Juan David LeongómezUniversidad El Bosque · Facultad de Psicología
Juan David Leongómez
PhD, MSc
About
78
Publications
57,946
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Introduction
I am an Associate Professor and Researcher at El Bosque University in Bogota, Colombia. My research interests include mate choice, human vocal communication, and musicality. I am also interested in bioacoustics and psychoacoustics, as well as hormonal effects on human behaviour. I am passionate about quantitative methods, using R as a tool to promote reproducibility and open science. For more info, please check my personal website https://jdleongomez.info/
Additional affiliations
January 2015 - December 2016
Position
- Professor
Description
- Teaching: Evolution and Development of Vocal Communication: Songs, Fashion, and Language (2016). Inferential Statistics (2015-2016). Descriptive Statistics (2015-2016).
April 2019 - present
Position
- Professor (Associate)
Description
- I am a researcher at the Human Behaviour Lab, do some post-grad teaching, lead a research group, and am a member of the Research Committee.
January 2015 - April 2019
Position
- Professor (Assistant)
Description
- I did some under- and post-grad teaching, and supported both members of staff and postgraduate students in research methods and statistics.
Education
October 2010 - August 2014
September 2008 - September 2009
January 1998 - October 2004
Publications
Publications (78)
Speakers modulate their voice when talking to infants, but we know little about subtle variation in acoustic parameters during speech in adult social interactions. Because tests of perception of such variation are hampered by listeners’ understanding of semantic content, studies often confine speech to enunciation of standard sentences, restricting...
Non-verbal behaviours, including voice characteristics during speech, are an important way to communicate social status. Research suggests that individuals can obtain high social status through dominance (using force and intimidation) or through prestige (by being knowledgeable and skilful). However, little is known regarding differences in the voc...
Voice characteristics are important to communicate socially relevant information. Recent research has shown that individuals alter their voices depending on the context of social interactions and perceived characteristics of the audience, and this affects how they are perceived. Numerous studies have also shown that the presence of bodily odours ca...
Research on within-individual modulation of vocal cues is surprisingly scarce outside of human speech. Yet, voice modulation serves diverse functions in human and nonhuman nonverbal communication, from dynamically signalling motivation and emotion, to exaggerating physical traits such as body size and masculinity, to enabling song and musicality. T...
Studies show that specific vocal modulations, akin to those of infant-directed speech (IDS) and perhaps music, play a role in communicating intentions and mental states during human social interaction. Based on this, we propose a model for the evolution of musicality—the capacity to process musical information—in relation to human vocal communicati...
Women’s preferences for facial masculinity in men are influenced by individual and socio-contextual factors that allow them to balance costs-benefits in pursuit of their well-being. This study examined how Colombian women's preferences for masculinized male faces are influenced by relationship context and resource availability, as well as their ind...
The evolution of music, language, and cooperation have been debated since before Darwin. The social bonding hypothesis proposes that these phenomena may be interlinked: musicality may have facilitated the evolution of group cooperation beyond the possibilities of spoken language. Although dozens of experimental studies have shown that synchronised...
A recommendation of: Guérin, S. M. R., Coulon, E., Lenc, T., Polak, R., Keller, P. E., & Nozaradan, S. (2024). Culture-Driven Neural Plasticity and Imprints of Body-Movement Pace on Musical Rhythm Processing. https://zenodo.org/doi/10.5281/zenodo.10221480.
In the present research, we examine the effect of dehumanizing framing of ex-perpetrators of violence on participants’ attributions of their agency, punishment deservingness, and suitableness for resocialization in postconflict. For this purpose, we collected data in the aftermath of a peace agreement between the government and the Revolutionary Ar...
Studies investigating facial attractiveness in humans have frequently been limited to studying the effect of individual morphological factors in isolation from other facial shape components in the same population. In this study, we go beyond this approach by focusing on multiple components and populations while combining geometric morphometrics of...
El meta-análisis es un método ampliamente utilizado para sintetizar los datos de diferentes estudios. Sin embargo, a menudo estudiantes, profesionales e investigadores carecemos de conocimientos prácticos para hacer e interpretar un meta-análisis. Esta guía presenta una variedad de herramientas para realizar meta-análisis de correlaciones en R, med...
This large, international dataset contains survey responses from N = 12,570 students from 100 universities in 35 countries, collected in 21 languages. We measured anxieties (statistics, mathematics, test, trait, social interaction, performance, creativity, intolerance of uncertainty, and fear of negative evaluation), self-efficacy, persistence, and...
