According to the “good genes” hypothesis, females choose males based on traits that indicate the male’s genetic quality in terms of disease resistance. The “immunocompetence handicap hypothesis (ICHH)” proposed that ...

Three adaptive hypotheses have been proposed to explain the link between the human leucocyte antigen (HLA) genes, health measures and facial attractiveness: inbreeding avoidance, heterozygote advantage and frequency-dependent ...

A substantial number of studies indicate that human facial features such as symmetry and averageness are preferred in human mate choice. Little is known, however, about face preferences in intrapopulation or between-cultural ...

Women in the UK prefer the faces of men with low levels of the stress hormone cortisol, and the relationship is moderated by the sex hormone testosterone. In a Latvian sample, however, women’s preferences were not affected ...

The quantification of skin carotenoid levels has a range of applications in Caucasian populations, from serving as a versatile and noninvasive biomarker (e.g., of systemic carotenoid levels, carotenoid consumption, the ...

Facial appearance is thought to indicate immunity in humans, but very few studies have tested this relationship directly. The aim of this study was to test the relationship between direct measures of immunity, perceived ...

Facial cues contribute to attractiveness, including shape cues such as symmetry, averageness, and sexual dimorphism. These cues may represent cues to objective aspects of physiological health, thereby conferring an ...

Judgments of leadership ability from face images predict the outcomes of actual political elections and are correlated with leadership success in the corporate world. The specific facial cues that people use to judge ...

Sexual dimorphism in physical appearance may be an important cue in both intra- and inter-sex competition. Recently, the facial width-to-height ratio (fWHR) has been proposed as a novel sexually dimorphic morphologic ...