Physical attractiveness, and facial neoteny cross-cultural evidence and implications

Abstract

Physical attractiveness and its relation to the theory of sexual se lection deserve renewed attention from cultural and biological an thropologists. This paper focuses on an anomaly associated with physical attractiveness-in our species, in contrast to many oth ers, males seem to be more concemed than females with the at- tractiveness of potential sexual partners, perhaps because hu- mans show far more age-related variance in female than in male fecundity. The resulting selection for male attraction to marker of female youth may lead incidentally to attraction to females displaying age-related cues in an exaggerated form. This paper reports cross-cultural evidence that males in five populations (Brazilians, U.S. Americans, Russians, Ache, and Hiwi) show an attraction to females with neotenous facial proportions (a comb nation of large eyes, small noses, and full lips) even after femal age is controlled for. Two further studies show that female mod els have neotenous cephalofacial proportions relative to U.S. un- dergraduates and that drawings of faces artificially transforme to make them more or less neotenous are perceived as corre- spondingly more or less attractive. These results suggest severa further lines of investigation, including the relationship betwee facial and bodily cues and the consequences of attraction to neo teny for morphological evolution.