Sex Differences in Facial and Vocal Attractiveness Among College Students in China

Abstract

This study aims to investigate sex differences in ratings for facial attractiveness (FA) and vocal attractiveness (VA). Participants (60 undergraduates in Study 1 and 111 undergraduates in Study 2) rated the attractiveness of computerized face images and voice recordings of men and women. In Study 1, face images and voice recordings were presented separately. Results indicated that men generally rated voice recordings of women more attractive than those of men, whereas women did not show different attractiveness ratings for voices of men vs. women. In Study 2, face images and voice recordings were paired as multimodal stimuli and presented simultaneously. Results indicated that men rated multimodal stimuli of women as more attractive than those of men, whereas women did not differentiate multimodal stimuli of men vs. women. We found that, compared to VA, FA had a stronger influence on participants' overall evaluations. Finally, we tested the difference between “original multimodal stimuli” (OMS) and “non-original multimodal stimuli” (non-OMS) and found the “OMS-facilitating effect.” Taken together, findings indicated some sex differences in FA and VA in the current study, which could be used to interpret behaviors of sexual selection, human mate preferences, and designs and popularization of sex robots.

Gender context modulation on the self‐enhancement effect of vocal attractiveness evaluation

“…Both results indicated that men rated women's voices with higher scores than those women rated men's voices. This is consistent with a recent study which found that men rated other men's voices as less attractive than women's voices whereas women's ratings did not differ for men's voices and women's voices (Hou & Ye, 2019). As women are more sensitive to voice perception than men (Hung & Cheng, 2014) and have advantages over men in terms of speech processing and coding (Hunter, Phang, Lee, & Woodruff, 2005;Schirmer, Striano, & Friederici, 2005;Skuk & Schweinberger, 2013), women are able to more accurately perceive vocal attractiveness.…”

“…That is, for male raters, the rating for ssOther-by-Self is lower than that for osOther-by-Self; for female raters, the score of ssSelf-by-Self is lower than that of osSelf-by-Self. The former result corroborates previous findings that men rated female voices as more attractive than those of men (Babel et al, 2014;Hou & Ye, 2019). The latter result was associated with the aforementioned strategy that women tend to make themself more attractive in the opposite-sex context.…”

“…Consistent with our prediction, the self-enhancement effect from the perspective of the voice (i.e., SE_voice) in the same-sex context was significantly greater than that in the opposite-sex context for male raters. This may be because men tend to rate other men's voices as less attractive than women's voices whereas women have no such preference (Hou & Ye, 2019). This was further corroborated by the present study, in which the male participants evaluated the opposite-sex participants' voices as more attractive than the same-sex others' voices (i.e., osOther-by-Self > ssOther-by-Self; see Table 1) whereas no significant difference was found in the female participants.…”

“…Thus, the present study aims to explore the difference in the evaluation of self-voice attractiveness under the same-sex and opposite-sex gender contexts. Men were found to be more active in mate selection (Buss, 2016) and be more effective than women in competitive environments (Gneezy, Niederle, & Rustichini 2003) whereas women showed greater avoidance of direct competition with same-sex counterparts because they experienced more discomfort than males in such situations (Benenson et al, 2002).Thus, compared with women, men are more likely to be competitive with thesame-sex others (Kordsmeyer, Hunt, Puts, Ostner, & Penke 2018), as demonstrated by the fact that men rated male voices as less attractive than those of women whereas women's ratings did not differ for men's voices and women's voices (Hou & Ye, 2019). Therefore, we hypothesized that the self-enhancement effect of vocal attractiveness in the same-sex context would be greater than that in the opposite-sex context for male raters whereas no such significant difference would be apparent for female raters.…”

Human–Robot Interaction and Sexbots: A Systematic Literature Review

“…Considering the results of this systematic review, we can note that there are sex differences in male and female faces and voices [20]. Males prefer more female voices and stimulus.…”