title: In your face: facial metrics predict aggressive behaviour in the laboratory and in varsity and professional hockey players.
abstract: Facial characteristics are an important basis for judgements about gender, emotion, personality, motivational states and behavioural dispositions. Based on a recent finding of a sexual dimorphism in facial metrics that is independent of body size, we conducted three studies to examine the extent to which individual differences in the facial width-to-height ratio were associated with trait dominance (using a questionnaire) and aggression during a behavioural task and in a naturalistic setting (varsity and professional ice hockey). In study 1, men had a larger facial width-to-height ratio, higher scores of trait dominance, and were more reactively aggressive compared with women. Individual differences in the facial width-to-height ratio predicted reactive aggression in men, but not in women (predicted 15% of variance). In studies 2 (male varsity hockey players) and 3 (male professional hockey players), individual differences in the facial width-to-height ratio were positively related to aggressive behaviour as measured by the number of penalty minutes per game obtained over a season (predicted 29 and 9% of the variance, respectively). Together, these findings suggest that the sexually dimorphic facial width-to-height ratio may be an 'honest signal' of propensity for aggressive behaviour.
authors: Department of Psychology, Brock University, 500 Glenridge Avenue, St Catharines, Ontario, Canada L2S 3A1.
authors: Justin M
authors: JM
authors: Carré
authors: Cheryl M
authors: CM
authors: McCormick
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000374:Aggression / Q000502:physiology* / Q000523:psychology*; D005149:Facial Expression; D005260:Female; D006688:Hockey; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D012727:Sex Characteristics