FACIAL ATTRACTIVENESS, DEVELOPMENTAL STABILITY, AND FLUCTUATING ASYMMETRY

Despite robust cross-cultural reliability of human facial attractivene ss ratings, research on facial attractiveness has only superficially a ddressed the connection between facial attractiveness and the history of sexual selection in Home sapiens. There are reasons to believe that developmental stability and phenotypic quality are related. Recent st udies of nonhuman animals indicate that developmental stability, measu red as fluctuating asymmetry in generally bilateral symmetrical traits , is predictive of performance in sexual selection: Relatively symmetr ical males are advantaged under sexual selection. This pattern is sugg ested by our study of facial attractiveness and fluctuating asymmetry in seven bilateral body traits in a student population. Overall, facia l attractiveness negatively correlated with fluctuating asymmetry; the relation for men, but not for women, was statistically reliable. Poss ible confounding factors were controlled for in the analysis.