Bogusław Pawłowski

University of Wroclaw | WROC · Zakład Biologii Człowieka

Previous studies showed that intrauterine growth restrictions, resulting in smaller body size at birth, are associated with altered development and the risk of age-related diseases in adult life. Thus, prenatal development may predict aging trajectories in humans. The study aimed to verify if body size at birth is related to biological age in adult...

Previous studies showed that intrauterine growth restrictions, resulting in smaller body size at birth, are associated with altered development and the risk of age-related diseases in adult life. Thus, prenatal development may predict aging trajectories in humans. The study aimed to verify if body size at birth is related to biological age in adult...

Glycemia is linked with one of the key mechanisms underlying the aging process and inter-individual differences in biological age. Previous research showed that glucose level is linked with perceived age in elder individuals. This study aimed to verify if glycemia is related to perceived facial age in healthy adult individuals as interventions in y...

Previous work has reported a relation between pathogen-avoidance motivations and prejudice toward various social groups, including gay men and lesbian women. It is currently unknown whether this association is present across cultures, or specific to North America. Analyses of survey data from adult heterosexuals ( N = 11,200) from 31 countries show...

S-Klotho is perceived as a biomarker of healthy aging that has been shown to be inversely associated with cardiometabolic risk in elderly individuals. The aim of this study was to test if s-Klotho level is associated with cardiometabolic risk markers in younger healthy men in order to verify the possible role of s-Klotho level as an early marker of...

The possession of permanent, adipose breasts in women is a uniquely human trait that develops during puberty, well in advance of the first pregnancy. The adaptive role and developmental pattern of this breast morphology, unusual among primates, remains an unresolved conundrum. The evolutionary origins of this trait have been the focus of many hypot...

Previous studies have shown that women perceive male faces with a more reactive immune system as more attractive, but whether body odor might likewise provide cues to immune function has not been investigated yet. These two studies tested a possible relationship between body odor quality and immunoreactivity (Study 1) and immune system function (St...

PurposeWe aimed to study sex differences in the association of childhood socioeconomic position (SEP) with later-life depressive symptoms, the mediating effect of education and explore regional differences across Europe.Methods The study included 58,851 participants (55% women, mean age 65 years) from the multicentre, population-based Survey on Hea...

Physical attractiveness has been shown to reflect women’s current fecundity level, allowing a man to choose a potentially more fertile partner in mate choice context. However, women vary not only in terms of fecundity level at reproductive age but also in reproductive longevity, both influencing a couple’s long-term reproductive success. Thus, men...

Masculinity-related morphological traits are supposed to be honest indicators of a man's biological quality. While some studies showed that sexually dimorphic traits are related to various aspects of biological condition such as general health, immunity or fertility, still little is known about the relationship between masculine traits and the effe...

Background: Women's morphological femininity is perceived to develop under the influence of sex hormones and to serve as a cue of estradiol level, fertility and health in mating context. However, as the studies on direct relationship between femininity and sex steroid levels have reported mixed results, it is still not well understood what factors...

Disgust triggers behavioral avoidance of pathogen-carrying and fitness-reducing agents. However, because of the cost involved, disgust sensitivity should be flexible, varying as a function of an individual’s immunity. Asymptomatic colonization with Staphylococcus aureus often results from weakened immunity and is a potential source of subsequent in...

The Triangular Theory of Love (measured with Sternberg’s Triangular Love Scale – STLS) is a prominent theoretical concept in empirical research on love. To expand the culturally homogeneous body of previous psychometric research regarding the STLS, we conducted a large-scale cross-cultural study with the use of this scale. In total, we examined mor...

Facial appearance has been suggested to provide an honest cue of an individual’s biological condition. However, there is little direct evidence that facial attractiveness reflects actual health. Here we tested if facial appearance is related with metabolic health biomarkers. Face photographs of 161 healthy, young women (Mage = 28.59, SDage = 2.34)...

Objectives Facial attractiveness is thought to reflect an individual's biological condition. This seems to be largely explained by the relationship between facial appearance and body adiposity, a trait that affects various aspects of body homeostasis, including fertility and immunity. The aim of this study was to test if, a part of adipose tissue a...

