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Big team science challenges researchers to revisit three issues around authorship: (1) What is an authorship-worthy contribution, (2) How should contributions be documented, and (3) How should disagreements among large teams of co-authors be handled? We propose steps that the community can take to resolve these issues.

Evidence that affective factors (e.g. anxiety, depression, affect) are significantly related to individual differences in emotion recognition is mixed. Palermo et al . (Palermo et al . 2018 J. Exp. Psychol. Hum. Percept. Perform. 44 , 503–517) reported that individuals who scored lower in anxiety performed significantly better on two measures of facial-expression recognition (emotion-matching and emotion-labelling tasks), but not a third measure (the multimodal emotion recognition test). By contrast, facial-expression recognition was not significantly correlated with measures of depression, positive or negative affect, empathy, or autistic-like traits. Because the range of affective factors considered in this study and its use of multiple expression-recognition tasks mean that it is a relatively comprehensive investigation of the role of affective factors in facial expression recognition, we carried out a direct replication. In common with Palermo et al . (Palermo et al . 2018 J. Exp. Psychol. Hum. Percept. Perform. 44 , 503–517), scores on the DASS anxiety subscale negatively predicted performance on the emotion recognition tasks across multiple analyses, although these correlations were only consistently significant for performance on the emotion-labelling task. However, and by contrast with Palermo et al . (Palermo et al . 2018 J. Exp. Psychol. Hum. Percept. Perform. 44 , 503–517), other affective factors (e.g. those related to empathy) often also significantly predicted emotion-recognition performance. Collectively, these results support the proposal that affective factors predict individual differences in emotion recognition, but that these correlations are not necessarily specific to measures of general anxiety, such as the DASS anxiety subscale.

While most studies on sexuality in later life report that sexual desire declines with age, little is known about the exact nature of age effects on sexual desire. Using self-reported dyadic sexual desire relating to a partner, dyadic sexual desire relating to an attractive person, and solitary sexual desire from a large (N > 8000) and age diverse (14.6–80.2 years) online sample, the current study had three goals: First, we investigated relationships between men and women’s sexual desire and age. Second, we examined whether individual differences such as gender/sex, sexual orientation, self-rated masculinity, relationship status, self-rated attractiveness, and self-rated health predict sexual desire. Third, we examined how these associations differed across sexual desire facets. On average, the associations between age and both men and women’s sexual desire followed nonlinear trends and differed between genders/sexes and types of sexual desire. Average levels of all types of sexual desire were generally higher in men. Dyadic sexual desire related positively to self-rated masculinity and having a romantic partner and solitary desire was higher in people with same-sex attraction. We discuss the results in the context of the evolutionary hypothesis that predict an increase of sexual desire and female reproductive effort prior to declining fertility. Our findings both support and challenge beliefs about gender/sex specificity of age effects on sexual desire and highlight the importance of differentiating between desire types.

Objective Although it is widely assumed that men’s sexual desire and interest in casual sex (i.e., sociosexual orientation) are linked to steroid hormone levels, evidence for such associations is mixed. Methods We tested for both longitudinal and cross-sectional relationships between salivary testosterone, cortisol, reported sexual desire and sociosexuality in a sample of 61 young adult men, each of whom was tested weekly on up to five occasions. Results Longitudinal analyses showed no clear relationships between steroid hormones and self-reported sexual desire or sociosexual orientation. Cross-sectional analyses showed no significant associations between average hormone levels and self-reported sexual desire. However, some aspects of sociosexuality, most notably desire for casual sex, were related to men’s average hormone levels. Men with higher average testosterone reported greater desire for casual sex, but only if they also had relatively low average cortisol levels. Conclusions Our results support a Dual Hormone account of men’s sociosexuality, in which the combined effects of testosterone and cortisol predict the extent of men’s interest in casual sex. However, we did not detect compelling evidence for an association of within-subject hormone shifts and sexual desire or sociosexual orientation.

