Impact of parity and salivary hormonal levels on motivation toward infant emotions.

Infant faces have been shown to be particularly motivating stimuli for women. No studies, however, have compared mothers and nonmothers in whether parity modulates approach motivation toward emotional infant faces. We studied 54 Finnish first-time mothers and 42 nonmothers in a pay-per-view key-press task where the participants were shown 20 infant faces with smiling and crying expressions.

Decoding the language of first impressions: Comparing models of first impressions of faces derived from free-text descriptions and trait ratings.

First impressions formed from facial appearance predict important social outcomes. Existing models of these impressions indicate they are underpinned by dimensions of Valence and Dominance, and are typically derived by applying data reduction methods to explicit ratings of faces for a range of traits. However, this approach is potentially problematic because the trait ratings may not fully capture the dimensions on which people spontaneously assess faces.

Re-evaluating the Role of Partnership-Related Perceptions in Women's Preferences for Men with Masculine Face Shapes.

Many researchers have proposed that women perceive men with masculine face shapes to be less suitable as parents and long-term partners than men with feminine face shapes, causing women to find masculine men more attractive for short-term than long-term relationships. However, recent work shows that results obtained using the type of experimentally manipulated stimuli that were employed in studies presenting evidence for these claims are not necessarily observed when natural (i.e.

No evidence that averaging voices influences attractiveness.

Vocal attractiveness influences important social outcomes. While most research on the acoustic parameters that influence vocal attractiveness has focused on the possible roles of sexually dimorphic characteristics of voices, such as fundamental frequency (i.e.

Assessing the roles of shape prototypicality and sexual dimorphism in ratings of the trustworthiness of faces.

Perceptions of the trustworthiness of faces predict important social outcomes, including economic exchange and criminal sentencing decisions. However, the specific facial characteristics that drive trustworthiness perceptions remain poorly understood. Here we investigated this issue by exploring possible relationships between ratings of the trustworthiness of face images and objective assessments of two aspects of face shape that researchers have previously argued are important for perceptions of trustworthiness: distinctiveness and sexual dimorphism.

No increased inbreeding avoidance during the ovulatory phase of the menstrual cycle.

Mate preferences and mating-related behaviours are hypothesised to change over the menstrual cycle to increase reproductive fitness. Recent large-scale studies suggest that previously reported hormone-linked behavioural changes are not robust. The proposal that women's preference for associating with male kin is down-regulated during the ovulatory (high-fertility) phase of the menstrual cycle to reduce inbreeding has not been tested in large samples.

The importance of face-shape masculinity for perceptions of male dominance depends on study design.

Dominance perceptions play an important role in social interactions. Although many researchers have proposed that shape masculinity is an important facial cue for dominance perceptions, evidence for this claim has come almost exclusively from studies that assessed perceptions of experimentally manipulated faces using forced-choice paradigms. Consequently, we investigated the role of masculine shape characteristics in perceptions of men's facial dominance (1) when shape-manipulated stimuli were presented in a forced-choice paradigm and (2) when unmanipulated face images were rated for dominance and shape masculinity was measured from face images.

No evidence that sociosexual orientation moderates effects of conception probability on women's preferences for male facial masculinity.

Although many researchers have proposed that women will show stronger preferences for male facial masculinity when conception probability is high, empirical tests of this hypothesis have produced mixed results. One possible explanation for these inconsistent findings is that effects of conception probability on women's preferences for facial masculinity are moderated by additional factors not typically considered in these empirical tests. One such potential moderator is individual differences in women's openness to uncommitted sexual relationships (i.

The role of valence, dominance, and pitch in perceptions of artificial intelligence (AI) conversational agents' voices.

There is growing concern that artificial intelligence conversational agents (e.g., Siri, Alexa) reinforce voice-based social stereotypes.

Mapping physical characteristics in face images to social judgements.

Sutherland and Young (Br. J. Psychol.

Age Effects on Women's and Men's Dyadic and Solitary Sexual Desire.

While most studies on sexuality in later life report that sexual desire declines with age, little is known about the exact nature of age effects on sexual desire. Using self-reported dyadic sexual desire relating to a partner, dyadic sexual desire relating to an attractive person, and solitary sexual desire from a large (N > 8000) and age diverse (14.6-80.

Does facial attractiveness really signal immunocompetence?