Visual attention plays a central role in current theories of sexual information processing and is key to informing the use of eye-tracking techniques in the study of typical sexual preferences and more recently, in the study of atypical preferences such as pedophilia (prepubescent children) and hebephilia (pubescent children). The aim of this theor...
This large, international dataset contains survey responses from N = 12,570 students from 100 universities in 35 countries, collected in 21 languages. We measured anxieties (statistics, mathematics, test, trait, social interaction, performance, creativity, intolerance of uncertainty, and fear of negative evaluation), self-efficacy, persistence, and...
One research line in criminal behavior studies 2D:4D ratio as predictor of aggression and violent behavior, given that there are sexually dimorphic behaviors associated with the influence of testosterone on brain organization. However, results have been mixed. The aim of this study was to explore the differences in the 2D:4D ratio among offending a...
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...
The SARS-CoV-2 pandemic has imposed widespread negative impacts (economically, psychologically, neurologically, and societally), and has changed daily behaviors on a global scale. Such impacts are more significant and pervasive in countries with higher levels of inequality and reduced Government capacity and responsiveness, such as those in the Glo...
The human voice carries information about a vocalizer's physical strength that listeners can perceive and that may influence mate choice and intrasexual competition. Yet, reliable acoustic correlates of strength in human speech remain unclear. Compared to speech, aggressive nonverbal vocalizations (roars) may function to maximize perceived strength...
This document contains all code, and step by step explanations for all analyses, figures and tables (including supplementary figures and tables) for: Kleisner K et al. 2021 Predicting strength from aggressive vocalizations versus speech in African bushland and urban communities. Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B 376, 20200403. (doi:10.1098/rstb.2020.0403). Da...
Studies show that specific vocal modulations, akin to those of infant-directed speech and perhaps music, play a role in communicating intentions and mental states during human social interaction. Based on this, we propose a model for the evolution of musicality –the capacity to process musical information– in relation to human vocal communication....
Despite intensive research, evolutionary psychology has not yet reached a consensus regarding the association between sexual dimorphism and attractiveness. This study examines associations between perceived and morphological facial sexual dimorphism and perceived attractiveness in samples from five distant countries (Cameroon, Colombia, Czechia, Ir...
Men look different than women, well that is not a big surprise, but we wanted to study the phenomena of sexual dimorphism of human faces more thoroughly.
Every human face can be represented as a position in a 144-dimensional space. That is a start. We collected face shapes in 8 different cultures, In Cameroon, Namibia, Brazil, Colombia, Czech Repub...
Sexual selection, including mate choice and intrasexual competition, is responsible for the evolution of some of the most elaborated and sexually dimorphic traits in animals. Although there is sexual dimorphism in the shape of human faces, it is not clear whether this is similarly due to mate choice, or whether mate choice affects only part of the...
Over the past 10 years, Oosterhof and Todorov’s valence–dominance model has emerged as the most prominent account of how people evaluate faces on social dimensions. In this model, two dimensions (valence and dominance) underpin social judgements of faces. Because this model has primarily been developed and tested in Western regions, it is unclear w...
Over the past 10 years, Oosterhof and Todorov’s valence–dominance model has emerged as the most prominent account of how people evaluate faces on social dimensions. In this model, two dimensions (valence and dominance) underpin social judgements of faces. Because this model has primarily been developed and tested in Western regions, it is unclear w...
Esta guía práctica acompaña la serie de videos Poder estadístico y tamaño de muestra en R, de mi canal de YouTube Investigación Abierta, que recomiendo ver antes de leer este documento. Contiene una explicación básica del análisis de poder estadístico y cálculo de tamaño de muestra, centrándose en el procedimiento para realizar análisis de poder y...
Voice characteristics are important to communicate socially relevant information. Recent research has shown that individuals alter their voices depending on the context of social interactions and perceived characteristics of the audience, and this affects how they are perceived. Numerous studies have also shown that the presence of bodily odours ca...
This R Markdown document contains the supplementary materials and methods, as well as results, including
all code, and step by step detailed explanations for all analyses, figures and tables included in Leongómez,
J.D., Sánchez, O.R., Vásquez-Amézquita, M., & Roberts, S.C. (2019). Contextualising courtship: Exploring
male body odour effects on voca...
It has been hypothesised that the strength of association between sex typicality and attractiveness follows an adaptive pattern across cultures. Such pattern allows for adjustment of individual preferences for facial cues associated with direct (parenting) and indirect (biological quality) benefits from mating with a potential mate according to env...
This R Markdown document contains the code and analyses for "Self-reported Health is Related to Body Height and Waist Circumference in Rural Indigenous and Urbanised Latin-American Populations" (2020). Data available at https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/KGR5X.
