Coetzee, VinetFaerber, Stella J.Greeff, Jacobus MareeLefevre, Carmen E.Re, Daniel E.Perrett, David IanYovel, Galit2012-11-302012-11-302012-10-29Coetzee V, Faerber SJ, Greeff JM, Lefevre CE, Re DE, et al. (2012) African Perceptions of Female Attractiveness. PLoS ONE 7(10): e48116. DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0048116.1932-620310.1371/journal.pone.0048116http://hdl.handle.net/2263/20601Conceived and designed the experiments: VC DP. Performed the experiments: VC. Analyzed the data: VC JMG DP DR CL SF. Contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools: VC DP DR CL SF. Wrote the paper: VC. Revised the manuscript critically for important intellectual content: VC DR JMG DP SF CL.Text S1 Alternative GLM analysis using CIELab values measured directly from the face images. (DOCX)Text S2 Instructions for post-inflammatory hyper pigmentation ratings. (DOCX)Little is known about mate choice preferences outside Western, educated, industrialised, rich and democratic societies, even though these Western populations may be particularly unrepresentative of human populations. To our knowledge, this is the first study to test which facial cues contribute to African perceptions of African female attractiveness and also the first study to test the combined role of facial adiposity, skin colour (lightness, yellowness and redness), skin homogeneity and youthfulness in the facial attractiveness preferences of any population. Results show that youthfulness, skin colour, skin homogeneity and facial adiposity significantly and independently predict attractiveness in female African faces. Younger, thinner women with a lighter, yellower skin colour and a more homogenous skin tone are considered more attractive. These findings provide a more global perspective on human mate choice and point to a universal role for these four facial cues in female facial attractiveness.en© 2012 Coetzee et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution LicenseAfricanArticle