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1.
Arch Sex Behav ; 53(8): 3255-3265, 2024 Aug.
Artigo em Inglês | MEDLINE | ID: mdl-38944665

RESUMO

Sex-typicality displayed as sexual dimorphism of the human face is a key feature enabling sex recognition. It is also believed to be a cue for perceiving biological quality and it plays an important role in the perception of attractiveness. Sexual dimorphism of human faces has two main components: sexual shape dimorphism of various facial features and sexual color dimorphism, generally manifested as dimorphism of skin luminance, where men tend to be darker than women. However, very little is known about the mutual relationship of these two facets. We explored the interconnection between the dimorphism of face shape and dimorphism of face color in three visually distinct populations (Cameroonian, Czech, and Vietnamese). Our results indicated that populations which showed a significant dimorphism in skin luminance (Cameroon, Vietnam) had low levels of sexual shape dimorphism, while a population with higher levels of sexual shape dimorphism (Czech Republic) did not exhibit a significant dimorphism of skin luminance. These findings suggest a possible compensatory mechanism between various domains of sexual dimorphism in populations differing in the levels of shape and color dimorphism.


Assuntos
Face , Caracteres Sexuais , Pigmentação da Pele , Humanos , Feminino , Masculino , Face/anatomia & histologia , República Tcheca , Vietnã , Adulto
2.
Am J Hum Biol ; 36(4): e24008, 2024 Apr.
Artigo em Inglês | MEDLINE | ID: mdl-37897188

RESUMO

OBJECTIVES: Previous research revealed that in some African populations, food-production strategies are associated with facial shape. Nomadic pastoralists living in the African Sahel/Savannah belt have a different facial morphology than their sedentary neighbors. We investigated whether the lifestyle associated with a subsistence pattern has an impact on sexual dimorphism in the facial structure. METHODS: We employed several methods from geometric morphometrics and demonstrated such effect in four ethnically distinct populations that share the same geographic space. RESULTS: We show that the facial traits which correlate with a subsistence strategy are systematically associated with levels of facial sex-typicality. In particular, we found that faces with more pronounced pastoralist features have on average more masculine facial traits and that this effect is more pronounced in men than in women. CONCLUSIONS: In general, though, the magnitude of overall facial dimorphism does not differ between pastoralists and farmers. Pastoralists (in contrast to farmers) tend to have a more masculine facial morphology but facial differences between the sexes are in both groups the same.


Assuntos
Face , Caracteres Sexuais , Feminino , Humanos , Masculino , População Negra , DNA Mitocondrial , Fenótipo , Face/anatomia & histologia
3.
Arch Sex Behav ; 50(8): 3687-3694, 2021 11.
Artigo em Inglês | MEDLINE | ID: mdl-34427845

RESUMO

Apart from morphological differences, male and female faces also vary in color, especially in overall lightness and facial contrast, i.e., the contrast between the luminance and color of facial features (eyes, lips, or brows) and luminance and color of the surrounding skin. In many populations, it has been demonstrated that women tend to be lighter than men. Other differences were found in facial contrast: women have a higher contrast between the lightness of their eyes and lips and the surrounding skin. Manipulation of this contrast in an artificial genderless face can result in a masculine or feminine appearance. So far, however, this phenomenon has been studied mostly in Euro-American and East Asian samples, with little evidence from populations with darker facial tone. We explored natural sexual dimorphism in both facial contrast and lightness in an African, namely Cameroonian, sample, and compared it with results for a European, in particular Czech, population. Our findings showed that sexual differences in luminance contrast of eyes and brows were in both studied populations similar but in the Cameroonian sample, significant difference in lips contrast was absent. These results indicate that sex differences in facial contrast are a side effect of the sex differences in skin color and can be used as a proxy for skin color perception.


