After all, what are women attracted to?: a meta-analytic review of women's preferences for men's physical traits

• Autor(a) principal: Barroso, Bruno Miguel Mendo Miguez
• Data de Publicação: 2019
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10773/29051
• topic: Male attractiveness; Women’s preferences; Facial attractiveness; Bodily attractiveness; Sexual selection; Mate-choice

The perception of attractiveness is an evolutionary sexual adaptation of the human species to ensure the selection of high genetic quality mates, in light of sexual selection theory. Thus, opposite-sex judgements of attractiveness should be fairly consistent, and higher for certain characteristics (displayed by high-quality individuals). However, specifically in the case of male physical attractiveness literature, there seems to be great variability in the results. With the aim of providing a clearer picture of what is presently known about women’s physical preferences in men, we explored eight particularly relevant traits of male physical attractiveness: facial averageness, symmetry, sexual dimorphism of shape, colour and facial hair; body type (including muscularity and relevant ratios), hair and relative height. Through a meta-analytic review, we found that: 1) facial averageness and symmetry, waist-to-chest ratio, and height were important predictors of male attractiveness; 2) inconclusive results were found for sexual dimorphism of shape; 3) skin colour and facial hair are relevant factors in attractiveness and need future research; and 4) body hair seems less relevant than other traits. We then present a discussion about the noticeable variability of the literature in the light of evolutionary theory and recent genetics research, and propose that male physical attractiveness may be secondary to behavioural aspects in judgements of attractiveness.