Sexual Selection, Physical Attractiveness, and Facial Neoteny: Cross-cultural Evidence and Implications [and Comments and Reply] Author(s): Doug Jones, C. Loring Brace, William Jankowiak, Kevin N. Laland, Lisa E. Musselman, Judith H. Langlois, Lori A. Roggman, Daniel Pérusse, Barbara Schweder, Donald Symons Reviewed work(s): Source: Current Anthropology, Vol. 36, No. 5 (Dec., 1995), pp. 723-748 Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2744016 . Accessed: 09/12/2011 18:16 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. The University of Chicago Press and Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Current Anthropology. http://www.jstor.org CURRENT ANTHROPOLOGY Volume 36, Number 5, December I995 ? I995 byThe Wenner-GrenFoundation for Anthropological Research. All rightsreserved ooII-3204/95/36o5-0004$3.oo 1JZVO Wl VX V.LIs X11 \s1sX L.... %J1%S XS 11%11a W1l a%.1lAl At4 1Vb13 1 Five Populations"(Human Nature 4:27i-96) and authorof the forthcomingPhysical Attractiveness and the Theoryof Sexual Se- Sexual Selection, lection:Results from Five Populations(Ann Arbor: University of MichiganMuseum ofAnthropology, in press).The presentpaper was submittedI4 XI 94 and accepted2o I 95; the finalversion Physical reachedthe Editor'soffice 24 II 95. Attractiveness, The firstpublication by Darwin to discuss human evolu- and Facial Neoteny tion at length bears the double title "The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex" (i98I[i87i]) and consists of two works back to back. The firstwork dis- cusses human evolution and argues "that man is the Cross-culturalEvidence and modifieddescendant of some pre-existingform" (p. 9). The second presents the topic of sexual selection-a Implications formof natural selection resultingfrom "the advantage which certainindividuals have over otherindividuals of the same sex and species, in exclusive relationto repro- by Doug Jones duction" (p. 256). Darwin yoked human evolution and sexual selection togetherin a single volume because he believed that sexual selection had played a major role both in the descent of humans fromearlier forms and in the differentiationof human races. Physicalattractiveness and its relationto the theoryof sexual se- In the half-centuryafter Darwin publishedthis work, lectiondeserve renewed attention from cultural and biologicalan- thropologists.This paperfocuses on an anomalyassociated with a numberof authorstook up the topic ofphysical attrac- physicalattractiveness-in our species,in contrastto manyoth- tiveness across cultures. Many, such as Westermarck ers,males seem to be moreconcemed than females with the at- (i92i) and Ellis (i926), followed Darwin's lead in trying tractivenessof potential sexual partners,perhaps because hu- to relatethe developmentof standards of physical attrac- mans show farmore age-related variance in femalethan in male fecundity.The resultingselection for male attractionto markers tiveness in humans to the theoryof sexual selection. offemale youth may lead incidentallyto attractionto females Subsequently, however, the social sciences grew in- displayingage-related cues in an exaggeratedform. This paper creasinglydivorced from evolutionary theory and from reportscross-cultural evidence that males in fivepopulations the study of physical variation (Degler i99i). Almost 2o U.S. Americans, and (Brazilians, Russians,Ache, Hiwi) show an years ago, Berscheid and Walster (I974:i58) summarized attractionto femaleswith neotenous facial proportions (a combi- nationof large eyes, small noses,and fulllips) evenafter female the consequences of this divorcefor the studyof physi- age is controlledfor. Two furtherstudies show thatfemale mod- cal attractiveness:"Most social scientistshave shown a els have neotenouscephalofacial proportions relative to U.S. un- studied professional disinterest in . how our physical dergraduatesand thatdrawings of faces artificially transformed appearanceinfluence[s] our relationshipwith others." to make themmore or less neotenousare perceivedas corre- spondinglymore or less attractive.These resultssuggest several More recently,there has been a revival of interestin furtherlines ofinvestigation, including the relationshipbetween the topic of attractivenessand an explosion of social facialand bodilycues and the consequencesof attraction to neo- psychological research on the subject, demonstrating tenyfor morphological evolution. significantagreement across ratersin judgmentsof at- tractivenessand