Testosterone And Attraction

Preferences for masculinity were strongest when women’s testosterone levels were relatively high. Our findings complement those from previous studies that show systematic variation in masculinity preferences during the menstrual cycle and suggest that change in testosterone level may play an important role in cyclic shifts in women’s preferences for masculine traits.

Welling, L. L. M., et al. “Raised salivary testosterone in women is associated with increased attraction to masculine faces.” Hormones and Behavior 52.2 (2007): 156-161.
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Men reported stronger attraction to femininity in women’s faces in test sessions where salivary testosterone was high than in test sessions where salivary testosterone was low. This effect was found to be specific to judgments of opposite-sex faces. The strength of men’s reported attraction to femininity in men’s faces did not differ between high and low testosterone test sessions, suggesting that the effect of testosterone that we observed for judgments of women’s faces was not due to a general response bias.

Welling, Lisa LM, et al. “Men report stronger attraction to femininity in women’s faces when their testosterone levels are high.” Hormones and Behavior 54.5 (2008): 703-708.
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Furthermore, men’s actual and perceived affinity for children predicted women’s long-term mate attractiveness judgments, while men’s testosterone and perceived masculinity predicted women’s short-term mate attractiveness judgments. These results suggest that women can detect facial cues of men’s hormone concentrations and affinity for children, and that women use perception of these cues to form mate attractiveness judgments.

Roney, James R., et al. “Reading men’s faces: women’s mate attractiveness judgments track men’s testosterone and interest in infants.” Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 273.1598 (2006): 2169-2175.
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Testosterone is thought to mediate a trade-off between paternal effort and mating effort, such that males investing monogamously have lower testosterone than those with multiple partners. This suggests that high-testosterone males may have a reproductive advantage over their low-testosterone counterparts via increased mating success. We tested 119 adult males to assess whether testosterone is associated with mating success, and rated masculinity and attractiveness. We found a significant positive correlation between testosterone and cumulative mating success. There was, however, no correlation between testosterone and rated masculinity or attractiveness. This study indicates that, although current levels of testosterone covary with male mating success, this effect may not be mediated by women’s preferences for visual cues to testosterone levels conveyed in static face or body features. If the testosterone–mating success link is driven by female choice, this effect may be behaviourally modulated, for example, through the augmentation of male mate seeking or courtship effort.

Peters, Marianne, Leigh W. Simmons, and Gillian Rhodes. “Testosterone is associated with mating success but not attractiveness or masculinity in human males.” Animal Behaviour 76.2 (2008): 297-303.