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Attractiveness qualifies the effect of observation on trusting behavior in an economic game
Abstract
Recent studies show that subtle cues of observation affect cooperation even when anonymity is explicitly assured. For instance, recent studies have shown that the presence of eyes increases cooperation on social economic tasks. Here we tested the effects of cues of observation on trusting behavior in a two-player trust game and the extent to which these effects are qualified by participants' own attractiveness. Although explicit cues of being observed (i.e. when participants were informed that the other player would see their face) tended to increase trusting behavior, this effect was qualified by the participants' other-rated attractiveness (estimated from third-party ratings of face photographs). Participants’ own physical attractiveness was positively correlated with the extent to which they trusted others more when they believed they could be seen than when they believed they could not be seen was. This interaction between cues of observation and own attractiveness suggests context-dependence of trusting behavior that is sensitive to whether and how others react to one’s physical appearance.
... Krupp and colleagues [19] tested whether this effect is due to attractiveness per se by experimentally manipulating apparent health, which is a reliable component of attractiveness, in a Trust Game (TG) and found that participants did not invest more in but return more to attractive partners, indicating a preference for reciprocation with those attractive partners. This was also supported with a finding from another study that attractiveness facilitated trusting behavior only when participants knew that their partners could see their faces [20]. These findings suggest that when contacting with attractive persons, participants are expecting their reciprocation rather than simply feeling rewarded from attractiveness [19,20]. ...
... This was also supported with a finding from another study that attractiveness facilitated trusting behavior only when participants knew that their partners could see their faces [20]. These findings suggest that when contacting with attractive persons, participants are expecting their reciprocation rather than simply feeling rewarded from attractiveness [19,20]. Furthermore, an intriguing gender difference was observed in Krupp et al [19]'s study that participants fairly reciprocated the trust of healthy more than unhealthy female players, but not of healthy versus unhealthy male players. ...
... The sorting results revealed that the mean importance score of facial attractiveness ranked 5 th (Mean = 3.412, SD = 0.795) out of the six factors. Paired t-test showed that Intelligence (t (16) = In order to compare potential gender differences we also surveyed all subjects (total of 21, all males) who participated in our former experiment [7] using the same questionnaire and discovered that facial attractiveness ranked 2 nd (Mean = 4.238, SD = 0.831) among the six factors, and it was significantly more important than Resource (t (20) Table 2 below illustrates all mean scores and rankings from both questionnaires in relation to male and female subjects. ...
The current study delineated how male proposers' facial attractiveness affect female
responders' fairness considerations and their subsequent decision outcome during the Ultimatum
Game (UG). Event Related Potentials (ERPs) were recorded from 17 female subjects,
who played the role as responders and had to decide whether to accept offers from
either attractive or unattractive male proposers. Behavioral data (Acceptance Ratio and
Response time) revealed that, more offers were accepted from attractive-face conditions;
subjects typically responded quicker to unfair offers from unattractive proposers as compared
with slower to unfair offers from attractive proposers. The ERP data demonstrated
similar N2 amplitudes elicited by both attractive and unattractive faces, and a larger early
frontal LPP elicited by the attractive faces compared with unattractive ones, but no significant
differences of both late posterior LPP and typical parietal LPP amplitudes were
observed between these two face conditions, which was different from our previous study
with similar paradigm but male participants. The results suggest that, in comparison to
males, females might not experience the potential attention bias towards unattractive opposite-
sex faces and are less likely to possess an enhanced processing and evaluation of
those faces. This phenomenon might be explained by endogenous gender differences in
mate preference. The feedback-related negativity (FRN) and P300 responses during an
offer presentation were further measured in both attractive-face and unattractive-face conditions
and the results demonstrated that the amplitudes elicited by fair and unfair offers were
not statistically different in the former condition, but were different in the latter condition.
More specifically, unfair offers generated larger FRN and smaller P300 than fair ones in the
unattractive-face condition. Findings suggest that, although females tend to possess less
salient evaluation of male's facial attractiveness, the attractiveness of male proposers would
still attenuate female responders' fairness consideration during the UG.
... (incorrectly) as signaling trustworthiness [see also Hancock and DeBruine (2003), Smith et al. (2009) and Pandey and Zayas (2021)]. Other cultural and physical cues are also important, including skin color, ethnic and racial identity, attractiveness, and gender (Eckel & Wilson, 2008;Simpson et al., 2007;Fershtman & Gneezy, 2001;Burns, 2012;Croson & Gneezy, 2009;Lount & Pettit, 2012;Tognetti et al., 2013). ...
... Finally, attractiveness confounds matters, with subjects over-guessing the amount sent to attractive trustees. In line with other studies we find that attractive people are more likely to be trusted [see Wilson and Eckel (2006), Hancock and DeBruine (2003), Smith et al. (2009) and Pandey and Zayas (2021)]. Figure 5 presents the point estimates and confidence intervals from the random effects GLS (the models are given in Table 4). ...
This study examines whether individuals can accurately predict trust and trustworthiness in others based on their appearance. Using photos and decisions from previous experimental trust games, subjects were asked to view the photos and guess the levels of trust and trustworthiness of the individuals depicted. The results show that subjects had little ability to accurately guess the trust and trustworthiness behavior of others. There is significant heterogeneity in the accuracy of guesses, and errors in guesses are systematically related to the observable characteristics of the photos. Subjects’ guesses appear to be influenced by stereotypes based on the features seen in the photos, such as gender, skin color, or attractiveness. These findings suggest that individuals’ beliefs that they can infer trust and trustworthiness from appearance are unfounded, and that efforts to reduce the impact of stereotypes on inferred trustworthiness may improve the efficiency of trust-based interactions.
... The Trust Game. A computerized trust game similar to those that have been used in many economic and psychological studies was utilized to test trust and reciprocity from the participants (Debruine, 2002;Scharleman, Eckel, Kacelnik, & Wilson, 2001;Smith, Debruine, Jones, Krupp, Welling, & Conway, 2009). This economic trust game was chosen as a means for having people interact with someone strictly based on group identity. ...
... Following the coding and analyses of the trust task used in previous research (Smith et al., 2009), the "Distrust" decision was coded as 0 and the "Trust" decision was coded as 1. Because the following study employed an experimental design consisting of both between-and within-subject variables as a means of examining differences across different groups of people, a 4 (target group) x 2 (participant religion: Baptist vs. Catholic) x 2 (participant arbitrary group: Blue vs. Yellow) x 2 (participant sex) x 2 (target sex) mixed-design analysis of variance (ANOVA) was performed on these coded responses. ...
