Women’s Preferences for Male Facial Features

Abstract

(from the chapter) Humans face perception is highly specialized and a focus of much research in diverse areas (Little, Jones, & DeBruine, 2011). One area of particular interest is whether and how face perception functions in mate choice. Opposite-sex face preferences are proposed to function, at least in part, to identify appropriate mates (Little, Jones, & DeBruine, 2011b; Thornhill & Gangestad, 1999). Because an ideal mate for both men and women is one who is healthy, fertile, and investing, one might predict few sex differences in preferences for traits that signal these attributes. Indeed, both men and women show preferences for traits that have been linked to health, such as symmetry and averageness (reviewed in Little et al., 2011; Rhodes, 2006). The same prediction might be made for preferences for enhanced sextypical characteristics (i.e., male masculinity and female femininity), but research shows that men tend to have strong, consistent preferences for feminine female faces, while women do not have strong, consistent preferences for masculine male faces (Penett et al., 1998). In this chapter, I will briefly review the evidence for similarity between women's and men's face preferences before focusing on women's preferences for male masculinity. First, I will review the evidence for a sex difference in preferences for exaggerated sex-typical characteristics in opposite-sex faces. Next, I will outline the trade-off theory (Gangestad & Simpson, 2000) and evidence supporting this explanation for systematic variation in women's preferences for male masculinity. Finally, I will describe some of the controversy surrounding certain aspects of this theory. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2015 APA, all rights reserved)