Assuntos
Face , Caracteres Sexuais , África Central , População Negra , Face/diagnóstico por imagem , Feminino , Humanos , Masculino , Pigmentação da Pele
4.
Am J Phys Anthropol ; 169(4): 632-645, 2019 08.
Artigo em Inglês | MEDLINE | ID: mdl-31032542

RESUMO

OBJECTIVES: The Sahel/Savannah belt is a region where two sympatric human subsistence strategies-nomadic pastoralism and sedentary farming-have been coexisting for millennia. While earlier studies focused on estimating population differentiation and genetic structure of this ecologically remarkable region's inhabitants, less effort has been expended on understanding the morphological variation among local populations. MATERIALS AND METHODS: To fill this gap, we used geometric morphometrics to analyze the facial features of three groups of pastoralists and three groups of sedentary farmers belonging to three language families (Niger-Congo, Nilo-Saharan, and Afro-Asiatic) whose mitochondrial DNA sequences have been published previously. RESULTS: Our results show that pastoralists differ from farmers with several facial features. We also found that individuals who bear maternally inherited haplotypes of Eurasian ancestry do not significantly morphologically differ from individuals whose maternal ancestry is sub-Saharan. CONCLUSIONS: Our study follows up and builds upon population genetic and phylogeographic studies of Eurasian haplogroups in the Fulani pastoralists and sub-Saharan haplogroups in the Arab pastoralists, as well as studies on the spread of lactase persistence mutations and other genetic markers. Our results suggest that recent gene flows across the Sahel/Savannah belt were not strong enough to erase a genetic structure established by Paleolithic foragers and further shaped by the adoption of agropastoral food-producing strategies.


Assuntos
População Negra , Dieta/estatística & dados numéricos , Face/anatomia & histologia , Fazendeiros/estatística & dados numéricos , Migrantes/estatística & dados numéricos , Adulto , África Subsaariana , África do Norte , Antropologia Física , Árabes/genética , Árabes/estatística & dados numéricos , População Negra/genética , População Negra/estatística & dados numéricos , DNA Mitocondrial/genética , Feminino , Genética Populacional , Haplótipos/genética , Humanos , Masculino , População Branca/genética , População Branca/estatística & dados numéricos , Adulto Jovem
5.
Am J Hum Biol ; 30(5): e23147, 2018 09.
Artigo em Inglês | MEDLINE | ID: mdl-30328226

RESUMO

OBJECTIVES: Facial averageness and sexual dimorphism are extensively studied attractiveness markers, which are viewed as possible indicators of biological quality. Both are complex morphological traits, and both can be easily assessed from frontal and lateral projection of a human face. Interestingly, examination of mutual relations between the frontal and lateral dimensions of these markers has so far received little attention in published research. METHODS: In our cross-cultural study, we used geometric morphometric data from male and female faces from Brazil, Cameroon, Colombia, and the Czech Republic, and analyzed correlations between frontal and lateral measurements of averageness and degree of maleness/femaleness, that is, the individual variation in features that characterize sexual dimorphism. We also analyzed whether the association between frontal and lateral measurements differed in men and women. RESULTS: In general, our results showed a moderate correlation in sexually dimorphic features between lateral and frontal facial configuration in both sexes, while frontal and lateral facial averageness was moderately correlated only in women. This pattern was less consistent when individual populations were analyzed separately. CONCLUSIONS: We suggest that, in general, the weak association between lateral and frontal facial configurations may be the result of selection pressures in favor of individual identity signals. Moreover, especially in women, the frontal and lateral dimension of a given facial attractiveness marker may provide similar information about the qualities of the individual. The absence of a significant correlation in male facial averageness suggests that frontal and lateral averageness convey different information about an individual.


