The Psychology of Love
Individual differences in empathizing and systemizing predict variation in face preferences
Finlay Smith, Benedict Jones & Lisa DeBruine
Personality and Individual Differences, forthcoming
Abstract:
Previous studies demonstrate that the extent to which individuals display exaggerated sex-typical physical characteristics is positively correlated with the extent to which they prefer sexually dimorphic physical characteristics in opposite-sex individuals. It is unclear, however, whether individual differences in sex-typical psychological traits predict variation in mate preferences in a similar manner. To investigate this issue, we examined the relationship between the sex-typical psychological traits empathizing and systemizing and the strength of participants' preferences for sexually dimorphic shape cues in own- and opposite-sex faces. Women's empathizing scores were positively correlated with the strength of their preferences for masculine men and men's systemizing scores were positively correlated with the strength of their preferences for feminine women. By contrast with these findings for opposite-sex faces, neither empathizing nor systemizing scores predicted men's or women's preferences for sexually dimorphic cues in own-sex faces. Collectively, these findings suggest that sex-typical psychological traits have effects on attractiveness judgments that are strikingly similar to those previously reported for sex-typical physical characteristics and, potentially, implicate individual differences in empathizing and systemizing in variation in mate preferences.
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Reproduction expediting: Sexual motivations, fantasies, and the ticking biological clock
Judith Easton, Jaime Confer, Cari Goetz & David Buss
Personality and Individual Differences, forthcoming
Abstract:
Beginning in their late twenties, women face the unique adaptive problem of declining fertility eventually terminating at menopause. We hypothesize women have evolved a reproduction expediting psychological adaptation designed to capitalize on their remaining fertility. The present study tested predictions based on this hypothesis-these women will experience increased sexual motivations and sexual behaviors compared to women not facing a similar fertility decline. Results from college and community samples (N = 827) indicated women with declining fertility think more about sex, have more frequent and intense sexual fantasies, are more willing to engage in sexual intercourse, and report actually engaging in sexual intercourse more frequently than women of other age groups. These findings suggest women's "biological clock" may function to shift psychological motivations and actual behaviors to facilitate utilizing remaining fertility.
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Lisa DeBruine, Benedict Jones, Finlay Smith & Anthony Little
Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, June 2010, Pages 751-758
Abstract:
Women's preferences for male masculinity are highly variable. Although many researchers explain this variability as reflecting systematic individual differences in how women resolve the tradeoff between the costs and benefits of choosing a masculine partner, others suggest that methodological differences between studies are responsible. A recent study found general femininity preferences for judgments of faces that were manipulated in sexual dimorphism of shape but general masculinity preferences for judgments of faces that were based on perceived masculinity. Using the original stimuli, we replicated these previous results but found equivalent general femininity preferences for both types of faces when nonface confounds in the stimuli (e.g. hairstyle) were eliminated through masking. We conclude that care must be taken to control potential confounds in stimuli and that the influence of nonface cues on preferences for facial masculinity deserves further study.
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What's in a Screen Name? Attractiveness of Different Types of Screen Names Used by Online Daters
Monica Whitty & Tom Buchanan
International Journal of Internet Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
This paper examined whether different types of screen names offer advantages when it comes to attracting a partner on dating sites. In the pilot study, we conducted a content analysis of real screen names to develop a typology of screen names. In the main study, we explored whether the typology predicted online daters' ratings of names, and compared the types of names that appealed to men and to women. Men more than women were attracted to screen names that indicated physical attractiveness, and women more than men were attracted to screen names that indicated intelligence or were neutral. Similarly, men more than women were motivated to contact screen names which indicated physical attractiveness and women more than men were more motivated to contact screen names which indicated intellectual characteristics or were neutral. These findings indicate that different types of screen names may elicit different reactions.
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Jaime Confer, Carin Perilloux & David Buss
Evolution and Human Behavior, forthcoming
Abstract:
Studies of physical attractiveness have long emphasized the constituent features that make faces and bodies attractive, such as symmetry, skin texture, and waist-to-hip ratio. Few studies, however, have examined the reproductively relevant cues conveyed by faces and bodies as whole units. Based on the premise that fertility cues are more readily assessed from a woman's body than her face, the present study tested the hypothesis that men evaluating a potential short-term mate would give higher priority to information gleaned from her body, relative to her face, than men evaluating a potential long-term mate. Male and female participants (N=375) were instructed to consider dating an opposite sex individual, whose face was occluded by a "face box" and whose body was occluded by a "body box," as a short-term or long-term mate. With the instruction that only one box could be removed to make their decision about their willingness to engage in the designated relationship with the occluded individual, significantly more men assigned to the short-term, compared to the long-term, mating condition removed the body box. Women's face versus body information choice, in contrast, was unaffected by the temporal dimension of the mating condition. These results suggest that men, but not women, have a condition-dependent adaptive proclivity to prioritize facial cues in long-term mating contexts, but shift their priorities toward bodily cues in short-term mating contexts.
