Posted by Jessica Abbott on behalf of Qinyang Li
Hello everyone, next lab meeting I suggest we can discuss the
studies and evolutionary theories about human facial attractiveness and
their physical performance. There are some papers published on this
topic, but we will focus on the most recent one. In this study, elite
male cyclists were chosen as test subject since endurance is a strong
predictor of fitness. The ratings on their attractiveness turned out to
be positively correlated with their performance.
Abstract:
Females
often prefer to mate with high quality males, and one aspect of quality
is physical performance. Although a preference for physically fitter
males is therefore predicted, the relationship between attractiveness
and performance has rarely been quantified. Here, I test for such a
relationship in humans and ask whether variation in (endurance)
performance is associated with variation in facial attractiveness within
elite professional cyclists that finished the 2012 Tour de France. I
show that riders that performed better were more attractive, and that
this preference was strongest in women not using a hormonal
contraceptive. Thereby, I show that, within this preselected but
relatively homogeneous sample of the male population, facial
attractiveness signals endurance performance. Provided that there is a
relationship between performance-mediated attractiveness and
reproductive success, this suggests that human endurance capacity has
been subject to sexual selection in our evolutionary past.
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