Empathy is crucial for normal and effective social functioning, enabling comprehension and prediction of actions in social environments. Despite its importance for maintaining social relationships in human groups, the physiological correlates of empathy are not fully known. The aim of this study was to test whether empathy is related to oxidative s...

Digit ratio (2d/4d) in humans is commonly used as a proxy for the exposure to oestrogens and androgens in prenatal life. Masculinisation/feminisation in adults may be also related to digit ratio and therefore to the oestrogen/androgen ratio in prenatal life. It has been shown, for instance, that Waist-to-Hip ratio (WHR) and the amount and distribut...

Inter- and intra-individual variation in disgust sensitivity can be largely explained considering costs and benefits of coming into contact with potentially fitness-reducing factors. These costs and benefits should differ depending on individuals' biological condition, thus disgust sensitivity may depend on an individual's condition as well. Hand g...

The power of stories to raise our concern for animals has been postulated throughout history by countless scholars, activists, and writers, including such greats as Thomas Hardy and Leo Tolstoy. This is the first book to investigate that power and explain the psychological and cultural mechanisms behind it. It does so by presenting the results of a...

Objectives Successful breastfeeding, crucial for a child's development, depends on a woman's ability to initiate lactation, milk yield, and composition. Those traits differ among women, but the cause and physiological mechanisms responsible for this variation are not fully understood yet. Growing evidence shows that lactation and milk composition v...

Throughout history, it has been often claimed by activists, writers, and scholars that narrative empathy for animals influences social attitudes toward other species. The problem is that there are no experimental data to support this opinion. Our study aimed to address this limitation. Involving 209 participants and three different narratives, it s...

Objectives More symmetric organisms are perceived as more attractive. Fluctuating asymmetry (FA) i.e. small, random deviations from perfect bilateral symmetry, is supposed to inform about developmental instability. According to the good genes hypothesis, a low level of FA is a putative cue to an organism's biological quality. An important aspect of...

Fluctuating asymmetry (FA), a morphological marker of developmental stability, may be related to an individual’s biological condition, e.g., health or fertility. The aim of this study was to test if the level of a woman’s FA was related to her fertility and reproductive potential as measured by reproductive hormone levels. Fifty-three healthy, non-...

A correction to this article has been published and is linked from the HTML and PDF versions of this paper. The error has not been fixed in the paper.

The observations that testosterone might be immunosuppressive, form the basis for the immunocompetence handicap hypothesis (ICHH). According to ICHH only high-quality individuals can maintain high levels of testosterone and afford the physiological cost of hormone-derived immunosuppression. The animal and human studies that attempted to support the...

The purpose of the three studies described in this paper was to investigate the effects that reading fiction has on pro-animal attitudes and behavior. Although such effects have been widely claimed to exist by writers, activists and scholars, there has been scant experimental data to support that. In particular, there have been no experimental stud...

Objectives: Fluctuating asymmetry (FA) is hypothesized to reflect the level of an individual's developmental instability, and therefore genetic quality. As a potential signal of biological condition, female body (including breast) symmetry was shown to be perceived as more attractive in mate choice context. If symmetry reflects a woman's genetic q...

As love seems to be universal, researchers have attempted to find its biological basis. However, no studies till date have shown its direct association with reproductive success, which is broadly known to be a good measure of fitness. Here, we show links between love, as defined by the Sternberg Triangular Theory of Love, and reproductive success a...

The effect of free mate choice on the relative magnitude of fitness benefits has been examined among various species. The majority of the data show significant fitness benefits of mating with partners of an individual’s own choice, highlighting elevated behavioral compatibility between partners with free mate choice. Similarities between humans and...

According to the good genes hypothesis and energy allocation theory, human adult body height may reflect biological quality. An important aspect of this quality is immune system functioning (ISF). The aim of this studywas to evaluate the relationship between ISF and body height in healthy people. The ISF was determined by several important innate (...

Pregnancy induces many physiological and psychological changes associated with a suite of new behaviours developing to increase the chance for an offspring survival. This study aimed to investigate whether risk-taking propensity changes during pregnancy. Eighty one healthy, pregnant women (age M = 29.63, SD = 3.79) participated in the longitudinal...

