Original ArticleMore than just a pretty face: men's priority shifts toward bodily attractiveness in short-term versus long-term mating contexts
Introduction
The importance of physical attractiveness and the biological correlates of various attributes has received much empirical attention since Darwin (1871) noted the precedence given to physical attractiveness, especially in women: “In civilized life man is largely, but by no means exclusively, influenced in the choice of his wife by external appearance” (p. 738). Despite much research having been devoted to attractiveness, most studies have focused on the specific features that contribute to overall attractiveness (for a review, see Sugiyama, 2005). Symmetry (Perrett et al., 1999), averageness (Langlois & Roggman, 1990; but see Grammer & Thornhill, 1994 for sex-specific effects), and sexual dimorphism (Johnston, Hagel, Franklin, Fink, & Grammer, 2001) have been shown to affect facial attractiveness. Contributors to bodily attractiveness include waist-to-hip ratio (Singh, 1993) and body mass index (Tovée, Maisey, Emery, & Cornelissen, 1999). Other specific bodily traits, such as muscularity (Frederick & Haselton, 2007), breast size (Furnham & Swami, 2007), and leg length (Sorokowski & Pawlowski, 2008) have been the focus of recent empirical research. Lacking, however, is research on the relative importance of faces and bodies as whole units, and whether the prioritization of facial or bodily attractiveness is dependent upon the intended duration of the mating context (short-term versus long-term mating)—a context of well-documented importance in mate preferences (Buss & Schmitt, 1993).
Aspects of physical attractiveness have been hypothesized to be “attractive” because they have been recurrently and closely associated with individuals' health, age, and hormonal status throughout human evolutionary history (Symons, 1979, Williams, 1975). Certain fitness-dependent cues relating to a woman's current fertility and her reproductive value (a measure of future reproductive potential that is strongly correlated with a woman's age) are conveyed through the face and body with substantial overlap. For example, a woman's current fertility can be assessed through increases in facial (Roberts et al., 2004) and bodily attractiveness (Kirchengast & Gartner, 2002) that occur at ovulation. Similarly, health-correlated cues of reproductive value can be conveyed through both the face and the body. Pocked-marked facial skin, for example, reveals a history of disease (Buss, 1994), while increased leg length is correlated with a multitude of health benefits: lower risks of cardiovascular disease (Gunnell, Whitley, et al., 2003), diabetes (Davey Smith et al., 2001) and cancer (Gunnell, May, Ben-Sholomo, Yarnell, & Smith, 2003). Finally, age-dependent cues also related to reproductive value, such as taut facial skin and firm breasts (Symons, 1979), can be diagnosed through a woman's face and body. Clearly, information regarding a woman's fertility and reproductive value can be gleaned from both her face and body.
Nevertheless, one component, the face or the body, may convey relatively richer information about a particular health or hormonal status variable than the other. Thus, our central hypothesis is that although many cues regarding a woman's health and fertility can be gleaned from both her face and her body, each component conveys a subset of cues that are not conveyed by the other component. The results of several studies have indicated that the face and body make independent contributions toward overall attractiveness (e.g., Currie and Little, 2009, Peters et al., 2007), supporting the tenability of this basic premise. We hypothesized that a woman's face provides relatively richer information regarding her reproductive value; and conversely, that a woman's body conveys stronger cues to her current fertility. These two dimensions peak at different ages, necessitating a tradeoff such that one could not secure a woman who is simultaneously at the pinnacle of reproductive value and fertility. In human populations, reproductive value peaks around age 17, whereas fertility peaks around age 24 (Buss, 1994, Symons, 1979, Williams, 1975). Accordingly, Jones (1996) notes that “…male preferences may have led to the evolution both of cues in the female figure that advertise sexual maturity and of cues in the face that advertise youth” (p. 103; see also Symons, 1979).
Empirical evidence supports the premise that female faces and bodies provide information that is not entirely redundant. Facial features appear to be particularly effective cues of youth and health. Aside from obvious facial indicators of youth, such as homogeneous skin and the absence of wrinkles and sagginess (Fink, Grammer, & Thornhill, 2001), preferences have also been demonstrated for neotenous facial traits (e.g., large eyes; Cunningham, 1986). Features such as these are considered “feminine” because they are sensitive to the rise in estrogen levels that accompanies puberty and persists throughout a woman's reproductive lifespan (Thornhill & Gangestad, 2008). As women age and approach menopause, however, androgens increase relative to estrogen levels, causing their facial features to take a more masculine form (e.g., thinner lips; Gangestad & Scheyd, 2005), rendering specific facial features effective proxies for assessing a woman's age and consequently, her reproductive value.
