Original Article
The role of facial hair in women's perceptions of men's attractiveness, health, masculinity and parenting abilities

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2013.02.003Get rights and content

Abstract

Facial hair strongly influences people's judgments of men's socio-sexual attributes. However, the nature of these judgments is often contradictory. The levels of intermediate facial hair growth presented to raters and the stage of female raters' menstrual cycles might have influenced past findings. We quantified men's and women's judgments of attractiveness, health, masculinity and parenting abilities for photographs of men who were clean-shaven, lightly or heavily stubbled and fully bearded. We also tested the effect of the menstrual cycle and hormonal contraceptive use on women's ratings. Women judged faces with heavy stubble as most attractive and heavy beards, light stubble and clean-shaven faces as similarly less attractive. In contrast, men rated full beards and heavy stubble as most attractive, followed closely by clean-shaven and light stubble as least attractive. Men and women rated full beards highest for parenting ability and healthiness. Masculinity ratings increased linearly as facial hair increased, and this effect was more pronounced in women in the fertile phase of the menstrual cycle, although attractiveness ratings did not differ according to fertility. Our findings confirm that beardedness affects judgments of male socio-sexual attributes and suggest that an intermediate level of beardedness is most attractive while full-bearded men may be perceived as better fathers who could protect and invest in offspring.

Introduction

Androgen-dependent facial and bodily traits are positively associated with men's health (Thornhill & Gangestad, 2006), immunity (Rantala et al., 2012), dominance and competitive ability (Archer, 2009). Masculine men may also achieve greater mating and reproductive success (Rhodes, Simmons, & Peters, 2005). Yet averaged across experiments, women either prefer less masculine faces (Perrett et al., 1998) or weakly prefer masculine faces (Rhodes, 2006). However, women's preferences for facial cues of masculinity vary, growing strongest when men are rated for short-term relationships (Little, Connely, Feinberg, Jones, & Roberts, 2011), and during the most fertile part of their menstrual cycle (Gangestad & Thornhill, 2008).

The beard is a highly sexually dimorphic androgen-dependent trait that varies markedly among men (Randall, 2008). While this implies a sexually selected origin for beardedness, there is no consensus on the relative importance of female mate choice and male-male competition in shaping facial hair. Given that facial hair growth begins at puberty and continues throughout adulthood, it is not surprising that beards augment perceptions of maturity and masculinity (Addison, 1989, Neave and Shields, 2008). However, associations between other personality traits and beards are highly polarized. On the one hand, bearded men are ascribed positive attributes such as self-confidence, courage, sincerity, generosity and industriousness (Kenny and Fletcher, 1973, Pellegrini, 1973, Hellström and Tekle, 1994). On the other hand, beards are judged as less socially appeasing and more aggressive (Addison, 1989, Muscarella and Cunningham, 1996, Neave and Shields, 2008).

Findings on the attractiveness of facial hair are equally mixed. In some cases full beards increased male attractiveness (Pellegrini, 1973, Hatfield and Sprecher, 1986, Reed and Blunk, 1990), while others found they did not (Feinman and Gill, 1977, Wogalter and Hosie, 1991, Muscarella and Cunningham, 1996, Dixson and Vasey, 2012). These mixed findings may have resulted, in part, from using written questionnaires (Feinman & Gill, 1977), fake beards (Wood, 1986) or facial hair created using make-up pencils (Muscarella & Cunningham, 1996). Where natural photographs have been used, typically only full beards or clean-shaven faces were presented (e.g. Dixson & Vasey, 2012), which does not capture variation in men's ability to grow facial hair. Interestingly, Neave and Shields (2008) found using computer-generated images that varied in grades of facial hair that light stubble was most attractive to women.

In the present study, a sample of men, each of whom were photographed as clean-shaven, lightly stubbled, heavily stubbled and fully bearded, were rated for attractiveness, healthiness, masculinity and parenting abilities. Analysis 1 compared ratings between men and women. We predicted that men would judge full beards more favorably than women because of the strong role of beards in judgments of social dominance and threat (Dixson & Vasey, 2012). Conversely, we predicted that women may judge more bearded faces to be more attractive than clean-shaven faces but that a threshold of masculinity may be preferred, with lightly stubbled faces considered most attractive (after Neave & Shields, 2008). Women's preferences for masculine traits are known to become stronger during the late follicular, more fertile, period of the menstrual cycle when any benefits of mating with a more masculine partner can be realized (Gangestad & Thornhill, 2008). Thus, in Analysis 2 we tested the prediction that heavier stubble and hence greater masculinity would be more attractive at the period of the menstrual cycle when conception is more likely.

Section snippets

Stimuli

Ten men of European descent (mean age ± SD = 23.50 ± 3.57 years), each of whom had dark brown head and facial hair were photographed in each of four conditions in the following order: fully bearded (at least 6 weeks without shaving), clean-shaven, with 5 days (light stubble) and 10 days of beard growth (heavy stubble). Men posed smiles generated using the Facial Action Coding System (Ekman, Friesen, & Hager, 2002). Photographs were taken using a Canon digital camera (8.0 megapixels resolution), 150 cm

Discussion

While ratings of masculinity rose monotonically with beardedness, the effects of facial hair on attractiveness, health and parenting ratings were non-linear. In almost all cases, light stubble received the lowest ratings, with heavy stubble or full beards judged more favorably and clean-shaven faces faring as well or almost as well. Attractiveness was the only property that males and females rated differently, but the interaction between sex and health ratings was marginally significant as

Supplementary Materials

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