Jeanne Bovet

Northumbria University · Department of Psychology

Feeling and expressing love is at the core of romantic relationships, but individuals differ in their proclivity to worry about their relationships and/or avoid intimacy. Saying ‘I love you’ signals a commitment to a future with our romantic partner. Contrary to gender stereotypes, research in the US demonstrates that men are more likely to confess...

Prototype faces, created by averaging faces from several individuals sharing a common characteristic (for example a certain personality trait), can be used for highly informative experimental designs in face research. Although the facial prototype method is both ingenious and useful, in this paper we argue that its implementation is associated with...

Economic preferences may be shaped by exposure to sex hormones around birth. Prior studies of economic preferences and numerous other phenotypic characteristics use digit ratios (2D : 4D), a purported proxy for prenatal testosterone exposure, whose validity has recently been questioned. We use direct measures of neonatal sex hormones (testosterone...

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 att...

Over the last 25 years, a large amount of research has been dedicated to identifying men's preferences for women's physical features, and the evolutionary benefits associated with such preferences. Today, this area of research generates substantial controversy and criticism. I argue that part of the crisis is due to inaccuracies in the evolutionary...

Romantic mouth-to-mouth kissing is culturally widespread, although not a human universal, and may play a functional role in assessing partner health and maintaining long-term pair bonds. Use and appreciation of kissing may therefore vary according to whether the environment places a premium on good health and partner investment. Here, we test for c...

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 predictive utility of existing theory-driven models of fac...

If you enter the word “beauty” in a search engine, almost all the pictures you will see appear on your computer screen are of attractive young women. In Western society, the concept of beauty is closely associated with physical attractiveness and especially feminine physical attractiveness. Beautiful women are everywhere: on the walls of our cities...

Both parents and offspring have evolved mating preferences that enable them to select mates and children‐in‐law to maximize their inclusive fitness. The theory of parent–offspring conflict predicts that preferences for potential mates may differ between parents and offspring: individuals are expected to value biological quality more in their own ma...

A great number of studies have shown that features linked to immediate fertility explain a large part of the variance in female attractiveness. This is consistent with an evolutionary perspective, as men are expected to prefer females at the age at which fertility peaks (at least for short-term relationships) in order to increase their reproductive...

Table S1. Results of all statistical models. The tables provide, for each explanatory variable of the full model (i.e. without removing non-significant terms), the magnitude of the slope (β) and its standard error (SE), the t-value of the test β=0 and its significance P(t), the residual standard error of the model (RSE), the degrees of freedom (df)...

Sexual ornaments are often assumed to be indicators of mate quality. Yet it remains poorly known how certain ornaments are chosen before any coevolutionary race makes them indicative. Perceptual biases have been proposed to play this role, but known biases are mostly restricted to a specific taxon, which precludes evaluating their general importanc...

“Beauty is bought by judgment of the eye” (Shakespeare, Love’s Labour’s Lost), but the bodily features governing this critical biological choice are still debated. Eye movement studies have demonstrated that males sample coarse body regions expanding from the face, the breasts and the midriff, while making female attractiveness judgements with natu...

The ratio between the body circumference at the waist and the hips (or WHR) is a secondary sexual trait that is unique to humans and is well known to influence men's mate preferences. Because a woman's WHR also provides information about her age, health and fertility, men's preference concerning this physical feature may possibly be a cognitive ada...

In a context of mate choice, preferences are psychological mechanisms allowing individuals to choose a partner who can enhance their reproductive success. As a man's number of children greatly depends on the fertility of his mate(s), the ability to detect and prefer women with a high fertility has been selected. Moreover, as a woman's fertility is...

Why some women have more attractive face than others has been the focus of many studies. For short-term mating, males are expected to prefer females at the age of peak fertility. In fact, facial fertility cues have been linked to female attractiveness. For long-term partnerships, a high residual reproductive value - the expected future reproductive...

Male mate choice might be based on both absolute and relative strategies. Cues of female attractiveness are thus likely to reflect both fitness and reproductive potential, as well as compatibility with particular male phenotypes. In humans, absolute clues of fertility and indices of favorable developmental stability are generally associated with in...

Points for measurement of asymmetry and femininity. For asymmetry, eight distances on each side of the face were considered: (2-3) vs (4-5), (15-17) vs (18-20), (16-8) vs (19-9) and (3-21) vs (4-21). For femininity/masculinity, nine distances were computed: (2-5), (3-4), (6-7), (8-9), (11-12), (10-13), (2-14), (1-14) and (11-14). (TIF)

Linear discriminant analysis (LDA) according to sex. It provides a synthetic variable corresponding to a masculinity/femininity axis. The coordinate of each woman along this axis represents her individual femininity value. (TIF)

Male mate choice might be based on both absolute and relative strategies. Cues of female attractiveness are thus likely to reflect both fitness and reproductive potential, as well as compatibility with particular male phenotypes. In humans, absolute clues of fertility and indices of favorable developmental stability are generally associated with in...