Objectives A large literature exists investigating the extent to which physical characteristics (e.g., strength, weight, and height) can be accurately assessed from face images. While most of these studies have employed two-dimensional (2D) face images as stimuli, some recent studies have used three-dimensional (3D) face images because they may contain cues not visible in 2D face images. As equipment required for 3D face images is considerably more expensive than that required for 2D face images, we here investigated how perceptual ratings of physical characteristics from 2D and 3D face images compare. Methods We tested whether 3D face images capture cues of strength, weight, and height better than 2D face images do by directly comparing the accuracy of strength, weight, and height ratings of 182 2D and 3D face images taken simultaneously. Strength, height and weight were rated by 66, 59 and 52 raters respectively, who viewed both 2D and 3D images. Results In line with previous studies, we found that weight and height can be judged somewhat accurately from faces; contrary to previous research, we found that people were relatively inaccurate at assessing strength. We found no evidence that physical characteristics could be judged more accurately from 3D than 2D images. Conclusion Our results suggest physical characteristics are perceived with similar accuracy from 2D and 3D face images. They also suggest that the substantial costs associated with collecting 3D face scans may not be justified for research on the accuracy of facial judgments of physical characteristics.

Trade-off theories of women’s masculinity preferences propose that women’s masculinity preferences vary according to the probability of reproduction. Consistent with the proposal that preferences for masculine men are stronger when probability of reproduction is higher, previous research reported that heterosexual women show stronger preferences for images of male faces displaying masculine shape characteristics than do homosexual women (Glassenberg et al., 2010). However, many reported findings for individual differences in women’s masculinity preferences have not been replicated in subsequent studies. Consequently, we carried out a direct replication of Glassenberg et al’s (2010) comparison of heterosexual and homosexual women’s preferences for sexually dimorphic face-shape characteristics. Replicating the results from Glassenberg et al. (2010), we found that heterosexual women (N = 20,360) showed stronger preferences for masculine men that did homosexual women (N = 1598). This finding is consistent with the proposal that women’s preferences for masculine men are stronger when the probability of reproduction is higher, presenting further evidence for trade-off theories of women’s masculinity preferences.

Science is often perceived to be a self-correcting enterprise. In principle, the assessment of scientific claims is supposed to proceed in a cumulative fashion, with the reigning theories of the day progressively approximating truth more accurately over time. In practice, however, cumulative self-correction tends to proceed less efficiently than one might naively suppose. Far from evaluating new evidence dispassionately and infallibly, individual scientists often cling stubbornly to prior findings. Here we explore the dynamics of scientific self-correction at an individual rather than collective level. In 13 written statements, researchers from diverse branches of psychology share why and how they have lost confidence in one of their own published findings. We qualitatively characterize these disclosures and explore their implications. A cross-disciplinary survey suggests that such loss-of-confidence sentiments are surprisingly common among members of the broader scientific population yet rarely become part of the public record. We argue that removing barriers to self-correction at the individual level is imperative if the scientific community as a whole is to achieve the ideal of efficient self-correction. ispartof: PERSPECTIVES ON PSYCHOLOGICAL SCIENCE vol:16 issue:6 pages:1255-1269 ispartof: location:United States status: published

Many researchers have proposed that straight men prefer women’s faces displaying feminine shape characteristics at least partly because mating with such women will produce healthier offspring. Although a prediction of thisadaptation-for-mate-choicehypothesis is that straight men will show stronger preferences for feminized versus masculinized versions of women’s faces than will gay men, only one previous study has directly tested this prediction. Here we directly replicated that study by comparing 623 gay and 3163 straight men’s preferences for feminized versus masculinized versions of faces. Consistent with the adaptation-for-mate-choice hypothesis of straight men’s femininity preferences, we found that straight men showed significantly stronger preferences for feminized female faces than did gay men. Consistent with previous research suggesting that gay men place a premium on masculinity in potential romantic partners, we also found that gay men showed significantly stronger preferences for masculinized versions of male faces than did straight men. Together, these findings indicate the sexual orientation contributes to individual differences in men’s face preferences.

Social and behavioural scientists have attempted to speak to the COVID-19 crisis. But is behavioural research on COVID-19 suitable for making policy decisions? We offer a taxonomy that lets our science advance in Evidence Readiness Levels to be suitable for policy. We caution practitioners to take extreme care translating our findings to applications.