Previous studies have documented links between sub-clinical narcissism and the active pursuit of short-term mating strategies (e.g., unrestricted sociosexuality, marital infidelity, mate poaching). Nearly all of these investigations have relied solely on samples from Western cultures. In the current study, responses from a cross-cultural survey of...

According to the life history paradigm, in life-threatening conditions, sexual selection criteria are relaxed in order to increase the probability of a last resort reproduction, ultimately contributing to reproductive success. This should be reflected in loosened mating preferences — a process observed in nonhuman animals. Studies investigating thi...

Mate value discrepancy (MVD) between heterosexual partners is an important factor influencing relationship satisfaction which, in turn, has an effect on the quality and the stability of the relationship. Therefore, partners’ involvement in mate retention behaviours, such as controlling behaviours, can be related to MVD and our study aims to determi...

Literary fiction has been credited with considerable power to improve attitudes toward out-groups. It was even argued that it has been an important factor behind the global decline of violence against various minorities in the last centuries. Could it also help to reduce the human-inflicted suffering of animals? To test this, we studied the attitud...

Quiz announcements. Announcement A in S1 Text provides an English translation of the original Polish text of the announcement posted on the author’s Facebook profile. Announcement B in S1 Text provides the original Polish version. Announcement C in S1 Text provides an English translation of the original Polish text of the announcement posted on the...

Control narrative used in the study. Narrative A in S3 Text provides an English translation of the original Polish control narrative used in the study. Narrative B in S3 Text provides the original Polish version. (DOCX)

ATAW Scale. Scale A in S5 Text provides an English translation of the original Polish scale used in the study. Scale B in S5 Text B provides the original Polish version. (DOCX)

Questionnaire used in the study. Questionnaire A in S4 Text provides an English translation of the original Polish questionnaire used in the study. Questionnaire B in S4 Text B provides the original Polish version. (DOCX)

Experimental narrative used in the study. Narrative A in S2 Text provides an English translation of the original Polish experimental narrative used in the study. Narrative B in S2 Text B provides the original Polish version. (DOCX)

People who are more avoidant of pathogens are more politically conservative, as are nations with greater parasite stress. In the current research, we test two prominent hypotheses that have been proposed as explanations for these relationships. The first, which is an intragroup account, holds that these relationships between pathogens and politics...

Background: Male gender and adiposity are considered to be risk factors for Staphylococcus aureus carriage. We tested whether colonization is related to free testosterone (fT) level and adiposity, measured with body mass index (BMI) and body fat percentage (BFP), in healthy adults. Methods: Blood sample and throat swabs were taken twice (at 4-we...

Objectives: Total leukocyte count (white blood cells-WBC) and the count of each subpopulation vary across the menstrual cycle, but results of studies examining the time and direction of these changes are inconsistent and methodologically flawed. Besides, no previous study focused on leukocyte count on the day of ovulation. Methods: Blood samples...

One of the biggest mysteries of human evolution is the divergence of the hominin lineage from the other hominoids. This chapter addresses the problem of the selective forces that might have been behind hominin emergence and that shaped this evolutionary lineage in its early stages. To establish the selection pressures that led to hominin emergence,...

It has been proposed that women's preferences for male facial sexual dimorphism are positively correlated with conception probability and differ between short- and long-term mating contexts. In this study, we tested this assumption by analyzing relationships between estradiol levels to the women's preferences of male faces that were manipulated to...

Objectives High level of oxidative stress (OS) during the first weeks of pregnancy is related to many serious pregnancy complications. Previous studies showed that body fluctuating asymmetry (FA) is related to OS level in men, suggesting that FA is a marker of oxidative balance in an individual. The aim of this study was to analyze if body FA was r...

Objectives Breast size and fluctuating asymmetry (FA) are related to women's biological condition, as size correlates positively with fecundity, whereas FA correlates negatively with biological quality. We tested if breast volume, FA, and their changes during pregnancy are related to a fetus's sex. Women with bigger, symmetrical breasts, with a gre...

Zahavi's handicap principle suggests that only organisms with good genetic quality can afford to engage in costly behaviors. Recreational drug use can be harmful to one's health and therefore might be viewed as a costly signal of one's genetic quality. One of the measurements of genetic quality is bodily symmetry assessed by fluctuating asymmetry....

