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Women's Preferences for Masculinity in Male Faces Are Predicted by Material Scarcity, But Not Time or Psychological Scarcity
Facial femininity in men is purportedly used as a cue by women as a signal of parental quality and willingness to provide resources. Accordingly, in contexts where choosing a partner that will provide resources is more beneficial (e.g., when resources are scarce), women have shown an increase prefer...
Autores principales: | , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
SAGE Publications
2023
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10517608/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37735893 http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/14747049231175073 |
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author | Lee, Anthony J. McGuire, Nikita K. J. |
author_facet | Lee, Anthony J. McGuire, Nikita K. J. |
author_sort | Lee, Anthony J. |
collection | PubMed |
description | Facial femininity in men is purportedly used as a cue by women as a signal of parental quality and willingness to provide resources. Accordingly, in contexts where choosing a partner that will provide resources is more beneficial (e.g., when resources are scarce), women have shown an increase preference for facial femininity in male faces. However, domains of scarcity often covary, and it is, therefore, unclear whether these contextual shifts in facial masculinity/femininity preferences are specific to material scarcity (as implied by previous theory), or due to an unrelated domain of scarcity (e.g., time or psychological scarcity). Here, a sample of 823 women completed the Perceived Scarcity Scale, which measures three separate domains of scarcity: material scarcity, time scarcity, and psychological scarcity. Participants also rated the attractiveness of 42 male faces, which were measured on objective sexual dimorphism and perceived masculinity. Consistent with theory, material scarcity, and not time or psychological scarcity, was associated with a decreased preference for objective sexual dimorphism (i.e., an increased preference for facial femininity). This study provides evidence that women use sexual dimorphism as a cue to material resource provisioning potential when assessing men as a mate. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-10517608 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2023 |
publisher | SAGE Publications |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-105176082023-10-02 Women's Preferences for Masculinity in Male Faces Are Predicted by Material Scarcity, But Not Time or Psychological Scarcity Lee, Anthony J. McGuire, Nikita K. J. Evol Psychol Original Research Article Facial femininity in men is purportedly used as a cue by women as a signal of parental quality and willingness to provide resources. Accordingly, in contexts where choosing a partner that will provide resources is more beneficial (e.g., when resources are scarce), women have shown an increase preference for facial femininity in male faces. However, domains of scarcity often covary, and it is, therefore, unclear whether these contextual shifts in facial masculinity/femininity preferences are specific to material scarcity (as implied by previous theory), or due to an unrelated domain of scarcity (e.g., time or psychological scarcity). Here, a sample of 823 women completed the Perceived Scarcity Scale, which measures three separate domains of scarcity: material scarcity, time scarcity, and psychological scarcity. Participants also rated the attractiveness of 42 male faces, which were measured on objective sexual dimorphism and perceived masculinity. Consistent with theory, material scarcity, and not time or psychological scarcity, was associated with a decreased preference for objective sexual dimorphism (i.e., an increased preference for facial femininity). This study provides evidence that women use sexual dimorphism as a cue to material resource provisioning potential when assessing men as a mate. SAGE Publications 2023-09-21 /pmc/articles/PMC10517608/ /pubmed/37735893 http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/14747049231175073 Text en © The Author(s) 2023 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) which permits any use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access page (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage). |
spellingShingle | Original Research Article Lee, Anthony J. McGuire, Nikita K. J. Women's Preferences for Masculinity in Male Faces Are Predicted by Material Scarcity, But Not Time or Psychological Scarcity |
title | Women's Preferences for Masculinity in Male Faces Are Predicted by Material Scarcity, But Not Time or Psychological Scarcity |
title_full | Women's Preferences for Masculinity in Male Faces Are Predicted by Material Scarcity, But Not Time or Psychological Scarcity |
title_fullStr | Women's Preferences for Masculinity in Male Faces Are Predicted by Material Scarcity, But Not Time or Psychological Scarcity |
title_full_unstemmed | Women's Preferences for Masculinity in Male Faces Are Predicted by Material Scarcity, But Not Time or Psychological Scarcity |
title_short | Women's Preferences for Masculinity in Male Faces Are Predicted by Material Scarcity, But Not Time or Psychological Scarcity |
title_sort | women's preferences for masculinity in male faces are predicted by material scarcity, but not time or psychological scarcity |
topic | Original Research Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10517608/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37735893 http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/14747049231175073 |
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