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The effect of a woman's incidental tactile contact on men's later behavior
Nicolas Guéguen
Social Behavior and Personality, Winter 2010, Pages 257-266
Abstract:
Previous research has indicated that a light tactile contact is associated with a positive response towards the person who is touching. The effect of touch on courtship was investigated in this experiment, which was conducted in a field setting. A female confederate either slightly touched or did not touch a man in a bar when asking him for some help. It was found that men who were touched showed more interest toward the female confederate than when no touch occurred. It was also found that touch was associated with stronger courtship intentions by men. The importance of women's nonverbal patterns in the courtship context and the trend of men to misinterpret women's intent are proposed to explain these results.
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I only have eyes for you: Ovulation redirects attention (but not memory) to attractive men
Uriah Anderson, Elaine Perea, Vaughn Becker, Joshua Ackerman, Jenessa Shapiro, Steven Neuberg & Douglas Kenrick
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
A number of studies have found a disjunction between women's attention to, and memory for, handsome men. Although women pay initial attention to handsome men, they do not remember those men later. The present study examines how ovulation might differentially affect these attentional and memory processes. We found that women near ovulation increased their visual attention to attractive men. However, this increased visual attention did not translate into better memory. Discussion focuses on possible explanations, in the context of an emerging body of findings on disjunctions between attention to, and memory for, other people.
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Timing of Sexual Maturation and Women's Evaluation of Men
Stefan Belles, Wilfried Kunde & Roland Neumann
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, May 2010, Pages 703-714
Abstract:
Many antecedents and consequences of an accelerated sexual maturation are associated with negative experiences with the opposite sex. Here we show a connection between menarcheal age, a salient sign of female sexual maturation, and the implicit attitude toward men in later adulthood. In Study 1, earlier age at first menstruation was associated with automatic negative evaluations of male faces but not female ones. Study 2 revealed a relationship between early age of menarche and an implicit association between the concepts male and danger. In Study 3, the earlier the menarche, the larger was the estimated egocentric distance of virtual male voices and the shorter the estimated distance of female voices. These results, obtained about a decade after onset of menstruation, suggest that apparently subtle differences in the onset of sexual maturation may have long-lasting implications for intersexual relationships.
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Benedict Jones, Lynda Boothroyd, David Feinberg & Lisa DeBruine
Personality and Individual Differences, May 2010, Pages 860-863
Abstract:
Although researchers have suggested that adult women who experienced early puberty may demonstrate particularly strong preferences for masculine men, evidence for such an association is equivocal. Here we show that adult women's preferences for masculinized male voices (i.e., male voices with lowered pitch) are negatively associated with the age at which they experienced first menses (i.e., age at menarche). Moreover, this relationship was independent of women's stated preference for long- versus short-term relationships, suggesting that the relationship does not necessarily reflect individual differences in women's preferred type of relationship. We discuss alternative mechanisms for the relationship between early puberty and women's masculinity preferences, focusing on the possibility that girls who experience early puberty might learn to associate masculinity with desirable mates because of exposure to particularly masculine males during adolescence.
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‘Love is in the air': Effects of songs with romantic lyrics on compliance with a courtship request
Nicolas Guéguen, Céline Jacob & Lubomir Lamy
Psychology of Music, July 2010, Pages 303-307
Abstract:
Previous research has shown that exposure to various media is correlated to variations in human behaviour. Exposure to aggressive song lyrics increases aggressive action whereas exposure to songs with prosocial lyrics is associated with prosocial behaviour. An experiment was carried out where 18-20-year-old single female participants were exposed to romantic lyrics or to neutral ones while waiting for the experiment to start. Five minutes later, the participant interacted with a young male confederate in a marketing survey. During a break, the male confederate asked the participant for her phone number. It was found that women previously exposed to romantic lyrics complied with the request more readily than women exposed to the neutral ones. The theoretical implication of our results for the General Learning Model is discussed.
