The DOI matches its Crossref record; 18 of the 18 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
Facial attractiveness: evolutionary based research
Open accessAbstract
Face preferences affect a diverse range of critical social outcomes, from mate choices and decisions about platonic relationships to hiring decisions and decisions about social exchange. Firstly, we review the facial characteristics that influence attractiveness judgements of faces (e.g. symmetry, sexually dimorphic shape cues, averageness, skin colour/texture and cues to personality) and then review several important sources of individual differences in face preferences (e.g. hormone levels and fertility, own attractiveness and personality, visual experience, familiarity and imprinting, social learning). The research relating to these issues highlights flexible, sophisticated systems that support and promote adaptive responses to faces that appear to function to maximize the benefits of both our mate choices and more general decisions about other types of social partners.
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
The genetical evolution of social behaviour. I
Hamilton, W. D. (1964) · Journal of Theoretical Biology · doi:10.1016/0022-5193(64)90038-4 · Cited by 15,725
Attitudinal Effects of Mere Exposure
Zajonc, R. B. (1968) · Journal of Personality and Social Psychology · doi:10.1037/h0025848 · Cited by 6,745
Mate selection—A selection for a handicap
Zahavi, A. (1975) · Journal of Theoretical Biology · doi:10.1016/0022-5193(75)90111-3 · Cited by 5,251
Sex differences in human mate preferences: Evolutionary hypotheses tested in 37 cultures
Buss, D. M. (1989) · Behavioral and Brain Sciences · doi:10.1017/s0140525x00023992 · Cited by 4,484
Dion, K., Berscheid, E., & Walster, E. (1972) · Journal of Personality and Social Psychology · doi:10.1037/h0033731 · Cited by 3,865
Parasites, Bright Males, and the Immunocompetence Handicap
Folstad, I., & Karter, A. J. (1992) · The American Naturalist · doi:10.1086/285346 · Cited by 2,799
Not By Genes Alone: How Culture Transformed Human Evolution
Richerson, P. J., & Boyd, R. (2004) · doi:10.7208/chicago/9780226712130.001.0001 · Cited by 2,793
Maxims or myths of beauty? A meta-analytic and theoretical review
Langlois, J. H., Kalakanis, L., Rubenstein, A. J., Larson, A., Hallam, M., & Smoot, M. (2000) · Psychological Bulletin · doi:10.1037/0033-2909.126.3.390 · Cited by 2,429
Exposure and affect: Overview and meta-analysis of research, 1968–1987.
Bornstein, R. F. (1989) · Psychological Bulletin · doi:10.1037/0033-2909.106.2.265 · Cited by 1,970
Eagly, A. H., Ashmore, R. D., Makhijani, M. G., & Longo, L. C. (1991) · Psychological Bulletin · doi:10.1037/0033-2909.110.1.109 · Cited by 1,875
Cited by
Thomas, A. G., Jonason, P. K., Blackburn, J. D., Kennair, L. E. O., Lowe, R., Malouff, J., Stewart‐Williams, S., Sulikowski, D., & Li, N. P. (2020) · Journal of Personality · doi:10.1111/jopy.12514 · Cited by 126
Importance of physical appearance in patients with skin cancer
Sobanko, J. F., Sarwer, D. B., Zvargulis, Z., & Miller, C. J. (2015) · Dermatologic Surgery · doi:10.1097/dss.0000000000000253 · Cited by 105
Little, A. C., Burriss, R. P., Petrie, M., Jones, B. C., & Roberts, S. C. (2013) · Psychoneuroendocrinology · doi:10.1016/j.psyneuen.2013.02.014 · Cited by 89
Little, A. C., & Jones, B. C. (2012) · Psychoneuroendocrinology · doi:10.1016/j.psyneuen.2011.11.007 · Cited by 71
Self-citationA review of infants’ and children’s facial cues’ influence on adults’ perceptions and behaviors.
Franklin, P., & Volk, A. A. (2018) · Evolutionary Behavioral Sciences · doi:10.1037/ebs0000108 · Cited by 66
Seeing Dogs: Human Preferences for Dog Physical Attributes
Hecht, J., & Horowitz, A. (2015) · Anthrozoös · doi:10.2752/089279315x14129350722217 · Cited by 63
Cue-based estimates of reproductive value explain women's body attractiveness
Andrews, T. M., Lukaszewski, A. W., Simmons, Z. L., & Bleske-Rechek, A. (2017) · Evolution and Human Behavior · doi:10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2017.04.002 · Cited by 52
Control by a hair’s breadth: the role of microRNAs in the skin
Ning, M. S., & Andl, T. (2013) · Cellular and Molecular Life Sciences · doi:10.1007/s00018-012-1117-z · Cited by 48
Kukkonen, I., Pajunen, T., Sarpila, O., & Åberg, E. (2024) · European Societies · doi:10.1080/14616696.2023.2210202 · Cited by 43
“(Little et al .”
Demographic and Sociocultural Predictors of Face Image Satisfaction: The U.S. Body Project I
Frederick, D. A., Reynolds, T. A., Barrera, C. A., & Murray, S. B. (2022) · Body Image · doi:10.1016/j.bodyim.2022.01.016 · Cited by 37
The Virtual Focus Group: A Modern Methodology for Facial Attractiveness Rating
Popenko, N. A., Devcic, Z., Karimi, K., & Wong, B. J. F. (2012) · Plastic & Reconstructive Surgery · doi:10.1097/prs.0b013e31825dcb48 · Cited by 14
Imagining the Far East: Exploring Perceived Biases in AI-Generated Images of East Asian Women
Lan, X., An, J., Guo, Y., Chiyou, T., Cai, X., & Zhang, J. (2025) · Proceedings of the Extended Abstracts of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems · doi:10.1145/3706599.3719678 · Cited by 8
The hidden identity of faces: a case of lifelong prosopagnosia
Wegrzyn, M., Garlichs, A., Heß, R. W. K., Woermann, F. G., & Labudda, K. (2019) · BMC Psychology · doi:10.1186/s40359-019-0278-z · Cited by 4
Metadata
- Authors
- Little, A. C., Jones, B. C., & DeBruine, L. M.
- Venue
- Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences
- Publisher
- The Royal Society
- Published
- 2011-06-12
- Volume
- 366
- Issue
- 1571
- Pages
- 1638-1659
- ISSN
- 0962-8436 (ISSN-L)
- 1471-2970
- OpenAlex
- W2103359077
- Cited by
- 1,010
- References
- 18
- FWCI
- 44.28
- 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
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.
