PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Benedict C Jones
AU  - Amanda C Hahn
AU  - Claire I Fisher
AU  - Hongyi Wang
AU  - Michal Kandrik
AU  - Junpeng Lao
AU  - Chengyang Han
AU  - Anthony J Lee
AU  - Iris J Holzleitner
AU  - Lisa M DeBruine
TI  - No evidence that more physically attractive women have higher estradiol or progesterone
AID  - 10.1101/136515
DP  - 2018 Jan 01
TA  - bioRxiv
PG  - 136515
4099  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2018/01/08/136515.short
4100  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2018/01/08/136515.full
AB  - Putative associations between sex hormones and attractive physical characteristics in women are central to many theories of human physical attractiveness and mate choice. Although such theories have become very influential, evidence that physically attractive and unattractive women have different hormonal profiles is equivocal. Consequently, we investigated hypothesized relationships between salivary estradiol and progesterone and two aspects of women’s physical attractiveness that are commonly assumed to be correlated with levels of these hormones: facial attractiveness (N=249) and waist-to-hip ratio (N=247). Our analyses revealed no evidence that women with more attractive faces or lower (i.e., more attractive) waist-to-hip ratios had higher levels of estradiol or progesterone. These results do not support the influential hypothesis that between-woman differences in physical attractiveness are related to estradiol and/or progesterone.