Women’s preferences for masculine characteristics in men’s faces have been extensively studied. By contrast, little is known about how gay men respond to masculine facial characteristics. One area of disagreement in the emerging literature on this topic is the association between gay men’s partnership status and masculinity preference. One study found that partnered gay men showed stronger preferences for masculine faces than did single gay men, while another study found that partnered gay men showed weaker preferences for masculine faces than did single gay men. We re-examined this issue in a sample of 618 gay men, finding no significant difference between partnered and single gay men’s masculinity preferences. Together with the mixed previous findings, our null result suggests that the effect of partnership status on gay men’s face preferences is not robust.

Previous research suggests that humans show positive assortative mating, i.e. tend to pair up with partners that are similar to themselves in a range of traits, including facial appearance. Facial appearance can function as a cue to genetic similarity and plays a critical role in human mate choice. Evidence for positive assortative mating for facial appearance has largely come from studies showing people can match pictures of couples’ faces at levels greater than chance and that facial photographs of couples are rated to look more similar than those of non-couples. However, interpreting results from matching studies as evidence of positive assortative mating for facial appearance is problematic, since this measure of perceived compatibility does not necessarily reflect actual physical similarity, and may be orthogonal to, or even negatively correlated with, physical similarity. Even if participants are asked to rate facial similarity directly, it remains unclear which, if any, face shape cues contribute to an increased perception of similarity in romantic couples. Here we use a shape-based assessment of facial similarity to show that the median similarity of long-term couples’ face shapes is only slightly greater than that of an age-matched control sample. Moreover, this was driven by the most similar 40% of couples, while the most dissimilar 20% of couples actually showed disassortative mating for face shape when compared to the control sample. These data show that a simple measure of central tendency obscures variability in the extent to which couples display assortative or disassortative mating for face shape. By contrast, a more fine-grained analysis that considers the distribution of variation across couples in the extent to which they resemble each other suggests that both positive and negative assortative processes influence human mate choice.

[No abstract available] Funding Agencies|Flinders University; RU, Radboud Universiteit; NIU, Northern Illinois University; University of Nottingham; Universität zu Köln; Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin; SLU, Saint Louis University; TU/e, Technische Universiteit Eindhoven; University of Leeds; IUPUI, Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis; UiT, Universitetet i Tromsø; EUR, Erasmus Universiteit Rotterdam; UvT, Universiteit van Tilburg; University of Oxford; UNIL, Université de Lausanne; SEBM, Society for Experimental Biology and Medicine; NYU, New York University; UiT, Universitetet i Tromsø; RWTH Aachen University; KU Leuven; Universität Bielefeld; University of Louisiana at Lafayette; UA, University of Arkansas; Genentech Foundation for Biomedical Sciences; University of Bristol; UV, University of Virginia; City of Mobile; Université de Fribourg; Universiteit Gent; Yale University; VT, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University; DIBS, Duke Institute for Brain Sciences, Duke University; UCB UK; University of Leeds; BIBS, Brown Institute for Brain Science; UU, Universiteit Utrecht; Keele University; HRD, Division of Human Resource Development; WVU, West Virginia University; King’s College London; NTU, Nottingham Trent University; Rijksuniversiteit Groningen; KACST, King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology; University of Edinburgh; UCONN, University of Connecticut; University of Kent; University of Cambridge; UNLV, University of Nevada, Las Vegas; Universiteit Leiden; UBC, University of British Columbia; HGS, Human Genome Sciences; AV CR, Akademie Ved Ceské Republiky; IUPUI, Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis; UK, University of Kentucky; University of Texas at Austin; DRS, Dahlem Research School, Freie Universität Berlin; Bangor University; RAND Corporation; University of Glasgow; University of Chester; CONICET, Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Massey University; UC, University of California; NIH, National Institutes of Health; UFSC, Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina; OU, Open University; Electroencephalography and Clinical Neuroscience Society; UNAB, Universidad Autónoma de Bucaramanga; KACST, King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology; SU, Stanford University; CSIR, Council for Scientific and Industrial Research; FSU, Florida State University; UW, University of Wisconsin-Madison; LUMC, Leids Universitair Medisch Centrum; CERSI, Center of Excellence in Regulatory Science and Innovation; DePaul University; Baylor University; SU, Sahlgrenska Universitetssjukhuset; NINDS, National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke

