Physical attractiveness: Interpersonal and intrapersonal variability of assessments

Abstract

On the basis of face photographs, a team of 50 male judges assessed the physical attractiveness of 64 young women, giving them scores according to two scales (0/1 and 1–10). The attractiveness of each woman was then calculated as the mean value of assessments of all observers. The ratio of intra‐ to interpersonal variance of assessments was the measure of divergence of the observers’ opinions (and its complement to unit was the measure of consistency). The correlation between assessments of attractiveness and measurements of the morphological features of the women was calculated as well as the correlation between the morphological features of the observers and the features of women regarded by them as the most attractive. The main conclusions are: Attractiveness is not solely a function of individual tastes. About 25 per cent of the assessments’ variance can be explained by common opinion of the judges. Higher assessments of attractiveness are correlated with modal variants of morphological features of assessed women. There was no correlation between morphological features of the observers and the features of the women rated most attractive by those observers.     

Physical attractiveness: Manipulation by physique and status displays

This study investigated the effects of physique and status ornamentation on the perceived attractiveness of males and females. Physique display was manipulated by altering clothing tightness and skin exposure. Status was manipulated with clothing changes designed to represent dress of different socioeconomic classes. College students provided ratings for opposite-sex models' physical, dating, sexual, and marital attractiveness. All attractiveness measures were enhanced when models wore high-status costumes, primarily when physique was not also displayed. Accentuating the body produced an overall enhancement of attractiveness as a sexual partner but a decrease in attractiveness as a marital partner. Results are primarily discussed in terms of the economic exchange and expectations regarding sexual behavior that are involved in the traditional marriage.     

Physical attractiveness influences reproductive success of modern men

Theory suggests that reproductive success is positively associated with an individual’s genetic quality. However, the association between physical attractiveness and reproductive success (i.e., number of offspring) in modern humans remains less clear. Here we examined associations between men’s reproductive success and physical attractiveness from retrospective data obtained from married, divorced, and single samples of Slovakian men. As predicted, facially more attractive and taller men were more likely to engage in marriage. In turn, married men had higher reproductive success than single men. Even when men’s marital status was considered, facially more attractive men had higher reproductive success than their less attractive counterparts. This supports the importance of physical attractiveness in sexual selection in modern humans.     

The evolved psychology of voice: evaluating interrelationships in listeners' assessments of the size,masculinity, and attractiveness of unseen speakers

A growing body of research has examined how voice characteristics advertise personal dimensions relevant in mate competition and mate choice. This work has centered on two key voice features, namely, fundamental frequency (F₀) and formants (Fn), and has consistently found that speakers with low F₀, low Fn, or both are rated as being larger, more masculine, and more attractive if men but less attractive if women. However, this consistency in listeners' perceptions is not matched by an equivalent consensus in how these mate-relevant dimensions are causally related or signaled by voice characteristics. Consequently, it is critical to test whether the strong correlations in listeners' perceptions reflect reliable causal relationships between these dimensions or, alternatively, whether they reflect some perceptual or cognitive nonindependence, for example, “what is large is masculine” and “what is small is feminine.” To test this latter possibility, we report detailed analyses of interdependence in listeners' ratings of perceived size, masculinity or femininity, and attractiveness of natural and manipulated voices of the opposite sex. We found strong correlations in listeners' ratings of all three dimensions, confirming past research. Principal component analysis corroborated these interrelationships but also revealed some independence in women's ratings of men's attractiveness and additional (but weaker) independence in men's ratings of women's size. We discuss possible implications for future research on the evolved psychology of voice and whether and how it reflects adaptive functional heuristics for discriminating mates.     

Physical attractiveness and reproductive success in humans: evidence from the late 20th century United States

Physical attractiveness has been associated with mating behavior, but its role in reproductive success of contemporary humans has received surprisingly little attention. In the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study (1244 women, 997 men born between 1937 and 1940), we examined whether attractiveness assessed from photographs taken at age 18 years predicted the number of biological children at age 53–56 years. In women, attractiveness predicted higher reproductive success in a nonlinear fashion, so that attractive (second highest quartile) women had 16% and very attractive (highest quartile) women 6% more children than their less attractive counterparts. In men, there was a threshold effect so that men in the lowest attractiveness quartile had 13% fewer children than others who did not differ from each other in the average number of children. These associations were partly but not completely accounted for by attractive participants' increased marriage probability. A linear regression analysis indicated relatively weak directional selection gradient for attractiveness (β=0.06 in women, β=0.07 in men). These findings indicate that physical attractiveness may be associated with reproductive success in humans living in industrialized settings.     

Human body odour, symmetry and attractiveness.

Several studies have found body and facial symmetry as well as attractiveness to be human mate choice criteria. These characteristics are presumed to signal developmental stability. Human body odour has been shown to influence female mate choice depending on the immune system, but the question of whether smell could signal general mate quality, as do other cues, was not addressed in previous studies. We compared ratings of body odour, attractiveness, and measurements of facial and body asymmetry of 16 male and 19 female subjects. Subjects wore a T-shirt for three consecutive nights under controlled conditions. Opposite-sex raters judged the odour of the T-shirts and another group evaluated portraits of the subjects for attractiveness. We measured seven bilateral traits of the subject's body to assess body asymmetry. Facial asymmetry was examined by distance measurements of portrait photographs. The results showed a significant positive correlation between facial attractiveness and sexiness of body odour for female subjects. We found positive relationships between body odour and attractiveness and negative ones between smell and body asymmetry for males only if female odour raters were in the most fertile phase of their menstrual cycle. The outcomes are discussed in the light of different male and female reproductive strategies.     

The attractiveness of the Droop equations.

