The Face of Attraction

Masculine facial features are heavily influenced by the production of testosterone during adolescence, when the bones in the face take their adult form. From an evolutionary perspective, puberty marks the time when men and women enter the arena of mate competition. They begin to allocate time, energy, and effort to the tasks of mate selection and mate attraction. In men, the amount of muscle mass, as we have seen, contributes to success in competition with other men and sexual attractiveness to women. And testosterone turns out to be the magical hormone that promotes men’s muscle mass and masculine facial features.

 

So why don’t all men have masculine faces and ripped bodies? The answer strangely hinges on a negative side effect of testosterone. High testosterone production compromises the body’s immune functioning, leaving men less able to fight off diseases and parasites. Now here is the paradox: Only men who are above average in healthiness during adolescence can “afford” to produce the high levels of testosterone that masculinize the face. Less healthy adolescents cannot afford to compromise their already precarious immune systems, and so produce lower levels of testosterone at precisely the time when facial bones take their adult form. A masculine-looking face signals a man’s health, his ability to succeed in competing with other men, and his ability to protect. And that is the best explanation for why most women find somewhat more masculine faces (but not the most masculine find somewhat more masculine faces (but not the most masculine faces) to be the most attractive.

But when we consider a woman’s fertility status and whether she is evaluating a man as a casual sex partner or a husband, the dynamics shift. In a series of scientific studies, women were asked to judge the attractiveness of a variety of men’s faces at different points during their ovulation cycle—during the most fertile phase (the five days leading up to ovulation) and during the least fertile, post-ovulation luteal phase. The subjects evaluated the faces for sexiness, their attractiveness as a casual sex partner, and their attractiveness as a long-term mate. Women found above-average masculine faces to be the sexiest and the most attractive for a casual sexual encounter. In contrast, women judged somewhat less masculine faces to be more attractive for a long-term relationship. Women’s sexual desires for testosterone-fuelled facial cues of masculinity were especially strong during the fertile window of their cycle.

The most plausible interpretation of these results is that women are attracted to men who are likely to be “good dads” when choosing long-term mates, but are attracted to the honest signals of health that masculinity provides when they are most likely to become impregnated. This interpretation, however, raises a puzzle: Why wouldn’t women be attracted to highly masculine males for all mating relationships, from dangerous liaisons through lifelong love?

The answer lies in the fact that the more masculine men are less sexually faithful. They are more likely to be the risk-taking womanizing “bad boys” among the male population. Womanizing “bad boys” among the male population. Consequently, most women face a trade-off: If they choose the less masculine-looking man, they get a better father and a more sexually loyal mate, but they lose out in the currency of genes for good health. If they choose the more masculine man, they can endow their children with good genes for health, but must suffer the costs of a man who channels some of his sexual energy toward other women. So women’s preferences reveal a dual mating strategy, an attempt to get the best of both worlds.

They can choose to have a long-term relationship with a slightly less masculine man who will be sexually loyal and invest in her children, while opportunistically having sex with the more masculine men when they are most likely to get pregnant. DNA fingerprinting studies reveal that roughly 12 percent of women get pregnant by men other than their long-term mates, suggesting that some, but certainly not all, women pursue this dual mating strategy.

Cultures differ, however, in how much women are attracted to facial masculinity. Psychologist Ian Penton-Voak and his colleagues found that Jamaican women found masculine-looking men sexier than did British women. They interpret this cultural difference as a product of the higher rates of infectious diseases in Jamaica compared to England. In cultures in which infectious disease is a more pervasive problem, women seem to shift their sexual choices to men who possess honest signals of good health—men whose faces have been shaped by testosterone.