Assuntos
Cefalometria , Comparação Transcultural , Face/anatomia & histologia , Caracteres Sexuais , Adolescente , Adulto , Brasil , Camarões , Colômbia , República Tcheca , Feminino , Humanos , Masculino , Pessoa de Meia-Idade , Adulto Jovem
6.
Aggress Behav ; 41(4): 331-4, 2015.
Artigo em Inglês | MEDLINE | ID: mdl-25236530

RESUMO

Recent research has reported an association between facial width-to-height ratio (fWHR) and both fighting performance and judgments of formidability in a sample of mixed martial arts (MMA) combatants. The results provide evidence of fWHR being associated with sporting performance and aggression in men. However, it has been argued that the effect of fWHR might be a by-product of associations between body size and behavioral measures. Here we tested whether fWHR is associated with perceived aggressiveness, fighting ability and success in physical confrontation, while controlling for body size, also in a sample of MMA fighters. We found that perceived fighting ability was predicted by weight but not by fWHR. In contrast, both fWHR and body weight independently predicted perceived aggressiveness. Furthermore, we found positive associations between fWHR and fighting performance which appear to be independent of body size. Our findings provide further support for the proposal that fWHR is associated with fighting ability and perceived aggression, and that these effects are independent of body size. Therefore, fWHR might be considered as a viable and reliable marker for inference of success in male intra-sexual competition.


Assuntos
Agressão/fisiologia , Face/anatomia & histologia , Reconhecimento Facial/fisiologia , Artes Marciais/fisiologia , Percepção Social , Feminino , Humanos , Masculino
7.
Naturwissenschaften ; 101(12): 1055-63, 2014 Dec.
Artigo em Inglês | MEDLINE | ID: mdl-25280559

RESUMO

The males of the Brimstone butterfly (Gonepteryx rhamni) have ultraviolet pattern on the dorsal surfaces of their wings. Using geometric morphometrics, we have analysed correlations between environmental variables (climate, productivity) and shape variability of the ultraviolet pattern and the forewing in 110 male specimens of G. rhamni collected in the Palaearctic zone. To start with, we subjected the environmental variables to principal component analysis (PCA). The first PCA axis (precipitation, temperature, latitude) significantly correlated with shape variation of the ultraviolet patterns across the Palaearctic. Additionally, we have performed two-block partial least squares (PLS) analysis to assess co-variation between intraspecific shape variation and the variation of 11 environmental variables. The first PLS axis explained 93% of variability and represented the effect of precipitation, temperature and latitude. Along this axis, we observed a systematic increase in the relative area of ultraviolet colouration with increasing temperature and precipitation and decreasing latitude. We conclude that the shape variation of ultraviolet patterns on the forewings of male Brimstones is correlated with large-scale environmental factors.


Assuntos
Borboletas/fisiologia , Meio Ambiente , Pigmentação/fisiologia , Raios Ultravioleta , Animais , Masculino , Asas de Animais/fisiologia
8.
Arch Sex Behav ; 43(2): 353-61, 2014 Feb.
Artigo em Inglês | MEDLINE | ID: mdl-24132775

RESUMO

Previous studies have shown that homosexual men differ from heterosexual men in several somatic traits and lay people accurately attribute sexual orientation based on facial images. Thus, we may predict that morphological differences between faces of homosexual and heterosexual individuals can cue to sexual orientation. The main aim of this study was to test for possible differences in facial shape between heterosexual and homosexual men. Further, we tested whether self-reported sexual orientation correlated with sexual orientation and masculinity-femininity attributed from facial images by independent raters. In Study 1, we used geometric morphometrics to test for differences in facial shape between homosexual and heterosexual men. The analysis revealed significant shape differences in faces of heterosexual and homosexual men. Homosexual men showed relatively wider and shorter faces, smaller and shorter noses, and rather massive and more rounded jaws, resulting in a mosaic of both feminine and masculine features. In Study 2, we tested the accuracy of sexual orientation judgment from standardized facial photos which were assessed by 80 independent raters. Binary logistic regression showed no effect of attributed sexual orientation on self-reported sexual orientation. However, homosexual men were rated as more masculine than heterosexual men, which may explain the misjudgment of sexual orientation. Thus, our results showed that differences in facial morphology of homosexual and heterosexual men do not simply mirror variation in femininity, and the stereotypic association of feminine looking men as homosexual may confound judgments of sexual orientation.