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Joy McClure, John Lydon, Jodene Baccus & Mark Baldwin
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, forthcoming
Abstract:
Initiating a romantic relationship invokes an approach-avoidance conflict between the desire for affiliation and the fear of rejection; optimally, people should selectively approach potential partners who reciprocate their interest. This may be difficult for anxiously attached people: They may be unpopular, and their ambivalence could lead to either a fearfully selective approach at the cost of missed opportunities or an unselective, indiscriminate approach at the cost of increasing rejection. Using a speed-dating paradigm, data were collected from 116 participants, and a signal detection framework was applied to examine the outcomes. For anxious participants, speed-dating attendance was motivated by loneliness. At speed dating, they were unpopular and unselective; they missed fewer opportunities but made more failed attempts. Anxious men made fewer matches than nonanxious men, whereas anxious women were buffered by having a response bias toward saying "yes" to potential partners. Attachment anxiety predicted outcomes above and beyond the powerful impact of attractiveness.
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Personality and reproductive success in a high-fertility human population
Alexandra Alvergne, Markus Jokela & Virpi Lummaa
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, forthcoming
Abstract:
The existence of interindividual differences in personality traits poses a challenge to evolutionary thinking. Although research on the ultimate consequences of personality differences in nonhuman animals has recently undergone a surge of interest, our understanding of whether and how personality influences reproductive decisions in humans has remained limited and informed primarily by modern societies with low mortality-fertility schedules. Taking an evolutionary approach, we use data from a contemporary polygynous high-fertility human population living in rural Senegal to investigate whether personality dimensions are associated with key life-history traits in humans, i.e., quantity and quality of offspring. We show that personality dimensions predict reproductive success differently in men and women in such societies and, in women, are associated with a trade-off between offspring quantity and quality. In women, neuroticism positively predicts the number of children, both between and within polygynous families. Furthermore, within the low social class, offspring quality (i.e., child nutritional status) decreases with a woman's neuroticism, indicating a reproductive trade-off between offspring quantity and quality. Consistent with this, maximal fitness is achieved by women at an intermediate neuroticism level. In men, extraversion was found to be a strong predictor of high social class and polygyny, with extraverted men producing more offspring than their introverted counterparts. These results have implications for the consideration of alternative adaptive hypotheses in the current debate on the maintenance of personality differences and the role of individual factors in fertility patterns in contemporary humans.
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Eduardo Undurraga et al.
PLoS ONE, June 2010, e11027
Background: Evolutionary theory suggests that natural selection favors the evolution of cognitive abilities which allow humans to use facial cues to assess traits of others. The use of facial and somatic cues by humans has been studied mainly in western industrialized countries, leaving unanswered whether results are valid across cultures.
Methodology/Principal Findings: Our objectives were to test (i) if previous finding about raters' ability to get accurate information about an individual by looking at his facial photograph held in low-income non western rural societies and (ii) whether women and men differ in this ability. To answer the questions we did a study during July-August 2007 among the Tsimane', a native Amazonian society of foragers-farmers in Bolivia. We asked 40 females and 40 males 16-25 years of age to rate four traits in 93 facial photographs of other Tsimane' males. The four traits were based on sexual selection theory, and included health, dominance, knowledge, and sociability. The rating scale for each trait ranged from one (least) to four (most). The average rating for each trait was calculated for each individual in the photograph and regressed against objective measures of the trait from the person in the photograph. We found that (i) female Tsimane' raters were able to assess facial cues related to health, dominance, and knowledge and (ii) male Tsimane' raters were able to assess facial cues related to dominance, knowledge, and sociability.
Conclusions/Significance: Our results support the existence of a human ability to identify objective traits from facial cues, as suggested by evolutionary theory.