Women's bodies provide a window to several variables related to their current fertility (as contrasted with reproductive value) that cannot be ascertained through their facial characteristics alone. A woman's body shape is subjected to what Singh (1993) refers to as a “wide first pass filter,” a quick heuristic that unconsciously evaluates whether a woman is currently capable of conceiving. For example, information obtained from a woman's waist-to-hip ratio (WHR) informs three concerns paramount to a woman's reproductive condition: (1) pregnancy status, (2) fertility, and possibly, (3) ovulatory status. First, as a woman progresses through pregnancy, her WHR exceeds 1.0, a clear indication that she is currently incapable of conceiving. For example, a young pregnant woman has high reproductive value, but a fertility of zero. This highlights the fact that fertility and reproductive value are partially dissociable, and that bodily cues are a powerful source of information regarding current fertility. Second, women with unusually high WHRs have greater difficulty conceiving than women with sex-typical WHRs (Singh, 1993, Zaadstra et al., 1993); therefore, the hormonal profile necessary for conception can be assessed through a woman's WHR. Finally, based on evidence that women's WHRs may slightly decrease at ovulation (Kirchengast & Gartner, 2002), a woman's figure could also reveal whether or not she is at peak cycle fertility. In addition to waist-to-hip ratio, a woman's body mass index signals her ability to sustain pregnancy and lactation (Lake, Power, & Cole, 1997) as well as her supply of the fatty acids that support fetus neurodevelopment (Lassek & Gaulin, 2008). Bodily traits such as these can be appraised at a glance to assess a woman's current fertility.
Historically, a man's reproductive success depended in part on selecting a mate high in fertility with appreciable reproductive value. However, because there are substantial costs involved in exclusively attempting to secure such a woman (e.g., missed sexual opportunities), men typically make tradeoffs that depend on whether a short-term or long-term mate is sought. Theoretically, for men pursuing a short-term mate, a woman's current fertility is more paramount than her reproductive value (Buss & Schmitt, 1993). Thus, unlike men pursuing a long-term mating strategy, men pursuing short-term mating opportunities should possess evolved psychological mechanisms that are activated less by cues to a woman's reproductive value than by cues to her current fertility. This logic formed the basis of our prediction: Men assigned to evaluate a woman a short-term mate would give higher priority to information gleaned from her body than from her face, compared to men assigned to evaluate a woman as a long-term mate.
Although there is compelling evidence that both sexes have evolved short-term and long-term mating strategies (Buss & Schmitt, 1993), individuals naturally differ in the extent to which they pursue one mating strategy over another, a construct labeled sociosexual orientation (SOI-R) (Gangestad & Simpson, 1990). We hypothesized that SOI-R would affect the relative priority given to facial and bodily cues, in addition to the effect of the mating condition to which participants were assigned. Based on the same rationale for the assigned short-term and long-term mating contexts, we anticipated that those who naturally pursue short-term relationships (as measured by the SOI-R, with higher scores indicating less restricted SOI-R; Penke & Asendorpf, 2008) would assign a higher priority to bodily attractiveness than those pursuing mainly long-term committed relationships. Our central hypothesis would receive additional support if both the individual differences in SOI-R and the contextual effects that result from assigning participants to mating conditions produce similar patterns of information prioritization.
We saw no a priori grounds for predicting that women would experience an analogous conditional shift in body versus face priority across the two mating contexts for two reasons. First, women were predicted not to differentially prioritize cues of current fertility because men's fertility does not show the same precipitous age-dependent drop-off as women's fertility. As a result, there has been relatively weaker selection pressure on women to attend to such cues. Second, to the degree that women seek physical indicators of good genes in a mate (Gangestad and Thornhill, 1997, Penton-Voak et al., 1999), hormonally dependent characteristics indicative of good genes appear to be equally reflected in men's faces and bodies (Folstad and Karter, 1992, Gangestad et al., 1994, Thornhill and Gangestad, 1993). Previous research has shown that testosterone-based cues of masculinity (e.g., wide jaw) are correlated with actual and perceived health (Rhodes, Chan, Zebrowitz, & Simmons, 2003). Because such cues have also been correlated with fluctuating asymmetry as assessed through the face and the body (Gangestad, & Thornhill, 2003), information about a man's health can be gleaned from both sources. Thus, in contrast to men, we expected no difference in the priority that women would give to a man's facial and bodily attractiveness as a function of mating context.
Section snippets
Participants
The sample consisted of 381 university students (194 male, 187 female) who agreed to participate in exchange for course credit. The data from six participants who did not identify themselves as heterosexual were excluded, resulting in a data set of 192 men (age M=18.85, SD=1.29) and 183 women (age M=18.69, SD=1.45). Approximately one quarter of the sample (51 men and 57 women) reported being in a committed romantic relationship.
