Carrito Mariana L, Bismarck Francisca, Bem-Haja Pedro, Perrett David I, Santos Isabel M
Centro de Psicologia da Universidade do Porto, Faculdade de Psicologia e de Ciências da Educação da Universidade do Porto, Rua Alfredo Allen, 4200-135 Porto, Portugal.
Centro de Investigação em Tecnologias e Serviços de Saúde, Departamento de Educação e Psicologia, Universidade de Aveiro, Aveiro, Portugal.
Evol Hum Sci. 2023 Nov 14;5:e31. doi: 10.1017/ehs.2023.28. eCollection 2023.
The impact of sexual dimorphism on facial attractiveness has been controversial owing to contradictory results, particularly in studies on female preferences. Given that sexually dimorphic facial features, especially more masculine ones, have been previously related to the perception of anger, we investigated the bi-directional influence of emotional expressions and facial masculinity and explored their impact on women's preferences for facial masculinity. We confirmed the effect of facial sexual dimorphism on the perception of emotional cues (happiness and anger) and explored whether smiling or angry expressions influence women's perception of masculinity in male faces. Additionally, we examined women's preferences for emotionally expressive male faces altered along a continuum of masculinity. The results showed that masculinised faces are perceived as angrier, while feminised faces are perceived as happier (Experiment 1), and that angry faces are perceived as more masculine when compared with happy faces (Experiment 2). It is noteworthy that our Experiment 3 uncovered a pivotal finding: women prefer reduced feminisation in happy faces compared with neutral/angry faces. This suggests that the avoidance response observed towards masculinity is attenuated by a smiling expression. The current study introduces a new perspective to be considered when exploring the role of facial masculinity in women's attractiveness preferences.
由于研究结果相互矛盾，性别二态性对面部吸引力的影响一直存在争议，尤其是在关于女性偏好的研究中。鉴于具有性别二态性的面部特征，特别是更具男性化的特征，此前已与愤怒感知相关联，我们研究了情绪表达与面部男性化之间的双向影响，并探讨了它们对女性对面部男性化偏好的影响。我们证实了面部性别二态性对情绪线索（快乐和愤怒）感知的影响，并探究了微笑或愤怒表情是否会影响女性对男性面部男性化的感知。此外，我们考察了女性对沿着男性化连续体变化的情绪表达丰富的男性面孔的偏好。结果表明，男性化的面孔被视为更愤怒，而女性化的面孔被视为更快乐（实验1），并且与快乐面孔相比，愤怒面孔被视为更具男性化（实验2）。值得注意的是，我们的实验3发现了一个关键结果：与中性/愤怒面孔相比，女性更喜欢快乐面孔中减少女性化特征。这表明微笑表情会减弱对男性化特征的回避反应。本研究为探索面部男性化在女性吸引力偏好中的作用引入了一个新的视角。