Assuntos
Face , Ossos Faciais/anatomia & histologia , Heterossexualidade , Homossexualidade Masculina , Caracteres Sexuais , Adulto , Feminino , Feminilidade , Humanos , Julgamento , Masculino , Masculinidade , Comportamento Sexual
9.
Psychol Sci ; 24(9): 1664-72, 2013 Sep.
Artigo em Inglês | MEDLINE | ID: mdl-23818656

RESUMO

Accurate assessment of competitive ability is a critical component of contest behavior in animals, and it could be just as important in human competition, particularly in human ancestral populations. Here, we tested the role that facial perception plays in this assessment by investigating the association between both perceived aggressiveness and perceived fighting ability in fighters' faces and their actual fighting success. Perceived aggressiveness was positively associated with the proportion of fights won, after we controlled for the effect of weight, which also independently predicted perceived aggression. In contrast, perception of fighting ability was confounded by weight, and an association between perceived fighting ability and actual fighting success was restricted to heavyweight fighters. Shape regressions revealed that aggressive-looking faces are generally wider and have a broader chin, more prominent eyebrows, and a larger nose than less aggressive-looking faces. Our results indicate that perception of aggressiveness and fighting ability might cue different aspects of success in male-male physical confrontation.


Assuntos
Agressão/psicologia , Desempenho Atlético/psicologia , Comportamento Competitivo/fisiologia , Expressão Facial , Artes Marciais/psicologia , Percepção Social , Adulto , Sinais (Psicologia) , Feminino , Humanos , Masculino
10.
Sci Rep ; 13(1): 13320, 2023 08 16.
Artigo em Inglês | MEDLINE | ID: mdl-37587194

RESUMO

Attractiveness is a proposed universal cue to overall biological quality. Nonetheless, local raters and raters of the same ethnicity may be more accurate in assessing the cues for attractiveness than distant and unfamiliar raters. Shared ethnicity and shared environment may both affect rating accuracy: our aim was to compare their relative influence. Therefore, we photographed young Vietnamese participants (N = 93, 33 women) from Hanoi, Vietnam. The photographs were rated by Czechs, Asian Vietnamese, and Czech Vietnamese (raters of Vietnamese origin who lived in Czechia for all or most of their life). Using geometric morphometrics, we measured facial shape cues to biological quality: averageness, asymmetry, and sexual dimorphism. We expected that Vietnamese raters residing in Czechia and Vietnam would agree on perceived attractiveness and use shape-related facial cues to biological quality better than Czech European raters, who are less familiar with East Asians. Surprisingly, mixed-effect models and post hoc comparisons identified no major cross-group differences in attributed attractiveness and path analyses revealed that the three groups based their rating on shape-related characteristics in a similar way. However, despite the considerable cross-cultural agreement regarding perceived attractiveness, Czech European raters associated attractiveness with facial shape averageness significantly more than Vietnamese raters.


Assuntos
Beleza , Caracteres Sexuais , População do Sudeste Asiático , Feminino , Humanos , Percepção , Vietnã
11.
Evol Psychol ; 21(3): 14747049231186119, 2023.
Artigo em Inglês | MEDLINE | ID: mdl-37428141

RESUMO

Although decades of research have identified facial features relating to people's evaluations of faces, specific features have largely been examined in isolation from each other. Recent work shows that considering the relative importance of these features in face evaluations is important to test theoretical assumptions of impression formation. Here, we examined how two facial features of evolutionary interest, facial attractiveness and facial-width-to-height ratio (FWHR), relate to evaluations of faces across two cultures. Because face evaluations are typically directly measured via self-reports, we also examined whether these features exert differential effects on both direct and indirect face evaluations. Evaluations of standardized photos naturally varying in facial attractiveness and FWHR were collected using the Affect Misattribution Procedure in the United States and Turkey. When their relative contributions were considered in the same model, facial attractiveness, but not FWHR, related to face evaluations across cultures. This positive attractiveness effect was stronger for direct versus indirect evaluations across cultures. These findings highlight the importance of considering the relative contributions of facial features to evaluations across cultures and suggest a culturally invariant role of attractiveness when intentionally evaluating faces.