Materials and procedure
Two clothed, full body photographs, one of a man and one of a
Face versus body box choice
To evaluate whether participants chose to remove the face or body box more often, we first conducted an exploratory analysis which revealed a general trend to choose the face box over the body box in male participants (face: 61%; χ21=9.19, N=192, prep=.99, φ=.22) and in female participants (face: 69%; χ21=27.55, N=183, prep>.99, φ=.39). We then conducted χ2cross-tabulation analyses within each sex to examine the effect of mating context on box choice, taking into account the inherently unequal
Discussion
Simply assigning men to a short-term mating condition, as opposed to a long-term mating condition, caused them to increase the priority given to information obtained from a woman's body. Women assigned to the short-term and long-term mating conditions all gave greater priority to information obtained from an opposite sex individual's face. These results, as shown through both box choice and priority ratings, empirically support the hypothesis that men attend to bodily cues more in short-term
Acknowledgments
The authors thank Greg Hixon for his verification of our statistical procedures and members of the Buss Lab for their helpful feedback.
References (44)
- et al.
The relative importance of the face and body in judgments of human physical attractiveness
Evolution and Human Behavior
(2009) - et al.
The evolutionary psychology of extra-pair sex: The role of fluctuating asymmetry
Evolution and Human Behavior
(1997) - et al.
Facial masculinity and fluctuating asymmetry
Evolution and Human Behavior
(2003) - et al.
Facial attractiveness, developmental stability, and fluctuating asymmetry
Ethology and Sociobiology
(1994) - et al.
Male facial attractiveness: Evidence for hormone-mediated adaptive design
Evolution and Human Behavior
(2001) - et al.
Waist-to-hip ratio and cognitive ability: Is gluteofemoral fat a privileged store of neurodeveopmental resources?
Evolution and Human Behavior
(2008) - et al.
Symmetry and human facial attractiveness
Evolution and Human Behavior
(1999) - et al.
Contributions of the face and body to overall attractiveness
Animal Behavior
(2007) - et al.
Adaptive preferences for leg length in a potential partner
Evolution and Human Behavior
(2008) - et al.
The body and face of woman: One ornament that signals quality?
Evolution and Human Behavior
(1999)
The evolution of desire: Strategies of human mating
Sexual strategies theory: A contextual evolutionary analysis of human mating
Psychological Review
Measuring the physical in physical attractiveness: Quasi-experiments on the sociobiology of female facial beauty
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
The descent of man, and selection in relation to sex
Leg length, insulin resistance, and coronary heart disease risk: The Caerphilly Study
Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health
Human (Homo sapiens) facial attractiveness in relation to skin texture and color
Journal of Comparative Psychology
Parasites, bright males, and the immunocompetence handicap
The American Naturalist
Why is muscularity sexy? Tests of the fitness indicator hypothesis.
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin
The relative influence of facial neoteny and waist-to-hip ratio on judgments of female attractiveness and fecundity
Psychology, Health, & Medicine
Perception of female buttocks and breast size in profile
Social Behavior and Personality
The evolution of human physical attractiveness
Annual Review of Anthropology
Toward an evolutionary history of female sociosexual variation
Journal of Personality
Cited by (99)
Relationships between use of geosocial mobile dating application “the L″ and self-objectification among Chinese female sexual minorities
2022, Computers in Human BehaviorCitation Excerpt :The chain-mediating effects of objectification experience and AOPP further revealed the potential mechanism between the use of dating app/objectification experience and SO from the mating perspective. For individuals with mating motivation, appearance-related experience induces an increase in SO, laterally highlighting the importance of physical appearance in mate selection (Confer et al., 2010). According to Swami and Tovée (2006), lesbians regard appearance attractiveness as important when choosing sexual partners.
Mate-value moderates the function of make-up as a signal of intrasexual aggression
2022, Personality and Individual DifferencesRituals as signals of mate quality
2022, Current Research in Ecological and Social PsychologyIf you work it, flaunt it: Conspicuous displays of exercise efforts increase mate value
2020, Journal of Business ResearchMating and marketing
2020, Journal of Business ResearchCitation Excerpt :And like women, men value good partner and good parent qualities such as kindness and emotional stability. In short-term mating, compared to long-term mating, men are more likely to value cues to body attractiveness; in long-term mating, men prioritize facial attractiveness (Confer, Perilloux, & Buss, 2010). Even more sharply, men seeking short-term mates are especially attracted to cues to sexual exploitability—women who seem immature, intoxicated, reckless, flirtatious, sleepy, wearing skimpy clothing, and showing an open body posture (Goetz, Easton, Lewis, & Buss, 2012; Lewis, Easton, Goetz, & Buss, 2012).
Sexuality and Morality: How Sexual Experiences Affect Self-Humanity Perceptions
2024, Basic and Applied Social Psychology