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. 2018 Jun;29(6):996-1005.
doi: 10.1177/0956797618760197. Epub 2018 Apr 30.

No Compelling Evidence that Preferences for Facial Masculinity Track Changes in Women's Hormonal Status

Benedict C Jones  1 , Amanda C Hahn  2 , Claire I Fisher  1 , Hongyi Wang  1 , Michal Kandrik  1 , Chengyang Han  1 , Vanessa Fasolt  1 , Danielle Morrison  1 , Anthony J Lee  1 , Iris J Holzleitner  1 , Kieran J O'Shea  1 , S Craig Roberts  3 , Anthony C Little  4 , Lisa M DeBruine  1
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No Compelling Evidence that Preferences for Facial Masculinity Track Changes in Women's Hormonal Status

Benedict C Jones et al. Psychol Sci. 2018 Jun.

Abstract

Although widely cited as strong evidence that sexual selection has shaped human facial-attractiveness judgments, findings suggesting that women's preferences for masculine characteristics in men's faces are related to women's hormonal status are equivocal and controversial. Consequently, we conducted the largest-ever longitudinal study of the hormonal correlates of women's preferences for facial masculinity ( N = 584). Analyses showed no compelling evidence that preferences for facial masculinity were related to changes in women's salivary steroid hormone levels. Furthermore, both within-subjects and between-subjects comparisons showed no evidence that oral contraceptive use decreased masculinity preferences. However, women generally preferred masculinized over feminized versions of men's faces, particularly when assessing men's attractiveness for short-term, rather than long-term, relationships. Our results do not support the hypothesized link between women's preferences for facial masculinity and their hormonal status.

Keywords: attractiveness; mate preferences; menstrual cycle; open data; open materials; oral contraceptives; sexual selection.

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Conflict of interest statement

Declaration of Conflicting Interests: The author(s) declared that there were no conflicts of interest with respect to the authorship or the publication of this article.

Figures

Fig. 1.
Fig. 1.
Examples of masculinized (a) and feminized (b) versions of men’s faces used to assess facial-masculinity preferences in our study.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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