Social perceptions of men’s dominance and variations in men’s intrasexual competitiveness

Dominance plays a central role in human social interaction. Over the years, researchers have learned a lot about how men’s dominance is perceived by others, including that people use a variety of perceptual cues when judging men’s dominance and that these judgements are typically consistent across observers. However, questions remain concerning what external factors can influence a person’s perceptions of other’s dominance, and what factors affect individual differences in dominance and competitiveness. This thesis will review the current literature on dominance in men, before presenting three empirical chapters aimed at addressing gaps in the current literature. The first empirical chapter investigates the effects of testosterone and cortisol, on male intrasexual competitiveness, a key dominance behaviour. The study uses a longitudinal design to examine natural fluctuations in hormone levels over time. The study found no evidence of either a within-subject or between subject effect of testosterone, cortisol or their interaction, on intrasexual competitiveness. The second empirical chapter investigated regional variation in sensitivity to cues of dominance across US states. Despite strong theoretical predictions, the results show no compelling evidence that regional variation in population sex ratio influence sensitivity to cues of dominance. The final empirical chapter investigated the influence of transient cues, specifically head orientation on perceptions of dominance and trustworthiness. The results show that while tilting one’s head down does reliably increase perceptions of dominance and decrease perceptions of trustworthiness, it appears that cue does not have downstream context contingent effects for leadership judgements

No evidence for associations between men's salivary testosterone and responses on the Intrasexual Competitiveness Scale

Objectives: Many previous studies have investigated relationships between men’s competitiveness and testosterone. For example, the extent of changes in men’s testosterone levels following a competitive task predicts the likelihood of them choosing to compete again. Recent work investigating whether individual differences in men’s testosterone levels predict individual differences in their competitiveness have produced mixed results. Methods: In light of the above, we investigated whether men’s (N = 59) scores on the Intrasexual Competitiveness Scale were related to either within-subject changes or between-subject differences in men’s salivary testosterone levels. Results: Men’s responses on the Intrasexual Competitiveness Scale did not appear to track within-subject changes in testosterone. By contrast with one recent study, men’s Intrasexual Competitiveness Scale also did not appear to be related to individual differences in testosterone. Conclusions: Our results present no evidence for associations between men’s testosterone and their responses on the Intrasexual Competitiveness Scale

The relative contributions of facial shape and surface information to perceptions of attractiveness and dominance

Although many studies have investigated the facial characteristics that influence perceptions of others’ attractiveness and dominance, the majority of these studies have focused on either the effects of shape information or surface information alone. Consequently, the relative contributions of facial shape and surface characteristics to attractiveness and dominance perceptions are unclear. To address this issue, we investigated the relationships between ratings of original versions of faces and ratings of versions in which either surface information had been standardized (i.e., shape-only versions) or shape information had been standardized (i.e., surface-only versions). For attractiveness and dominance judgments of both male and female faces, ratings of shape-only and surface-only versions independently predicted ratings of the original versions of faces. The correlations between ratings of original and shape-only versions and between ratings of original and surface-only versions differed only in two instances. For male attractiveness, ratings of original versions were more strongly related to ratings of surface-only than shape-only versions, suggesting that surface information is particularly important for men’s facial attractiveness. The opposite was true for female physical dominance, suggesting that shape information is particularly important for women’s facial physical dominance. In summary, our results indicate that both facial shape and surface information contribute to judgments of others’ attractiveness and dominance, suggesting that it may be important to consider both sources of information in research on these topics

Does Adult Sex Ratio Predict Regional Variation in Facial Dominance Perceptions? Evidence From an Analysis of U.S. States

When the adult sex ratio of the local population is biased toward women, men face greater costs due to increased direct intrasexual competition. In order to mitigate these costs, men may be more attuned to cues of other men’s physical dominance under these conditions. Consequently, we investigated the relationships between the extent to which people (N = 3,586) ascribed high dominance to masculinized versus feminized faces and variation in adult sex ratio across U.S. states. Linear mixed models showed that masculinized faces were perceived as more dominant than feminized faces, particularly for judgments of men’s facial dominance. Dominance perceptions were weakly related to adult sex ratio, and this relationship was not moderated by face sex, participant sex, or their interaction. Thus, our results suggest that dominance perceptions are relatively unaffected by broad geographical differences in adult sex ratios

