Women’s Perception of Attractiveness of Men’s Faces Inversely Correlates with Men’s Serum Testosterone During the Fertility Phase of the Menstrual Cycle

The attractiveness of the human face may signal the genetic suitability of a mate. The ‘ovulatory shift hypothesis’ postulates that women in the fertile phase of the menstrual cycle prefer faces of masculine men that signal ‘good genes’, whereas in the non-fertile phase they prefer good parental providers. We studied relationships between serum total testosterone and face attractiveness of 77 healthy men (20-29 years, mean±SD 22.44±1.79) as rated by 19 healthy women (20-27 years, mean±SD 22.84±1.96) on day 13 of their menstrual cycle. Using advanced Bayesian multilevel modeling we showed that the attractiveness of faces is negatively associated with the concentration of serum testosterone in the men, even taking into account the concentration of serum estrogen in the raters. The average face composited from images of 39 faces rated above pool median attractiveness rate, was slightly narrower than the average face composited from 38 less attractive faces. Our results challenge the ‘ovulatory shift hypothesis’ as faces of males with higher circulating testosterone were rated as less attractive than faces of males with lower testosterone by women on the fertile phase of the cycle.