Assuntos
Atitude , Face , Humanos , Evolução Biológica , Beleza
12.
PLoS One ; 18(4): e0284079, 2023.
Artigo em Inglês | MEDLINE | ID: mdl-37023103

RESUMO

The link between human ocular morphology and attractiveness, especially in the context of its potential adaptive function, is an underexplored area of research. In our study, we examined the association between facial attractiveness and three sexually dimorphic measures of ocular morphology in White Europeans: the sclera size index, width-to-height ratio, and relative iris luminance. Sixty participants (30 women) assessed the attractiveness of the opposite-sex photographs of 50 men and 50 women. Our results show that in both men and women, none of the three measures was linked to the opposite sex ratings of facial attractiveness. We conclude that those ocular morphology measures may play a limited role in human mate preferences.


Assuntos
Beleza , População Europeia , Olho , Face , População Branca , Feminino , Humanos , Masculino , População Europeia/psicologia , Face/anatomia & histologia , Iris/anatomia & histologia , População Branca/psicologia , Olho/anatomia & histologia , Estética/psicologia , Fotografação , Pesos e Medidas Corporais/métodos , Pesos e Medidas Corporais/psicologia , Caracteres Sexuais , Fatores Sexuais
13.
Biosemiotics ; 15(1): 61-66, 2022.
Artigo em Inglês | MEDLINE | ID: mdl-35035606

RESUMO

The recent changes in COVID-19 symptoms suggest convergent evolution of respiratory diseases. This process is analogous to the emergence of animal mimetic complexes and complements previously identified types of mimicry. A novel pathogen might go unnoticed or insufficiently counteracted if it resembles a disease that the host already faced on multiple occasions, which creates a selective pressure towards a typical symptomic phonotype. In short, the reason why so many unrelated pathogens cause similar symptoms may correspond to the reasons that drove the evolution of the 'warning' wasp-like colouration in various insect species.

14.
Insects ; 13(3)2022 Feb 28.
Artigo em Inglês | MEDLINE | ID: mdl-35323542

RESUMO

Ultraviolet (UV) means 'beyond violet' (from Latin 'ultra', meaning 'beyond'), whereby violet is the colour with the highest frequencies in the 'visible' light spectrum. By 'visible' we mean human vision, but, in comparison to many other organisms, human visual perception is rather limited in terms of the wavelengths it can perceive. Still, this is why communication in the UV spectrum is often called hidden, although it most likely plays an important role in communicating various kinds of information among a wide variety of organisms. Since Silberglied's revolutionary Communication in the Ultraviolet, comprehensive studies on UV signals in a wide list of genera are lacking. This review investigates the significance of UV reflectance (and UV absorption)-a feature often neglected in intra- and interspecific communication studies-mainly in Lepidoptera. Although the text focuses on various butterfly families, links and connections to other animal groups, such as birds, are also discussed in the context of ecology and the evolution of species. The basic mechanisms of UV colouration and factors shaping the characteristics of UV patterns are also discussed in a broad context of lepidopteran communication.

15.
Sci Rep ; 12(1): 6821, 2022 04 26.
Artigo em Inglês | MEDLINE | ID: mdl-35474334

RESUMO

Biosocial impact of facial dominance and sex-typicality is well-evidenced in various human groups. It remains unclear, though, whether perceived sex-typicality and dominance can be consistently predicted from sexually dimorphic facial features across populations. Using a combination of multidimensional Bayesian approach and geometric morphometrics, we explored associations between perceived dominance, perceived sex-typicality, measured sexual shape dimorphism, and skin colour in a European and an African population. Unlike previous studies, we investigated the effect of facial variation due to shape separately from variation due to visual cues not related to shape in natural nonmanipulated stimuli. In men, perceived masculinity was associated with perceived dominance in both populations. In European women higher perceived femininity was, surprisingly, likewise positively associated with perceived dominance. Both shape and non-shape components participate in the constitution of facial sex-typicality and dominance. Skin colour predicted perceived sex-typicality in Africans but not in Europeans. Members of each population probably use different cues to assess sex-typicality and dominance. Using our methods, we found no universal sexually dimorphic scale predicting human perception of sex-typicality and dominance. Unidimensional understanding of sex-typicality thus seems problematic and should be applied with cautions when studying perceived sex-typicality and its correlates.