Human cooperation has led to the social lifestyle that our world thrives on today. Many common groups – such as religious and political affiliations—facilitate this social lifestyle by advocating trust, reciprocity, and cooperation among group members; however, studies on trust and reciprocity tend to manipulate group identity via assigning participants to arbitrary groups rather than investigating the potential relationship with actual social groups (e.g., religion and politics). Therefore, the present study empirically tested the relationships that may exist between actual group memberships, arbitrary group membership, trust, and reciprocity. Two studies (N = 144 per study) were conducted with a computerized “trust” game to measure trust and reciprocity between people based on political affiliation, religious denomination, and arbitrary identification. Results indicated that people trusted their fellow in-group members more than out-group members, and trusted religious and political in-group members more than arbitrary in-group members. Participants also gave more money to in-group members than out-group members for both meaningful and arbitrary group identities. There were no significant differences in the amount of money given to actual and arbitrary in-group members. These are the first two studies to date that have examined whether different types of in-groups elicit different levels of reciprocal exchange. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2014 APA, all rights reserved)
... Putz, Palotai, Cserto, and Bereczkei (2016) and Solnick and Schweitzer (1999) found that, in economic games, attractive people were rewarded to a significantly greater extent and that attractive free riders were punished to a significantly lesser extent than unattractive ones. In a trust game, Smith et al. (2009) found that attractive subjects tended to trust untrustworthy ones. Solnick and Schweitzer (1999) also found that attractiveness has a significant effect on offers in ultimatum bargaining games. ...
We conducted a trust game experiment to investigate whether women are trusted more when they wear makeup than when they do not. Facial attractiveness, which was manipulated through the application of makeup by a professional makeup artist, was measured before and after makeovers. Trustors were shown a photograph of their female counterparts before they made decisions about money transfers to trustees. The results showed that wearing makeup increased perceived attractiveness, which in turn led trustors to make larger transfers to female trustees during the trust game. Additionally, we discovered a pure makeup premium that was mediated by gender. Specifically, female trustees with makeup received larger transfers than female trustees without makeup when the trustors were men, even after controlling for female trustees’ levels of attractiveness.
... Among the latter, attractive individuals have more success in the marriage market and produce more children (Jokela, 2009;Gangestad and Scheyd, 2005). They are perceived as more competent (Todorov et al, 2005), trustworthy (Little, 2012), are more trusting themselves (Smith et al., 2009), and are also more likely to be helped by strangers (Benson, Karabenick and Lerner, 1976). ...
We consider the effect of physical attractiveness, assessed using publicly available pictures of top scientists, on their probability of winning the Nobel Prize. There is now an extensive body of literature that finds that physically attractive people receive non-negligible benefits in the labor market, marriage market and social life. In contrast, we find that attractiveness is negatively correlated with the probability of being awarded the Nobel, with the magnitude of this effect being non-negligible. We discuss the potential mechanisms that could explain this result.
... There is little disagreement among researchers that explicit reputation incentives strongly affect human prosocial behavior. These explicit incentives can take the form of higher future material benefits in a dynamic experimen-tal game-such as in our explicit reputation treatment-or they can arise when real people (e.g., an audience) saliently observe other people's cooperative or non-cooperative behavior (Gächter and Fehr, 1999;Rege and Telle, 2004;Kurzban et al., 2007;Smith et al., 2009). The strength of merely implicit reputation cues, in which subjects cannot really acquire a good or bad reputation, is, however, much less investigated. ...
... Individuals with attractive faces are more preferred in mate selection because facial attractive- ness is considered to be a symbol of health, sound immunity, and reproductive advantages (Perrett, 2012;Fink & PentonVoak, 2002;Rhodes & Zebrowitz, 2002). Attractive people have, on average, better parasite resistance ( Buss, 2005;Kościński, 2008), greater physical and reproductive fitness ( Malo et al., 2009;Preston, Stevenson, Pemberton, Coltman, & Wilson, 2003), longevity (Henderson & Anglin, 2003), easier shedding of genetic load (Kokko, Brooks, Jennions, & Morley, 2003), higher intelligence (Buss, 2015;Li et al., 2013), and better mental health ( Smith et al., 2009). The perception of facial attractiveness would help people select a high-quality mate and transmit their genes to the succeeding generation (Fink & Penton-Voak, 2002; Gallup & Frederick, 2010;Rhodes, 2006;Rhodes, Morley, & Simmons, 2013). ...
Facial attractiveness plays important roles in social interaction. Electrophysiological and neuroimaging studies found several brain areas to be differentially responsive to attractive relative to unattractive faces. However, little is known about the time course of the information processing, especially under the unattended condition. Based on a "cross-modal delayed response" paradigm, the present study aimed to explore the automatic mechanism of facial attractiveness processing of females with different physiological cycles and males, respectively, through recording the event-related potentials in response to (un)attractive opposite-sex faces by two experiments. The attractiveness-related visual mismatch negativity (attractiveness vMMN) in posterior scalp distribution was recorded in both the experiments, which indicated that attractive faces could be processed automatically. And high-attractive opposite-sex faces can elicit larger vMMN in males than females in menstrual period in Study 1, but similar as females in ovulatory period in Study 2. Furthermore, by comparison, the latency of attractiveness vMMN in females with the ovulatory period was the longest. These results indicated as follows: (1) Males were more sensitive to attractive female faces, (2) females in ovulatory period were also attracted by the attractive male faces, (3) the long vMMN latency in females during ovulatory period suggested a special reproductive motivation to avoid being tainted by genes, which takes priority over the breeding motivation.
... People exhibit a greater trust in a hypothetical trust game where kinship is induced by morphing a trustor's face with the counterpart's face [3]. People are more likely to trust an attractive counterpart, and expect higher levels of trust from attractive first movers in the game [4] (see also Hancock and DeBruine [5], and Smith et al. [6]). Cultural cues are also important, ranging from skin color to the gender or ethnicity of one's counterpart [7][8][9][10][11][12]. ...
This paper introduces a strategic element into the dictator game by allowing recipients to select their dictator. Recipients are presented with the photographs of two dictators and the envelopes containing their allocations, and are then asked to select which dictator’s gift they would like to receive. The recipient is paid the contents of the envelope they select. The photographs carry information about the gender and race/ethnicity of the dictators, and we ask an independent sample of raters to evaluate the photographs for other characteristics. While gender and ethnicity do not affect the recipient’s choice, one characteristic inferred from the photos makes them significantly more likely to be selected: Their perceived reliability.
