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Facial Features: What Women Perceive as Attractive and What Men Consider Attractive

Attractiveness plays an important role in social exchange and in the ability to attract potential mates, especially for women. Several facial traits have been described as reliable indicators of attractiveness in women, but very few studies consider the influence of several measurements simultaneous...

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Autores principales: Muñoz-Reyes, José Antonio, Iglesias-Julios, Marta, Pita, Miguel, Turiegano, Enrique
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2015
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4498779/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26161954
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0132979
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author Muñoz-Reyes, José Antonio
Iglesias-Julios, Marta
Pita, Miguel
Turiegano, Enrique
author_facet Muñoz-Reyes, José Antonio
Iglesias-Julios, Marta
Pita, Miguel
Turiegano, Enrique
author_sort Muñoz-Reyes, José Antonio
collection PubMed
description Attractiveness plays an important role in social exchange and in the ability to attract potential mates, especially for women. Several facial traits have been described as reliable indicators of attractiveness in women, but very few studies consider the influence of several measurements simultaneously. In addition, most studies consider just one of two assessments to directly measure attractiveness: either self-evaluation or men's ratings. We explored the relationship between these two estimators of attractiveness and a set of facial traits in a sample of 266 young Spanish women. These traits are: facial fluctuating asymmetry, facial averageness, facial sexual dimorphism, and facial maturity. We made use of the advantage of having recently developed methodologies that enabled us to measure these variables in real faces. We also controlled for three other widely used variables: age, body mass index and waist-to-hip ratio. The inclusion of many different variables allowed us to detect any possible interaction between the features described that could affect attractiveness perception. Our results show that facial fluctuating asymmetry is related both to self-perceived and male-rated attractiveness. Other facial traits are related only to one direct attractiveness measurement: facial averageness and facial maturity only affect men's ratings. Unmodified faces are closer to natural stimuli than are manipulated photographs, and therefore our results support the importance of employing unmodified faces to analyse the factors affecting attractiveness. We also discuss the relatively low equivalence between self-perceived and male-rated attractiveness and how various anthropometric traits are relevant to them in different ways. Finally, we highlight the need to perform integrated-variable studies to fully understand female attractiveness.
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spelling pubmed-44987792015-07-17 Facial Features: What Women Perceive as Attractive and What Men Consider Attractive Muñoz-Reyes, José Antonio Iglesias-Julios, Marta Pita, Miguel Turiegano, Enrique PLoS One Research Article Attractiveness plays an important role in social exchange and in the ability to attract potential mates, especially for women. Several facial traits have been described as reliable indicators of attractiveness in women, but very few studies consider the influence of several measurements simultaneously. In addition, most studies consider just one of two assessments to directly measure attractiveness: either self-evaluation or men's ratings. We explored the relationship between these two estimators of attractiveness and a set of facial traits in a sample of 266 young Spanish women. These traits are: facial fluctuating asymmetry, facial averageness, facial sexual dimorphism, and facial maturity. We made use of the advantage of having recently developed methodologies that enabled us to measure these variables in real faces. We also controlled for three other widely used variables: age, body mass index and waist-to-hip ratio. The inclusion of many different variables allowed us to detect any possible interaction between the features described that could affect attractiveness perception. Our results show that facial fluctuating asymmetry is related both to self-perceived and male-rated attractiveness. Other facial traits are related only to one direct attractiveness measurement: facial averageness and facial maturity only affect men's ratings. Unmodified faces are closer to natural stimuli than are manipulated photographs, and therefore our results support the importance of employing unmodified faces to analyse the factors affecting attractiveness. We also discuss the relatively low equivalence between self-perceived and male-rated attractiveness and how various anthropometric traits are relevant to them in different ways. Finally, we highlight the need to perform integrated-variable studies to fully understand female attractiveness. Public Library of Science 2015-07-10 /pmc/articles/PMC4498779/ /pubmed/26161954 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0132979 Text en © 2015 Muñoz-Reyes et al http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are properly credited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Muñoz-Reyes, José Antonio
Iglesias-Julios, Marta
Pita, Miguel
Turiegano, Enrique
Facial Features: What Women Perceive as Attractive and What Men Consider Attractive
title Facial Features: What Women Perceive as Attractive and What Men Consider Attractive
title_full Facial Features: What Women Perceive as Attractive and What Men Consider Attractive
title_fullStr Facial Features: What Women Perceive as Attractive and What Men Consider Attractive
title_full_unstemmed Facial Features: What Women Perceive as Attractive and What Men Consider Attractive
title_short Facial Features: What Women Perceive as Attractive and What Men Consider Attractive
title_sort facial features: what women perceive as attractive and what men consider attractive
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4498779/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26161954
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0132979
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