ArticleScientific reports2017
Predictors of facial attractiveness and health in humans.
Article in Scientific reports, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 69 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
69 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Soft tissue changes associated with Class III orthopaedic treatment in growing patients: a systematic review and meta-analysis.Progress in orthodontics · 2025Pooled it
- Facial Asymmetry and Sexuality in Women.Archives of sexual behavior · 2026Article
- Predicting 3D Post-Orthodontic Facial Outcomes With a Diffusion Model Trained on Unpaired Datasets.International dental journal · 2026Article
- Associations Between Reproductive Disorders and Specific Physical, Mental, Personality, and Social Characteristics: A Narrative Review.Health science reports · 2026Article
- The evaluation of facial features as markers of cardiometabolic health in women of post-reproductive age.Evolution, medicine, and public health · 2026Article
- Real-time and digital remote nutritional assessment framework with the use of smartphone-enabled facial morphometrics and machine learning- a proof of concept.European journal of clinical nutrition · 2026Observational
- Face Value: Beauty, Punishment, and the Moral Politics of Appearance.Behavioral sciences (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Review
- Less is more: Aesthetic liking is inversely related to metabolic expense by the visual system.PNAS nexus · 2025Article
- Facial Appearance and Markers of Cardiometabolic Risk in Healthy Adult Men.Archives of sexual behavior · 2025Article
- Predicting changes of incisor and facial profile following orthodontic treatment: a machine learning approach.Head & face medicine · 2025Article
- Mate assessment based on physical characteristics: a review and reflection.Biological reviews of the Cambridge Philosophical Society · 2025Review
- Muscle parameters in men and oxidative stress markers.Journal of physiological anthropology · 2025Article
- Assessing the association between menstrual cycle phase and voice-gender categorization: no robust evidence for an association.Frontiers in psychology · 2025Article
- Is the human face a biomarker of health? - A scoping review.PloS one · 2025Article
- A systematic review of the association between women's morphological traits and fertility.Evolutionary human sciences · 2025Article
- Time perception of attractive male faces and voices: The role of women's menstrual cycle.PloS one · 2025Article
- Visual attention to faces during attractiveness and dominance judgements.Evolutionary human sciences · 2025Article
- Beautiful Strangers: Physical Evaluation of Strangers Is Influenced by Friendship Expectation.Personality & social psychology bulletin · 2024Article
- There Is no Universal Standard of Beauty.Aesthetic plastic surgery · 2024Review
- Limits in the Perception of Facial Symmetry-A Prospective Study.Journal of personalized medicine · 2024Article
9 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Facial attractiveness has been suggested to provide signals of biological quality, particularly health, in humans. The attractive traits that have been implicated as signals of biological quality include sexual dimorphism, symmetry, averageness, adiposity, and carotenoid-based skin colour. In this study, we first provide a comprehensive examination of the traits that predict attractiveness. In men, attractiveness was predicted positively by masculinity, symmetry, averageness, and negatively by adiposity. In women, attractiveness was predicted positively by femininity and negatively by adiposity. Skin colour did not predict attractiveness in either sex, suggesting that, despite recent interest in the literature, colour may play limited role in determining attractiveness. Male perceived health was predicted positively by averageness, symmetry, and skin yellowness, and negatively by adiposity. Female perceived health was predicted by femininity. We then examined whether appearance predicted actual health using measures that have been theoretically linked to sexual selection, including immune function, oxidative stress, and semen quality. In women, there was little evidence that female appearance predicted health. In men, we found support for the phenotype-linked fertility hypothesis that male masculinity signalled semen quality. However, we also found a negative relationship between averageness and semen quality. Overall, these results indicate weak links between attractive facial traits and health.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.