... The most likely explanation for these findings is that attractive people expect favorable treatment from others because of their physical appearance (for evidence of this, see Smith et al. [2009]) and therefore are less inclined to cooperate and more likely to exploit others. This explanation is generally consistent with the evolutionary explanations for the effects of attractiveness on decision making: In these explanations, attractiveness has intrinsic value (because attractive individuals have high mate value) rather than simply being a marker of personality or behavior. ...
Mating motives lead decision makers to favor attractive people, but this favoritism is not sufficient to create a beauty premium in competitive settings. Further, economic approaches to discrimination, when correctly characterized, could neatly accommodate the experimental and field evidence of a beauty premium. Connecting labor economics and evolutionary psychology is laudable, but mating motives do not explain the beauty premium.
... The most likely explanation for these findings is that attractive people expect favorable treatment from others because of their physical appearance (for evidence of this, see Smith et al. [2009]) and therefore are less inclined to cooperate and more likely to exploit others. This explanation is generally consistent with the evolutionary explanations for the effects of attractiveness on decision making: In these explanations, attractiveness has intrinsic value (because attractive individuals have high mate value) rather than simply being a marker of personality or behavior. ...
We adopt Tinbergen's (1963) “four questions” approach to strengthen the criticism by Maestripieri et al. of the non-evolutionary accounts of favouritism toward attractive individuals, by showing which levels of explanation are lacking in these accounts. We also use this approach to propose ways in which the evolutionary account may be extended and strengthened.
... The most likely explanation for these findings is that attractive people expect favorable treatment from others because of their physical appearance (for evidence of this, see Smith et al. [2009]) and therefore are less inclined to cooperate and more likely to exploit others. This explanation is generally consistent with the evolutionary explanations for the effects of attractiveness on decision making: In these explanations, attractiveness has intrinsic value (because attractive individuals have high mate value) rather than simply being a marker of personality or behavior. ...
Maestripieri et al. pit evolutionary psychology against social psychological and economic perspectives in a winner-take-all empirical battle. In doing so, they risk positioning evolutionary psychology as an antagonistic subdisciplinary enterprise. We worry that such a framing may exacerbate tensions between “competing” scientific perspectives and limit evolutionary psychology's potential to serve as a unifying core theory.
... The most likely explanation for these findings is that attractive people expect favorable treatment from others because of their physical appearance (for evidence of this, see Smith et al. [2009]) and therefore are less inclined to cooperate and more likely to exploit others. This explanation is generally consistent with the evolutionary explanations for the effects of attractiveness on decision making: In these explanations, attractiveness has intrinsic value (because attractive individuals have high mate value) rather than simply being a marker of personality or behavior. ...
According to cognitive averaging theory, preferences for attractive faces result from their similarity to facial prototypes, the categorical central tendencies of a population of faces. Prototypical faces are processed more fluently, resulting in increased positive affect in the viewer.
... The most likely explanation for these findings is that attractive people expect favorable treatment from others because of their physical appearance (for evidence of this, see Smith et al. [2009]) and therefore are less inclined to cooperate and more likely to exploit others. This explanation is generally consistent with the evolutionary explanations for the effects of attractiveness on decision making: In these explanations, attractiveness has intrinsic value (because attractive individuals have high mate value) rather than simply being a marker of personality or behavior. ...
An account of the “beauty premium” based only on mating motivations overlooks adaptationist models of social valuation that have broader explanatory power. We suggest a broader approach based on evolved preferences for attractive partners in multiple cooperative domains (not just mating), which accounts for many observations of attractiveness-based preferential treatment more comfortably than does the target article's mating-specific account.
... This seems important given the dependent variable was related to conservation of the butterfly. Second, we excluded studies in which participants were shown images of their game partners or people who were purportedly their game partners (e.g., Burnham, 2003;Smith et al., 2009). Although these images may have served as good surveillance cues, they also introduced potential confounding variables by providing participants with information about their game partners that participants in control groups did not have. ...
Many studies have seemingly demonstrated that anonymous individuals who are shown artificial cues of being watched behave as if they are being watched by real people. However, several studies have failed to replicate this surveillance cue effect. In light of these mixed results, we conducted two meta-analyses investigating the effect of artificial observation cues on generosity. Overall, our meta-analyses found no evidence to support the claim that artificial surveillance cues increase generosity, either by increasing how generous individuals are, or by increasing the probability that individuals will show any generosity at all. Therefore, surveillance cue effects should be interpreted cautiously.
... Konsekwencją lepszego traktowania atrakcyjnych osób jest zmiana ich postaw wobec innych ludzi. SMITH et al. (2009c) zauważyli, że w grze internetowej, w której dzięki kooperacji można było wygrać pieniądze, atrakcyjne osoby ufały innym graczom bardziej niż nieatrakcyjne, ale tylko wtedy, gdy były przekonane, że ich twarz jest widoczna dla innych. Oznacza to, że stosunkowo dobre (w tym, uczciwe) traktowanie atrakcyjnych osób w ciągu ich życia wykształciło większą ich ufność. ...
A newer version of the Polish text which has been published (in somewhat shortened form) as two English-language papers: "Facial attractiveness: General patterns of facial preferences" and "Facial attractiveness: Variation, adaptiveness and consequences of facial preferences".
... Note also that "cooperativeness" has multiple meanings, and that attractive people may be higher in some forms of cooperativeness. For example, in a study involving a trust game, in which players cooperated by trusting other players to be generous with them, men and women who were higher in other-assessed attractiveness, and whose attractiveness could be viewed by other players, were more trusting(Smith et al., 2009). The study's authors suggest that this increased trust may be rational in the sense that attractive people do generally receive more generous treatment in economic games. ...
Ancestrally, relatively attractive individuals and relatively formidable males may have had reduced incentives to be egalitarian (i.e., to act in accordance with norms promoting social equality). If selection calibrated one's egalitarianism to one's attractiveness/formidability, then such people may exhibit reduced egalitarianism ("observed egalitarianism") and be perceived by others as less egalitarian ("perceived egalitarianism") in modern environments. To investigate, we created 3D body models of 125 participants to use both as a source of anthropometric measurements and as stimuli to obtain ratings of bodily attractiveness and perceived egalitarianism. We also measured observed egalitarianism (via an economic "dictator" game) and indices of political egalitarianism (preference for socialism over capitalism) and "equity sensitivity." Results indicated higher egalitarianism levels in women than in men, and moderate-to-strong negative relationships between (a) attractiveness and observed egalitarianism among men, (b) attractiveness and perceived egalitarianism among both sexes, and (c) formidability and perceived egalitarianism among men. We did not find support for two previously-reported findings: that observed egalitarianism and formidability are negatively related in men, and that wealth and formidability interact to explain variance in male egalitarianism. However, this lack of support may have been due to differences in variable measurement between our study and previous studies.
