Health perceptions are thought to play an important role in human mate preferences. Although many studies have investigated potential relationships between health ratings of faces and facial symmetry, prototypicality, and sexual dimorphism, findings have been mixed across studies. Consequently, we tested for potential relationships between health ratings of faces and the symmetry, prototypicality, and sexual dimorphism of those faces’ shapes. When these three shape characteristics were considered in separate regression models, we observed significant positive relationships between health ratings and both shape symmetry and prototypicality. By contrast, health ratings and sexual dimorphism were not significantly correlated in these analyses. However, in analyses in which symmetry, prototypicality, and sexual dimorphism were entered simultaneously as predictors in a single model, prototypicality, but not symmetry, was significantly correlated with health ratings. Moreover, sexual dimorphism predicted health ratings of female, but not male, faces in these analyses. Collectively, these results suggest that the relationship between symmetry and health ratings is, at least partly, driven by the effect of prototypicality on health perceptions and highlight the importance of considering multiple aspects of face shape when investigating factors that predict perceived health.

Social judgments of faces influence important social outcomes. Although many researchers have argued that facial masculinity plays a key role in perceptions of prosociality and dominance, whether these effects are consistent among people from different world regions is highly contentious. Consequently, we investigated possible relationships between masculinity and face ratings made by 11,484 participants from eleven world regions (Africa, Asia, Australia and New Zealand, Central America and Mexico, Eastern Europe, Middle East, Scandinavia, South America, United Kingdom, United States and Canada, Western Europe). Surprisingly, masculinity did not significantly predict perceived prosociality or dominance in any regions. By contrast, facial distinctiveness (i.e., atypicality) was significantly and negatively correlated with prosocial perceptions in all regions. Collectively, our results suggest that consensus in social judgments of faces among people from different world regions is driven by the effects of distinctiveness on prosocial perceptions (i.e., an “anomalous-is-bad” stereotype), rather than the effects of masculinity. This research was supported by ESRC grant ES/X000249/1 awarded to BCJ and University of Strathclyde Global Research Awards to KL and JD. For the purpose of Open Access, the authors have applied a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) to any Author Accepted Manuscript (AAM) version arising from this submission.

Competence ratings of faces predict important social outcomes, including hiring decisions. Here we investigated the role of the perceptual dimensions Valence and Dominance in competence ratings, along with the possibility that these relationships differ according to the type of role (i.e., employment context) for which competence is assessed. Analyses of ratings from >2500 participants showed that (1) Valence positively predicted competence ratings across a wide range of employment contexts, (2) Dominance positively predicted ratings of competence to run a large company, but negatively predicted ratings of competence for jobs requiring effective interaction with the public, and (3) neither Valence nor Dominance significantly predicted competence ratings for jobs requiring no social interaction with either colleagues or the public. These results suggest that mappings between competence ratings and Valence and Dominance can differ according to the type of interaction required for different employment contexts. Collectively, our results highlight previously unrecognised nuance in how people map facial dimensions to first impressions of competence and suggest that considering these context-sensitive mappings may improve the effectiveness of interventions aimed at reducing appearance-based biases in hiring decisions. This research was supported by ESRC grant ES/X000249/1 awarded to BCJ. For the purpose of Open Access, the authors have applied a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) to any Author Accepted Manuscript (AAM) version arising from this submission.

Previously documented sexual response patterns of gender-specificity among gynephilic men and gender-nonspecificity among gynephilic women could be explained by women responding more strongly to non-gendered aspects of sexual stimuli. Cues of attractiveness are known determinants of sexual decision-making, yet have not been directly tested as determinants of sexual response. The current study investigated the role of attractiveness cues in explaining gender-based patterns of sexual response. Thirty-one gynephilic men and 60 androphilic women were presented slideshows of images depicting individual nude men and women that were pre-rated in a pilot study as either attractive or unattractive. The men and women were posed with legs spread and aroused genitals displayed prominently. Images were isolated against a white background and included minimal contextual information. Three sexual responses - genital arousal (via photoplethysmographs), self-reported arousal, and visual attention (via eye-tracking) - were recorded continuously. Across all three response modalities, men's and women's responses were stronger for the attractive versus unattractive images and for their preferred versus non-preferred gender. For men's arousal and women's self-reported arousal, the effect of attractiveness was stronger for their preferred versus non-preferred gender. Thus, both men and women demonstrated preference-specific patterns of sexual response. Gender cues had the strongest effect on men's visual attention, whereas attractiveness cues had the strongest effect on women's visual attention. Findings establish the importance of target attractiveness in arousal to sexual stimuli and add to mounting evidence that androphilic women's sexual responses are sensitive to gender, but may be more sensitive to non-gendered features of sexual stimuli.

'Big team' science challenges researchers to revisit three issues around authorship: (1) how to define authorship-worthy contributions, (2) how contributions should be documented and (3) how disagreements among large teams of coauthors should be handled. We propose steps that the community can take to resolve these issues.

Using a single pair or a small number of pairs of composite stimuli to assess the relationship between morphology and other traits is a common method in face research. Here, I use data simulation to demonstrate how this method inevitably leads to a high false positive rate, and how this problem is made worse by using a larger number of raters. I conclude by suggesting alter- native methods for assessing the relationship between face morphology and individual traits.

