DEPARTMENT OF ANTHROPOLOGY- HUMAN BEHAVIOR RESEARCH | face and body

The Body and Face of Woman: One Ornament that Signals Quality?

Thornhill R., Grammer K.

in: (1999): The Body and Face of Woman: One Ornament that Signals Quality?, Evolution and Human Behavior 20, 105-120

Considerable evidence has accumulated in recent years supporting the hypothesis that both facial and bodily physical attractiveness are health certifications and thus represent honest signals of phenotypic and genetic quality. The hypothesis that beauty connotes health was first proposed by Westermarck and later by Ellis and Symons. Jones (1996) has proposed that facial and body attractiveness in women are deceptive signals, not honest ones, of phenotypic and genetic quality. Jones hypothesis is not supported by this study of men's ratings of the attractiveness of photographs of 93 nude women. Independent ratings of faces, fronts with faces covered, and backs of the same women are significantly, positively correlated, as predicted by the health certification hypothesis. The correlation between the ratings of different pictures implies that women's faces and bodies comprise a single ornament of honest mate value, apparently constructed during puberty by estrogen. The picture shows the correlations between the attractiveness ratings of different views in two cultures (Americans above, Austrians lower).

UNIVERSITY OF VIENNA