Perceptions of Human Attractiveness Comprising Face and Voice Cues

Abstract

In human mate choice, sexually dimorphic faces and voices comprise hormone-mediated cues that purportedly develop as an indicator of mate quality or the ability to compete with samesex rivals. If preferences for faces communicate the same biologically relevant information as do voices, then ratings of these cues should correlate. Sixty participants (30 male and 30 female) rated a series of opposite-sex faces, voices, and faces together with voices for attractiveness in a repeated measures computer-based experiment. The effects of face and voice attractiveness on face-voice compound stimuli were analyzed using a multilevel model.Faces contributed proportionally more than voices to ratings of face-voice compound attractiveness. Faces and voices positively and independently contributed to the attractiveness of male compound stimuli although there was no significant correlation between their rated attractiveness. A positive interaction and correlation between attractiveness was shown for faces and voices in relation to the attractiveness of female compound stimuli. Rather than providing a better estimate of a single characteristic, male faces and voices may instead communicate independent information that, in turn, provides a female with a better assessment of overall mate quality. Conversely, female faces and voices together provide males with a more accurate assessment of a single dimension of mate quality.

Forensic voice discrimination by lay listeners: The effect of speech type and background noise on performance

“…Voice discrimination accuracy was analysed using multilevel logistic regression (lme4 package in R: Bates, Maechler, Bolker, & Walker, ) in order that both participants and stimuli could be treated as random effects. The advantages of multilevel modelling over traditional analysis of variance are widely reported (Baguley, ; Clark, ; Judd, Westfall, & Kenny, ; Smith, Dunn, Baguley, & Stacey, ; Wells, Baguley, Sergeant, & Dunn, ). We used the same method of analysis as Smith et al (), comparing four nested models, fitted using restricted maximum likelihood.…”

A cross-cultural study of sex-typicality and averageness: Correlation between frontal and lateral measures of human faces

“…We propose that these sex differences between women and men may reflect differences in the information conveyed by male and female faces. Previous studies of multimodal signalling show that vocal and facial attractiveness are often correlated in women (Feinberg et al, 2005; Penton-Voak et al, 2001), while in men the evidence is more ambiguous (Lander, 2008; Oguchi & Kikuchi, 1997; Saxton, Burriss, Murray, Rowland, & Roberts, 2009; Saxton, Caryl, & Roberts, 2006; Valentová, Roberts, & Havlícek, 2013; Wells, Baguley, Sergeant, & Dunn, 2013). Faces are not multimodal but unimodal entities which depend solely on visual perception.…”

The neurobiology and evolutionary foundations of the perception of beauty

“…As the sexually dimorphic features in human face are partly hormone-controlled signs, they may be indicators of their reproductive quality or their ability to compete with same-sex competitors (78). Even though it has been demonstrated many times in animals that masculine traits increase procreative power and success, this remains a matter of debate where human beings are concerned (79)(80)(81).…”