Men are hypothesized to show stronger preferences for physical attractiveness in potential mates than women are, particularly when assessing the attractiveness of potential mates for short-term relationships. By contrast, women are thought to show stronger preferences for social status in potential mates than men are, particularly when assessing the attractiveness of potential mates for long-term relationships. These mate-preference sex differences are often claimed to be ‘universal' (i.e. stable across cultures). Consequently, we used an established ‘budget-allocation' task to investigate Chinese and UK participants' preferences for physical attractiveness and social status in potential mates. Confirmatory analyses replicated these sex differences in both samples, consistent with the suggestion that they occur in diverse cultures. However, confirmatory analyses also showed that Chinese women had stronger preferences for social status than UK women did, suggesting cultural differences in the magnitude of mate-preference sex differences can also occur.

Researchers have suggested that more attractive women will show stronger preferences for masculine men because such women are better placed to offset the potential costs of choosing a masculine mate. However, evidence for correlations between measures of women's own attractiveness and preferences for masculine men is mixed. Moreover, the samples used to test this hypothesis are typically relatively small. Consequently, we conducted two large-scale studies that investigated possible associations between women's preferences for facial masculinity and their own attractiveness as assessed from third-party ratings of their facial attractiveness (Study 1, N = 454, laboratory study) and self-rated attractiveness (Study 2, N = 8972, online study). Own attractiveness was positively correlated with preferences for masculine men in Study 2 (self-rated attractiveness), but not Study 1 (third-party ratings of facial attractiveness). This pattern of results is consistent with the proposal that women's beliefs about their own attractiveness, rather than their physical condition per se, underpins attractiveness-contingent masculinity preferences.

Previous research has established that humans are able to detect kinship among strangers from facial images alone. The current study investigated what facial information is used for making those kinship judgments, specifically the contribution of face shape and surface reflectance information (e.g., skin texture, tone, eye and eyebrow color). Using 3D facial images, 195 participants were asked to judge the relatedness of 100 child pairs, half of which were related and half of which were unrelated. Participants were randomly assigned to judge one of three stimulus versions: face images with both surface reflectance and shape information present (reflectance and shape version), face images with shape information removed but surface reflectance present (reflectance version), or face images with surface reflectance information removed but shape present (shape version). Using binomial logistic mixed models, we found that participants were able to detect relatedness at levels above chance for all three stimulus versions. Overall, both individual shape and surface reflectance information contribute to kinship detection, and both cues are optimally combined when presented together. Preprint, preregistration, code, and data are available on the Open Science Framework (osf.io/7ftxd).

Research on whether prosocial behavior is deliberate or intuitive typically uses decision time in economic games as a proxy for the automaticity of underlying cognitive processes. We investigate the relationship between trust and decision time in a sample with a predicted high baseline level of cooperative behavior and low conflict between self-interested and cooperative motives: biological siblings. Sixty-three full sibling pairs played for money in a one-shot trust game. We found a significant negative linear (rather than quadratic) effect of trust on decision time: the more money a sibling was trusted with, the quicker the decision was made. These results suggest that trust among siblings is intuitive and largely based on automatic and effortless processes.

International audience; Facial attractiveness plays a critical role in social interaction, influencing many different social outcomes. However, the factors that influence facial attractiveness judgments remain relatively poorly understood. Here, we used a sample of 594 young adult female face images to compare the performance of existing theory-driven models of facial attractiveness and a data-driven (i.e., theory-neutral) model. Our data-driven model and a theory-driven model including various traits commonly studied in facial attractiveness research (asymmetry, averageness, sexual dimorphism, body mass index, and representational sparseness) performed similarly well. By contrast, univariate theory-driven models performed relatively poorly. These results (a) highlight the utility of data driven models of facial attractiveness and (b) suggest that theory-driven research on facial attractiveness would benefit from greater adoption of multivariate approaches, rather than the univariate approaches that they currently almost exclusively employ. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

On average, women show stronger preferences for mates with good earning capacity than men do, while men show stronger preferences for physically attractive mates than women do. Studies reporting that sex differences in mate preferences are smaller in countries with greater gender equality have been interpreted as evidence that these sex differences in mate preferences are caused by the different roles society imposes on men and women. Here, we attempted to replicate previously reported links between sex differences in mate preferences and country-level measures of gender inequality in a sample of 3,073 participants from 36 countries (data and code available at https://osf.io/4sr5f/ ). Although women preferred mates with good earning capacity more than men did and men preferred physically attractive mates more than women did, we found little evidence that these sex differences were smaller in countries with greater gender equality. Although one analysis suggested that the sex difference in preferences for good earning capacity was smaller in countries with greater gender equality, this effect was not significant when controlling for Galton’s problem or when correcting for multiple comparisons. Collectively, these results provide little support for the social roles account of sex differences in mate preferences.