... In sum, these sorts of detailed cost-benefit analyses lead to the prediction(s) that individual differences in RBP should exert positive calibrational effects on extraversion, approach motivation, perceived social support, comfort with closeness and interpersonal trust, and negative calibrational effects on emotionality, avoidance motivation, fear of rejection and attachment anxiety (Table 1). Consistent with this, extant evidence indicates that certain of these trait dimensions can be predicted from variations in RBP-enhancing phenotypic features such as physical attractiveness (Feingold, 1992;Langlois et al., 2000;Lukaszewski & Roney, 2011;Smith et al., 2009) and physical strength (Lukaszewski & Roney, 2011). The current study will conceptually replicate these findings as it examines each of the focal interpersonal traits in relation to measures of RBP. ...
This article provides the first test of an adaptationist ‘common calibration’ theory to explain the origins of trait covariation, which holds that (i) personality traits are often facultatively calibrated in response to cues that ancestrally predicted the reproductive payoffs of different trait levels and (ii) distinct traits that are calibrated on the basis of common input cues will exhibit consistent patterns of covariation. This theory is applied to explain the covariation within a ‘personality syndrome’ encompassing various interpersonal trait dimensions (e.g. extraversion, emotionality and attachment styles). Specifically, it is hypothesized that these traits are inter-correlated because each is calibrated in response to relative bargaining power (RBP)—a joint function of one's ability to benefit others and harm others. Path analyses from a correlational study compellingly supported this theoretical model: Objective and self-perceived measures of RBP-enhancing phenotypic features (physical attractiveness and physical strength) influenced an internal regulatory variable indexing RBP (i.e. self-perceived RBP), which in turn had robust effects on each of the focal personality traits. Moreover, in support of the theory's core postulate, controlling for self-perceived RBP greatly reduced the covariation within the interpersonal syndrome. These novel findings illustrate the promise of an evolutionary psychological approach to elucidating trait covariation. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
... Most of these studies investigate the role of decision making in the mating context. For instance, Smith et al. (2009) explored the role of attractiveness in cooperative situations and found that more attractive individuals are more sensitive to whether they can be observed in trust games. Also, people are more likely to reciprocally cooperate with healthy-looking partners (Krupp, DeBruine, and Barclay, 2008). ...
Informed by the research on adaptive decision making in other animal species, this study investigated human females' intertemporal and risky choices across the ovulatory cycle. We tested the hypothesis that at peak fertility, women who are exposed to environments that signal availability of higher quality mates (by viewing images of attractive males), become more impulsive and risk-seeking in economic decision tasks. To test this, we collected intertemporal and risky choice measures before and after exposure to images of either attractive males or neutral landscapes both at peak and low fertility conditions. The results showed an interaction between women's fertility status and image type, such that women at peak fertility viewing images of attractive men chose the smaller, sooner monetary reward option less than women at peak fertility viewing neutral images. Neither fertility status nor image type influenced risky choice. Thus, though exposure to images of men altered intertemporal choices at peak fertility, this occurred in the opposite direction than predicted-i.e., women at peak fertility became less impulsive. Nevertheless, the results of the current study provide evidence for shifts in preferences over the ovulatory cycle and opens future research on economic decision making.
... Other aspects of facial appearance may predict trusting behavior in the exchange of resources. While attractive individuals are more likely to be trusted in economic exchanges (Solnick and Schweitzer, 1999;Hancock and DeBruine, 2003;Wilson and Eckel, 2006;Andreoni and Petrie, 2008), particularly attractive individuals are more likely than their less attractive peers to "shift" toward more trusting behavior when they believe that others' have the opportunity to take their appearance into account ( Smith et al., 2009). Given that attractiveness is associated with a suite of positive attributions ( Langlois et al., 2000) and that a positive reputation can benefit one's reproductive fitness (Fehr, 2004;Nowak and Sigmund, 2005), strategic economic behavior in light of a beautiful appearance is to be expected, particularly given the severe penalties incurred when individuals are perceived as having used their looks for nefarious purposes (e.g., in cases of fraud; see Mazzella and Feingold, 1994 for a metaanalytic review; see also Wilson and Eckel, 2006). ...
... This pattern of results suggests that greater sensitivity to dominance among shorter men is unlikely to reflect a conscious or deliberate strategy. Indeed, findings for other potentially adaptive aspects of social perception (e.g., attraction to symmetric individuals; Perrett et al. 1999;Little and Jones 2006) have also demonstrated this apparent dissociation between awareness and behavior (see also, e.g., Smith et al. 2009). Individual differences among men in their experience of aggressive conflicts with other men (e.g., number of previous conflicts and rate of success in such conflicts) may nonetheless contribute to the negative association between height and men's dominance sensitivity that we observed. ...
Male dominance rank, physical strength, indices of reproductive success, and indices of reproductive potential are correlated with masculine characteristics in many animal species, including humans. Accordingly, men generally perceive masculinized versions of men’s faces and voices to be more dominant than feminized versions. Less dominant men incur greater costs when they incorrectly perceive the dominance of rivals. Consequently, it may be adaptive for less dominant men to be particularly sensitive to cues of dominance in other men. Since height is a reliable index of men’s dominance, we investigated the relationship between own height and men’s sensitivity to masculine characteristics when judging the dominance of other men’s faces and voices. Although men generally perceived masculinized faces and voices to be more dominant than feminized versions, this effect of masculinity on dominance perceptions was significantly greater among shorter men than among taller men. These findings suggest that differences among men in the potential costs of incorrectly perceiving the dominance of rivals have shaped systematic variation in men’s perceptions of the dominance of potential rivals.
... Extraverted behavior entails associating widely with others and attracting social attention (Ashton et al., 2002), which can promote relationship initiation and social status if one possesses characteristics valued by others. Research suggests that at least some of the features that define physical attractiveness were likely predictive of health, fertility, or formidability in human ancestral environments (for a review, see Roney, 2009), which may help explain why attractive individuals are preferred as associates for many types of relationships (e.g., Kurzban & Leary, 2001;Sprecher & Regan, 2002), are given preferential treatment in cooperative exchanges (Smith et al., 2009), and tend to have higher social status (Anderson et al., 2001). For these reasons, ceteris paribus, extraverted behavior should provide higher relationship-related returns for more attractive individuals. ...
