WOMEN CAN PREDICT A MAN'S INTEREST IN SHORT-TERM RELATIONSHIPS FROM VISUAL PERCPETION OF HIS FACE

   

WOMEN CAN PREDICT A MAN'S INTEREST IN SHORT-TERM RELATIONSHIPS FROM VISUAL PERCPETION OF HIS FACE

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Men’s facial morphology appears to act as a valid cue of sociosexuality, according to new research published in Evolution and Human Behavior journal. The study found evidence that women could predict a man’s attitude towards casual sexual relationships based purely on the shape of his face.

Evolutionary psychologists theorize that attraction is a mechanism for identifying healthy, fertile, appropriate mates. If this is correct, then two things must be true: there must be cues in our faces and bodies that reflect aspects of physiology and psychology; and there must be mechanisms in our brains that can extract this information from the cues and use it to form impressions.

Being able to tell whether someone is likely to be interested in serious relationships or just one night stands would be very useful for both men and women when selecting partners. So, research scientists decided to see whether that information was reflected in the face, and whether observers can extract that information to form accurate impressions.

In the study, 103 individuals were photographed and asked to complete an assessment of sociosexuality, meaning their openness to casual, uncommitted sexual relationships. Using a technique known as geometric morphometric methodology, the researchers were able to find a relationship between sociosexuality and facial shape characteristics among men but not women. Heightened sociosexuality in men was associated with a longer faces, higher foreheads, longer noses, sharp jawline, hollow cheeks, high cheekbones and smaller eyes.

In a second study, which included 65 participants, the photographs were then shown to members of the opposite sex, who were asked to assess the sociosexuality of the person shown in each photograph. The researchers found that women’s perception of sociosexuality was strongly associated with men’s self-reported sociosexuality scores, indicating that women could predict men’s sexual behavior and attitudes. But men’s perception of sociosexuality was not associated with women’s self-reported sociosexuality scores.

It turned out that women were really good at judging whether men were only interested in short-term uncommitted relationships. This is a really valuable skill to have, as it allows women to make subconscious decisions about which men would be a good fit for them, according to their relationship goals, especially if they are looking to get married and have kids.

Using their data, the researchers also created pairs of facial composites that represented high- and low-sociosexuality faces. The researchers found that participants were able to correctly identify the high sociosexuality composite better than chance — but only for men’s and not women’s faces.

We all make lots of judgements about people just by looking at them. Some of these judgements are very accurate – for example, we are >99.9% accurate at judging whether a face is male or female, even when we can’t see the hair, makeup, jewelry, facial hair etc. Other judgements, such as people’s personality traits and behavior seem much less obvious. The recent research study suggests that at least some of these judgements are accurate.

The main caveat is that researchers don’t yet know what the physiological mechanism behind this is. For instance, how exactly is men’s sociosexual orientation reflected in their faces? It is suspected that it may have something to do with testosterone levels – people with higher testosterone levels look more masculine and have a TESTOSTERONE FACE (as mentioned above), and tend to express more masculine personality and behavioral traits of being a hunter. This would also go some way to explaining why it is only in the male faces that women can predict sociosexualiity. However, researchers did not make testosterone measurements in the study, so the implication of testosterone is an educated guess and a matter of conjecture for now.

The findings of the study do not mean to suggest that you should throw out the old adage “don’t judge a book by it’s cover,”.

While this study suggests that there may be some truth to our first impressions, we can get a lot more information about people’s personalities by speaking to them and observing how they behave over a period of time. So the recommendation is not to make a snap judgements about people just from how they look even though your instincts might be correct!

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