that variation in women's preferences for masculine proportions in male faces reflect variation in attraction to male age and do not support a strict immunocompetence explanation of preferences for facial masculinity.

Partner characteristics associated with masculinity, health and maturity in male faces

“…As found by Boothroyd et al (2005), masculinized faces were perceived as significantly more masculine looking than feminized faces (t 10 =2. 44, p<0.05, d=1.54); "healthy" faces appeared more healthy than "unhealthy" faces (t 10 =4.…”

“…These data therefore lend more weight to the hypothesis suggested by Boothroyd et al (2005), that the advantages of masculinity may best be viewed in the context of dominance as a "sexy son"…”

“…Perrett et al, 1998;Penton-Voak et al, 1999;Thornhill & Gangestad, 1999). Boothroyd et al (2005) found that preferences for masculinity in male faces constructed using an identical methodology to that used in previous masculinity studies (Perrett et al, 1998;Penton-Voak et al, 1999;Little, Burt, Penton-Voak & Perrett, 2001), did not relate to preferences for apparent facial health. Similarly, Rhodes, Chan, Zebrowitz & Simmons (2003) found that although perceptions of masculinity and health related to each other in black and white male facial photographs, the relationship was independent of how attractive observers found the faces.…”

“…Stimulus pairs were presented side by side in a java applet, with a 0-7 scale underneath (see Boothroyd et al, 2005, for further details of applet). Participants were asked to select which face was "more [of the trait] and how much more so" by clicking on a point on the scale (where 0=strong choice for face on the left, 7=strong choice for face on the right and 3.5 is the theoretical indifference point).…”

“…Study 1 used two stimulus sets previously developed by Boothroyd et al (2005); employment of two stimulus sets allows replication across independent images. Set A faces consisted of 3 male composite faces (each composite was created from between 12 and 66 facial photographs; mean age of composites being 21.2 to 22.0 years) to which a series of "transformations" were applied (Rowland & Perrett, 1995).…”