Research on links between peoples’ personality traits and their voices has primarily focused on other peoples’ personality judgments about a target person based on a target person’s vocal characteristics, particularly voice pitch. However, it remains unclear whether individual differences in voices are linked to actual individual differences in personality traits, and thus whether vocal characteristics are indeed valid cues to personality. Here, we investigate how the personality traits of the Five Factor Model of Personality, sociosexuality, and dominance are related to measured fundamental frequency (voice pitch) and formant frequencies (formant position). For this purpose, we conducted a secondary data analysis of a large sample (2217 participants) from eleven different, independent datasets with a Bayesian approach. Results suggest substantial negative relationships between voice pitch and self-reported sociosexuality, dominance and extraversion in men and women. Thus, personality might at least partly be expressed in people’s voice pitch. Evidence for an association between formant frequencies and self-reported personality traits is not compelling but remains uncertain. We discuss potential underlying biological mechanisms of our effects and suggest a number of implications for future research.

Social judgments of faces predict important social outcomes, including leadership decisions. Previous work suggests that facial cues associated with perceptions of dominance and trustworthiness have context-specific effects on leadership decisions. Facial cues linked to perceived dominance have been found to be preferred in leaders for hypothetical wartime contexts and facial cues linked to perceived trustworthiness have been found to be preferred in leaders for hypothetical peacetime contexts. Here we sought to replicate these effects using images of women’s faces, as previous studies have primarily focused on perceptions of leadership abilities from male faces, with only a handful of these including female faces. Consistent with previous work, a linear mixed effects model demonstrated that more trustworthy-looking faces were preferred in leaders during times of peace and more dominant-looking faces were preferred in leaders during times of war. These results provide converging evidence for context-specific effects of facial cues on hypothetical leadership judgments.

This letter (to appear in Behavioral Ecology) reports alternative analyses of Shimoda et al. (2018 Behavioral Ecology https://doi.org/10.1093/beheco/arx124). These new analyses suggest that conception risk has similar effects on in- and extra-pair sexual desire, rather than the effect on extra-pair desire reported by Shimoda et al. (2018).

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Previous studies suggest that birth order affects kinship detection ability. Kaminski et al. (2010) argued that firstborns use contextual cues (e.g., maternal perinatal association) to assess kinship in their own family, leading to a disadvantage in assessing kinship from facial cues alone in strangers. In contrast, laterborns do not have the contextual cue of maternal perinatal association and hence rely more on facial cues, leading to an advantage in detecting kin from facial cues alone. However, Alvergne et al. (2010) found no evidence in support of such a birthorder effect. The current study aimed to replicate previous studies with better suited methods to determine the effect of birth order on kin recognition. 109 raters viewed 132 pairs of photographs of children (aged 3–17 years), and indicated whether each pair was related or unrelated. Half of the pairs were sibling pairs and half were unrelated child pairs that were age- and gender- matched to the related pairs. No image was shown more than once, related pairs were not known to be related to any other image in the study, and individuals from unrelated pairs were not known to be related to any other image. We used binomial logistic mixed effects modelling to predict kinship judgments from relatedness and birth order (with image pair and rater as random factors). Relatedness was the main factor driving kinship judgments; related child-pairs were more than twice as likely as unrelated pairs to be judged as kin. Kinship judgment accuracy was unaffected by rater birth order. These findings indicate that laterborns did not have an advantage in detecting child sibling pairs. Pre-registration, data, code, and preprint available at osf.io/h43ep.

