(176 kB) LM DeBruine, BC Jones & DI Perrett (2005). Women's attractiveness judgments of self-resembling faces change across the menstrual cycle. Hormones and Behavior, 47(4): 379-383. doi: 10.1016/j.yhbeh.2004.11.006

Two lines of reasoning predict that women's preferences for people exhibiting cues to kinship will be lower in the follicular phase than in the luteal phase of the menstrual cycle. Women may avoid kinship cues during the follicular phase when they are most fertile due to the costs of inbreeding. Alternatively, women may seek kinship cues during the luteal phase as a byproduct of the benefits of associating with kin during pregnancy, which is also characterized by high progesterone. We find that preferences for facial resemblance, a putative kinship cue, follow this predicted pattern and are positively correlated with estimated progesterone levels based on cycle day. Neither estimated estrogen levels nor conception risk predicted preferences for self-resemblance, and the cyclic shift was stronger for preferences for female faces than male faces. These findings lead to the possibility that this cyclic change in preference for self-resemblance may be a byproduct of a hormonal mechanism for increasing affiliative behavior toward kin during pregnancy rather than a mechanism for preventing inbreeding during fertile periods.

Figure 1
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Figure 1. Participants' images (a) were used to transform composite images of young adult women (b), adult women (c), young adult men (d), and adult men (e). Transformation added 50% of a participant's face shape to the composite faces, but did not alter color information. Participants were grouped by ethic category (i.e. East Asian, West Asian or European) and asked to choose the more attractive of pairs of faces (e.g. 1b vs. 2b).
Figure 2
Figure 2. Preferences for self-resemblance were greater in the luteal phase (21 women) than the late follicular phase (22 women). This shift was greater for female faces than for male faces. Error bars represent standard error of the mean.
Figure 3
Figure 3. The black line represents the 5-day moving average of 71 women's average preference for self-resemblance in male and female faces by day of menstrual cycle, which follow the same pattern as typical progesterone levels (grey line, taken from Alliende, 2002).

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