The DOI matches its Crossref record; 33 of the 33 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
Facial appearance is a cue to oestrogen levels in women
Open accessAbstract
Although many accounts of facial attractiveness propose that femininity in women's faces indicates high levels of oestrogen, there is little empirical evidence in support of this assumption. Here, we used assays for urinary metabolites of oestrogen (oestrone-3-glucuronide, E1G) and progesterone (pregnanediol-3-glucuronide, P3G) to investigate the relationship between circulating gonadal hormones and ratings of the femininity, attractiveness and apparent health of women's faces. Positive correlations were observed between late follicular oestrogen and ratings of femininity, attractiveness and health. Positive correlations of luteal progesterone and health and attractiveness ratings were marginally significant. Ratings of facial attributions did not relate to hormone levels for women wearing make-up when photographed. There was no effect of sex of rater on the relationships between oestrogen and ratings of facial appearance. These findings demonstrate that female facial appearance holds detectable cues to reproductive health that are considered attractive by other people.
Overview
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Verification
Claims the paper makes
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Self-check
Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.
The self-check needs the paper’s full text.
Citations
Cites
Effects of sexual dimorphism on facial attractiveness
Perrett, D. I., Lee, K. J., Penton-Voak, I., Rowland, D., Yoshikawa, S., Burt, D. M., Henzi, S. P., Castles, D. L., & Akamatsu, S. (1998) · Nature · doi:10.1038/29772 · Cited by 1,330
Self-citationThornhill, R., & Gangestad, S. W. (1999) · Trends in Cognitive Sciences · doi:10.1016/s1364-6613(99)01403-5 · Cited by 919
Facial shape and judgements of female attractiveness
Perrett, D. I., May, K. A., & Yoshikawa, S. (1994) · Nature · doi:10.1038/368239a0 · Cited by 849
Self-citationPrototyping and transforming facial textures for perception research
Tiddeman, B., Burt, M., & Perrett, D. (2001) · IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications · doi:10.1109/38.946630 · Cited by 796
Self-citationDNA sequence and analysis of human chromosome 9
Humphray, S. J., Oliver, K., Hunt, A. R., Plumb, R. W., Loveland, J. E., Howe, K. L., Andrews, T. D., Searle, S., Hunt, S. E., Scott, C. E., et al. (2004) · Nature · doi:10.1038/nature02465 · Cited by 637
Human facial beauty: Averageness, symmetry, and parasite resistance
Thornhill, R., & Gangestad, S. W. (1993) · Human Nature · doi:10.1007/bf02692201 · Cited by 611
Sex hormones and the female voice
Abitbol, J., Abitbol, P., & Abitbol, B. (1999) · Journal of Voice · doi:10.1016/s0892-1997(99)80048-4 · Cited by 510
Large breasts and narrow waists indicate high reproductive potential in women
Jasieńska, G., Ziomkiewicz, A., Ellison, P. T., Lipson, S. F., & Thune, I. (2004) · Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Series B: Biological Sciences · doi:10.1098/rspb.2004.2712 · Cited by 436
Does sexual dimorphism in human faces signal health?
Rhodes, G., Chan, J., Zebrowitz, L. A., & Simmons, L. W. (2003) · Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Series B: Biological Sciences · doi:10.1098/rsbl.2003.0023 · Cited by 404
High salivary testosterone is linked to masculine male facial appearance in humans
Penton-Voak, I. S., & Chen, J. Y. (2004) · Evolution and Human Behavior · doi:10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2004.04.003 · Cited by 383
Cited by
Individual recognition: it is good to be different
Tibbetts, E. A., & Dale, J. (2007) · Trends in Ecology & Evolution · doi:10.1016/j.tree.2007.09.001 · Cited by 779
Too real for comfort? Uncanny responses to computer generated faces
MacDorman, K. F., Green, R. D., Ho, C.-C., & Koch, C. T. (2009) · Computers in Human Behavior · doi:10.1016/j.chb.2008.12.026 · Cited by 533
MHC-correlated mate choice in humans: A review
Havlicek, J., & Roberts, S. C. (2009) · Psychoneuroendocrinology · doi:10.1016/j.psyneuen.2008.10.007 · Cited by 339
A sex difference in facial contrast and its exaggeration by cosmetics
Russell, R. (2009) · Perception · doi:10.1068/p6331 · Cited by 206
Little, A. C., DeBruine, L. M., & Jones, B. C. (2011) · Proceedings of the Royal Society B Biological Sciences · doi:10.1098/rspb.2010.1925 · Cited by 172
Metadata
- Authors
- Law Smith, M. J., Perrett, D. I., Jones, B. C., Cornwell, R. E., Moore, F. R., Feinberg, D. R., Boothroyd, L. G., Durrani, S. J., Stirrat, M. R., Whiten, S., Pitman, R. M., & Hillier, S. G.
- Venue
- Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences
- Publisher
- The Royal Society
- Published
- 2005-11
- Volume
- 273
- Issue
- 1583
- Pages
- 135-140
- ISSN
- 0080-4649 (ISSN-L)
- 0962-8452
- 1471-2954
- OpenAlex
- W2163248637
- Cited by
- 401
- References
- 33
- FWCI
- 13.74
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
How to cite
Cite CoChat for the checks on this page, and the paper for its own findings.
- This page
- CoChat. (2026). Citation check: Facial appearance is a cue to oestrogen levels in women. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1098/rspb.2005.3296
- The paper
- Law Smith, M. J., Perrett, D. I., Jones, B. C., Cornwell, R. E., Moore, F. R., Feinberg, D. R., Boothroyd, L. G., Durrani, S. J., Stirrat, M. R., Whiten, S., Pitman, R. M., & Hillier, S. G. (2006). Facial appearance is a cue to oestrogen levels in women. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences. https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2005.3296
Data sources
Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.
Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.
