Re-evaluating the role of partnership-related perceptions in women’s preferences for men with masculine face shapes

Abstract

Many studies have reported that women show stronger preferences for male faces with masculine shapes when assessing men’s attractiveness for short-term than long-term relationships. However, these studies used face stimuli in which shape characteristics were experimentally manipulated and presented in forced-choice testing paradigms. Because of recent work suggesting results obtained using this approach do not necessarily occur when more ecologically valid methods are employed, we tested for this putative effect of relationship context on masculinity preferences when natural (i.e., unmanipulated) male face images were rated for attractiveness and face-shape masculinity was objectively assessed from the images. In two studies, one in which relationship context was a between-subjects factor and one in which relationship context was a within-subjects factor, we saw no compelling evidence that relationship context moderated women’s preferences for masculine face shapes. These null results suggest that the hypothesised effect of relationship context is, at best, very small when a study design with greater ecological validity than those employed in previous work is used. Furthermore, they add to a growing body of work raising concerns about the appropriateness of experimentally manipulated face stimuli and forced-choice paradigms for investigating the role of facial characteristics in mate preferences. This research was supported by ESRC grant ES/X000249/1 awarded to BCJ and a University of Strathclyde Global Research Award to JD. For the purpose of Open Access, the authors have applied a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) to any Author Accepted Manuscript (AAM) version arising from this submission.