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Women Get Lots of Info From Male Faces
dtjohnson writes "Researchers
at UC Santa Barbara have found
that women have a remarkable ability to assess a man's testosterone
levels and his interest in fathering children by looking at his facial
features. Sixty-nine percent of the women were able to correctly
judge a man's interest in having children merely by looking at cues on
photograph's of his facial features. Saliva samples were also
taken from each man in the study and tested for testosterone with a
$2,000-a-pop test. The women in the study were able to correctly
identify the men with the highest testosterone levels just by looking
at their photographs. Of course, the study did not look at
what men were able to tell about women by looking at photographs
of their female body parts."
How about using a proper source for this study?
The summary (and the linked articles) are so sensationalised it is ridiculous.
The BBC have a slightly better written article:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/4751501.stm
How about using a proper source for this study?
The summary (and the linked articles) are so sensationalised it is ridiculous.
The BBC have a slightly better written article
Better yet, here's the actual research abstract and article published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B. The article seems to be accessible without an institutional subscription, but just in case, here's the abstract text:
Reading men's faces: women's mate attractiveness judgments track men's testosterone and interest in infants
James R. Roney, Katherine N. Hanson, Kristina M. Durante, Dario Maestripieri
This study investigated whether women track possible cues of paternal and genetic quality in men's faces and then map perception of those cues onto mate attractiveness judgments. Men's testosterone concentrations served as a proxy for genetic quality given evidence that this hormone signals immunocompetence, and men's scores on an interest in infants test were chosen as prima facie markers of paternal quality. Women's perceptions of facial photographs of these men were in fact sensitive to these two variables: men's scores on the interest in infants test significantly predicted women's ratings of the photos for how much the men like children, and men's testosterone concentrations significantly predicted women's ratings of the men's faces for masculinity. Furthermore, men's actual and perceived affinity for children predicted women's long-term mate attractiveness judgments, while men's testosterone and perceived masculinity predicted women's short-term mate attractiveness judgments. These results suggest that women can detect facial cues of men's hormone concentrations and affinity for children, and that women use perception of these cues to form mate attractiveness judgments.
On a related note, this reminds me of research previously done linking finger-length ratios with things like testosterone levels, sexual orientation, and male aggressiveness.
You jest, but some researchers think that's a very accurate description: "WHAT'S a girl to do when faced with the choice between a powerful action man who has great DNA but is likely to love her and leave her, and a carpet-and-slippers kind of bloke who will hang around and bring up the kids but may not be Mr Right in the genes department? Well, ideally, she should fool the latter into bringing up the former's children. And a piece of evidence that this is exactly what happens emerged this week from a research group led by Jan Havlicek of Charles University, in Prague."
Bonsai Kitten: TNG
Which percentage of *men* were able to judge the men with the highest testosterone levels by looking at the photographs? I would not be surprised if guessing this by looking at someone's physical traits (jaw squareness, beard growth, ...) does not require some special capability specific to women.
Not to turn the snark abruptly off, but Malcolm Gladwell wrote a hella good article about facial cues a few years ago: http://www.gladwell.com/2002/2002_08_05_a_face.htm
I don't find any of this hard to believe. If we didn't subconsciously give away cues to our personalities, how would animation work? Or for that matter, acting? I think it's easy to be scared at just how much we do give away.