A New Viewpoint on the Evolution of Sexually Dimorphic Human Faces

Human faces show marked sexual shape dimorphism, and this affects their attractiveness. Humans also show marked height dimorphism, which means that men typically view women's faces from slightly above and women typically view men's faces from slightly below. We tested the idea that this pe...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Evolutionary psychology Vol. 8; no. 4; pp. 573 - 585
Main Authors: Burke, Darren, Sulikowski, Danielle
Format: Journal Article
Language:English
Published: Los Angeles, CA SAGE Publications 01.10.2010
SAGE Publishing
Subjects:
Adult
Animals
Biological Evolution
Body Height - physiology
Choice Behavior
Cues
Esthetics - psychology
Face - anatomy & histology
Female
Femininity
Humans
Infant
Male
Masculinity
Original
Photic Stimulation - methods
Posture
Reproducibility of Results
Sex Characteristics
Social Dominance
Statistics as Topic
Visual Perception - physiology
Young Adult
attractiveness
sexual dimorphism
head tilt
ISSN:1474-7049, 1474-7049
Online Access:Get full text
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Summary:Human faces show marked sexual shape dimorphism, and this affects their attractiveness. Humans also show marked height dimorphism, which means that men typically view women's faces from slightly above and women typically view men's faces from slightly below. We tested the idea that this perspective difference may be the evolutionary origin of the face shape dimorphism by having males and females rate the masculinity/femininity and attractiveness of male and female faces that had been manipulated in pitch (forward or backward tilt), simulating viewing the face from slightly above or below. As predicted, tilting female faces upwards decreased their perceived femininity and attractiveness, whereas tilting them downwards increased their perceived femininity and attractiveness. Male faces tilted up were judged to be more masculine, and tilted down judged to be less masculine. This suggests that sexual selection may have embodied this viewpoint difference into the actual facial proportions of men and women.
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ISSN:1474-7049
1474-7049
DOI:10.1177/147470491000800404