Women’s Preferences for Men’s Facial Masculinity: Trade-Off Accounts Revisited

Abstract

Studies on mate preferences have demonstrated that women's perception of male attractiveness is sensitive to men's facial masculinity, and that women's preferences for facial masculinity are subject to individual differences, such as own condition. These individual differences have been linked to potential tradeoffs that women face given the hypothesized benefits and costs that masculinity may cue in a potential partner. Whereas most studies based conclusions regarding such trade-offs on shifts in mean preferences for a feminized vs. masculinized face shape, here we directly investigated attractiveness as a function of different levels of masculinity. Using computer-graphic methods, we manipulated the facial masculinity of men's 3D faces to vary between extremely feminine and hypermasculine, and assessed women's preferences for these different masculinity levels in the light of individual differences in self-rated attractiveness, financial worries, pathogen disgust sensitivity, self-reported health and relationship status. Our findings show that some individual differences shift preferences towards a generally lower or higher masculinity level, whereas others affect the tolerance to low vs. high levels of masculinity. We suggest that the use of preference curves allows for a more comprehensive investigation of how and why women's preferences for masculinity may shift under different contexts.

A multivariate analysis of women's mating strategies and sexual selection on men's facial morphology

“…Women's preferences were higher for slightly masculine and highly masculine faces than faces with lower masculinity, especially when judging long-term rather than short-term sexual attractiveness. While this pattern is the opposite to that reported in some of the past literature on women's facial masculinity preferences [61], preferences peaked at intermediate levels of masculinity (unmanipulated and +30%) rather than the most masculine faces, supporting previous research that also used stimuli in which masculinity varied incrementally [125]. This level of masculinity may reflect an optimal combination of masculine and feminine features that enhance aesthetic facial attractiveness in men [25,26].…”

A new data-driven mathematical model dissociates attractiveness from sexual dimorphism of human faces

“…This might be due to the higher correlation between attractiveness and sexual dimorphism rating scores for female faces (ρ = −0.70) than male faces (ρ = −0.37). It is likely that the facial features driving both attractiveness and sexual dimorphism were left out by face vector orthogonalisation more largely for female faces than male faces, thereby providing smaller changes in the ratings for female faces 15 .…”

Masculinity and the mechanisms of human self-domestication

“…Each is likely to have varied over deep-time in response to differing socioecological contexts, and stages of human physical, cognitive, and social evolution. Increased reliance on social learning and a cooperative sociocultural niche [4][5][6][7][8] Group ostracism or execution of aggressive individuals [9][10][11][12] Group collaboration in inter-group hostilities 13,14 Negative Direct and physical male-male contest competition 15,16 Female selection in favour of masculine 'good genes' 17,18 Notes: 1 (Hrdy, 2009); 2 (Cieri et al, 2014); 3 (Kruger, 2006);4 (Cieri et al, 2014;Ellis, 2016;Hare, 2017;Sterelny, 2011Sterelny, , 2018; 5 (Ellis, 2016); 6 (Hare, 2017); 7 (Sterelny, 2011); 8 (Sterelny, 2018); 9 (Boehm, 2014); 10 (Wrangham, 2018); 11 (Wrangham, 2019a); 12 (Wrangham, 2019b); 13 (Alexander, 1990); 14 (Wrangham & Glowacki, 2012); 15 (Carrier & Morgan, 2015); 16 (Hill et al, 2017); 17 (Holzleitner & Perrett, 2017); 18 (Marcinkowska et al, 2019).…”