Citation

Li Y, Bailey DH, Winegard B, Puts DA, Welling LL, Geary DC. PLoS One 2014; 9(10): e110497.

Affiliation

Department of Psychological Sciences, University of Missouri, Columbia, Missouri, United States of America; Interdisciplinary Neuroscience Program, University of Missouri, Columbia, Missouri, United States of America.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2014, Public Library of Science)

DOI

10.1371/journal.pone.0110497

PMID

25314277

Abstract

Women's preferences for men's masculinized faces and voices were assessed after women (n = 331) were primed with images of male-on-male aggression, male-on-female aggression, pathogens, and neutral scenes. Male-on-male aggression and pathogen primes were associated with increased preference for masculine traits, but the same effect emerged in the neutral condition. We show the increased preference for masculine traits was due to repeated exposure to these traits, not the priming images themselves. Images of male-on-female aggression were an exception; these elicited feelings of disgust and anger appeared to disrupt the preference for masculinized traits. The results suggest women process men's facial and vocal traits as signals of aggressive potential and lose any preference for these traits with cues indicating men might direct this aggression toward them.

Language: en