The origins of variation in extraversion are largely mysterious. Recent theories and some findings suggest that personality variation can be orchestrated by specific genetic polymorphisms. Few studies, however, have examined an alternative hypothesis that personality traits are facultatively calibrated to variations in other phenotypic features, and none have considered how these distinct processes may interact in personality determination. Since physical strength and physical attractiveness likely predicted the reproductive payoffs of extraverted behavioral strategies over most of human history, it was theorized that extraversion is calibrated to variation in these characteristics. Confirming these predicted patterns, strength and attractiveness together explained a surprisingly large fraction of variance in extraversion across two studies--effects that were independent of variance explained by an androgen receptor gene polymorphism. These novel findings initially support an integrative model wherein facultative calibration and specific genetic polymorphisms operate in concert to determine personality variation.
... There is little disagreement among researchers that explicit reputation incentives strongly affect human prosocial behaviour. These explicit incentives can take the form of higher future material benefits in a dynamic experimental game-such as in our explicit reputation treatment-or they can arise when real people (e.g. an audience) saliently observe other people's cooperative or non-cooperative behaviour (Gächter & Fehr 1999;Rege & Telle 2004;Kurzban et al. 2007;Smith et al. 2009). The strength of merely implicit reputation cues, in which subjects cannot really acquire a good or bad reputation, is, however, much less investigated. ...
Strong reciprocity is characterized by the willingness to altruistically reward cooperative acts and to altruistically punish norm-violating, defecting behaviours. Recent evidence suggests that subtle reputation cues, such as eyes staring at subjects during their choices, may enhance prosocial behaviour. Thus, in principle, strong reciprocity could also be affected by eye cues. We investigate the impact of eye cues on trustees' altruistic behaviour in a trust game and find zero effect. Neither the subjects who are classified as prosocial nor the subjects who are classified as selfish respond to these cues. In sharp contrast to the irrelevance of subtle reputation cues for strong reciprocity, we find a large effect of explicit, pecuniary reputation incentives on the trustees' prosociality. Trustees who can acquire a good reputation that benefits them in future interactions honour trust much more than trustees who cannot build a good reputation. These results cast doubt on hypotheses suggesting that strong reciprocity is easily malleable by implicit reputation cues not backed by explicit reputation incentives.
Physical attractiveness has been found to influence labour market outcomes, including employment and remuneration. Researchers have also found links between attractiveness and dimensions that are likely to impact career or academic success, such as trust and cooperation. There is less research on physical attractiveness in interactions that are not inherently reciprocal in nature. We are interested in whether altruistic decisions are impacted by perceptions of physical attractiveness in South Africa, a country with significant racial and cultural diversity. We use a dictator game ( n = 338, for 1689 decisions) to experimentally investigate whether people perceived as more attractive are treated with more altruism and whether attractive people behave more altruistically. We find more altruism shown towards attractive respondents, particularly from decision‐makers who see themselves as less attractive. Less attractive decision‐makers also show more altruism than decision‐makers who rate themselves as more attractive.
A substantial amount of research has demonstrated that good-looking individuals are perceived and treated in a favorable manner; however, relatively little research has examined how attractive people actually behave. There are two predominant theories on attractiveness: the self-fulfilling nature of “what is beautiful is good” from social psychology and the evolutionary perspective of attractiveness, make divergent predictions in this regard. The current research systematically investigated whether physical attractiveness can predict self-interested behavior and, if so, in which direction. Across five studies (N = 1,303), self-perceived attractiveness, either chronically experienced (Studies 1-3) or temporarily heightened (Studies 4 and 5), predicted and increased self-interested behavioral intention and behavior. Increased psychological entitlement acted as a mediator in this process (Studies 1–5). Furthermore, the publicity of the act was a boundary condition for the effect of attractiveness on self-interested behavior (Study 5). We have discussed theoretical and practical implications.
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Does wearing makeup benefit women by changing how they perceive themselves, and are the perceptions that others make of makeup wearers positive, or negative? In two pre‐registered experiments, we investigated the effects of makeup on women's self‐perceived traits, and others’ objectifying perceptions of them. In Experiment 1, 229 women imagined one of four scenarios (e.g., a romantic date). Half applied makeup for that scenario before rating their self‐perceived agency, humanness, romantic competitiveness towards other women and reactions to partner jealousy. Results showed little evidence that applying makeup affected women's self‐perceived traits. In Experiment 2, 844 participants rated images of women's faces from Experiment 1 on their mental capacity and moral status. Women wearing more makeup were attributed less mental capacity and moral status, with attributions mediated by perceptions that heavier makeup‐wearers have more sex and are more physically attractive. Findings suggest that although women experience cultural pressure to wear makeup, negative stereotypes of makeup‐wearers may lead to detrimental perceptions of women.
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Financial and prosocial biases in favor of attractive individuals have been documented in the labor market, in everyday life social transactions, and in studies involving experimental economic games. Different explanations have been proposed by economists, social psychologists, and evolutionary psychologists. Some of these explanations assume that attractiveness is a marker of personality, intelligence, trustworthiness, professional competence, or productivity while others suggest that attractive individuals are favored because they are preferred sexual partners. Multiple lines of evidence suggest that mating motives play a more important role in driving financial and prosocial biases toward attractive adults than previously recognized.
Reciprocity evolves only when social partners reliably repay, with interest, the investments of others. However, not all individuals are equally able—or motivated—to recompense others satisfactorily. As such, reciprocity relies greatly on the capacities and motives of partners. Apparent health may provide a cue to the value of potential exchange partners in this regard: healthier individuals will tend to live longer and accrue more, higher quality resources, thus increasing the incentives for mutual cooperation. In a monetary exchange task, we show that the apparent health of partners’ faces affects human reciprocity. Specifically, participants were more willing to return a profitable amount to, but not more willing to invest in, apparently healthy than unhealthy partners. This effect appears to be a function of the attractiveness of apparent health, suggesting a preference for repayment of attractive partners. Furthermore, the effect of apparent health on reciprocal exchange is qualified by the sex of the partners, implicating a history of sexual selection in the evolution of human social exchange.
Facial attractiveness is associated with a variety of positive social characteristics including trustworthiness. Variations in smiling, such as the appearance of the Duchenne marker and increased intensity of expression, have likewise been linked with positive judgments of trustworthiness. The study investigated the interaction of the effects of models' attractiveness and their smiling intensity on impressions of perceived trustworthiness. Participants rated the attractiveness and expressivity of neutral, low intensity, and high intensity smiling images of 45 women models. These images were also presented to a second group of participants who rated trustworthiness. Repeated measures analysis of covariance of the effects of attractiveness and manipulated smile intensity on trustworthiness indicated a main effect for smile intensity: increased smile intensity was associated with greater trustworthiness. Attractiveness also contributed to rated trustworthiness independently of smiling intensity. Results suggested there is an additional contribution of facial expression in creating social impressions of trustworthiness.
