What do women want? Facialmetric assessment of multiple motives in the perception of male facial physical attractiveness.

Cunningham, Michael R., Barbee, Anita P., Pike, Carolyn L.·1990·Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
DOI 10.1037//0022-3514.59.1.61

Abstract

The multiple motive hypothesis of physical attractiveness suggests that women are attracted to men whose appearances elicit their nurturant feelings, who appear to possess sexual maturity and dominance characteristics, who seem sociable, approacheable, and of high social status. Those multiple motives may cause people to be attracted to individuals who display an optimal combination of neotenous, mature, and expressive facial features, plus desirable grooming attributes. Three quasi-experiments demonstrated that men who possessed the neotenous features of large eyes, the mature features of prominent cheekbones and a large chin, the expressive feature of a big smile, and high-status clothing were seen as more attractive than other men. Further supporting the multiple motive hypothesis, the 2nd and 3rd studies indicated that impressions of attractiveness had strong relations with selections of men to date and to marry but had a curvilinear relation with perceptions of a baby face vs. a mature face.

Cites (2)

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Cited by (7)

  1. Maxims or myths of beauty? A meta-analytic and theoretical review
    Langlois, Judith H., Kalakanis, Lisa, Rubenstein, Adam J., Larson, Andrea, Hallam, Monica, Smoot, Monica · 2000 · Psychological Bulletin
  2. Human (Homo sapiens) facial attractiveness and sexual selection: The role of symmetry and averageness.
    Grammer, Karl, Thornhill, Randy · 1994 · Journal of Comparative Psychology
  3. Pathogen prevalence and human mate preferences
    Gangestad, Steven W., Buss, David M. · 1993 · Ethology and Sociobiology
  4. Exposure to visual cues of pathogen contagion changes preferences for masculinity and symmetry in opposite-sex faces
    Little, Anthony C., DeBruine, Lisa M., Jones, Benedict C. · 2011 · Proceedings of the Royal Society B Biological Sciences
  5. Something to smile about: the interrelationship between attractiveness and emotional expression
    Golle, Jessika, Mast, Fred W., Lobmaier, Janek S. · 2014 · Cognition and Emotion

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How to cite

Cite CoChat for the checks on this page, and the paper for its own findings.

This page
CoChat. (2026). Citation check: What do women want? Facialmetric assessment of multiple motives in the perception of male facial physical attractiveness. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1037//0022-3514.59.1.61
The paper
Cunningham, M. R., Barbee, A. P., & Pike, C. L. (1990). What do women want? Facialmetric assessment of multiple motives in the perception of male facial physical attractiveness. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. https://doi.org/10.1037//0022-3514.59.1.61

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Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.