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Facial masculinity is only weakly correlated with handgrip strength in young adult women

Amanda C Hahn, View ORCID ProfileIris J Holzleitner, View ORCID ProfileAnthony J Lee, View ORCID ProfileMichal Kandrik, View ORCID ProfileKieran J O’Shea, View ORCID ProfileLisa M DeBruine, Benedict C Jones
doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/425017
Amanda C Hahn
1Department of Psychology, Humboldt State University, Behavioral and Social Science Building, 1 Harpst Street, Arcata, CA 95521, USA
2Institute of Neuroscience & Psychology, University of Glasgow, 58 Hillhead Street, Glasgow, G12 8QB, Scotland, UK
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Iris J Holzleitner
2Institute of Neuroscience & Psychology, University of Glasgow, 58 Hillhead Street, Glasgow, G12 8QB, Scotland, UK
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Anthony J Lee
2Institute of Neuroscience & Psychology, University of Glasgow, 58 Hillhead Street, Glasgow, G12 8QB, Scotland, UK
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Michal Kandrik
2Institute of Neuroscience & Psychology, University of Glasgow, 58 Hillhead Street, Glasgow, G12 8QB, Scotland, UK
3Institute for Brain and Behaviour Amsterdam, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, V.d. Boechorststraat 1-3, Room TR 1B-21, 1081BT Amsterdam, Netherland
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Kieran J O’Shea
2Institute of Neuroscience & Psychology, University of Glasgow, 58 Hillhead Street, Glasgow, G12 8QB, Scotland, UK
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Lisa M DeBruine
2Institute of Neuroscience & Psychology, University of Glasgow, 58 Hillhead Street, Glasgow, G12 8QB, Scotland, UK
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Benedict C Jones
2Institute of Neuroscience & Psychology, University of Glasgow, 58 Hillhead Street, Glasgow, G12 8QB, Scotland, UK
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Abstract

Objectives Ancestrally, strength is likely to have played a critical role in determining the ability to obtain and retain resources and the allocation of social status among humans. Responses to facial cues of strength are therefore thought to play an important role in human social interaction. Although many researchers have proposed that sexually dimorphic facial morphology is reliably correlated with physical strength, evidence for this hypothesis is somewhat mixed. Moreover, to date, only one study has investigated the putative relationship between facial masculinity and physical strength in women. Consequently, we tested for correlations between handgrip strength and objective measures of face-shape masculinity.

Methods 531 women took part in the study. We measured each participant’s handgrip strength (dominant hand). Sexual dimorphism of face shape was objectively measured from each face photograph using two methods: discriminant analysis and vector analysis. These methods use shape components derived from principal component analyses of facial landmarks to measure the probability of the face being classified as male (discriminant analysis method) or to locate the face on a female-male continuum (vector analysis method).

Results Our analyses revealed that handgrip strength is, at best, only weakly correlated with facial masculinity in women. There was a weak significant association between handgrip strength and one measure of women’s facial masculinity. The relationship between handgrip strength and our other measure of women’s facial masculinity was not significant.

Discussion Together, these results do not support the hypothesis that face-shape masculinity is an important cue of physical strength, at least in women.

Footnotes

  • Data and analysis code are available at https://osf.io/98qf4/ and https://osf.io/chz2n/

  • This project was funded by ERC grants to BCJ (OCMATE) and LMD (KINSHIP)

Copyright 
The copyright holder for this preprint is the author/funder, who has granted bioRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. It is made available under a CC-BY 4.0 International license.
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Posted September 24, 2018.
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Facial masculinity is only weakly correlated with handgrip strength in young adult women
Amanda C Hahn, Iris J Holzleitner, Anthony J Lee, Michal Kandrik, Kieran J O’Shea, Lisa M DeBruine, Benedict C Jones
bioRxiv 425017; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/425017
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Facial masculinity is only weakly correlated with handgrip strength in young adult women
Amanda C Hahn, Iris J Holzleitner, Anthony J Lee, Michal Kandrik, Kieran J O’Shea, Lisa M DeBruine, Benedict C Jones
bioRxiv 425017; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/425017

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