There is a misunderstanding of the difference of rated attractiveness between men and women. Women's attractiveness has a direct correlation with her reproductive capacity, whereas men's attractiveness has more to do with probability of social dominance. That includes confidence, assertiveness, aggressiveness, charisma, and of course height. Some of it is correlated with health, but other factors are not. So there is a big confounder in this study in that many of the factors for a man's attractiveness actually correlates with his potential for success.
"These findings demonstrate that female facial appearance holds detectable cues to reproductive health that are considered attractive by other people."
EDIT: I really, really enjoy finding cases where something I assumed to be true is questioned on the grounds of scientific correctness. It is always a wonderful opportunity to bring my thinking closer to reality, no matter if my assumptions are true or false.
I'm a research scientist for a face recognition company and have done a lot of work with attractiveness estimators and sex classification. I've found that the sex classification score and female attractiveness has a pretty high correlation. I think Alice O'Toole has a paper that has a similar finding although I would have to search for the exact reference.
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There is a misunderstanding of the difference of rated attractiveness between men and women. Women's attractiveness has a direct correlation with her reproductive capacity, whereas men's attractiveness has more to do with probability of social dominance. That includes confidence, assertiveness, aggressiveness, charisma, and of course height. Some of it is correlated with health, but other factors are not. So there is a big confounder in this study in that many of the factors for a man's attractiveness actually correlates with his potential for success.
Source please.
This was a little harder to find than I expected:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16555779
"These findings demonstrate that female facial appearance holds detectable cues to reproductive health that are considered attractive by other people."
Found via http://asutriplehelix.org/node/99 which also cites some other related papers
EDIT: I really, really enjoy finding cases where something I assumed to be true is questioned on the grounds of scientific correctness. It is always a wonderful opportunity to bring my thinking closer to reality, no matter if my assumptions are true or false.
I'd be a _little_ careful turning "detectable cues" into some kind of axiomatic understanding of attractiveness.
I'm a research scientist for a face recognition company and have done a lot of work with attractiveness estimators and sex classification. I've found that the sex classification score and female attractiveness has a pretty high correlation. I think Alice O'Toole has a paper that has a similar finding although I would have to search for the exact reference.
With her 'perceived' reproductive capacity would have been already a bit more palatable.
http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/271/1545/1213
BOOBS.
I see this is getting downvoted. Will an honest man upvote this back into the black?
The fact is that men place far more value in physical assets than women do. That it is even questioned and needing a scientific study is bewildering.
There is a correlation with estrogen level, nutrients level, and body fat.
The Internet has a lot of white knights.
Oh, come on, how is downvoting a comment consisting of all caps "boobs" with no explanation "white knighting"? It even breaks HN rules for style.
How white-knighting comes into this is beyond me, notwithstanding how much I hate that term in general.
I'm not sure that size of mammaries correlates with fertility.
Is this completely conjecture on your part? Or do you have additional studies?
Thank you - what I was trying to say