Sexual selection and the role of variation in women's mate preference for masculine traits

Abstract

Indirect (genetic) benefits to offspring have been proposed as a mechanism for why certain traits are preferred in a partner; however, whether this mechanism plays a role in humans is currently debated. In this thesis, I aim to address whether women's preference for masculinity is due to indirect benefits, which according to the predominant theory is preferred by women for heritable benefits in immune functioning of offspring.Before I present the empirical findings of this thesis, I first give an overview of the evolutionary approach to human mating and describe sexual selection mechanisms that may drive preference for a trait and review the literature on human mate preference for sexual dimorphism (i.e., the masculinity of males and the femininity of females). The thesis is then separated into two parts:In Part 1, I present three studies that investigate the relationship between contextual factors and mate preferences. In Study 1, we tested whether individual pathogen avoidance and resource scarcity predicted revealed mate preferences for facial attractiveness, facial sexual dimorphism, and perceived intelligence based on 689 participants' attractiveness ratings of manipulated online dating profiles. Supporting our predictions, pathogen disgust positively predicted men and women's preferences for facial attractiveness and men's preference for facial femininity, whereas women's resource scarcity negatively predicted their preference for facial masculinity. Contrary to previous results, pathogen disgust was not associated with women's facial masculinity preferences, and unexpectedly, neither pathogen disgust nor resource scarcity predicted preference for greater perceived intelligence. In Study 2, we investigated the association between women's pathogen disgust and facial masculinity preferences further by extending previous research that is solely based on young adult participants and targets, using forced-choice preference measures, begging the question as to whether the findings are generalisable to other adult age groups or other preference measures. We conducted three experiments assessing facial masculinity preferences of women of a iii wider age range rating target faces of a wider age range than previously investigated. In Experiment 1 and 2, 447 and 433 women respectively made forced choices between two identical faces that were manipulated on masculinity/femininity. In Experiment 1, face stimuli were manipulated on sexual dimorphism using age-matched templates, while in Experiment 2 young face stimuli were manipulated with older templates and older face stimuli were manipulated using young templates.In Experiment 3, the facial masculinity preferences of 386 women were revealed through their attractiveness ratings of natural (unmanipulated) faces. For Experiment 1, no association was found between women's pathogen disgust and masculinity preference, but when limiting the sample to younger women rating younger faces we replicated previous findings of significant association between pathogen disgu...