ObjectivesAncestrally, strength is likely to have played a critical role in determining the ability to obtain and retain resources and the allocation of social status among humans. Responses to facial cues of strength are therefore thought to play an important role in human social interaction. Although many researchers have proposed that sexually dimorphic facial morphology is reliably correlated with physical strength, evidence for this hypothesis is somewhat mixed. Moreover, to date, only one study has investigated the putative relationship between facial masculinity and physical strength in women. Consequently, we tested for correlations between handgrip strength and objective measures of face-shape masculinity.Methods531 women took part in the study. We measured each participant’s handgrip strength (dominant hand). Sexual dimorphism of face shape was objectively measured from each face photograph using two methods: discriminant analysis and vector analysis. These methods use shape components derived from principal component analyses of facial landmarks to measure the probability of the face being classified as male (discriminant analysis method) or to locate the face on a female-male continuum (vector analysis method).ResultsOur analyses revealed that handgrip strength is, at best, only weakly correlated with facial masculinity in women. There was a weak significant association between handgrip strength and one measure of women’s facial masculinity. The relationship between handgrip strength and our other measure of women’s facial masculinity was not significant.DiscussionTogether, these results do not support the hypothesis that face-shape masculinity is an important cue of physical strength, at least in women.

Mate preferences and mating-related behaviors are hypothesized to change over the menstrual cycle in ways that function to increase reproductive fitness. Results of recent large-scale studies suggest that many of these hormone-linked behavioral changes are less robust than was previously thought. One specific hypothesis that has not yet been subject to a large-scale test is the proposal that women’s preference for associating with male kin is down-regulated during the ovulatory (high-fertility) phase of the menstrual cycle. Consequently, we used a longitudinal design to investigate the relationship between changes in women’s steroid hormone levels and their perceptions of faces experimentally manipulated to possess kinship cues (Study 1). Analyses suggested that women viewed men’s faces displaying kinship cues more positively (i.e., more attractive and trustworthy) when estradiol-to-progesterone ratio was high. Since estradiol-to-progesterone ratio is positively associated with conception risk during the menstrual cycle, these results directly contradict the hypothesis that women’s preference for associating with male kin is down-regulated during the ovulatory (high-fertility) phase of the menstrual cycle. Study 2 employed a daily diary approach and found no evidence that women reported spending less time in the company of male kin or thought about male kin less often during the fertile phase of the menstrual cycle. Thus, neither study found evidence that inbreeding avoidance is up-regulated during the ovulatory phase of the menstrual cycle.

Source at https://doi.org/10.1177/2515245918797607. Concerns about the veracity of psychological research have been growing. Many findings in psychological science are based on studies with insufficient statistical power and nonrepresentative samples, or may otherwise be limited to specific, ungeneralizable settings or populations. Crowdsourced research, a type of large-scale collaboration in which one or more research projects are conducted across multiple lab sites, offers a pragmatic solution to these and other current methodological challenges. The Psychological Science Accelerator (PSA) is a distributed network of laboratories designed to enable and support crowdsourced research projects. These projects can focus on novel research questions or replicate prior research in large, diverse samples. The PSA’s mission is to accelerate the accumulation of reliable and generalizable evidence in psychological science. Here, we describe the background, structure, principles, procedures, benefits, and challenges of the PSA. In contrast to other crowdsourced research networks, the PSA is ongoing (as opposed to time limited), efficient (in that structures and principles are reused for different projects), decentralized, diverse (in both subjects and researchers), and inclusive (of proposals, contributions, and other relevant input from anyone inside or outside the network). The PSA and other approaches to crowdsourced psychological science will advance understanding of mental processes and behaviors by enabling rigorous research and systematic examination of its generalizability.

Previous research has suggested that women using oral contraceptives show weaker preferences for masculine men than do women not using oral contraceptives. Such research would be consistent with the hypothesis that steroid hormones influence women's preferences for masculine men. Recent large-scale longitudinal studies, however, have found limited evidence linking steroid hormones to masculinity preferences. Given the relatively small samples used in previous studies investigating putative associations between masculinity preferences and oral contraceptive use, we compared the facial masculinity preferences of women using oral contraceptives and women not using oral contraceptives in a large online sample of 6482 heterosexual women. We found no evidence that women using oral contraceptives had weaker preferences for male facial masculinity than did women not using oral contraceptives. These findings add to a growing literature suggesting that links between reproductive hormones and preferences are more limited than previously proposed.

