Changes in women's mate preferences across the ovulatory cycle

Previous research has shown that women's mate preferences change across the ovulatory cycle in a number of ways. The leading explanation for these changes--the good genes hypothesis--predicts that women should prefer presumed markers of genetic benefits ("good genes") most strongly when they are fertile and evaluating men as possible short-term mates. Research testing this hypothesis has almost exclusively examined preferences for purported markers of good genes. Little is known about how preferences for men who display traits valued in long-term, investing mates (e.g., warmth and faithfulness) change across the cycle. The authors had women at different points in their ovulatory cycle rate videotapes of men in terms of how attractive they found each man as a short-term and long-term mate. The authors then examined how women's preferences for traits typically valued in long-term and/or short-term mates varied according to women's fertility status. The results supported the good genes hypothesis. Implications of these findings for models of human mating are discussed.     

Improving Unfamiliar Face Matching by Masking the External Facial Features

Counter‐terrorism and crime prevention often depend on our ability to match images of unfamiliar faces. For example, when issuing passports, staff must establish an applicant's identity by comparing the submitted photograph witht those in the database of current passports to ensure that multiple documents are not issued to the same person under different names. Previous research has shown that this is a difficult and error prone task. We suggest that this ‘passport problem’ may be due to an over‐reliance on the appearance of external facial features that can be unreliable cues to identity. Compatible with this explanation, we demonstrate that in difficult trials involving a change of appearance or attempted fraud involving a similar looking foil, participants are better able to determine whether two images are of the same person when shown only the internal features of the faces rather than whole images. This discovery has significant practical implications and could form the basis of a procedure to improve the detection of identity fraud.Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Sexual Attitudes and Double Standards: A Literature Review Focusing on Participant Gender and Ethnic Background

We conducted a review of literature regarding sexual attitudes and double standards, focusing on participant gender and ethnic background. We found that men had more permissive sexual attitudes than women, and that African Americans had the most permissive sexual attitudes, followed by White Americans, then by Hispanic Americans and Asian Americans. The literature regarding sexual double standards was mixed; some studies showed evidence of continued sexual double standards and some studies showed the absence of sexual double standards. In some studies, men were more likely to endorse the sexual double standard than women. We found only one article addressing sexual double standards using ethnic background as a quasi-independent variable; this research revealed that non-North American (Russian and Japanese) samples were more likely to endorse the traditional double standard, that sex is more acceptable for men than for women.

Women's preferences for male behavioral displays change across the menstrual cycle

Abstract— Women prefer both the scent of symmetrical men and masculine male faces more during the fertile (late follicular and ovulatory) phases of their menstrual cycles than during their infertile (e.g., luteal) phases. Men's behavioral displays in social settings may convey signals that affect women's attraction to men even more strongly. This study examined shifts in women's preferences for these behavioral displays. A sample of 237 normally ovulating women viewed 36 or 40 videotaped men who were competing for a potential lunch date and then rated each man's attractiveness as a short-term and a long-term mate. As predicted, women's preference for men who displayed social presence and direct intrasexual competitiveness increased on high-fertility days relative to low-fertility days, but only in a short-term, not a long-term, mating context. These findings add to the growing literature indicating that women's mate preferences systematically vary across the reproductive cycle.