Physiognomy and Interest in Infants
A group of scientists led by James Roney of the University of California, Santa Barbara has discovered that women can tell who is and is not fond of children just by looking at their faces.
Their 39 male subjects, selected from a variety of ethnic backgrounds, were shown 20 pairs of pictures, each depicting an adult and an infant. They were asked to signify their preference for either the adult or the child. Some reported no interest in the child at all. The rest expressed a range of interest, including a few who always preferred the pictures of infants. The men also provided saliva swabs to assess their testosterone levels. The researchers then took digital photographs of the men and doctored the images so that their hairstyles were obscured, and could not affect the judgments of the female subjects.
These were a group of 29 women, from equally diverse backgrounds, who were shown the photographs. They were asked to rate the men according to whether they thought the men liked children, and whether those men appeared masculine and physically attractive. They were also asked to say which men they preferred for short-term and which for long-term relationships. The results (pdf file here), which have just been published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society, confirm that women are very good at reading faces.
When asked to rate the men’s masculinity, the women agreed on who was top and who was bottom, and their rankings correlated with the testosterone levels from the swabs.
The features that research has suggested denote high testosterone levels include a prominent jaw and a heavy beard.
When asked to rate the men’s liking of children from the photographs, the women ranked them in the same order as the researchers had done from the interest the men themselves had shown in pictures of infants.
When asked with whom they would prefer to have a short-term relationship, women tended to pick the high-testosterone males. This makes sense from an evolutionary point of view, since testosterone suppresses the immune system. An excess of testosterone suggests that an individual must have particularly disease-resistant genes in order to compensate. These make desirable partners for a woman’s own genes in her children. The problem with testosterone-fuelled males is that they are less likely to remain faithful to their partners.
By contrast, men who show an interest in children are also likely to make good partners, because they will care for their offspring. The study showed that women prefer these men for long-term relationships.
Surprisingly, some men were perceived both as masculine and as interested in children
After the study was completed, five graduate students were asked to rate on a scale of 1 to 7 whether the men looked angry or happy. Though the men were instructed to have a neutral look on their faces when photographed, some apparently looked happier than others. The men who picked more infants in that test had a happier or more content look on their face.
“Oochy woochy coochy coo,” The Economist