Models indicate that opportunities for reputation formation can play an important role in sustaining cooperation and prosocial behavior. Results from experimental economic games support this conclusion, as manipulating reputational opportunities affects prosocial behavior. Noting that some prosocial behavior remains even in anonymous noniterated games, some investigators argue that humans possess a propensity for prosociality independent of reputation management. However, decision-making processes often employ both explicit propositional knowledge and intuitive or affective judgments elicited by tacit cues. Manipulating game parameters alters explicit information employed in overt strategizing but leaves intact cues that may affect intuitive judgments relevant to reputation formation. To explore how subtle cues of observability impact prosocial behavior, we conducted five dictator games, manipulating both auditory cues of the presence of others (via the use of sound-deadening earmuffs) and visual cues (via the presentation of stylized eyespots). Although earmuffs appeared to reduce generosity, this effect was not significant. However, as predicted, eyespots substantially increased generosity, despite no differences in actual anonymity; when using a computer displaying eyespots, almost twice as many participants gave money to their partners compared with the controls. Investigations of prosocial behavior must consider both overt information about game parameters and subtle cues influencing intuitive judgments.
The role of perceived physical attractiveness in everyday exchange is addressed using a laboratory paradigm that examines both play-versus-not-play and cooperate-versus-defect choices in an ecology of available prisoner's dilemma games. The analysis considers the actions of both subject and other in encounters where exchange relationships are possible and include perceptions of others' and own physical attractiveness. Results indicate that subjects are more likely to enter play and to cooperate with others they find attractive. Men who see themselves as more attractive more often cooperate than other men, while women who see themselves as more attractive less often cooperate than other women. In addition, subjects who rate themselves as highly attractive are more likely to cooperate with others they see as also highly attractive. Subjects expect others whom they see as attractive to cooperate more often. At the same time, the effect of perceived attractiveness on choice is independent of these expectations, supporting the hypothesis that attractiveness is a "taste" or "benefit" for actors in exchange relationships.
debate is emerging concerning the useof deception in social science research(especially when it employs experimen-tal methods), driven primarily by the relative-ly recent move by many economists intoexperimental work. These economists general-ly argue that deception should be banned.Deception includes a variety of practices insocial science research and is not limited toexperimental research. Most often it involvesproviding limited information about the truepurpose of the research, omitting informationin the instructions to subjects not deemed cen-tral to the study but important to the researcheffort, or giving a Ocover storyO for the studythat does not reveal the actual topic of study.Regardless of type, all deception used insocial science research must be approvedthrough protocol review by InstitutionalReview Boards (IRBs) in university settings.As political scientist Wilson (2007:5)notes in a recent essay: OIn economics alldeception is forbidden. Reviewers are quiteadamant on the point and a paper with anydeception will be rejected.O Thus, if the econ-omists prevail with journals, funding agen-cies, and universities in their efforts to ban theuse of deception, the impact on our capacity toconduct some kinds of research on importantintellectual and scientific issues will be largeand potentially very negative. Given spaceconstraints we comment on only a few of therelevant issues posed by this debate (e.g.Hertwig and Ortmann 2001) and the aggres-sive stance of most experimental economists(see also Eckel 2007).Hertwig and Ortmann (2001:397) argue(as do almost all experimental economists)that deception should generally not be used insocial science experimentation not on ethicalgrounds, but on pragmatic grounds.Deception, it is argued, produces a contami-nated subject pool for their use. They contendthat this public goods problem should besolved by strong sanctions, not by semi-volun-tary mechanisms such as IRB review.Although they acknowledge the need for suchreview, they believe it to be inadequate and toopermissive even by APA (AmericanPsychological Association) standards. Whilesocial psychologists and experimental sociol-ogists generally agree that deception shouldbe a last resort and is sometimes unnecessary,there are underlying issues relevant to thisdebate that need to be discussed. In the spaceallowed we briefly outline only some of ourconcerns, providing just a few examples of themajor theoretical problems at stake.As a rule we agree that deception shouldbe limited by necessity, but we do not agreethat the use of deception should be sanctionedby nonpublication of papers employing it,nonfunding of proposals for research requir-ing deception, or any other heavy sanction thatimposes one disciplineOs priorities on others.Important insights into human behavior anddecision-making have come from award-win-ning experiments (some involving deception)that revealed things about ourselves we maynot have wished to know, such as our tenden-cy toward obedience to authority, which takesmany forms and continues to have devastatingeffects on human history.The need for deception under certain cir-cumstances depends in part on oneOs view ofwhat is driving human decision-making andbehavior. Many experimental economists
Examined whether physically attractive stimulus persons, both male and female, are (a) assumed to possess more socially desirable personality traits than physically unattractive stimulus persons, and (b) expected to lead better lives (e.g., be more competent husbands and wives and more successful occupationally) than unattractive stimulus persons. Sex of Subject * Sex of Stimulus Person interactions along these dimensions also were investigated. Results with 30 male and 30 female undergraduates indicate a "what is beautiful is good" stereotype along the physical attractiveness dimension with no Sex of Judge * Sex of Stimulus interaction. Implications of such a stereotype on self-concept development and the course of social interaction are discussed.
Meta-analysis was used to examine findings in 2 related areas: experimental research on the physical attractiveness stereotype and correlational studies of characteristics associated with physical attractiveness. The experimental literature found that physically attractive people were perceived as more sociable, dominant, sexually warm, mentally healthy, intelligent, and socially skilled than physically unattractive people. Yet, the correlational literature indicated generally trivial relationships between physical attractiveness and measures of personality and mental ability, although good-looking people were less lonely, less socially anxious, more popular, more socially skilled, and more sexually experienced than unattractive people. Self-ratings of physical attractiveness were positively correlated with a wider range of attributes than was actual physical attractiveness. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Punishment has been proposed as being central to two distinctively human phenomena: cooperation in groups and morality. Here we investigate moralistic punishment, a behavior designed to inflict costs on another individual in response to a perceived moral violation. There is currently no consensus on which evolutionary model best accounts for this phenomenon in humans. Models that turn on individuals' cultivating reputations as moralistic punishers clearly predict that psychological systems should be designed to increase punishment in response to information that one's decisions to punish will be known by others. We report two experiments in which we induce participants to commit moral violations and then present third parties with the opportunity to pay to punish wrongdoers. Varying conditions of anonymity, we find that the presence of an audience—even if only the experimenter—causes an increase in moralistic punishment.
