Does the face reveal athletic flair?: Positions in team sports and facial attractiveness

J.H. Park; Abraham (Bram) Buunk; M. Wieling

doi:10.1016/j.paid.2007.05.020

Does the face reveal athletic flair? Positions in team sports and facial attractiveness

J.H. Park, Abraham (Bram) Buunk, M. Wieling

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › Academic › peer-review

12 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Athleticism is sexually attractive, indicating that it may serve as a sign of heritable fitness. We hypothesized that just as some sports may more honestly signal fitness than other sports, some positions within team sports may more honestly signal fitness than other positions, because success in such positions depends more strongly on traits associated with heritable fitness (e.g., agility, spontaneity, creativity). We conducted two studies in which women rated facial photographs of male soccer players and ice hockey players, and we found that the. faces of goalkeepers/goalies and strikers/forwards were rated to be more attractive than the faces of their team mates. These results suggest that heritable fitness may influence athletes' choice of (or assignment to) positions, and they generate a number of questions for additional research. (c) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	1960-1965
Number of pages	6
Journal	Personality and Individual Differences
Volume	43
Issue number	7
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2007.05.020
Publication status	Published - Nov-2007

Keywords

athleticism
facial attractiveness
ice hockey
sexual selection
soccer
team sport positions
WOMENS PREFERENCES
HERITABILITY
SYMMETRY
TESTOSTERONE
HUMANS
TWINS
MEN

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Does the face reveal athletic flair Positions in team sports and facial attractiveness
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title = "Does the face reveal athletic flair?: Positions in team sports and facial attractiveness",

abstract = "Athleticism is sexually attractive, indicating that it may serve as a sign of heritable fitness. We hypothesized that just as some sports may more honestly signal fitness than other sports, some positions within team sports may more honestly signal fitness than other positions, because success in such positions depends more strongly on traits associated with heritable fitness (e.g., agility, spontaneity, creativity). We conducted two studies in which women rated facial photographs of male soccer players and ice hockey players, and we found that the. faces of goalkeepers/goalies and strikers/forwards were rated to be more attractive than the faces of their team mates. These results suggest that heritable fitness may influence athletes' choice of (or assignment to) positions, and they generate a number of questions for additional research. (c) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.",

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