Facial resemblance between women's partners and brothers

Saxton, TK, Steel, C, Rowley, K, Newman, A and Baguley, T ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0477-2492, 2017. Facial resemblance between women's partners and brothers. Evolution and Human Behavior, 38 (4), pp. 429-433. ISSN 1090-5138

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Abstract

Research on optimal outbreeding describes the greater reproductive success experienced on average by couples who are neither too closely related, nor too genetically dissimilar. How is optimal outbreeding achieved? Faces that subtly resemble family members could present useful cues to a potential reproductive partner with an optimal level of genetic dissimilarity. Here, we present the first empirical data that heterosexual women select partners who resemble their brothers. Raters ranked the facial similarity between a woman's male partner, and that woman's brother compared to foils. In a multilevel ordinal logistic regression that modeled variability in both the stimuli and the raters, there was clear evidence for perceptual similarity in facial photographs of a woman's partner and her brother. That is, although siblings themselves are sexually aversive, sibling resemblance is not. The affective responses of disgust and attraction may be calibrated to distinguish close kin from individuals with some genetic dissimilarity during partner choice.

Item Type:	Journal article
Publication Title:	Evolution and Human Behavior
Creators:	Saxton, T.K., Steel, C., Rowley, K., Newman, A. and Baguley, T.
Publisher:	Elsevier
Date:	July 2017
Volume:	38
Number:	4
ISSN:	1090-5138
Identifiers:	Number Type 10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2017.04.006 DOI S109051381630280X Publisher Item Identifier
Divisions:	Schools > School of Social Sciences
Record created by:	Linda Sullivan
Date Added:	27 Apr 2017 11:52
Last Modified:	05 Aug 2020 09:16
URI:	https://irep.ntu.ac.uk/id/eprint/30547

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