ArticleBiology letters2014
Cross-cultural variation in men's preference for sexual dimorphism in women's faces.
Article in Biology letters, 2014. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 32 papers.
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Who cites it
32 citing papers in PubMed.
- Self-reported social media use does not affect cross-cultural consensus in first impressions.Evolutionary human sciences · 2026Article
- Testosterone mediates life-history trade-offs in female mammals.Biological reviews of the Cambridge Philosophical Society · 2025Review
- A systematic review of the association between women's morphological traits and fertility.Evolutionary human sciences · 2025Article
- What is beautiful is still good: the attractiveness halo effect in the era of beauty filters.Royal Society open science · 2024Article
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- Eyelash length attractiveness across ethnicities.Scientific reports · 2023Article
- No evidence that sociosexual orientation moderates effects of conception probability on women's preferences for male facial masculinity.Scientific reports · 2023Article
- Article
- Delicate dining with a date and burger binging with buddies: impression management across social settings and consumers' preferences for masculine or feminine foods.Frontiers in nutrition · 2023Article
- Africans and Europeans differ in their facial perception of dominance and sex-typicality: a multidimensional Bayesian approach.Scientific reports · 2022Article
- More than just a pretty face? The relationship between immune function and perceived facial attractiveness.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2022Article
- Why do we pick similar mates, or do we?Biology letters · 2021Review
- An exploratory, cross-cultural study on perception of putative cyclical changes in facial fertility cues.Scientific reports · 2021Article
- Self-rated attractiveness predicts preferences for sexually dimorphic facial characteristics in a culturally diverse sample.Scientific reports · 2021Article
- Effects of Male Facial Masculinity on Perceived Attractiveness.Adaptive human behavior and physiology · 2021Article
- Facial attractiveness and preference of sexual dimorphism: A comparison across five populations.Evolutionary human sciences · 2021Article
- Concern About Contracting COVID-19 Predicts Men's Preference for Female Facial Femininity, But Not Women's Preference for Male Facial Masculinity.Adaptive human behavior and physiology · 2021Article
- Cross-cultural perception of female facial appearance: A multi-ethnic and multi-centre study.PloS one · 2021Article
- A new data-driven mathematical model dissociates attractiveness from sexual dimorphism of human faces.Scientific reports · 2020Article
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Authors and funding
17 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Both attractiveness judgements and mate preferences vary considerably cross-culturally. We investigated whether men's preference for femininity in women's faces varies between 28 countries with diverse health conditions by analysing responses of 1972 heterosexual participants. Although men in all countries preferred feminized over masculinized female faces, we found substantial differences between countries in the magnitude of men's preferences. Using an average femininity preference for each country, we found men's facial femininity preferences correlated positively with the health of the nation, which explained 50.4% of the variation among countries. The weakest preferences for femininity were found in Nepal and strongest in Japan. As high femininity in women is associated with lower success in competition for resources and lower dominance, it is possible that in harsher environments, men prefer cues to resource holding potential over high fecundity.
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