Kinship informs the allocation of pro-social and sexual behaviour. In addition to the ability to detect kin who are directly related to the observer, humans are also able to detect relatedness among others who are not related to themselves based on facial cues of relatedness. However, it is unclear what exact facial cues inform these kinship judgments. Facial expression might be one candidate, as it has been shown that a computer kin-detection algorithm can match relatives accurately when the stimuli are smiling. The current study investigated whether a smiling facial expression increases the accuracy of judging relatedness compared to a neutral facial expression in human raters. The stimuli were images of 50 sibling pairs and 50 unrelated pairs (aged 3-17 years) matched for age, ethnicity and sex. The stimuli included both neutral and smiling versions of each individual. Raters (N=77) were asked to judge whether the presented pairs were related or not in one of two counterbalanced versions of the study, where the same stimuli were never presented as both smiling and neutral to the same rater, and the expression within the pair was always the same. Binary relatedness judgments were analysed using binomial logistic mixed regression. Contrary to expectations, smiling decreased the accuracy of relatedness judgments compared to a neutral facial expression. When shown with a smiling expression compared to a neutral one, related pairs were judged to be related less often, while unrelated pairs were judged to be related more often. Evidence that the upper face is mostly used for kinship judgments suggests that smiles could distort or distract from other, more reliable cues of kinship. Pre-registration, data and code available at https://osf.io/58ewu/.

ObjectivesRecent research on the signal value of masculine physical characteristics in men has focused on the possibility that such characteristics are valid cues of physical strength. However, evidence that sexually dimorphic vocal characteristics are correlated with physical strength is equivocal. Consequently, we undertook a further test for possible relationships between physical strength and masculine vocal characteristics.MethodsWe tested the putative relationships between White UK (N=115) and Chinese (N=106) participants’ handgrip strength (a widely used proxy for general upper-body strength) and five sexually dimorphic acoustic properties of voices: fundamental frequency (F0), fundamental frequency’s standard deviation (F0-SD), formant dispersion (Df), formant position (Pf), and estimated vocal-tract length (VTL).ResultsAnalyses revealed no clear evidence that stronger individuals had more masculine voices.ConclusionsOur results do not support the hypothesis that masculine vocal characteristics are a valid cue of physical strength.

Although many researchers have suggested that more physically attractive women report less restricted sociosexual orientations (i.e., report being more willing to engage in short-term, uncommitted sexual relationships), evidence for this association is equivocal. Consequently, we tested for possible relationships between women's scores on the revised version of the Sociosexual Orientation Inventory (SOI-R) and women's body mass index (N = 212), waist-hip ratio (N = 213), ratings of their facial attractiveness (N = 226), and a composite attractiveness measure derived from these three intercorrelated measures. Our analyses suggest that more attractive women report less restricted sociosexual orientations. Moreover, we show that this link between attractiveness and sociosexual orientation is not simply a consequence of women's scores on the behavior subscale of the SOI-R. Importantly, however, the correlations between measures of women's physical attractiveness and their reported sociosexual orientation were very weak, suggesting that perceptions of these potential cues of women's sociosexual orientation are unlikely to provide accurate, socially relevant information about others during social interactions.

Findings for progesterone and anxiety in non-human animals led to the hypothesis that women's interpersonal anxiety will track changes in progesterone during the menstrual cycle. There have been few direct tests of this hypothesis, however. Consequently, we used a longitudinal design to investigate whether interpersonal anxiety (assessed using the anxious jealousy subscale of the relationship jealousy questionnaire) tracked changes in salivary steroid hormones during the menstrual cycle in a large sample of young adult women. We found no evidence for within-subject effects of progesterone, estradiol, their interaction or ratio, testosterone, or cortisol on anxious jealousy. There was some evidence that other components of jealousy (e.g., reactive jealousy) tracked changes in women's cortisol, however. Collectively, these results provide no evidence for the hypothesis that interpersonal anxiety tracks changes in progesterone during the menstrual cycle.

The Dual Mating Strategy hypothesis proposes that women’s preferences for uncommitted sexual relationships with men displaying putative fitness cues increase during the high-fertility phase of the menstrual cycle. Results consistent with this hypothesis are widely cited as evidence that sexual selection has shaped human mating psychology. However, the methods used in most of these studies have recently been extensively criticized. Here we discuss (1) new empirical studies that address these methodological problems and largely report null results and (2) an alternative model of hormonal regulation of women’s mating psychology that can better accommodate these new data.

