Facial masculinity and fluctuating asymmetry

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Abstract

Recently, women have been found to prefer the scent of symmetrical men and relatively masculine male faces more during the fertile (late follicular and ovulatory) phases of their menstrual cycles than during their infertile (e.g., luteal) phases. These findings make most theoretical sense if men's symmetry is associated with the masculinity of their faces and, therefore, men's symmetry and facial masculinity tap a shared underlying quality. This study examined associations between masculine facial features and nonfacial body symmetry as well as facial symmetry in samples of 141 men and 154 women. As predicted, a component of facial features that discriminates the sexes and reflects masculinization of the face significantly covaried with symmetry in men. No significant correlation was observed for women. These findings suggest that men's facial masculinity partly advertises underlying developmental stability.

Introduction

Recently, Perrett, Penton-Voak, and colleagues have reported two surprising findings regarding male facial attractiveness. They digitized male and female faces, composited these images to create average sex-specific faces, and then blended or exaggerated differences between the composites to create male faces varying in masculinity. First, they found that women in the UK and Japan generally prefer male faces that are slightly feminized, not hypermasculinized (Perrett et al., 1998). Perrett et al. speculated that feminized faces are perceived to promise willingness to invest exclusively in a mate Berry & Wero, 1993, Cunningham et al., 1997, Graziano et al., 1997, Johnston et al., 2001, which may be traded off when women select a mate who possesses a masculine face perhaps indicative of other valuable traits (e.g., social dominance; Mazur & Booth, 1998, Mueller & Mazur, 1997, Swaddle & Reierson, 2002). The literature is not consistent in this regard, however; other studies have found that women find masculine faces more attractive (e.g., Johnston et al., 2001; Keating, 1985) or that they prefer neither masculinized nor feminized faces over average faces (e.g., Swaddle & Reierson, 2002).

Secondly, Penton-Voak et al. (1999) found that women's attraction to men's facial masculinity–femininity shifts across the cycle. Gangestad and Thornhill (1998a) reported that women prefer the scent of men who possess low fluctuating asymmetry (FA), but only during the fertile phase of their cycle. FA is a marker of developmental instability: imprecise expression of developmental design due to developmental perturbations (e.g., mutations, pathogens, toxins) or inability to deal with these perturbations Gangestad & Thornhill, 1999, Møller, 1999, Møller & Swaddle, 1997. This pattern has been replicated in three additional studies Rikowski & Grammer, 1999, Thornhill & Gangestad, 1999a, Thornhill et al., in press. Gangestad and Thornhill conjectured that the value that women have evolved to place on indicators of good investment on the one hand and genetic benefits on the other hand shifts across the menstrual cycle. Women should have evolved to place greater value on genetic benefits when they are fertile and hence can obtain those benefits for their offspring than when nonfertile, particularly when extrapair sex is a possibility. Penton-Voak et al. reasoned that if, as they previously speculated, feminine features in a man advertise willingness to invest in a mate whereas masculinity advertises allocation to intrasexual competition (which may be condition dependent and partly heritable), women might prefer greater masculinity near ovulation. This prediction has now been supported in four published studies in four different countries (UK, Japan, US, and Austria) (Johnston et al., 2001, Penton-Voak & Perrett, 2000, Penton-Voak et al., 1999 [two studies]). Although the notion that genetic benefits (in ancestral populations) account for these preference shifts remains speculative (e.g., Gangestad & Simpson, 2000, Kirkpatrick, 1996, Thornhill & Gangestad, in press), systematic shifts of preferences are well established.

These results make most theoretical sense if, in fact, men who possess low FA also have more masculine facial features on average, such that male symmetry and facial masculinity tap a shared underlying quality (Thornhill & Gangestad, 1993), but little work has systematically examined this association. Penton-Voak et al. (2001) found no significant correlation between male facial symmetry and masculinity; interestingly, however, a composite of the most symmetrical faces in their study was rated as more masculine than a composite of the least symmetrical faces. Scheib, Gangestad, and Thornhill (1999) found significant positive associations between male facial symmetry and features that may be related to facial masculinity (e.g., lower face length). The current study examined the association between facial masculinity and bodily FA, as measured in studies by Gangestad and Thornhill (1998a), Thornhill and Gangestad (1999a), and Thornhill et al. (in press) that have found a female preference for the scent of symmetrical men prior to ovulation, in addition to an association between facial masculinity and facial FA. (Rikowski & Grammer, 1999 measured facial and body FA.) As a comparison, we examined the association between FA and female facial masculinity. Our sample was considerably larger than those of Penton-Voak et al. (2001) or Scheib et al. (1999) and, hence, we had greater power to detect associations, should they exist.

Section snippets

Methods

Participants were 295 college students at the University of New Mexico (141 men and 154 women) who participated in a larger study on FA and romantic relationships (see Gangestad & Thornhill, 1997 for a fuller description of the sample). All individuals identified themselves as Caucasian or Hispanic; other ethnicities were poorly represented in the larger sample in this study (Asian: 3%; African American: 2%; Native American: 4%). Men's ages averaged 20.91 (S.D.=3.02; range=7–37); women's ages

Results

We analyzed predictors of facial masculinity through GLM (SPSS-PC 11.0). Sex, bodily FA, facial FA, the Bodily FA×Sex interaction, and the Facial FA×Sex interaction were the main predictors. We expected that bodily and facial FA would be negatively associated with facial masculinity for men, but not for women (and, hence, Predicted FA×Sex interactions). Because relative FA may correlate with overall body size (Palmer, 1994), body weight was included as a control factor, as were sample,

Discussion

This study found reliable associations of facial masculinity with bodily FA and facial FA for men but not women. As predicted, more symmetrical men tended to have more masculine features, including wider jaws, longer chins, and narrower (less open) eyes (the latter presumably due to development of the brow ridge). These features are purportedly the main ones affected by testosterone during pubertal development (see Swaddle & Reierson, 2002). Although the FA–facial masculinity correlations in

Acknowledgements

The authors thank Victor Johnston and Leslie Zebrowitz for very helpful comments on a previous version of this paper. Preparation of this paper was partly supported by National Science Foundation Grant Award 0136023.

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