This research examines one mechanism by which people decide whether to trust strangers. Using a laboratory setting that provides subjects with controlled information about their counterparts, we test whether attractive subjects gain a “beauty premium” in a game involving trust and reciprocity. Attractive trustees are viewed as more trustworthy; they are trusted at higher rates and as a consequence earn more in the first stage of the game. Attractiveness does not guarantee higher earnings, as we find a “beauty penalty” attached to attractive trusters in the second stage of the game. This penalty arises because attractive trusters do not live up to expectations of them on the part of the trustees. Trustees withhold repayment when their expectations are dashed. This punishment is larger when the disappointing truster is attractive.
The existence of a beauty premium in the labor market and the male–female wage gap suggests that appearance can matter in the real world. We explore beauty and gender in a public goods experiment and find similar effects. We find a beauty premium, even though beautiful people contribute, on average, no more or less than others. The beauty premium, however, disappears when we provide information on individual contributions, and becomes a beauty penalty. Players seem to expect beautiful people to be more cooperative. Relative to these expectations, they appear more selfish, which in turn results in less cooperation by others. These appear to be clear examples of stereotyping. We also find a substantial benefit to being male, especially with information. This is primarily due to men being better “leaders.” Men tend to make large contributions, and people follow their example and give more in later rounds.
Recent experimental research has revealed forms of human behavior involving interaction among unrelated individuals that have proven difficult to explain in terms of kin or reciprocal altruism. One such trait, strong reciprocity is a predisposition to cooperate with others and to punish those who violate the norms of cooperation, at personal cost, even when it is implausible to expect that these costs will be repaid. We present evidence supporting strong reciprocity as a schema for predicting and understanding altruism in humans. We show that under conditions plausibly characteristic of the early stages of human evolution, a small number of strong reciprocators could invade a population of self-regarding types, and strong reciprocity is an evolutionary stable strategy. Although most of the evidence we report is based on behavioral experiments, the same behaviors are regularly described in everyday life, for example, in wage setting by firms, tax compliance, and cooperation in the protection of local environmental public goods.
In a laboratory experiment, we use a public goods game to examine the hypothesis that human subjects use an involuntary eye-detector
mechanism for evaluating the level of privacy. Half of our subjects are “watched” by images of a robot presented on their
computer screen. The robot—named Kismet and invented at MIT—is constructed from objects that are obviously not human with
the exception of its eyes. In our experiment, Kismet produces a significant difference in behavior that is not consistent
with existing economic models of preferences, either self- or other-regarding. Subjects who are “watched” by Kismet contribute
29% more to the public good than do subjects in the same setting without Kismet.
Where behavior defies economic analysis, one explanation is that individuals consider more than the immediate payoff. We present evidence that noneconomic factors influence behavior. Attractiveness influences offers in the Ultimatum and Dictator Games. Facial resemblance, a cue of relatedness, increases trusting in a two-node trust game. Only by considering the range of possible influences will game-playing behavior be explained.
We examine the characteristics and relative strength of third-party sanctions in a series of experiments. We hypothesize that egalitarian distribution norms and cooperation norms apply in our experiments, and that third parties, whose economic payoff is unaffected by the norm violation, may be willing to enforce these norms although the enforcement is costly for them. Almost two-thirds of the third parties indeed punished the violation of the distribution norm and their punishment increased the more the norm was violated. Likewise, up to roughly 60% of the third parties punished violations of the cooperation norm. Thus, our results show that the notion of strong reciprocity extends to the sanctioning behavior of ‘‘unaffected’’ third parties. In addition, these experiments suggest that thirdparty punishment games are powerful tools for studying the characteristics and the content of social norms. Further experiments indicate that second parties, whose economic payoff is reduced by the norm violation, punish the violation much more strongly than do third parties.
We examine decision making in two-person extensive form game trees using nine treatments that vary matching protocol, payoffs, and payoff information. Our objective is to establish replicable principles of cooperative versus noncooperative behavior that involve the use of signaling, reciprocity, and backward induction strategies, depending on the availability of dominated direct punishing strategies and the probability of repeated interaction with the same partner. Contrary to the predictions of game theory, we find substantial support for cooperation under complete information even in various single-play treatments.
Common maxims about beauty suggest that attractiveness is not important in life. In contrast, both fitness-related evolutionary theory and socialization theory suggest that attractiveness influences development and interaction. In 11 meta-analyses, the authors evaluate these contradictory claims, demonstrating that (a) raters agree about who is and is not attractive, both within and across cultures; (b) attractive children and adults are judged more positively than unattractive children and adults, even by those who know them; (c) attractive children and adults are treated more positively than unattractive children and adults, even by those who know them; and (d) attractive children and adults exhibit more positive behaviors and traits than unattractive children and adults. Results are used to evaluate social and fitness-related evolutionary theories and the veracity of maxims about beauty.
Human cooperation is an evolutionary puzzle. Unlike other creatures, people frequently cooperate with genetically unrelated strangers, often in large groups, with people they will never meet again, and when reputation gains are small or absent. These patterns of cooperation cannot be explained by the nepotistic motives associated with the evolutionary theory of kin selection and the selfish motives associated with signalling theory or the theory of reciprocal altruism. Here we show experimentally that the altruistic punishment of defectors is a key motive for the explanation of cooperation. Altruistic punishment means that individuals punish, although the punishment is costly for them and yields no material gain. We show that cooperation flourishes if altruistic punishment is possible, and breaks down if it is ruled out. The evidence indicates that negative emotions towards defectors are the proximate mechanism behind altruistic punishment. These results suggest that future study of the evolution of human cooperation should include a strong focus on explaining altruistic punishment.
Organisms are expected to be sensitive to cues of genetic relatedness when making decisions about social behaviour. Relatedness can be assessed in several ways, one of which is phenotype matching: the assessment of similarity between others' traits and either one's own traits or those of known relatives. One candidate cue of relatedness in humans is facial resemblance. Here, I report the effects of an experimental manipulation of facial resemblance in a two-person sequential trust game. Subjects were shown faces of ostensible playing partners manipulated to resemble either themselves or an unknown person. Resemblance to the subject's own face raised the incidence of trusting a partner, but had no effect on the incidence of selfish betrayals of the partner's trust. Control subjects playing with identical pictures failed to show such an effect. In a second experiment, resemblance of the playing partner to a familiar (famous) person had no effect on either trusting or betrayals of trust.
