Research

I research what people find attractive in potential partners. More generally I'm interested in how preferences are shaped by our own characteristics and whether these preferences influence our real-world mating decisions. Most of my research makes use of the PsychoMorph facial manipulation programme, developed at the St. Andrews’ Perception Lab. Here are some brilliant demos of the software in action.

More about my research

  1. Do opposites attract?
  2. Scarring and facial attractiveness
  3. Voting for the winner
  4. Mate-choice copying
  5. Men’s face perceptions and their partner’s cycle

Do opposites attract?

Opposites attract. Or so the saying goes. In fact, there is overwhelming evidence that people are attracted to similarity in age, personality, beliefs and appearance. The most basic observation we can make about attraction is that people tend to pair with others whom they match in attractiveness. This is an example of what we call “assortative mating”. Much laboratory-based attractiveness research has focussed on two facial traits: symmetry and masculinity. Symmetric people are attractive, and so are masculine men and feminine women, probably because these traits are related to health. I and my collaborators sought to determine whether these preferences translate into real behaviour: do couples match in terms of their facial symmetry and masculinity? We found that men and women who were partnered tended to have similarly symmetric faces: symmetric men were paired up with symmetric women, and asymmetric men were paired up with asymmetric women. We didn’t find any such relationship for facial masculinity. Another finding from this study was that relationship duration tends to be shorter the more attractive the female partner is (unless the male partner is the more attractive of the pair). Perhaps understandably, this secondary finding was the one that received more media attention. » DOI PDF

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Scarring and facial attractiveness

Chicks dig scars. It’s a common belief, but several researchers have shown that scars reduce attractiveness, rather than increase it. I and my collaborators decided to test whether subtle facial scars influence attractiveness positively or negatively.

Example stimuli with artificial scars
Example stimuli with artificial scars

We found that these subtle scars didn’t affect women’s attractiveness at all. Men with scars, however, were more attractive, but only for short-term relationships. This makes sense if we think of scars as advertisements of bravery, dominance or masculinity. Previous research has shown that women prefer men with these masculine traits for flings but not for marriage, perhaps because masculine men produce healthy offspring but are less committed to their long-term relationships. » DOI PDF

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Voting for the winner

Come election-time, we often like to think that we cast our votes for the candidates with the best policies. Is it possible, though, that we’re swayed by other factors, such as the politicians’ appearance? My collaborators and I made composite images of the winning and losing candidates in a number of recent national elections in the UK, USA, Australia, Canada and New Zealand. We concealed the identities of the faces using computer trickery, and then had members of the British public “vote” for their preferred face.

Click the image to see their true identities.
Which of these two candidates would you vote for to run your country?
Click here to see their true identities.
McCain and Obama

We found that our participants’ votes very closely matched those which were cast in the genuine elections. Blair beat Howard (and Major and Hague) in our poll, just like he did in real life. We also found that differences in the hypothetical environment affected voting preferences: when asked to imagine that they were voting in a time of war, our participants came out in force for George Bush Jr. over John Kerry; when imagining themselves voting in a time of peace, they instead plumped for Kerry. » DOI

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Mate-choice copying

Ever found yourself attracted to someone who was already taken? Perhaps they were attractive because they were already taken. We know that in other species, such as grouse and guppies, females are more attracted to males that are surrounded by other females. The rule of thumb appears to be “these other females think he’s a catch, so I might as well agree”. This is a kind of behavioural shortcut: it allows females to spend less time and effort on mate-choice than if they assessed males individually. My collaborators and I conducted a series of experiments to test whether humans also copy mate-choice. We presented women with male faces that were paired with smiling or neutral faced women. Men paired with smiling women were rated as more attractive than men paired with the neutral faced women. The men’s actual attractiveness was held constant, so this was purely an effect of how positively each man’s female companion seemed to view him. In another experiment we showed that men and women were rated as more attractive if they were paired with an attractive rather than an unattractive partner. » DOI (paper 1) DOI (paper 2)

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Men’s face perceptions and their partner’s cycle

Women’s mate-preferences vary predictably over the course of their menstrual cycle. Around ovulation, women prefer masculine men, but later in their cycle they find feminine men more attractive. This so-called “preference shift” has been interpreted as evidence that women have an evolved propensity to pair-up with feminine men for the long-term, whilst seeking illicit affairs with bad boys when their chances of becoming pregnant are at their peak. If this is true, we might expect men whose partners are ovulating to be more sensitive to facially masculine rivals. If men’s ability to spot rivals is flexible, they will be better prepared to prevent their partner being poached mid-cycle by a square-jawed caveman. This is precisely what we found: men whose partners were ovulating perceived other men’s faces to be more dominant than did men whose partners were not ovulating. As a bonus, we also found that this effect was nullified in men whose partners were on the pill. This is what we’d expect to see, because women who are on the pill don't experience preference shifts. » DOI PDF

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  • Experiments feed

Experiments

Most of my experiments are run over the web, so if it weren't for people like you helping me out I'd probably be living under a bridge eating baked beans from a can. Don't let me end up like that: do one of my experiments!

  1. Factors influencing face preferences. Jun 2011
    Rate faces and answer a few questions (username is 'guest', leave password blank).
  2. Crime, convicts and culpability Jan 2011
    Rate convict faces for how blameworthy they are, and how long/short their sentences should be.
  3. Attractiveness and your ideal partner Jan 2011
    A quick face-preference experiment for those who live and were raised in the UK.
  4. Which face is more attractive? Oct 2010
    A quick experiment for persons who are lesbian, gay or bisexual. Those who identify as transgender are also encouraged to participate.

Fun experiments at other labs