Citation

Carré JM, McCormick CM. Proc. Biol. Sci. 2008; 275(1651): 2651-2656.

Affiliation

Department of Psychology, Brock University, 500 Glenridge Avenue, St Catharines, Ontario, Canada L2S 3A1.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2008, Royal Society of London)

DOI

10.1098/rspb.2008.0873

PMID

18713717

PMCID

PMC2570531

Abstract

Facial characteristics are an important basis for judgements about gender, emotion, personality, motivational states and behavioural dispositions. Based on a recent finding of a sexual dimorphism in facial metrics that is independent of body size, we conducted three studies to examine the extent to which individual differences in the facial width-to-height ratio were associated with trait dominance (using a questionnaire) and aggression during a behavioural task and in a naturalistic setting (varsity and professional ice hockey). In study 1, men had a larger facial width-to-height ratio, higher scores of trait dominance, and were more reactively aggressive compared with women. Individual differences in the facial width-to-height ratio predicted reactive aggression in men, but not in women (predicted 15% of variance). In studies 2 (male varsity hockey players) and 3 (male professional hockey players), individual differences in the facial width-to-height ratio were positively related to aggressive behaviour as measured by the number of penalty minutes per game obtained over a season (predicted 29 and 9% of the variance, respectively). Together, these findings suggest that the sexually dimorphic facial width-to-height ratio may be an 'honest signal' of propensity for aggressive behaviour.

Language: en