Perceptions of human attractiveness comprising face and voice cues

Wells, T, Baguley, T ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0477-2492, Sergeant, M and Dunn, A ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3226-1734, 2013. Perceptions of human attractiveness comprising face and voice cues. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 42 (5), pp. 805-811. ISSN 0004-0002

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Abstract

In human mate choice, sexually dimorphic faces and voices comprise hormone-mediated cues that purportedly develop as an indicator of mate quality or the ability to compete with same-sex rivals. If preferences for faces communicate the same biologically relevant information as do voices, then ratings of these cues should correlate. Sixty participants (30 male and 30 female) rated a series of opposite-sex faces, voices, and faces together with voices for attractiveness in a repeated measures computer-based experiment. The effects of face and voice attractiveness on face-voice compound stimuli were analyzed using a multilevel model. Faces contributed proportionally more than voices to ratings of face-voice compound attractiveness. Faces and voices positively and independently contributed to the attractiveness of male compound stimuli although there was no significant correlation between their rated attractiveness. A positive interaction and correlation between attractiveness was shown for faces and voices in relation to the attractiveness of female compound stimuli. Rather than providing a better estimate of a single characteristic, male faces and voices may instead communicate independent information that, in turn, provides a female with a better assessment of overall mate quality. Conversely, female faces and voices together provide males with a more accurate assessment of a single dimension of mate quality.

Item Type:	Journal article
Publication Title:	Archives of Sexual Behavior
Creators:	Wells, T., Baguley, T., Sergeant, M. and Dunn, A.
Publisher:	Springer
Date:	2013
Volume:	42
Number:	5
ISSN:	0004-0002
Identifiers:	Number Type 10.1007/s10508-012-0054-0 DOI
Divisions:	Schools > School of Social Sciences
Record created by:	EPrints Services
Date Added:	09 Oct 2015 10:48
Last Modified:	09 Jun 2017 13:39
URI:	https://irep.ntu.ac.uk/id/eprint/18396

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