Zahavi’s handicap principle suggests that only organisms with good genetic quality can afford to engage in costly behaviors. Recreational drug use can be harmful to one’s health and therefore might be viewed as a costly signal of one’s genetic quality. One of the measurements of genetic quality is bodily symmetry assessed by fluctuating asymmet...

Body height, body mass index (BMI) and waist-to-hip ratio (WHR) are the main traits characterizing human body morphology. Studies show that these traits are related to attractiveness and, therefore, according to an evolutionary point of view, are supposed to be honest signals of biological quality. If the immunocompetence handicap principal (IHP) i...

Diminished exercise capacity is a fundamental symptom of heart failure (HF), which is particularly disadvantageous for men for whom exercise capacity contributes significantly to their gender identity, self-esteem, and quality of life. In this study, we aimed to examine whether psychological gender would be different in men with systolic HF as comp...

The purpose of this study was to examine the associations between using unhealthy substances and the digit ratio (2nd to 4th digit length ratio, 2D:4D) which is supposed to indicate the prenatal testosterone level. The subjects were 455 students, 225 women and 230 men. Participants declared their frequency of smoking and alcohol drinking. There as...

Contradictory findings show both positive and negative effect of progesterone on the premenstrual mood changes in women. Here we present the study investigating this relationship on the large sample of premenstrual women. 122 healthy, reproductive age women collected daily morning saliva samples and recorded intensity scores for the mood symptoms:...

Neonatal weight and health depend on many epigenetic and environmental factors and also on a child's genes as inherited from the mother and the father. The "Hunting for Good Genes" (HfGG) hypothesis claims that women pursue short-term mating strategies in order to obtain good genes for their progeny. If this is true, one should expect that in compa...

Personality and temperament were hypothesized to function as important factors affecting life history strategies. Recent research has demonstrated the association between temperamental traits and reproduction in humans, however, the underlying mechanisms are still poorly understood. This study presents evidence for an association between temperamen...

Mate preferences are context-dependent and may vary with different ecological conditions and raters. The present study investigated whether sociosexual orientation influenced men's rating of attractiveness of female breast size. Participants (N=128) rated female breast attractiveness as a function of size (five levels) and viewing angles (front vie...

The possible existence of a relationship between breastfeeding duration, educational status and waist-hip ratio (WHR) as a measure of fertility and biological fitness in a sample of the Polish population is examined in this article. Data on age, height, weight, waist and hip circumferences, educational level (as a proxy for socio-economic status),...

In an attempt to explain gender differences in risk taking from an evolutionary perspective, this study examined the attractiveness of risk taking in potential mates. Questionnaire data from a sample of 352 primarily undergraduate students at Liverpool University, U.K., provided participants’ ratings of physical, social and financial risk-taking an...

Tattoos and non-conventional piercings are used in many societies. There are several social reasons for which people use these forms of body decorations (e.g., marking social status or signaling membership within a subculture). However, it is interesting why only some people within a group that uses body decoration as a badge of membership decide u...

Tattoos and non-conventional piercings are used in many societies. There are several social reasons for which people use these forms of body decorations (e.g., marking social status or signaling membership within a subculture). However, it is interesting why only some people within a group that uses body decoration as a badge of membership decide u...

Women’s attractiveness has been found to be negatively correlated with waist-to-hip ratio (WHR) in many studies. Two components of this ratio can, however, carry different signals for a poten- tial mate. Hip size indicates pelvic size and the amount of additional fat storage that can be used as a source of energy. Waist size conveys information suc...

This study investigated the role of skin tone, hair colour, and body weight in perceptions of women's physical attractiveness and health. Four-hundred and thirty-six women and 423 men in eight distinct national settings on three continents rated a series of 18 female line drawings that varied in three levels of skin tone, two levels of hair colour,...

In order to test the assumption that female attractiveness relates to reproductive success, photographs of 47 rural Polish women taken in their youth were rated for attractiveness, and BMI at age 18 was recorded; these measures of attractiveness were then compared with their subsequent life histories. Facial attractiveness did not relate to number...

It has been shown that height is one of the morphological traits that influence a person's attractiveness. To date, few studies have addressed the relationship between different components of height and physical attractiveness. Here, we study how leg length influences attractiveness in men and women. Stimuli consisted of seven different pictures of...