Sex is written on yer face

Submitted by xConorx on 9 April, 2008 - 12:56.

A person's attitude to sex might be written all over their face, according to a study of attractiveness. Psychologists also found that, when it comes to selecting relationships, heterosexual men and women are looking for entirely opposite things.
Guardian

The results, published in the journal Evolution and Human Behaviour, showed that men and women could generally judge who would be more interested in a short-term fling just by looking at their expression and features. In one study of 153 participants, 72% of people correctly identified the attitudes from photographs more than half of the time. "Men who said they were interested in short-term sex were seen as looking more masculine," said Boothroyd.

I'm gonna try and read the actual study, but serious quotes like this "72% of people correctly identified the attitudes from photographs more than half of the time" aren't promising. So that basically means, and bear in mind if there were no difference it's be expected to be 50-50% in terms of correctly guessing - "more than half" doesn't really say a lot and given close to 30% got it correct half or less than half the time, it doesn't seem to say much.

When I looked at the sample pics I got them wrong! I obviously can't read people at all - or maybe that's because this is a load of shite.

9 April, 2008 - 13:00

I'm just looking at the full-text

Abstract
In nonhuman animals, mate-choice copying has received much attention, with studies demonstrating that females tend to copy the choices of other females for specific males. Here we show, for both men and women, that pairing with an attractive partner increases the attractiveness of opposite-sex faces for long-term relationship decisions but not short-term decisions. Our study therefore shows social transmission of face preference in humans, which may have important consequences for the evolution of human traits. Our study also highlights the flexibility of human mate choice and suggests that, for humans, learning about nonphysical traits that are important to pair-bonding drives copying-like behavior.


Fig. 1. Example face pairs shown to male participants—feminine female/feminine male (A), feminine female/masculine male (B), masculine female/feminine male (C), masculine female/masculine male (A). Female participants saw the same pairs but with male faces on the left.


Fig. 2. Ratings of attractiveness for the target faces by female (top) and male (bottom) judges. Scores are split by term and the masculinity of the opposite-sex face paired with it (feminine/masculine). The scale is the same between graphs, but the range changes.

9 April, 2008 - 13:25

It's the quiet ones you have to watch.

9 April, 2008 - 13:36

So there is truth in the saying "she looks like a slut"

9 April, 2008 - 13:58

its kind of weird how the girls eyebrows are all shaped and shaded.

9 April, 2008 - 16:44

I wouldn't touch any of them.

9 April, 2008 - 16:49

I can't fucking tell the difference. I was completely wrong on the examples in the Guardian article.
Now, if it had of been a NI study of "which one is a prod or taig?" that would have been a different matter, because they are definitely different races, even Terry Eagleton says.

9 April, 2008 - 17:04

Personally I find this study offensive, a reductionist parody of the well respected multidisciplinary field of Slutology.

9 April, 2008 - 17:11

Exactly there's so many more factors that need to be taken into account:

Skankiness of walk
Sluttiness of clothes
Whorishness of make-up (i.e. was make-up gun set to "whore"?) (actually there's a funny story about this from last week where I made an absolute dick of myself, to myself - Notch8 knows the story - he made me feel mad guilty)
among others

This is certainly very greedy reductionism.

9 April, 2008 - 17:14

This study is shit.

9 April, 2008 - 17:17

Are you disagreeing with science?
mate they've got a graph and everything!

9 April, 2008 - 17:17

Man, even their graphs are creepy looking.

9 April, 2008 - 17:39

yeah fuck sake, a bit of colour wouldn't have gone amiss

9 April, 2008 - 19:55

Clearly, the one interested in one nighters is the one with spunk on her face.

9 April, 2008 - 20:02

tone successfully lowered
this was a proper scientific discussion!!!

9 April, 2008 - 20:33

Man you gotta love The Guardian.

Hackneyed Sitcom Storyline in Actually True Shock

Revealed: Crap Same Sex Changing Room Banter May Actually Be Kinda Relevant To Real Life

9 April, 2008 - 22:13
BBC wrote:
Professor David Perrett, a psychologist from the Perception Lab at the University of St Andrews, added: "While faces do hold cues to sexual attitudes, men should not presume any kind of relationship is wanted from appearance alone since women's choice is what matters.

So its no excuse to molest slutty looking girls, sorry lads.

9 April, 2008 - 22:38
Jess wrote:
BBC wrote:
Professor David Perrett, a psychologist from the Perception Lab at the University of St Andrews, added: "While faces do hold cues to sexual attitudes, men should not presume any kind of relationship is wanted from appearance alone since women's choice is what matters.

So its no excuse to molest slutty looking girls, sorry lads.

and to think, for a split-second, sex-pests everywhere thought science was on their side!
"but.. eh but, you look like a slut, I just eh... i just assumed you'd eh..."
*girl smashes glass in guy's face*

10 April, 2008 - 13:30

they have police and judge on their side, science would just be a bonus. like a cherry on the top of their legal system icing.

10 April, 2008 - 16:45

yeah The Man is still totally down on teh wimmins these days, bastard

10 April, 2008 - 17:06

if only.

10 April, 2008 - 23:56

Imagine that...testosterone, etc. have a morphiological and behavioral effect on human beings. Yawn.

10 April, 2008 - 23:58
xConorx wrote:
yeah The Man is still totally down on teh wimmins these days, bastard

The Man only goes down on teh wimmins with a certain kinda face, idiot.

...and the ones who don't smell of fish.