Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Females with lower WHRs (around 0.7) are generally rated as more
attractive (Marlowe, Apicella, & Reed, 2005; Singh, 1993a, 1993b, 2004; Singh, Dixson, Jessop,
Morgan, & Dixson, 2010; Weeden & Sabini, 2005).
Women with relatively low WHR and BMI are rated as the most
attractive (Dural, etinkaya, & Glbetekin, 2008; Furnham, Lavancy, & McClelland, 2001;
Furnham, Tan, & McManus, 1997; Henss, 1995, 2000; Kociski, 2014; Singh, 1993a, 1994a, 1994b,
1994c, 1995; Singh & Luis, 1995; Singh & Young, 1995; Streeter & McBurney, 2003).
Aharon, I., Etcoff, N., Ariely, D., Chabris, C. F., OConnor, E., & Breiter, H. C. (2001).
Beautiful faces have variable reward value: fMRI and behavioral evidence.
Neuron, 32, 537551.
A Proposal
While a man can increase his reproductive success by pursuing a
woman who is physically attractive, a woman may achieve better
reproductive benefit from mating with a man who is willing to
provide resources necessary for raising offspring (Symons, 1979).
Schtzwohl (2006):
Which of the two women appears more attractive to you?;
Which of the two women appears more healthy to you?;
Which of the two women appears more fecund to you?;
Which of the two women appears to you less likely as being
pregnant?
Studies with various cognitive tasks have found that men show greater functional
brain asymmetry than women (Bayer, et al., 2008; Bourne & Maxwell, 2010;
Gizewski, et al., 2006).
This allows for the possibility that asymmetric facial signals from women have led
to greater functional brain asymmetry in how men judge facial beauty.
Unfortunately, to our knowledge there are only a few studies in the literature
concerning hemispheric asymmetry in judgements of physical attractiveness.
A Proposal
Mohr, Porter, and Benton (2007) The subjects
had to decide whether the visual target (which
was presented in either the left or the RVF in
random order) was fatter or thinner than a real
body/object.
A Proposal
Mohr, Porter, and Benton (2007) study is important
because it demonstrates that
There may be neuropsychological specializations
in bodily judgements.
There may be a sexual dimorphisms in the
processing of bodily images.
A Proposal
Winston, ODoherty, Kilner, Perrett,
and Dolan (2007) revealed that the
right amygdala plays a role in the
affective evaluation of
attractiveness.
Dural, S., etinkaya, H., & Glbetekin, E. (2008). The role of waist-to-hip ratio in evaluation of
female physical attractiveness: Eye-tracker data. Turkish Journal of Psychology, 23, 8991.
Method
Stimuli
A subset of 3D female figures developed by Dural (2008)
M = 4.11 (SE = .11) M = 3.88 (SE = .11)
was used as stimuli.
The subset of figures included in the present study
consisted of six figures in a matrix of 3 2 with three
BW levels (under, normal and over) and two WHR levels
(0.7 and 1.0).
These findings are inline with the previous studies on
WHR/BW-attractiveness. We used these attractiveness
M = 3.94 (SE = .11) M = 3.75 (SE = .11)
scores for the calculation of the accuracy scores.
Backward RT
Mask 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
Attractiveness
5sec ITI rating
Results
Determining whether the subjects were able to
differentiate the female figures in terms of their
levels of attractiveness.
An accuracy interval was determined for each test stimulus by taking the mean attractiveness
rating for each female stimulus provided by subjects in the study by Dural (2008) and adding and
subtracting the standard error of that mean.
Thus, we obtained an accuracy interval for each female figure whose lower and upper bounds
were determined by its own standard error.
These accuracy intervals were then used to determine whether a certain attractiveness score
provided by a subject in the present study fell into the accuracy interval calculated for that
particular female figure.
If the attractiveness score fell into the accuracy interval, this score was categorized as hit; if
not, it was categorized as miss.
Results
The distribution of hits and misses was sorted into a
22 table in which response type (hit or miss) was one
factor and whether the female stimulus was presented
in the LVF vs. RVF was the second factor.
Finally, a 2 (under 0.7 and over 1.0) 2 (hit and miss) chi-square
test of independence indicated that the relation between
attractiveness and accuracy was found to be significant, 2(1) =
6.51, p < .01.
One important feature of the present findings pertains to sex difference observed in attractiveness
judgements. The most behavioral studies have not provided evidence of sex difference in judgements
of female physical attractiveness. Contrary to previous behavioral studies, in present study, female
participants did not discriminate in their ratings of the various images.
Barash and Lipton (1997) compared the ability of men and women to recognize infant facial
expressions when close-up photographs of the faces of babies were flashed on a screen. Women
detected emotions such as surprise, disgust, anger, fear and distress more quickly and accurately
than men did.
However, there was no difference between men and women when the stimuli were presented for
longer durations.
Discussion
Unlike female subjects, males responded to differences among the female stimulus figures.
These findings lend further support to the evolutionary hypotheses that male judgements
of female attractiveness are influenced by the slenderness and hourglass shape of the
female stimuli.
The findings of the present study suggest that human males may have perceptual
mechanisms that facilitate identifying female body shapes associated with health, fecundity
and attractiveness.
Males who were able to detect and process cues reflecting attributes of a good mate were
more likely have offspring with better chances of survival and reproduction.
Discussion
Given the significant associations of female slender and hourglass body shapes with fecundity, levels
of reproductive hormones (Jasienska, Ziomkiewicz, Ellison, Lipson, & Thune, 2004), higher likelihood
of conception (Zaadstra et al., 1993), availability of neurodevelopmental resources for offspring
(Lassek & Gaulin, 2008), lower likelihood of various illnesses (Singh, 1993a) and lower incidence of
depression (Nelson, Palmer, Pedersen, & Miles, 1999), it is no wonder that men rate such body
shapes as more attractive.
Not only the male subjects were not able to identify attractiveness differences accurately, but also
they spent similar times evaluating the female figures with different attractiveness levels, when
the figures were presented in LVF-RH. Although they performed more slowly, they were significantly
better at identifying the attractiveness of the figures, when the figures were presented in RVF-LH.
Based on these results, it seemed that the LH is more likely to play a role in evaluation of female
physical attractiveness.
Interestingly, LH tended to detect the most attractive figure significantly more accurately than the
least attractive figure.