Perceptions of human attractiveness comprising face and voice cues.
In human mate choice, sexually dimorphic faces and voices comprise hormone-mediated cues that purportedly develop as an indicator of mate quality or the ability to compete with same-sex rivals. If preferences for faces communicate the same biologically relevant information as do voices, then ratings of these cues should correlate. Sixty participants (30 male and 30 female) rated a series of opposite-sex faces, voices, and faces together with voices for attractiveness in a repeated measures computer-based experiment. The effects of face and voice attractiveness on face-voice compound stimuli were analyzed using a multilevel model. Faces contributed proportionally more than voices to ratings of face-voice compound attractiveness. Faces and voices positively and independently contributed to the attractiveness of male compound stimuli although there was no significant correlation between their rated attractiveness. A positive interaction and correlation between attractiveness was shown for faces and voices in relation to the attractiveness of female compound stimuli. Rather than providing a better estimate of a single characteristic, male faces and voices may instead communicate independent information that, in turn, provides a female with a better assessment of overall mate quality. Conversely, female faces and voices together provide males with a more accurate assessment of a single dimension of mate quality.
Department of Psychology, Aberystwyth University, Aberystwyth, SY23 2AX, UK. tiw4@aber.ac.uk
Timothy
T
Wells
Thom
T
Baguley
Mark
M
Sergeant
Andrew
A
Dunn
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D001504:Beauty; D002755:Choice Behavior; D003463:Cues; D005145:Face; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D010465:Perception; D010775:Photic Stimulation; D012747:Sexual Partners; D014831:Voice