Abstract
A large literature proposes that preferences for exaggerated sex typicality in human faces (masculinity/femininity) reflect a long evolutionary history of sexual and social selection. This proposal implies that dimorphism was important to judgments of attractiveness and personality in ancestral environments. It is difficult to evaluate, however, because most available data come from large-scale, industrialized, urban populations. Here, we report the results for 12 populations with very diverse levels of economic development. Surprisingly, preferences for exaggerated sex-specific traits are only found in the novel, highly developed environments. Similarly, perceptions that masculine males look aggressive increase strongly with development and, specifically, urbanization. These data challenge the hypothesis that facial dimorphism was an important ancestral signal of heritable mate value. One possibility is that highly developed environments provide novel opportunities to discern relationships between facial traits and behavior by exposing individuals to large numbers of unfamiliar faces, revealing patterns too subtle to detect with smaller samples.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 14388-93 |
Number of pages | 6 |
Journal | Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America |
Volume | 111 |
Issue number | 40 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 7 Oct 2014 |
Research Groups and Themes
- Cognitive Science
- Social Cognition
Keywords
- Adult
- Beauty
- Biological Evolution
- Choice Behavior
- Cross-Cultural Comparison
- Face
- Female
- Humans
- Least-Squares Analysis
- Male
- Masculinity
- Personality
- Regression Analysis
- Visual Perception
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Dive into the research topics of 'Human preferences for sexually dimorphic faces may be evolutionarily novel'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.Profiles
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Professor Innes C Cuthill
- Cabot Institute for the Environment
- Bristol Vision Institute
- Bristol Neuroscience
- School of Biological Sciences - Professor of Behavioural Ecology
- Evolutionary Biology
- Animal Behaviour and Sensory Biology
Person: Academic , Member
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Professor Ian S Penton-Voak
- School of Psychological Science - Professor of Evolutionary Psychology
- Bristol Population Health Science Institute
- Bristol Neuroscience
Person: Academic , Member