Exaggerated sexual dimorphism and symmetry in human faces have both been linked to potential 'good-gene' benefits and have also been found to influence the attractiveness of male faces. The current study explores how female self-rated attractiveness influences male face preference in females using faces manipulated with computer graphics. The study demonstrates that there is a relatively increased preference for masculinity and an increased preference for symmetry for women who regard themselves as attractive. This finding may reflect a condition-dependent mating strategy analogous to behaviours found in other species. The absence of a preference for proposed markers of good genes may be adaptive in women of low mate value to avoid the costs of decreased parental investment from the owners of such characteristics.
In some species, female condition correlates positively with preferences for male secondary sexual traits. Women's preferences for sexually dimorphic characteristics in male faces (facial masculinity) have recently been reported to covary with self-reported attractiveness. As women's attractiveness has been proposed to signal reproductive condition, the findings in human (Homo sapiens) and other species may reflect similar processes. The current study investigated whether the covariation between condition and preferences for masculinity would generalize to 2 further measures of female attractiveness: other-rated facial attractiveness and waist-to-hip ratio (WHR). Women with high (unattractive) WHR and/or relatively low other-rated facial attractiveness preferred more "feminine" male faces when choosing faces for a long-term relationship than when choosing for a short-term relationship, possibly reflecting diverse tactics in female mate choice.
Rational choice theory enjoys unprecedented popularity and influence in the behavioral and social sciences, but it generates intractable problems when applied to socially interactive decisions. In individual decisions, instrumental rationality is defined in terms of expected utility maximization. This becomes problematic in interactive decisions, when individuals have only partial control over the outcomes, because expected utility maximization is undefined in the absence of assumptions about how the other participants will behave. Game theory therefore incorporates not only rationality but also common knowledge assumptions, enabling players to anticipate their co-players' strategies. Under these assumptions, disparate anomalies emerge. Instrumental rationality, conventionally interpreted, fails to explain intuitively obvious features of human interaction, yields predictions starkly at variance with experimental findings, and breaks down completely in certain cases. In particular, focal point selection in pure coordination games is inexplicable, though it is easily achieved in practice; the intuitively compelling payoff-dominance principle lacks rational justification; rationality in social dilemmas is self-defeating; a key solution concept for cooperative coalition games is frequently inapplicable; and rational choice in certain sequential games generates contradictions. In experiments, human players behave more cooperatively and receive higher payoffs than strict rationality would permit. Orthodox conceptions of rationality are evidently internally deficient and inadequate for explaining human interaction. Psychological game theory, based on nonstandard assumptions, is required to solve these problems, and some suggestions along these lines have already been put forward.
We examined the effect of an image of a pair of eyes on contributions to an honesty box used to collect money for drinks in a university coffee room. People paid nearly three times as much for their drinks when eyes were displayed rather than a control image. This finding provides the first evidence from a naturalistic setting of the importance of cues of being watched, and hence reputational concerns, on human cooperative behaviour.
Relatedness is a cornerstone of the evolution of social behavior. In the human lineage, the existence of cooperative kin networks was likely a critical stepping-stone in the evolution of modern social complexity. However, increased interaction with nonrelatives would have left individuals vulnerable to exploitation, imposing selection pressure on kin recognition systems. Here we report the results of the first experimental manipulation of a putative cue of human kinship (facial self-resemblance) among ostensible players in a variant of the “tragedy of the commons”, the one-shot public goods game, in which group-level cooperation–via contributions made to the public good and the punishment of free-riders is supported at a personal cost. In accordance with theoretical predictions, contributions to the public good increased as a function of the “kin density” of the group and the distribution of punishment was not contingent on kin density level. Our findings indicate that the presence of a subtle cue of genealogical relatedness facilitates group cooperation, supporting the hypothesis that the mechanisms fostering contemporary sociality took root in extended family networks. Consequently, humans may have evolved cooperative and competitive strategies to contend with attempts by nonrelatives to compromise the integrity and prosperity of their kin groups.
Many studies show that people act cooperatively and are willing to punish free riders (i.e., people who are less cooperative than others). However, nonpunishers benefit when free riders are punished, making punishment a group-beneficial act. Presented here are four studies investigating whether punishers gain social benefits from punishing. Undergraduate participants played public goods games (PGGs) (cooperative group games involving money) in which there were free riders, and in which they were given the opportunity to impose monetary penalties on free riders. Participants rated punishers as being more trustworthy, group focused, and worthy of respect than nonpunishers. In dyadic trust games following PGGs, punishers did not receive monetary benefits from punishing free riders in a single-round PGG, but did benefit monetarily from punishing free riders in iterated PGGs. Punishment that was not directed at free riders brought no monetary benefits, suggesting that people distinguish between justified and unjustified punishment and only respond to punishment with enhanced trust when the punishment is justified.
We designed an experiment to study trust and reciprocity in an investment setting. This design controls for alternative explanations of behavior including repeat game reputation effects, contractual precommitments, and punishment threats. Observed decisions suggest that reciprocity exists as a basic element of human behavior and that this is accounted for in the trust extended to an anonymous counterpart. A second treatment, social history, identifies conditions which strengthen the relationship between trust and reciprocity.
Physical condition (e.g., health, fertility) influences female mate preferences in many species, with females in good condition preferring "higher quality" (e.g., healthier) mates. In humans, condition may comprise both physical (e.g., health and fertility) and psychological factors (e.g., stress, anxiety, and depression). We found that women with low waist-to-hip ratios (indicating health and fertility) or who scored low on anxiety, depression, and stress measures expressed greater attraction to composite male (but not female) faces with color and texture cues associated with apparent health than did women with relatively high waist-to-hip ratios or who scored relatively high on the anxiety, depression, and stress measures. These effects of physical and psychological condition were independent and were not mediated by women's perceptions of their own attractiveness. Our findings indicate that women's physical and psychological conditions both contribute to individual differences in face preferences.
Many economists and biologists view cooperation as anomalous: animals (including humans) who pursue their own self-interest have superior survival odds to their altruistic or cooperative neighbors. However, in many situations there are substantial gains to the group that can achieve cooperation among its members, and to individuals who are members of those groups. For an individual, the key to successful cooperation is the ability to identify cooperative partners. The ability to signal and detect the intention to cooperate would be a very valuable skill for humans to posses. Smiling is frequently observed in social interactions between humans, and may be used as a signal of the intention to cooperate. However, given that humans have the ability to smile falsely, the ability to detect intentions may go far beyond the ability to recognize a smile. In the present study, we examine the value of a smile in a simple bargaining context. 120 subjects participate in a laboratory experiment cons...
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