Assuntos
População Negra , Face , Teorema de Bayes , Feminino , Humanos , Masculino , Percepção , Comportamento Sexual
16.
Sci Rep ; 12(1): 18432, 2022 11 01.
Artigo em Inglês | MEDLINE | ID: mdl-36319732

RESUMO

Previous research has indicated that facial attractiveness may provide cues to the functioning of the immune system. Mating with individuals who have a more effective immune system could lead to a higher reproductive success. Our main aim was to test a possible association between immunoreactivity (stimulated by vaccination) and perceived facial attractiveness and healthiness. We experimentally activated the immune system of healthy men using vaccination against hepatitis A/B and meningococcus and measured levels of specific antibodies (markers of immune system reactivity) before and 30 days after the vaccination. Further, 1 day before the vaccination, we collected their facial photographs that were judged by females for attractiveness, healthiness, and facial skin patches for healthiness. In view of its proposed connection with the functioning of the immune system, we also measured skin colouration (both from the facial photographs and in vivo using a spectrophotometer) and we assessed its role in attractiveness and healthiness judgements. Moreover, we measured the levels of steroid hormones (testosterone and cortisol) and the percentage of adipose tissue, because both are known to have immunomodulatory properties and are related to perceived facial attractiveness and healthiness. We found no significant associations between antibody levels induced by vaccination and perceived facial attractiveness, facial healthiness, or skin healthiness. We also found no significant connections between steroid hormone levels, the amount of adipose tissue, rated characteristics, and antibody levels, except for a small negative effect of cortisol levels on perceived facial healthiness. Higher forehead redness was perceived as less attractive and less healthy and higher cheek patch redness was perceived as less healthy, but no significant association was found between antibody levels and facial colouration. Overall, our results suggest that perceived facial attractiveness, healthiness, and skin patch healthiness provide limited cues to immunoreactivity, and perceived characteristics seem to be related only to cortisol levels and facial colouration.


Assuntos
Beleza , Hidrocortisona , Feminino , Humanos , Masculino , Face , Julgamento , Nível de Saúde
17.
Interface Focus ; 11(3): 20200052, 2021 Jun 06.
Artigo em Inglês | MEDLINE | ID: mdl-34055303

RESUMO

We provide a formal account of an interface that bridges two different levels of dynamic processes manifested by mimicry: prey-prey interactions and predators' perception. Mimicry is a coevolutionary process between an animate selective agent and at least two similar organisms selected by agent's perception-driven actions. Attractor field model explains perceived similarity of forms by noting that in both human and animal cognition, morphologically intermediate forms are more likely to be perceived as belonging to rare rather than abundant forms. We formalize this model in terms of predators' perception space deformation using numerical simulations and argue that the probability of confusion between similar species creates pressure on the perception space, which in turn leads to inflation of regions of perception space with high density of species representations. Such inflation causes increased discrimination between species by a predator, which implies that adaptive mimicry could initially emerge more easily among atypical species because they do not need the same level of similarity to the model. We provide a theoretical instrument to conceptualize interdependence between objective measurable matrices and perceived matrices of the same external reality. We believe that our framework leads to a more precise understanding of the evolution of mimicry.

