Sexual Selection, Physical Attractiveness, and Facial Neoteny: Cross-cultural Evidence and Implications [and Comments and Reply]

Physical attractiveness and its relation to the theory of sexual selection deserve renewed attention from cultural and biological anthropologists. This paper focuses on an anomaly associated with physical attractiveness-in our species, in contrast to many others, males seem to be more concerned than females with the attractiveness of potential sexual partners, perhaps because humans show far more age-related variance in female than in male fecundity. The resulting selection for male attraction to markers of female youth may lead incidentally to attraction to females displaying age-related cues in an exaggerated form. This paper reports cross-cultural evidence that males in five populations (Brazilians, U.S. Americans, Russians, Ache, and Hiwi) show an attraction to females with neotenous facial proportions (a combination of large eyes, small noses, and full lips) even after female age is controlled for. Two further studies show that female models have neotenous cephalofacial proportions relative to U.S. undergraduates and that drawings of faces artificially transformed to make them more or less neotenous are perceived as correspondingly more or less attractive. These results suggest several further lines of investigation, including the relationship between facial and bodily cues and the consequences of attraction to neoteny for morphological evolutio

Dean Langlois responds to criticisms of her decision to postpone the hiring of a director

Dean Langlois responds to criticisms of her decision to postpone the hiring of a directorAsian American Studie

The Asian-American Studies Program: A Statement

Statement by Dean Judith Langlois articulating that the University would be hiring an interim AAS directorAsian American Studie

Judith Langlois's Statement Responding to Crtiticism

A statement in response to criticism following Langlois's decision to postpone hiring a director for Asian American Studies and choosing Dr. Sakamoto Jr. to temporarily fill the position; written by College of Liberal Arts Dean Judith H. Langlois, ad interim. Asian American Studie

Letter from Judith Langlois to President Faulkner Regarding UT 10

A letter from the College of Liberal Arts's Dean Judith H. Langlois, ad interim, addressed to President Faulkner requesting him to recommend to the County Attorney that the UT 10 charges be dropped. Asian American Studie

The Asian-American Studies Program

A statement written by College of Liberal Arts Dean Judith H. Langlois, ad interim, in response to students' frustrations regarding the prolonged search for an AAS program director and to declare Arthur Sakamoto Jr. as Interim Director in the meantime. Possibly written in May of 1999.Asian American Studie

Letter Regarding UT 10 from Dean Langlois to President Faulkner

Letter from Dean Langlois to President Faulkner regarding UT 10Asian American Studie

Attractive Faces Are Only Average

Scientists and philosophers have searched for centuries for a parsimonious answer to the question of what constitutes beauty. We approached this problem from both an evolutionary and information-processing rationale and predicted that faces representing the average value of the population would be consistently judged as attractive. To evaluate this hypothesis, we digitized samples of male and female faces, mathematically averaged them, and had adults judge the attractiveness of both the individual faces and the computer-generated composite images. Both male (three samples) and female (three samples) composite faces were judged as more attractive than almost all the individual faces comprising the composites. A strong linear trend also revealed that the composite faces became more attractive as more faces were entered. These data showing that attractive faces are only average are consistent with evolutionary pressures that favor characteristics close to the mean of the population and with cognitive processes that favor prototypical category members