Body height is a life-history component. It involves important costs for its expression and maintenance, which may originate trade-offs on other costly components such as reproduction or immunity. Although previous evidence has supported the idea that human height could be a sexually selected trait, the explanatory mechanisms that underlie this sel...
Sexual selection, including mate choice and intrasexual competition, is responsible for the evolution of some of the most elaborated and sexually dimorphic traits in animals. Although there is clear sexual dimorphism in the shape of human faces, it is not clear whether this is similarly due to mate choice, or whether mate choice affects only part o...
En este estudio se pretendió corroborar el efecto de inversión con estímulos de rostros calmos, de miedo e ira tomados de la base de datos de rostros calmos y emocionales NSTIM (base de datos de rostros), presentados de forma vertical e invertida, con una duración de presentación de 2000 milisegundos. Los resultados muestran que no hubo modulación...
Over the last ten years, Oosterhof and Todorov’s valence-dominance model has emerged as the most prominent account of how people evaluate faces on social dimensions. In this model, two dimensions (valence and dominance) underpin social judgments of faces. Because this model has primarily been developed and tested in Western regions, it is unclear w...
Body height is a life-history component. It involves important costs for its expression and maintenance, which may originate trade-offs on other costly components such as reproduction or immunity. Although previous evidence has supported the idea that human height could be a sexually selected trait, the explanatory mechanisms that underlie this sel...
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...
In the present research, we examine the effect of dehumanizing framing of ex-perpetrators of violence on participants’ attributions of their agency, punishment deservingness, and suitableness for resocialization in postconflict. For this purpose, we collected data in the aftermath of a peace agreement between the government and the Revolutionary Ar...
Men, whether gynephilic or androphilic, show both early and late attention toward adults and not toward children. We examined early and late visual attention to sexually mature versus immature stimuli in four groups of heterosexual men: sexual offenders against children (SOAC = 18), sexual offenders against adults (SOAA = 16), nonsexual offenders (...
Objectives
Facial averageness and sexual dimorphism are extensively studied attractiveness markers, which are viewed as possible indicators of biological quality. Both are complex morphological traits, and both can be easily assessed from frontal and lateral projection of a human face. Interestingly, examination of mutual relations between the fron...
The emotion of disgust plays a key role in the behavioral immune system, a set of disease-avoidance processes constituting a frontline defense against pathogenic threats. In the context of growing research interest in disgust, as well as recognition of its role in several psychiatric disorders, there is need for an improved understanding of behavio...
Digit ratio (2D:4D) is a marker of prenatal androgenic exposure that is correlated with different behaviour patterns. Here, we explore the relationship between 2D:4D ratio and early versus late attention to sexually preferred stimuli using an eye-tracking paradigm with 78 androphilic or gynephilic men and women. We simultaneously presented preferre...
Objectives
Facial averageness and sexual dimorphism are extensively studied attractiveness markers, which are viewed as possible indicators of biological quality. Both are complex morphological traits and both can be easily assessed from frontal and lateral projection of a human face. Interestingly, examination of mutual relations between the front...
Visual attention patterns measured with eye-tracking techniques provide indirect clues about sexual response. This study aimed to test the category specificity of sexual responses to stimuli varying in gender and age by evaluating both early and late attention of gynephilic and androphilic men and women. We simultaneously presented sexually preferr...
La discriminación de las emociones expresadas a nivel facial es importante para las relaciones sociales, la empatía y la interacción social. El objetivo de este estudio fue observar si existían diferencias en el procesamiento cortical ante dos emociones básicas, la ira y el miedo y definir si la percepción de la ira intensa genera una mayor modulac...
Ratings of targets’ attributes given by the participants.
Results are split by target (neutral: white bars; dominant: light grey bars; prestigious: dark grey bars) and attribute rated. a) Facial images; b) Employee testimonials; c) Names; d) Job titles. Bars represent mean ± 1 s.e.m.
(TIF)
Descriptive statistics for all vocal parameters.
Results represent mean ± SD for male and female participants to each type of target (neutral, dominant, prestigious).
(XLSX)
Context-dependent variation in vocal parameters.
T = Target (neutral, dominant, prestigious), Q = Question, PD = Participant Dominance, PP = Participant Prestige, PS = Participant Sex (male, female). Results are from repeated-measures general linear models for each vocal parameter, with Holm–Bonferroni adjustment for multiple tests. Significant eff...
Planned contrasts estimated for participants with varying degrees of dominance and prestige.
T = Target (neutral, dominant, prestigious), Q = Question, PS = Participant Sex, N = Neutral Target, HS = High-status Targets (dominant, prestigious), D = Dominant Target, P = Prestigious Target. For participants, self-perceived status covariates (PD = Part...
