Do hormones really influence

6/10/2018 Do Hormones Really Influence What Women Find Attractive? | Psychology Today
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Do Hormones Really Influence What Women
Find Attractive?
Recent replication studies torpedo earlier research on hormones and mate choice.
Posted Jun 05, 2018
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It’s no secret that psychology is in the midst of a
replication crisis. Research findings previously
thought to be solid and reliable have proven
anything but, as teams of independent researchers
have tried — and failed — to reproduce the results of
dozens of experiments.
Why might this be? Well, scientists are under
pressure to publish their research in prestigious
academic journals. The editors of these journals
often favor exciting and groundbreaking new
findings, rather than the dull but necessary work of
verifying the results of past endeavors.
I too might be guilty of focusing too much on the
most eye-catching results: the results I think you will want to read about, but which may or may not be
supported by later research. So today we’ll look at a few recent replication studies that have called into question
some of the effects that I’ve written about before.
We’ll look specifically at research on how hormones influence women’s mate preferences and mate choice,
partly because I personally find research in this area to be interesting, and partly because many of the results of
these studies have been hyped in the media (and on this blog).
So, is women’s mating psychology affected by their menstrual cycle or their hormonal contraceptives? Let’s find
out.
Hormonal contraceptives and relationship quality
Hormonal contraceptives, such as the pill or patch, are designed to reduce the likelihood that a woman will
conceive a child after having sex with a man. But hormones have psychological as well as physiological effects,
and so it’s reasonable to hypothesize that popping a daily pill chock-full of estrogen and progesterone —
hormones that govern processes related to reproduction— might influence the way a woman feels about
relationships and sex.
One idea that has received some support is the “congruency hypothesis”. The hypothesis goes like this: women
enter into relationships while using or not using the pill; afterwards, some of the women who were using the pill
stop using it, while some who weren’t using the pill start; if the pill affects sexual psychology, changes in pill use
may cause a woman to be less attracted to her partner; conversely, women who haven’t started or stopped
taking the pill since their relationship began should find their partner’s allure undiminished.
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A woman who starts or stops taking the pill after her relationship begins is classed as “incongruent”, while a
woman who sticks with the same regime (taking the pill or not taking the pill) is described as “congruent”.
A team of researchers led by Patrick Jern of Åbo Akademi University in Turku, Finland, recruited almost 1000
women who were in a relationship with a man. The women answered questions about the quality of their
relationship and their sexual satisfaction with their partner, their jealousy, and their partner’s physical
attractiveness.
Jern found that women who had used the pill when they met their partner, and women who were currently using
the pill, tended to report higher sexual satisfaction. Current pill users were also more jealous. However, the key
findings relating to the congruency hypothesis were not supported: women were no more or less satisfied with
their relationship or attracted to their partner if their pill regime had changed or remained the same.
Jern, recognizing that there are different ways to be congruent or incongruent (women could start or stop taking
the pill, or remain on or off the pill), tested for differences between these four groups of women. Consistent pill
users tended to be higher than consistent non-users in sexual satisfaction and jealousy.
Jern and his team speculate that one of the reasons why previous researchers have found support for the
congruency hypothesis is that the numbers of women in the different groups tend to be unequal. More women
stop using the pill after their relationship begins than start using the pill, meaning that non-users are often over-
represented in the incongruent group.
Hormones and macho men
Hormonal contraceptives are also thought to influence the type of man a woman finds most attractive.
In the interests of full disclosure, I should point out that a few years ago I co-authored a research paper showing
that the pill might affect women’s preference for male masculinity. My colleagues and I found that women who
used the pill when they started their current relationship tended to be paired with a man whose face was more
feminine (a Ryan Gosling type), while women who hadn’t used the pill were partnered with men who were
facially more masculine (think Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson).
Other psychologists have found that using the pill reduces women’s attraction to male facial masculinity, which
may help to explain our results.
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Recently, however, Ula Marcinkowska of Jagiellonian University in Kraków, Poland, repeated that research and
(spoiler alert) blew it out of the water.
She had over 6000 heterosexual women report their pill use. The women then saw pairs of faces that had been
manipulated using computer graphics software to appear more masculine or more feminine, and indicated
which faces they found most attractive (click here for an interactive demo).
The experiment showed that women were no more or less likely to prefer masculine male faces if they were
pill users than non-users (although, oddly, pill-using women did prefer feminine female faces to a greater
degree than non-users).
It’s possible that women who use the pill end up in relationships with masculine men despite not finding them
more physically attractive. Perhaps masculine-faced men have some other attractive trait that non-pill users find
alluring, or are better able to compete with one another for access to non-pill using women. Marcinkowska’s
findings don’t mean my own research will end up in the trashcan (phew!), but they do incentivize further work on
the question of hormones and masculinity preference.
The menstrual cycle and mate preferences
Talking of which, you may have heard about the much publicized effects of the menstrual cycle on women’s
preferences for various male traits, including masculinity. These findings emerged in the mid 1990s, and were
explained using the “dual mating strategy hypothesis”, which suggests that women vary in their attraction to so-
called “cads” and “dads”.
“Cads” are sexy bad boys who tend to appear sexy and masculine, but are less committed and generous. Based
on the now increasingly shaky assumption that masculinity is related to heritable healthiness, a masculine man
might make a good genetic fathers, but his personality might make him a poor bet for a long-term partner.
“Dads”, on the other hand, make up for what they lack in sex appeal by committing to their relationships, and
generally being friendly and nice. Seeing as women only have a good shot at conceiving with a “cad” when they
are most fertile, a heightened preference for masculinity around ovulation might be useful. A preference for
femininity at other times might lead women to benefit from relationships with a “dad” type.