The Droop equations are a system of three coupled, nonlinear ordinary differential equations describing the growth of a microorganism in a chemostat. The growth rate of the organism is limited by the availability of a single nutrient. In contrast to the better known Monod equations, the nutrient is divided into external and internal cellular pools. Only the internal pool can catalyze growth. This paper proves that the Droop equations are globally stable. Based on a single combination of parameters, either the chemostat organism goes extinct or it tends to a fixed, positive concentration.     

Accounting for spatial variability in life cycle cost-effectiveness assessments of environmental impact abatement measures

The International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment - The environmental and economic impacts of livestock production systems are typically assessed using global characterisation factors and data,...     

Physical training and heart rate and blood pressure variability: a 5-yr randomized trial

We studied the effect of regular physical activity on cardiac and vascular autonomic modulation during a 5-yr controlled randomized training intervention in a representative sample of older Finnish men. Heart rate variability (HRV) and blood pressure variability (BPV) are markers of cardiac and vascular health, reflecting cardiac and vascular autonomic modulation. One hundred and forty randomly selected 53- to 63-yr-old men were randomized into two identical groups: an intervention (EX) group and a reference (CO) group, of which 89 men remained until the final analysis (EX: n = 47; CO: n = 42). The EX group trained for 30-60 min three to five times a week with an intensity of 40-60% of maximal oxygen consumption. The mean weekly energy expenditure of the training program for the 5-yr training period was 3.80 MJ, and 71% of the EX group exceeded the mean. The EX group had a significantly (P < 0.01) higher oxygen consumption at ventilatory aerobic threshold (VO2VT) than the CO group at the 5-yr time point. VO2VT had a tendency to increase in the EX group and decrease in the CO group (interaction P < 0.001) from the baseline to the 5-yr time point. Peak performance did not change. Low-frequency power of R-R interval variability decreased in the EX group (P < 0.01, by 6%) from the baseline to the 5-yr time point. BPV did not change. In conclusion, low-intensity regular exercise training did not prevent HRV from decreasing or change BPV in 5 yr in older Finnish men.     

Facial attractiveness, symmetry and cues of good genes.

Cues of phenotypic condition should be among those used by women in their choice of mates. One marker of better phenotypic condition is thought to be symmetrical bilateral body and facial features. However, it is not clear whether women use symmetry as the primary cue in assessing the phenotypic quality of potential mates or whether symmetry is correlated with other facial markers affecting physical attractiveness. Using photographs of men's faces, for which facial symmetry had been measured, we found a relationship between women's attractiveness ratings of these faces and symmetry, but the subjects could not rate facial symmetry accurately. Moreover, the relationship between facial attractiveness and symmetry was still observed, even when symmetry cues were removed by presenting only the left or right half of faces. These results suggest that attractive features other than symmetry can be used to assess phenotypic condition. We identified one such cue, facial masculinity (cheek-bone prominence and a relatively longer lower face), which was related to both symmetry and full- and half-face attractiveness.     

Physical variability,diversity gradients and the ecology of temperate and tropical reefs

Traditionally, compared with the tropics, temperate systems are believed to: (i) have environments which are less favourable (i.e. harsher, more variable and less predictable); and (ii) support communities which are less diverse. Explanations for differences between temperate and tropical communities, including differences in diversity, generally rely on the former notion. The evidence for these ideas is, at best, equivocal. Organisms are subjected to physical stresses and disturbances on both temperate and tropical reefs. Communities on temperate reefs are not invariably less diverse than those in the tropics, at least at small spatial scales. Finally, there is as yet little evidence of genuine differences between the ecology of temperate and tropical communities. There is, however, much small-scale, spatial patchiness in the structure of reef communities and their physical environment. This patchiness in structure may result from patchiness in biological factors (e.g. recruitment) or in the physical environment. This small-scale variation in environmental factors may prove to be a more important determinant of community structure than the large-scale, latitudinal trends some ecologists have been obsessed with.     

The reproducibility of intrapartum cardiotocogram assessments.

Five obstetrician-gynecologists experienced in fetal monitoring assessed 150 intrapartum cardiotocograms obtained with an external transducer. There were three successive blind readings, the first two without any clinical data apart from gestational age. The reviewers indicated whether the tracings showed definite, possible or no abnormalities. The interpretations given by each reviewer for any one tracing were fairly consistent, but they varied markedly from one reviewer to another. The proportion of tracings interpreted as normal ranged from 39% to 74%, and the proportion assessed as abnormal ranged from 3% to 43%. All five observers agreed on the interpretation of 29% of the tracings. Inter-reviewer reproducibility scarcely changed when clinical data were provided. These findings emphasize the need to evaluate all methods of fetal monitoring before they become widespread.     

Time-motion and physiological assessments of ice hockey performance.

Ice hockey performance was studied during 10 contests to assess time-motion characteristics and associated physiological changes that occur for each position. Depending on the position played, the actual playing time per game for forwards and defensemen ranged between 20.7 and 28.0 min. The number of shifts ranged from 14 to 21 with an average playing time of 85.4 s/shift. Further analysis of each shift indicated that there was an average of 2.3 play stoppages which averaged 27.1 s, producing a continuous playing time of 39.7 s. Telemetered recordings of heart rate during each shift revealed sustained rates of between 170 and 174 beats/min over the three periods of the game. For both the forwards and defensemen, values for blood lactates were highest during the first and second periods (x = 78.0 and 66.1 mg/100 ml), then declined considerably during the third period (x = 44.5 mg/100 ml). Blood glucose showed a similar tendency (x = 139.3, 133.7, 114.1 mg/100 ml), while hematocrit and total protein showed little tendency to change.