Planned contrasts estimated for participants with varying degrees of dominance and prestige, per question.
T = Target (neutral, dominant, prestigious), N = Neutral Target, HS = High-status Targets (dominant, prestigious), D = Dominant Target, P = Prestigious Target. For participants, self-perceived status covariates (PD = Participant Dominance, PP...
Supplementary materials and methods.
(DOCX)
Independent ratings of target attributes.
Mean ratings for each attribute (images, employee testimonials, names, and job titles). N = Neutral target, D = Dominant target, P = Prestigious target. Results are from repeated-measures general linear models (d.f. = 2, 42 in each case) for each rated attribute. Significant effects are in bold.
(XLSX)
Excel file with data on participants and analysed acoustic characteristics.
(XLSX)
How to achieve dominance in a group is a recurrent challenge for individuals
of many species, including humans. Previous research indicates that both relationship
status and contraceptive use appear to moderate women’s testosterone levels. If testosterone
contributes to dominance, this raises the possibility for group differences in
dominance betwe...
La existencia de la música y su origen continúan siendo un misterio. Sin embargo, la ciencia ha logrado proveer respuestas parciales y modelos teóricos, basándose en una variedad de evidencias ha logrado señalar aspectos fundamentales y proponer hipótesis que deben ser estudiadas. Este artículo presenta una revisión de la literatura en cuanto al es...
Music and language are both deeply rooted in our biology, but scientists have given far more attention to the neurological, biological and evolutionary roots of language than those of music. Because of this, and probably partially due to this, the purpose of music, in evolutionary terms, remains a mystery. Our brain, physiology and psychology make...
Presentation prior to publication of the article with the same name: Leongómez, J. D., Binter, J., Kubicová, L., Stolařová, P., Klapilová, K., Havlíček, J., & Roberts, S. C. (2014). Vocal modulation during courtship increases proceptivity even in naive listeners. Evolution and Human Behavior, 35(6), 489–496. doi: 10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2014.06.008
Objective: Context-dependent modulation of paralinguistic parameters (non-verbal elements of communication) is classically demonstrated in ‘motherese’ but we know little about subtle variation in acoustic parameters during normal adult speech. Furthermore, because tests of perception of such variation are hampered by listeners’ understanding of sem...
Sexual fantasies (SF) are an integral part of human sexuality. In contrast with sexual behavioural displays, which rely to great extend on social factors, they are ideal for studying cognitive adaptations related to sexual differences in mate preferences and motivations. This article examines sex differences in the incidence of sexual fantasies hig...
There is growing evidence that human second-to-fourth digit ratio (or 2D:4D) is related to facial features involved in attractiveness, mediated by in utero hormonal effects. The present study extends the investigation to other phenotypic, hormone-related determinants of human attractiveness: voice and body odour. Pictures of faces with a neutral ex...
Resumen: Si la música tiene un origen cultural -como suele asumirse- ¿cómo puede explicarse su universalidad? Este artículo parte de este problema para plantear la hipótesis de que el fenómeno musical tenga un origen anterior al hombre moderno, o incluso anterior al hombre mismo y sea el resultado de una serie de adaptaciones al medio; de que tenga...
Questions
Question (1)
I was wondering if anyone could help me with a question regarding the assumptions for a statistical test I am running as part of a manuscript that I am revising now for publication (after receiving initial comments by the reviewers).
Basically, I recorded voices of men and women in two languages, responding to both men and women who were categorised either as attractive or unattractive, and I am analysing 4 different acoustic parameters of their voices. So, it is a 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 mixed design MANOVA, for which I have 2 between-subject variables (sex of the speaker and language) and 2 within-subject variables (target sex and target attractiveness), all with two levels, and 4 outcome variables. In total, I have 110 participants (30 men and 30 women in one language, and 25 men and 25 women in the other), and 4 observations per participant for each one of the 4 outcome variables. Therefore the degrees of freedom are 4, 103 for multivariate results, and 1, 106 for univariate.
Because all independent variables have only two levels, sphericity is not an issue. However, I have not been able to find clear information about multivariate normality and the variance-covariance matrices for a mixed design like mine, and how robust is the test to violations of these. I can run a Box’s test, but it seems that to be able to interpret the results it is essential test the multivariate normality, which apparently it is not possible in SPSS (which is what I normally use). Even more, all the information I have found seems to be contradictory regarding the importance of group sizes and how it affects the robustness of the main MANOVA to possible violations of the assumptions.
As you can see, I am very confused. I would appreciate any advice.