significantsocial consequences of at- DOUG JONES is VisitingScholar in Anthropologyat CornellUni- tractiveness.This literaturehas been surveyedat book versity(Ithaca, N.Y. I4853, U.S.A. [[email protected]]).Born in length by Patzer (i985), Hatfield and Sprecher(i986), i959, he was educated at Princeton University (B.A., i98i) and the University of Michigan (M.A., i989; Ph.D., I994). He has Bull and Rumsey (i988), and Jackson (i992). There is been conductingresearch on standardsof physical attractiveness also considerableethnographic material on standardsof in the UnitedStates, Paraguay, Brazil, and Russia since i989. He attractivenessin non-Westernsocieties, for example, Malinowski (i96i[i929]), Berndt (i95i), Weiner (I976), Gregor (i985), Boone (i986), Euba (i986), Munn (i986), i. I thankKim Hill ofthe University of New Mexicofor assistance Grinker (i990), and Jankowiak (I993). However, existing in collectingsome of the data reportedin this paperand Davic researchstill suffersfrom several limitations.First, the Buss,Conrad Kottak, and JohnMitani of the University of Michi. work of social is and de- gan,Carlos Alberto Caroso and Maria Hilda Paraisoof the Federa] psychologists heavilyempirical Universityof Bahia (Brazil),and BjarneForsterwald of the Puerta scriptive,with little in the way of theorythat would BarraMission (Paraguay) for help with different phases of the study explain why people findparticular features attractive or This researchwas supportedby NSF Doctoral DissertationRe. even why theyexperience physical attraction at all. Sec- searchImprovement Grant BNS-goo6394 and by grantsfrom the ond, culturalanthropologists have rarelymade research Universityof Michigan's Department of Anthropology and Evolu. tionand HumanBehavior Program. The Departmentof Anthropol. on standardsof attractivenessand theirconsequences a ogyat CornellUniversity provided access to libraryand computeJ major objectiveof fieldwork; the ethnographicliterature facilities. recordsfew if any attemptsto quantifyagreement be- 723 724 CURRENT ANTHROPOLOGY Volume 36, Number S, December I995 tween individuals about standardsof attractiveness,to the "new physical anthropology"of the I940S and 'sos, assess the social and life-historyconsequences of being and the neglect of sexual selection in the earlymodern perceived as attractiveor unattractive,or to compare synthesiswas inheritedby biological anthropology.Un- standards of attractivenessacross societies. Thus the til recently,relatively few serious quantitativestudies studyof attractivenessin the social sciences is underde- in physical anthropologypaid attentionto the possible veloped in importantrespects-undertheorized in psy- role of sexual selection in human evolution. Hulse's chology and both undertheorizedand underresearched (i967) studyof skin-colorvariation in modernJapan sug- in culturalanthropology. gested that sexual selection mightinfluence the evolu- In biological anthropologytoo, the topic of physical tion of this trait,and a numberof studies of assortative attractivenessand its possible evolutionarycauses and matingfor physical traits(Spuhler i968) suggestedhow consequences has been relativelyneglected. This neglect mating patternsmight influencegenotype frequencies. is partof a widerneglect of the theoryof sexual selection However, Hulse's work inspiredlittle comment or fol- in the field of evolutionarybiology between the I930S low-up, and the literatureon assortative mating was and the I970S-a period that West-Eberhard(i983:i56) largelysilent about the causes of the patternsobserved. calls "the ForgottenEra" of sexual selection theory(see Thus in spite of Darwin's argumentthat sexual selec- also Cronin i99i). In the I930S and '40s, evolutionary tion played a central role in human evolution,serious biologists formulatedthe "modern synthesis"-a syn- quantitativestudies of adaptationin physicalanthropol- thesis of Darwin's theoryof evolution and the new sci- ogy have focused overwhelminglyon adaptationto the ence of genetics. The pioneers of the modernsynthesis physical environment.Only recently,with the rise of had theirhands full investigatingadaptation to ecologi- human behavioral ecology,have anthropologistsbegun cal constraints.They were less concernedwith the evo- tryingto bringthe moderntheory of sexual selection to lution of social behaviorand had little use forDarwin's the studyof human evolution (Chagnonand Irons I979, theoryof sexual selection. Betzig,Turke, and