Perception of Men's Beauty and Attractiveness by Women with Low Sexual Desire

Abstract

Introduction. Despite the high prevalence of hypoactive sexual desire disorder (HSDD), especially among women, this sexual disorder remains poorly understood. Among the multiple factors possibly involved in HSDD, particularities in the cognitive evaluations of social stimuli need to be better characterized. Especially, beauty and attractiveness judgments, two dimensions of interpersonal perception that are related but differ on their underlying motivational aspects, may vary according to the level of sexual desire. Aim. The main goal of this study was to investigate whether women with and without HSDD differ in their evaluations of beauty and attractiveness of men's faces and voices. Methods. Young women from the general population (controls, n = 16) and with HSDD (patients, n = 16) took part in the study. They were presented with a series of neutral/nonerotic voices and faces of young men from the GEneva Faces And Voices database. Main Outcome Measures. Ratings of beauty (i.e., assessments of aesthetic pleasure) and of attractiveness (i.e., assessments of the personal propensity to feel attracted to someone) and the frequency to which the participants pressed a key to see or listen to each stimulus again were the main outcome measures. Results. Ratings of attractiveness were lower than ratings of beauty in both groups of women. The dissociation between beauty and attractiveness was larger in women with HSDD than in control participants. Patients gave lower attractiveness ratings than the controls and replayed the stimuli significantly less often. Conclusion. These results suggest that women with HSDD are characterized by specific alterations of the motivational component of men's perception, very early in the process of interpersonal relationships. Our findings have significant implications, both in better understanding the specific cognitive processes underlying hypoactive sexual desire and more largely the evaluative processes involved in human mate choice.

Mechanism underlying the self‐enhancement effect of voice attractiveness evaluation: self‐positivity bias and familiarity effect

“…From the perspective of the “speaker,” for example, many studies have investigated the effects of voice characteristics, such as length, intensity and pitch, on the evaluation of voice attractiveness (Jones, Feinberg, DeBruine, Little & Vukovic, 2008; Xu & Lee, 2018; Zuckerman & Miyake, 1993). From the perspective of the “listener,” the attractiveness evaluation of other voices could be affected by different biological, psychological and social factors embodied in the listener, such as his/her physiological hormone levels (Hodges‐Simeon, Gaulin & Puts, 2010; Shirazi, Puts & Escasa‐Dorne, 2018), physical condition (Feinberg, Jones, DeBruine, O'Connor, Tigue & Borak, 2011), and social relationship with the speaker (Ferdenzi, Delplanque, Vorontsova‐Wenger, Pool, Bianchi‐Demicheli & Sander, 2015).…”

One's own and similar voices are more attractive than other voices

“…However, other researchers have revealed that a louder voice might decrease the attractiveness of the voice, as it might be considered to be impolite and unacceptable (Tobing, Panggabean, & Sinar, ). Meanwhile, some of the features of the listener could also affect the evaluation of others' voice attractiveness, such as physiological hormone levels (Hodges‐Simeon, Gaulin, & Puts, 2010), physical conditions (Feinberg et al, ), and social relationships with the speaker (Ferdenzi et al, ).…”

The Role of Art Expertise and Symmetry on Facial Aesthetic Preferences

“…Most research investigating human preference for faces uses the terms "beauty" and "attractiveness" as synonyms, or simply does not differentiate between them [24,[100][101][102]. In this study, however, we consider beauty and attractiveness as two different variables, as has been done by some authors [103][104][105]. We observed that although there is a moderate correlation between these two variables, the mean scores for beauty and attractiveness were significantly different.…”