Context-specific effects of facial dominance and trustworthiness on hypothetical leadership decisions

Social judgments of faces predict important social outcomes, including leadership decisions. Previous work suggests that facial cues associated with perceptions of dominance and trustworthiness have context-specific effects on leadership decisions. Facial cues linked to perceived dominance have been found to be preferred in leaders for hypothetical wartime contexts and facial cues linked to perceived trustworthiness have been found to be preferred in leaders for hypothetical peacetime contexts. Here we sought to replicate these effects using images of women's faces, as previous studies have primarily focused on perceptions of leadership abilities from male faces, with only a handful of these including female faces. Consistent with previous work, a linear mixed effects model demonstrated that more trustworthy-looking faces were preferred in leaders during times of peace and more dominantlooking faces were preferred in leaders during times of war. These results provide converging evidence for context-specific effects of facial cues on hypothetical leadership judgments

Are sexual desire and sociosexual orientation related to men’s salivary steroid hormones?

Objective: Although it is widely assumed that men’s sexual desire and interest in casual sex (i.e., sociosexual orientation) are linked to steroid hormone levels, evidence for such associations is mixed. Methods: We tested for both longitudinal and cross-sectional relationships between salivary testosterone, cortisol, reported sexual desire and sociosexuality in a sample of 61 young adult men, each of whom was tested weekly on up to five occasions. Results: Longitudinal analyses showed no clear relationships between steroid hormones and self-reported sexual desire or sociosexual orientation. Cross-sectional analyses showed no significant associations between average hormone levels and self-reported sexual desire. However, some aspects of sociosexuality, most notably desire for casual sex, were related to men’s average hormone levels. Men with higher average testosterone reported greater desire for casual sex, but only if they also had relatively low average cortisol levels. Conclusions: Our results support a Dual Hormone account of men’s sociosexuality, in which the combined effects of testosterone and cortisol predict the extent of men’s interest in casual sex. However, we did not detect compelling evidence for an association of within-subject hormone shifts and sexual desire or sociosexual orientation

Jaimie Stephen Torrance's Quick Files

The Quick Files feature was discontinued and it’s files were migrated into this Project on March 11, 2022. The file URL’s will still resolve properly, and the Quick Files logs are available in the Project’s Recent Activity

Philosophy and its Psychological Correlates

Stoicism is a philosophy that aims to remove unnecessary suffering and improve meaning in life by perfecting human rationality. The differences between Stoicism, the ancient Greek philosophy, and stoicism, the psychological measure, are yet to be sufficiently understood. The Liverpool Stoicism Scale (LSS) has been associated with negative psychological outcomes but has poor conceptual validity for measuring Stoic philosophy. The Pathak-Wieten Stoicism Ideology Scale (PW-SIS) is an improved method of assessment of Stoic philosophy and was used in this study to assess the possible interactions between stoicism, gender, satisfaction with life and age. During the month of May 2023, 772 participants (women = 79%, M Age = 47.37, SD Age = 12.53), 18 years or older, answered demographic questions, the PW-SIS, and the Satisfaction With Life Scale. An omnibus model multiple regression revealed: a weak, negative, and significant relationship between stoicism and satisfaction with life; a weak, positive, and significant relationship between stoicism and gender; and no significant relationship between stoicism and age. Exploratory analyses revealed different associations between facets of Stoicism, mean stoicism, and satisfaction with life. This study used the PW-SIS, to provide conclusions with an improved conceptual validity than that made using the LSS. Facet level analyses affords conclusions that can distinguish differential effects of Stoic philosophy and thereby improve the ability to apply particular beneficial components in psychological interventions

Does adult sex ratio predict regional variation in facial dominance perceptions? Evidence from an analysis of US states

Data and analysis file