title: Faces and fitness: attractive evolutionary relationship or ugly hypothesis?
abstract: In recent years, various studies have attempted to understand human evolution by examining relationships between athletic performance or physical fitness and facial attractiveness. Over a wide range of five homogeneous groups (n = 327), there is an approximate 3% shared variance between facial attractiveness and athletic performance or physical fitness (95% CI = 0.5-8%, p = 0.002). Further, studies relating human performance and attractiveness often have major methodological limitations that limit their generalizability. Thus, despite statistical significance, the association between facial attractiveness and human performance has questionable biological importance. Here, we present a critique of these studies and provide recommendations to improve the quality of future research in this realm.
authors.affiliation: Department of Physical Therapy, High Point University, High Point, NC 27268, USA jsmoliga@highpoint.edu.
authors.forename: James M
authors.identifier: http://orcid.org/0000-0002-1895-5687
authors.initials: JM
authors.lastname: Smoliga
authors.affiliation: Department Respiratory Therapy, Georgia State University, Atlanta, GA 30302, USA.
authors.forename: Gerald S
authors.identifier: http://orcid.org/0000-0002-4473-1601
authors.initials: GS
authors.lastname: Zavorsky
mesh_terms: D056352:Athletes; D001504:Beauty; D005075:Biological Evolution; D005145:Face / Q000033:anatomy & histology*; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D010809:Physical Fitness
keywords: attractiveness; endurance; exercise; masculinity; mate selection; physiology