18.
Sci Rep ; 11(1): 550, 2021 01 12.
Artigo em Inglês | MEDLINE | ID: mdl-33436663

RESUMO

It has been demonstrated that sociocultural environment has a significant impact on human behavior. This contribution focuses on differences in the perception of attractiveness of European (Czech) faces as rated by Czechs of European origin, Vietnamese persons living in the Czech Republic and Vietnamese who permanently reside in Vietnam. We investigated whether attractiveness judgments and preferences for facial sex-typicality and averageness in Vietnamese who grew up and live in the Czech Republic are closer to the judgements and preferences of Czech Europeans or to those of Vietnamese born and residing in Vietnam. We examined the relative contribution of sexual shape dimorphism and averageness to the perception of facial attractiveness across all three groups of raters. Czech Europeans, Czech Vietnamese, and Asian Vietnamese raters of both sexes rated facial portraits of 100 Czech European participants (50 women and 50 men, standardized, non-manipulated) for attractiveness. Taking Czech European ratings as a standard for Czech facial attractiveness, we showed that Czech Vietnamese assessments of attractiveness were closer to this standard than assessments by the Asian Vietnamese. Among all groups of raters, facial averageness positively correlated with perceived attractiveness, which is consistent with the "average is attractive" hypothesis. A marginal impact of sexual shape dimorphism on attractiveness rating was found only in Czech European male raters: neither Czech Vietnamese nor Asian Vietnamese raters of either sex utilized traits associated with sexual shape dimorphism as a cue of attractiveness. We thus conclude that Vietnamese people permanently living in the Czech Republic converge with Czechs of Czech origin in perceptions of facial attractiveness and that this population adopted some but not all Czech standards of beauty.


Assuntos
Povo Asiático/psicologia , Beleza , Diversidade Cultural , Face/fisiologia , Reconhecimento Facial/fisiologia , Julgamento/fisiologia , Meio Social , População Branca/psicologia , Adulto , República Tcheca/etnologia , Feminino , Humanos , Masculino , Caracteres Sexuais , Fatores Sexuais , Vietnã/etnologia , Adulto Jovem
19.
Evol Hum Sci ; 3: e48, 2021.
Artigo em Inglês | MEDLINE | ID: mdl-37588556

RESUMO

The present research focused on how environmental harshness may affect heterosexual women's preferences of potential male mates' facial characteristics, namely masculinity-femininity. The evidence on this issue is mixed and mostly from Western samples. We aimed to provide causal evidence using a sample of Turkish women and Turkish male faces. A video-based manipulation was developed to heighten environmental harshness perceptions. In the main experiment, participants were primed with resource scarcity, pathogen prevalence or neither (control). They then saw masculinised vs. feminised versions of the same faces and indicated the face that they would prefer for a long-term relationship and separately rated the faces on various dimensions. In general, masculinised faces were perceived as slightly more attractive, slightly healthier and much more formidable. A multilevel Bayesian model showed that pathogen prevalence lowered the preference for masculinised faces while resource scarcity weakly elevated it. The overall drop in attractiveness ratings in cases of high perceived pathogen prevalence, one of the strongest effects we observed, suggests that during epidemics, the formation of new relationships is not a favourable strategy. Implications for evolutionary theories of mate preference are discussed.

20.
Evol Hum Sci ; 3: e38, 2021.
Artigo em Inglês | MEDLINE | ID: mdl-37588529

RESUMO

Despite intensive research, evolutionary psychology has not yet reached a consensus regarding the association between sexual dimorphism and attractiveness. This study examines associations between perceived and morphological facial sexual dimorphism and perceived attractiveness in samples from five distant countries (Cameroon, Colombia, Czechia, Iran and Turkey). We also examined possible moderating effects of skin lightness, averageness, age, body mass and facial width. Our results suggest that in all samples, women's perceived femininity was positively related to their perceived attractiveness. Women found perceived masculinity in men attractive only in Czechia and Colombia, two distant populations. The association between perceived sexual dimorphism and attractiveness is thus potentially universal only for women. Across populations, morphological sexual dimorphism and averageness are not universally associated with either perceived facial sexual dimorphism or attractiveness. With our exploratory approach, results highlight the need for control of which measure of sexual dimorphism is used (perceived or measured) because they affect perceived attractiveness differently. Morphological averageness and sexual dimorphism are not good predictors of perceived attractiveness. It is noted that future studies should use samples from multiple populations to allow for identification of specific effects of local environmental and socioeconomic conditions on preferred traits in unmanipulated local facial stimuli.

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