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Neural activation in the "reward circuit" shows a nonlinear response to facial attractiveness
Xiaoyun Liang, Leslie Zebrowitz & Yi Zhang
Social Neuroscience, June 2010, Pages 320-334
Abstract:
Positive behavioral responses to attractive faces have led neuroscientists to investigate underlying neural mechanisms in a "reward circuit" that includes brain regions innervated by dopamine pathways. Using male faces ranging from attractive to extremely unattractive, disfigured ones, this study is the first to demonstrate heightened responses to both rewarding and aversive faces in numerous areas of this putative reward circuit. Parametric analyses employing orthogonal linear and nonlinear regressors revealed positive nonlinear effects in anterior cingulate cortex, lateral orbital frontal cortex (LOFC), striatum (nucleus accumbens, caudate, putamen), and ventral tegmental area, in addition to replicating previously documented linear effects in medial orbital frontal cortex (MOFC) and LOFC and nonlinear effects in amygdala and MOFC. The widespread nonlinear responses are consistent with single cell recordings in animals showing responses to both rewarding and aversive stimuli, and with some human fMRI investigations of non-face stimuli. They indicate that the reward circuit does not process face valence with any simple dissociation of function across structures. Perceiver gender modulated some responses to our male faces: Women showed stronger linear effects, and men showed stronger nonlinear effects, which may have functional implications. Our discovery of nonlinear responses to attractiveness throughout the reward circuit echoes the history of amygdala research: Early work indicated a linear response to threatening stimuli, including faces; later work also revealed a nonlinear response with heightened activation to affectively salient stimuli regardless of valence. The challenge remains to determine how such dual coding influences feelings, such as pleasure and pain, and guides goal-related behavioral responses, such as approach and avoidance.
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Zwenneke Bosch, Abraham Buunk, Frans Siero & Justin Park
European Journal of Social Psychology, August 2010, Pages 847-855
Abstract:
As the tendency to compare oneself with others may be associated with the tendency to focus on similarities, we hypothesized that individual differences in social comparison orientation (SCO) may moderate the consequences of upward and downward comparisons. In Study 1, high comparers were found to focus more on similarities than low comparers, suggesting that high comparers are more likely to assimilate in general. In Study 2, SCO was found to be positively associated with mood following exposure to an attractive target, and negatively associated with mood following exposure to a less attractive target. In Studies 2 and 3, SCO was found to be positively associated with self-evaluations of attractiveness following exposure to an attractive target and negatively associated with self-evaluations of attractiveness following exposure to a less attractive target. These results indicate that research on the consequences of social comparison must attend to individual differences in SCO.
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Prevalence and Characteristics of Sexual Hookups Among First-Semester Female College Students
Robyn Fielder & Michael Carey
Journal of Sex & Marital Therapy, July 2010, Pages 346-359
Abstract:
First-semester female college students (N = 118) completed surveys to estimate the prevalence of sexual hookups and event-level assessments to clarify the behavioral characteristics of their most recent hookup. Hookups involving oral, vaginal, or anal sex were reported by 51% before college, 36% during their first semester, and 60% by the end of their first semester. Event-level analyses revealed that hookups were more likely to involve friends (47%) or acquaintances (23%) rather than strangers (14%); alcohol use (median = 3 drinks) preceded 64% of hookups. Condoms were used during 69% of vaginal sex hookups.
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Marie Charpentier, Jeremy Chase Crawford, Marylène Boulet & Christine Drea
Animal Behaviour, July 2010, Pages 101-108
Abstract:
To enhance the fitness benefits of social and sexual interaction, animals should be able to decipher information about the genetic makeup of conspecifics. The use of relative criteria to estimate genetic relatedness could facilitate nepotism or inbreeding avoidance, and the use of absolute criteria to estimate genetic quality could help identify the fittest competitor or the best mate. For animals to process trade-offs between relatedness and quality, however, both relative and absolute genetic information must be concurrently available and detectable by conspecifics. Although there is increasing evidence to suggest that animals make genetically informed decisions about their partners, and may even process trade-offs, we understand relatively little about the sensory mechanisms informing these decisions. In previous analyses of the olfactory signals of ringtailed lemurs, Lemur catta, we showed that both scrotal and labial secretions seasonally encode chemical information about (1) pairwise genetic relatedness, within and between the sexes, and (2) individual heterozygosity. Here, using a signaller-receiver paradigm, we conducted behavioural bioassays to test whether male and female lemurs are sensitive to these olfactory sources of genetic information in unfamiliar conspecifics. As the lemurs discriminated conspecific glandular secretions by pairwise relatedness and individual heterozygosity, volatile olfactory signals can be used by both sexes to concurrently process relative and absolute genetic information about conspecifics. Beyond supporting an olfactory mechanism of kin discrimination and mate choice in a primate, we suggest that animals could use olfactory processing to trade off between selection for the most compatible partner versus the most genetically diverse partner.