Cross-cultural effects of color, but not morphological masculinity, on perceived attractiveness of men's faces

Stephen, Ian D.; Scott, Isabel M.; Coetzee, Vinet; Pound, Nicholas; Perrett, David I.; Penton-Voak, Ian S.

doi:10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2011.10.003

Cited by 106 publications

(159 citation statements)

References 60 publications

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“…Although the effect of colour was weaker than that of mouth curvature, faces with more yellow coloration were judged as looking healthier. This is consistent with prior work demonstrating a reliable preference for yellowness in faces [38,45,47,61], but additionally illustrates that yellowness acts independently of adiposity and mouth curvature as a cue to health in unaltered facial images. Our findings in 2D faces highlight the influence of colour and mouth curvatures (which is likely to be perceived as subtle expression) in judgements of health in a sample of young Caucasian adults.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 91%

Perception of health from facial cues

Henderson

Holzleitner

Talamas

et al. 2016

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B

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Impressions of health are integral to social interactions, yet poorly understood. A review of the literature reveals multiple facial characteristics that potentially act as cues to health judgements. The cues vary in their stability across time: structural shape cues including symmetry and sexual dimorphism alter slowly across the lifespan and have been found to have weak links to actual health, but show inconsistent effects on perceived health. Facial adiposity changes over a medium time course and is associated with both perceived and actual health. Skin colour alters over a short time and has strong effects on perceived health, yet links to health outcomes have barely been evaluated. Reviewing suggested an additional influence of demeanour as a perceptual cue to health. We, therefore, investigated the association of health judgements with multiple facial cues measured objectively from two-dimensional and three-dimensional facial images. We found evidence for independent contributions of face shape and skin colour cues to perceived health. Our empirical findings: (i) reinforce the role of skin yellowness; (ii) demonstrate the utility of global face shape measures of adiposity; and (iii) emphasize the role of affect in facial images with nominally neutral expression in impressions of health.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 91%

Perception of health from facial cues

Henderson

Holzleitner

Talamas

et al. 2016

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B

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“…In addition to recent work focusing on comparing individuals from different populations (e.g., Little et al 2007;Stephen et al 2012;Tovée et al 2006), there has been a surge in work testing hypotheses via cross-cultural correlations. These studies have several merits (e.g., moving beyond unrepresentative, Western populations; Henrich et al 2010), but they also have several limitations.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

What Can Cross-Cultural Correlations Teach Us about Human Nature?

Pollet

Tybur

Frankenhuis

et al. 2014

Hum Nat

143

111

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Many recent evolutionary psychology and human behavioral ecology studies have tested hypotheses by examining correlations between variables measured at a group level (e.g., state, country, continent). In such analyses, variables collected for each aggregation are often taken to be representative of the individuals present within them, and relationships between such variables are presumed to reflect individual-level processes. There are multiple reasons to exercise caution when doing so, including: (1) the ecological fallacy, whereby relationships observed at the aggregate level do not accurately represent individual-level processes; (2) non-independence of data points, which violates assumptions of the inferential techniques used in null hypothesis testing; and (3) cross-cultural non-equivalence of measurement (differences in construct validity between groups). We provide examples of how each of these gives rise to problems in the context of testing evolutionary hypotheses about human behavior, and we offer some suggestions for future research.Keywords Ecological fallacy . Cross-cultural research . Research methods . Simpson's paradox . Non-independence . Measurement equivalence Many hypothesis-testing techniques used by evolutionary behavioral scientists involve examining degrees of covariation between two or more variables and making inferences based on such relationships (e.g., analysis of variance, Pearson correlation). This approach may be applied to a number of different research designs that examine variation at different, hierarchically organized levels (e.g., individuals versus groups;

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“…shown that own-ethnicity faces are a better predictor for attractiveness judgements (Stephen et al, 2012), hence performing separate analyses for each ethnicity makes theoretical sense.…”

Section: Accepted Manuscriptmentioning

confidence: 99%

Aggressor or protector? Experiences and perceptions of violence predict preferences for masculinity

Borras-Guevara

Batres

Perrett

2017

Evolution and Human Behavior

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Women's preferences for masculine male partners have been explained in terms of heritable health. The evidence between masculinity and health, however, is controversial and therefore, alternative explanations for masculinity preferences reflecting income inequality and protection from violence have been proposed. This study thus aimed to test the effect of exposure to violence (i.e., experiences of robberies and perceptions of danger) on the individual masculinity preferences of women and men from the capital city of Colombia, Bogota, and surrounding small towns. One hundred and fifty three adult participants (mean age +/-S.D.= 31.3 +/-9.4), all heterosexual, were surveyed in reference to indicators related to health (e.g., drinking water access, frequency of illnesses), access to media (e.g., television and internet access), education (e.g., graduating from high school, attending university) and exposure to violence (e.g., frequency of robberies/attacks, feelings of danger from violence).Participants made two alternative, preference forced-choice for masculinized and feminized versions of both rural Salvadoran and European male faces. We found that men and women exposed to higher levels of violence preferred less masculine male faces, although this effect was only significant for women. Additionally, the effect of violence exposure was more relevant for the Salvadoran stimuli. Violence contributed significantly to explaining masculinity preferences after controlling for participant age, education, access to media, and health-related factors. These preferences may reflect women's strategy to avoid male violence demonstrating that exposure to violence matters in interpersonal attraction.

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Cross-cultural effects of color, but not morphological masculinity, on perceived attractiveness of men's faces

Cited by 106 publications

References 60 publications

Perception of health from facial cues

Perception of health from facial cues

What Can Cross-Cultural Correlations Teach Us about Human Nature?

Aggressor or protector? Experiences and perceptions of violence predict preferences for masculinity

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