Circum-menopausal effects on women's judgements of facial attractiveness

Citation

Vukovic J, Jones BC, DeBruine LM, Little A, Feinberg DR & Welling LLM (2009) Circum-menopausal effects on women's judgements of facial attractiveness. Biology Letters, 5 (1), pp. 62-64. https://doi.org/10.1098/rsbl.2008.0478

Abstract
The marked change in a woman's hormonal profile that happens at menopause affects many aspects of behaviour. We investigated circum-menopausal women's preferences for femininity in the faces of young adult men and women. Post-menopausal women demonstrated stronger preferences for femininity in same-sex faces than pre-menopausal women did. This effect was independent of possible effects of participant's age and suggests that dislike of feminine (i.e. attractive) same-sex competitors decreases as fertility decreases. No significant difference between pre- and post-menopausal women was observed for men's faces, potentially because circum-menopausal women do not necessarily view young adult men as potential mates. To our knowledge, this is the first study to demonstrate circum-menopausal changes in women's face preferences.

Keywords
Adult; Affect; age; Attractiveness; Behaviour; difference; Face; face preferences; Faces; facial attractiveness; feminine; femininity; judgement; knowledge; Men; preference; Preferences; VIEW; Women; women's preferences

Journal
Biology Letters: Volume 5, Issue 1