Individuals are attuned to cues of quality in potential mates. Mate quality is assessed on both an absolute scale, independent of the observer, and also on a relative scale, dependent on attributes of the observer. Much research has focused on how individuals respond to either absolute or...

Symmetry and masculinity in human faces have been proposed to be cues to the quality of the owner. Accordingly, symmetry is generally found attractive in male and female faces, and femininity is attractive in female faces. Women's preferences for male facial masculinity vary in ways that may...

Consistent with Getty's (2002. Signaling health versus parasites. Am Nat. 159:363--371.) proposal that cues to long-term health and cues to current condition are at least partly independent, recent research on human face preferences has found divergent effects of masculinity--femininity, a cue...

Previous studies have found that indices of women's attractiveness predict variation in their mate preferences. For example, objective measures of women's attractiveness (waist-hip ratio and other-rated facial attractiveness) are positively related to the strength of their preferences for...

Sexual dimorphism is important in mate choice in many species and can be appraised via multiple traits in any one individual. Thus, one question that arises is whether sexual dimorphism in different traits influences preferences consistently. Here, we examined human preferences for...