ArticlePsychological science2018
No Compelling Evidence that Preferences for Facial Masculinity Track Changes in Women's Hormonal Status.
Article in Psychological science, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 51 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
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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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Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
51 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- A meta-analysis of the association between male dimorphism and fitness outcomes in humans.eLife · 2022Pooled it
- Physical Strength Is Not Associated With Facial Sexual Dimorphism and Asymmetry in Either Czechs or Cameroonians.American journal of human biology : the official journal of the Human Biology Council · 2025Article
- Chemosensory Cues Modulate Women's Jealousy Responses to Vocal Femininity.Archives of sexual behavior · 2025Article
- Further evidence that averageness and femininity, rather than symmetry and masculinity, predict facial attractiveness judgments.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Mate assessment based on physical characteristics: a review and reflection.Biological reviews of the Cambridge Philosophical Society · 2025Review
- Assessing the association between menstrual cycle phase and voice-gender categorization: no robust evidence for an association.Frontiers in psychology · 2025Article
- Time perception of attractive male faces and voices: The role of women's menstrual cycle.PloS one · 2025Article
- Editorial: Hormones and person perception.Frontiers in psychology · 2025Article
- Big bodies, blurred lines: the impact of male body size on sensitivity to sexually dimorphic facial features.Frontiers in psychology · 2025Article
- Sexual Dimorphism: The Interrelation of Shape and Color.Archives of sexual behavior · 2024Article
- Interactive effects of participant and stimulus race on cognitive performance in youth: Insights from the ABCD study.Developmental cognitive neuroscience · 2024Article
- Preeclampsia Argues Against an Ovulatory Shift in Female Mate Preferences.Archives of sexual behavior · 2023Article
- No evidence that sociosexual orientation moderates effects of conception probability on women's preferences for male facial masculinity.Scientific reports · 2023Article
- Facial Attractiveness, but not Facial Masculinity, is Used as a Cue to Paternal Involvement in Fathers.Adaptive human behavior and physiology · 2023Article
- Preference for Male Risk Takers Varies with Relationship Context and Health Status but not COVID Risk.Evolutionary psychological science · 2023Article
- Does the interplay of emotion-related personality traits and reproductive hormones predict individual variation in emotion recognition?PloS one · 2023Article
- The role of hormones in attraction and visual attention to facial masculinity.Frontiers in psychology · 2023Article
- Femme/Butch/Androgyne Identity and Preferences for Femininity Across Face, Voice, and Personality Traits in Chinese Lesbian and Bisexual Women.Archives of sexual behavior · 2022Article
- Fertility Status Does Not Facilitate Women's Judgment of Male Sexual Orientation.Archives of sexual behavior · 2022Article
- Stability and validity of steroid hormones in hair and saliva across two ovulatory cycles.Comprehensive psychoneuroendocrinology · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
14 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Although widely cited as strong evidence that sexual selection has shaped human facial-attractiveness judgments, findings suggesting that women's preferences for masculine characteristics in men's faces are related to women's hormonal status are equivocal and controversial. Consequently, we conducted the largest-ever longitudinal study of the hormonal correlates of women's preferences for facial masculinity ( N = 584). Analyses showed no compelling evidence that preferences for facial masculinity were related to changes in women's salivary steroid hormone levels. Furthermore, both within-subjects and between-subjects comparisons showed no evidence that oral contraceptive use decreased masculinity preferences. However, women generally preferred masculinized over feminized versions of men's faces, particularly when assessing men's attractiveness for short-term, rather than long-term, relationships. Our results do not support the hypothesized link between women's preferences for facial masculinity and their hormonal status.
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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.