THE EFFECTS OF AGE AND GENDER ON PERCEIVED FACIAL ATTRACTIVENESS - A REPLY

McLellan and McKelvie (1993), in a study investigating the effects of age and gender on attractiveness of photographs of faces, sought to es tablish whether men favoured faces of greater physical attractiveness in younger women, and women chose slightly older men (consistent with a proposed sociobiological interpretation) or whether people selected faces of the same age. We suggest the authors may wish to reconsider t heir results in view of our suggestion that their methodological proce dure is in error. We also argue in the context of sociobiological theo ry the following: (1) the implicit assumption that facial attractivene ss can be used as an indicator of human mate choice is questionable; ( 2) age categories of subjects choosing photographs of faces are too br oad to test the validity of a sociobiological hypothesis; (3) results are not accurately interpreted.