ArticleScientific reports2024
Cross-cultural perception of strength, attractiveness, aggressiveness and helpfulness of Maasai male faces calibrated to handgrip strength.
Article in Scientific reports, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 3 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
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.
The trial behind it
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.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
3 citing papers in PubMed.
- Sex Biases in Patterns of Parental Investment.Human nature (Hawthorne, N.Y.) · 2026Article
- 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
- Violence exposure is associated with preference for masculine faces: evidence from Senegal.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2025Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
8 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Previous research has demonstrated that Maasai and Europeans tend to align in their ratings of the physical strength and aggressiveness of Maasai male faces, calibrated to hand grip strength (HGS). However, perceptions of attractiveness of these faces differed among populations. In this study, three morphs of young Maasai men created by means of geometric morphometrics, and depicting the average sample and two extrema (± 4 SD of HGS), were assessed by men and women from Tanzania, Czech Republic, Russia, Pakistan, China, and Mexico (total sample = 1540). The aim of this study was to test cross-cultural differences in the perception of young Maasai men's composites calibrated to HGS, focusing on four traits: physical strength, attractiveness, aggressiveness, and helpfulness. Individuals from all six cultures were able to distinguish between low, medium, and high HGS portraits. Across all study populations, portrait of Maasai men with lower HGS was perceived as less attractive, more aggressive, and less helpful. This suggests that people from diverse populations share similar perceptions of physical strength based on facial shape, as well as attribute similar social qualities like aggressiveness and helpfulness to these facial images. Participants from all samples rated the composite image of weak Maasai men as the least attractive.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
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.