A flurry of studies in the early 2000s provided evidence for the link between cycle phase and a preference for
masculinity, showing that women do indeed find macho men more appealing at the most fertile time of the
month. But more recent studies (and a series of technical research papers suggesting that the methods of
earlier experiments were not sufficiently rigorous) have thrown these exciting discoveries into doubt.
Ben Jones of Glasgow University in Scotland recently led a team of researchers in an ambitious long-term study
of the face preferences of over 500 women. These women reported to Jones’ lab every week for several
months. On each occasion they provided saliva samples, and these were tested for hormones (the menstrual
cycle is associated with relatively predictable changes in estrogen, progesterone, and luteinizing hormone).
The women also completed masculinity preference tasks that were similar to those used by Marcinkowska. The
women judged which face — the masculine or feminine — was most attractive for a long-term and a short-term
relationship, because past research has indicated that the cycle effect is strongest when women judge men for
flings.
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Analyses revealed that women generally preferred masculine to feminine faces, an effect that was stronger for
judgments for short-term relationships. However, the fabled cycle effect failed to emerge. Women are no more
likely to prefer masculine faced men when they are most fertile than at other times of the month.
Another recent study, headed by Julia Jünger of the University of Göttingen in Germany, investigated the effects
of the ovulatory cycle on women’s preferences for masculinity in men’s bodies. This means it’s time for another
disclaimer: I was a co-author on the original paper showing that women prefer buff men when they’re ovulating.
In that study we recruited women over the internet and, based on their self-reported cycle phase, we estimated
whether they were likely to be at peak fertility at the time they rated the images. Jünger’s method was
substantially more robust: she tracked the same women over two cycles and, like Jones, collected saliva for
hormone testing.
The results of this newer study show that, when fertile, women rate male bodies as more attractive. But the
change in attractiveness is general across all male body types: both feminine and masculine male bodies are
more attractive to a woman in the fertile phase of her cycle.
And (because she clearly likes keeping busy) Jünger has also conducted a study of cycle effects on women’s
preferences for masculine male voices. Several research teams have shown that, when most fertile, women
prefer a man with a deeper voice. However, some of those teams estimated women’s cycle phase based on
when her most recent period began, rather than by checking her hormone levels.
Just as facial photographs can be made to appear more masculine or feminine, recordings of voices can also be
manipulated to sound deeper or higher. Jünger also had her volunteers rate the attractiveness of recordings of
men that had been shifted up or down, as well as recordings of men whose voices naturally varied in pitch (this
more naturalistic experiment can demonstrate whether an effect is likely to persist in real-world situations).
At this stage it should come as no surprise to you that Jünger found no effect of the cycle on women’s
preference for men’s vocal masculinity. However, deeper voices were rated as more attractive than higher
voices, and women generally rated men’s voices as more attractive when they were in their fertile phase.
In another paper that was published just as I was putting the finishing touches to this blog, Ula Marcinkowska
(busy busy busy) confirmed once more that masculinity preferences do not vary with cycling hormones.
However, she did find that a woman’s average level of hormones across the cycle were important: higher
average levels of progesterone were associated with a stronger preference for masculine men, but only among
partnered women — for single women, the pattern was reversed.
The results of both of Jünger’s studies suggest that there is likely something happening over the menstrual
cycle — women are perhaps more sexually motivated when fertile — but interest in masculinity appears to be
unchanged. Marcinkowska’s study suggests that hormones are related to masculinity preferences, but not in a
cyclical fashion, and that it’s important to account for other variables, such as relationship status.
Either way, the evidence for the dual mating strategy hypothesis is considerably weaker than it once was.
One step back, two steps forward
You might now be wondering whether you should take every psychology article with a pinch of salt. How can we
trust the results of any study?
Science works by a process of incremental advances. Psychologists who develop novel hypotheses are often at
a disadvantage: as they stride out into the unknown, they might be unaware of the tools and methods that are
necessary for robustly testing their theories. Only later, with the benefit of hindsight, can other researchers see
where improvements can be made.
Also, all psychologists have to decide how best to invest their time, effort, and funding. When an idea is new and
has little or no data to support it, it can be difficult to justify investing heavily in it. Afterwards, when an idea has
the weight of evidence behind it, psychologists may find it easier to argue for re-testing the hypothesis with a
bigger sample of volunteers, more expensive methods (such as hormonal tests), and for establishing
international collaborations to recruit culturally diverse volunteers.
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References
Jern, P., Kärnä, A., Hujanen, J., Erlin, T., Gunst, A., Rautaheimo, H., . . . Zietsch, B. P. (in press). A high-powered replication study
finds no effect of starting or stopping hormonal contraceptive use on relationship quality. Evolution and Human Behavior.
doi:10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2018.02.008
Jones, B. C., Hahn, A. C., Fisher, A. D., Wang, H., Kandrik, M., Han, C., . . . DeBruine, L. M. (2017). No compelling evidence that
preferences for facial masculinity track changes in women’s hormonal status. bioRxiv. Retrieved from
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/early/2017/12/29/136549
Jünger, J., Kordsmeyer, T. L., Gerlach, T. M., & Penke, L. (2018). Fertile women evaluate male bodies as more attractive,
regardless of masculinity. PsyArXiv. Retrieved from https://psyarxiv.com/nyba6/
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There will always be findings that, after the initial exciting phase of the investigation is through, prove difficult to
replicate. This is why we should never take the results of one study as definitive and unshakable evidence of
some underlying truth, and why all of us — professional psychologists and interested laypersons alike — should
be supportive of the efforts of those who are willing to look beyond the headlines.
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About the Author
Robert Burriss, Ph.D., is an evolutionary psychologist at Basel University in Switzerland. He produces The
Psychology of Attractiveness Podcast.

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