Findings for progesterone and anxiety in non-human animals led to the hypothesis that women’s interpersonal anxiety will track changes in progesterone during the menstrual cycle. There have been few direct tests of this hypothesis, however. Consequently, we used a longitudinal design to investigate whether interpersonal anxiety (assessed using the anxious jealousy subscale of the relationship jealousy questionnaire) tracked changes in salivary steroid hormones during the menstrual cycle in a large sample of young adult women (N=383). We found no evidence for within-subject effects of progesterone, estradiol, their interaction or ratio, testosterone, or cortisol on anxious jealousy. There was some evidence that other components of jealousy (e.g., reactive jealousy) tracked changes in women’s cortisol, however. Collectively, these results provide no evidence for the hypothesis that interpersonal anxiety tracks changes in progesterone during the menstrual cycle.

Men are hypothesized to show stronger preferences for physical attractiveness in potential mates than women are, particularly when assessing the attractiveness of potential mates for short-term relationships. By contrast, women are thought to show stronger preferences for social status in potential mates than men are, particularly when assessing the attractiveness of potential mates for long-term relationships. These mate-preference sex differences are often claimed to be ‘universal’ (i.e., stable across cultures). Consequently, we used an established “budget allocation” task to investigate Chinese and UK participants’ preferences for physical attractiveness and social status in potential mates. Confirmatory analyses replicated these sex differences in both samples, consistent with the suggestion that they occur in diverse cultures. However, confirmatory analyses also showed that Chinese women had stronger preferences for social status than UK women did, suggesting cultural differences in the magnitude of mate-preference sex differences can also occur.

Objectives Many previous studies have investigated relationships between men’s competitiveness and testosterone. For example, the extent of changes in men’s testosterone levels following a competitive task predicts the likelihood of them choosing to compete again. Recent work investigating whether individual differences in men’s testosterone levels predict individual differences in their competitiveness have produced mixed results. Methods In light of the above, we investigated whether men’s (N = 59) scores on the Intrasexual Competitiveness Scale were related to either within-subject changes or between-subject differences in men’s salivary testosterone levels. Results Men’s responses on the Intrasexual Competitiveness Scale did not appear to track within-subject changes in testosterone. By contrast with one recent study, men’s Intrasexual Competitiveness Scale also did not appear to be related to individual differences in testosterone. Conclusions Our results present no evidence for associations between men’s testosterone and their responses on the Intrasexual Competitiveness Scale. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (10.1007/s40750-018-0095-2) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Recent studies that either used luteinizing hormone tests to confirm the timing of ovulation or measured steroid hormones from saliva have found little evidence that women’s preferences for facial or body masculinity track within-subject changes in women’s fertility or hormonal status. Fewer studies using these methods have examined women’s preferences for vocal masculinity, however, and those that did report mixed results. Consequently, we used a longitudinal design and measured steroid hormones from saliva to test for evidence of hormonal regulation of women’s (N=351) preferences for two aspects of male vocal masculinity (low pitch and low formants). Analyses suggested that preferences for masculine pitch, but not masculine formants, may track within-woman changes in estradiol. Although these results present some evidence for the hypothesis that within-subject hormones regulate women’s attraction to masculine men, we do not discount the possibility that the effect of estradiol on pitch preferences in the current study is a false positive.

Effects of facial coloration on facial attractiveness judgments are hypothesized to be “universal” (i.e., similar across cultures). Cross-cultural similarity in facial color preferences is a critical piece of evidence for this hypothesis. However, only two studies have directly compared facial color preferences in two cultures. Both of those studies reported that White UK and Black African participants showed similar preferences for facial coloration. By contrast with the cross-cultural similarity reported in those studies, here we show cultural differences in the effects of facial coloration on Chinese and White UK participants' facial attractiveness judgments. While Chinese participants preferred faces with decreased yellowness to faces with increased yellowness, White UK participants preferred faces with increased yellowness to faces with decreased yellowness. Chinese participants also demonstrated weaker preferences for facial redness and stronger preferences for facial lightness than did White UK participants. These results suggest that preferences for facial coloration are not universal.