The dominant theory of facial attractiveness judgments is that they evolved to identify healthy individuals with strong immune systems. Here, we summarize results of recent tests of this hypothesis, concluding that it has little compelling empirical support. We then propose an alternative perspective that emphasizes the effects of lifestyle health.

Do 3D Face Images Capture Cues of Strength, Weight, and Height Better than 2D Face Images do?

Objectives: A large literature exists investigating the extent to which physical characteristics (e.g., strength, weight, and height) can be accurately assessed from face images.

An exploratory, cross-cultural study on perception of putative cyclical changes in facial fertility cues.

Although many researchers have argued that facial traits evolved as honest cues to women's current fertility (possibly via changes in facial femininity), evidence that women's facial attractiveness is significantly, positively related to probability of conception throughout menstrual cycle is mixed. These mixed results could reflect differences among studies in the methods used to assess facial attractiveness (i.e.

Self-rated attractiveness predicts preferences for sexually dimorphic facial characteristics in a culturally diverse sample.

Individuals who are more attractive are thought to show a greater preference for facial sexual dimorphism, potentially because individuals who perceive themselves as more physically attractive believe they will be better able to attract and/or retain sexually dimorphic partners. Evidence for this link is mixed, however, and recent research suggests the association between self-rated attractiveness and preferences for facial sexual dimorphism may not generalise to non-Western cultures. Here, we assess whether self-rated attractiveness and self-rated health predict facial sexual dimorphism preferences in a large and culturally diverse sample of 6907 women and 2851 men from 41 countries.

To which world regions does the valence-dominance model of social perception apply?

Over the past 10 years, Oosterhof and Todorov's valence-dominance model has emerged as the most prominent account of how people evaluate faces on social dimensions. In this model, two dimensions (valence and dominance) underpin social judgements of faces. Because this model has primarily been developed and tested in Western regions, it is unclear whether these findings apply to other regions.

Sexual orientation predicts men's preferences for sexually dimorphic face-shape characteristics: A replication study.

Many researchers have proposed that straight men prefer women's faces displaying feminine shape characteristics at least partly because mating with such women will produce healthier offspring. Although a prediction of this adaptation-for-mate-choice hypothesis is that straight men will show stronger preferences for feminized versus masculinized versions of women's faces than will gay men, only one previous study has directly tested this prediction. Here we directly replicated that study by comparing 623 gay and 3163 straight men's preferences for feminized versus masculinized versions of faces.

Perceived femininity and masculinity contribute independently to facial impressions.

In person perception research, femininity and masculinity are regularly conceived as 2 ends of 1 bipolar dimension. This unidimensional understanding permeates work on facial impressions, gender diagnosticity, and perceptions of LGBTQ individuals, but it is perhaps most prominent in evolutionary work suggesting that sexually dimorphic facial features (which vary along a female-male continuum) correspond directly with subjective ratings of femininity and masculinity, which in turn predict ratings of traits such as attractiveness. In this paper, we analyze 2 large face databases (the Chicago and Bogazici Face Databases) to demonstrate that femininity and masculinity are distinct dimensions in person perception.

Are Sexual Desire and Sociosexual Orientation Related to Men's Salivary Steroid Hormones?

Objective: Although it is widely assumed that men's sexual desire and interest in casual sex (i.e., sociosexual orientation) are linked to steroid hormone levels, evidence for such associations is mixed.

Preregistered Direct Replication of "Sick Body, Vigilant Mind: The Biological Immune System Activates the Behavioral Immune System".

The tendency to attend to and avoid cues to pathogens varies across individuals and contexts. Researchers have proposed that this variation is partially driven by immunological vulnerability to infection, though support for this hypothesis is equivocal. One key piece of evidence (Miller & Maner, 2011) shows that participants who have recently been ill-and hence may have a reduced ability to combat subsequent infection-allocate more attention to faces with infectious-disease cues than do participants who have not recently been ill.

Are affective factors related to individual differences in facial expression recognition?

Evidence that affective factors (e.g. anxiety, depression, affect) are significantly related to individual differences in emotion recognition is mixed.

No evidence that partnered and unpartnered gay men differ in their preferences for male facial masculinity.

Women's preferences for masculine characteristics in men's faces have been extensively studied. By contrast, little is known about how gay men respond to masculine facial characteristics. One area of disagreement in the emerging literature on this topic is the association between gay men's partnership status and masculinity preference.