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Psychological Science Accelerator coordinated three large-scale psychological studies to examine the effects of loss-gain framing, cognitive reappraisals, and autonomy framing manipulations on behavioral intentions and affective measures. The data collected (April to October 2020) included specific measures for each experimental study, a general questionnaire examining health prevention behaviors and COVID-19 experience, geographical and cultural context characterization, and demographic information for each participant. Each participant started the study with the same general questions and then was randomized to complete either one longer experiment or two shorter experiments. Data were provided by 73,223 participants with varying completion rates. Participants completed the survey from 111 geopolitical regions in 44 unique languages/dialects. The anonymized dataset described here is provided in both raw and processed formats to facilitate re-use and further analyses. The dataset offers secondary analytic opportunities to explore coping, framing, and self-determination across a diverse, global sample obtained at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, which can be merged with other time-sampled or geographic data.

Perceptions of the trustworthiness of faces predict important social outcomes, including economic exchange and criminal sentencing decisions. However, the specific facial characteristics that drive trustworthiness perceptions remain poorly understood. Here we investigated this issue by exploring possible relationships between ratings of the trustworthiness of face images and objective assessments of two aspects of face shape that researchers have previously argued are important for perceptions of trustworthiness: distinctiveness and sexual dimorphism. Here we report that faces with more distinctive shapes are rated as less trustworthy, but that sexual dimorphism of face shape is not significantly correlated with trustworthiness ratings. These results suggest that distinctiveness of face shape plays a more important role in trustworthiness perceptions than does sexual dimorphism and suggest that perceptions of trustworthiness may stem, at least in part, from the ‘anomalous-is-bad’ stereotype.

Salivary steroid immunoassays are widely used in psychoneuroendocrinological studies of menstrual cycle phase, puberty, and menopause. Though manufacturers advertise their assays as suitable, they have not been rigorously validated for these purposes. We collated data from eight menstrual cycle studies across > 1200 female participants and > 9500 time points. Seven studies collected saliva and one collected serum. All assayed estradiol and progesterone and had an independent measure of cycle phase (LH-surge, menstrual onset). In serum, cycle phase measures strongly predicted steroid concentrations. In saliva, cycle phase poorly predicted estradiol values, which showed an upward bias compared to expectations from serum. For salivary progesterone, predictability from cycle phase was mixed, low for enzyme-linked assays and moderate for tandem mass spectrometry. Imputing the population-average serum steroid changes from cycle phase may yield more valid values of hormonal changes for an independent person than directly assessing their hormone levels using salivary immunoassays.

While most studies on sexuality in later life report that sexual desire declines with age, little is known about the exact nature of age effects on sexual desire. Using self-reported dyadic sexual desire relating to a partner, dyadic sexual desire relating to an attractive person, and solitary sexual desire from a large (N > 8000) and age-diverse (14.6 - 80.2 years) online sample, the current study had three goals: First, we investigated relationships between men and women’s sexual desire and age. Second, we examined whether individual differences such as gender/sex, sexual orientation, self-rated masculinity, relationship status, self-rated attractiveness, and self-rated health predict sexual desire. Third, we examined how these associations differed across sexual desire facets. On average, the associations between age and both men and women’s sexual desire followed non-linear trends and differed between genders/sexes and types of sexual desire. Average levels of all types of sexual desire were generally higher in men. Dyadic sexual desire related positively to self-rated masculinity and having a romantic partner and solitary desire was higher in people with same-sex attraction. We discuss the results in the context of the evolutionary hypothesis that predict an increase of sexual desire and female reproductive effort prior to declining fertility. Our findings both support and challenge beliefs about gender/sex specificity of age effects on sexual desire and highlight the importance of differentiating between desire types.

Mate preferences and mating-related behaviors are hypothesized to change over the menstrual cycle in ways that function to increase reproductive fitness. Results of recent large-scale studies suggest that many of these hormone-linked behavioral changes are less robust than was previously thought. One specific hypothesis that has not yet been subject to a large-scale test is the proposal that women’s preference for associating with male kin is down-regulated during the ovulatory (high-fertility) phase of the menstrual cycle. Consequently, we used a longitudinal design to investigate the relationship between changes in women’s steroid hormone levels and their perceptions of faces experimentally manipulated to possess kinship cues (Study 1). Analyses suggested that women viewed men’s faces displaying kinship cues more positively (i.e., more attractive and trustworthy) when estradiol-to-progesterone ratio was high. Since estradiol-to-progesterone ratio is positively associated with conception risk during the menstrual cycle, these results directly contradict the hypothesis that women’s preference for associating with male kin is down-regulated during the ovulatory (high-fertility) phase of the menstrual cycle. Study 2 employed a daily diary approach and found no evidence that women reported spending less time in the company of male kin or thought about male kin less often during the fertile phase of the menstrual cycle. Thus, neither study found evidence that inbreeding avoidance is up-regulated during the ovulatory phase of the menstrual cycle.

In addition to benefiting reproducibility and transparency, one of the advantages of using R is that researchers have a much larger range of fully customizable data visualizations options than are typically available in point-and-click software because of the open-source nature of R. These visualization options not only look attractive but also can increase transparency about the distribution of the underlying data rather than relying on commonly used visualizations of aggregations, such as bar charts of means. In this tutorial, we provide a practical introduction to data visualization using R specifically aimed at researchers who have little to no prior experience of using R. First, we detail the rationale for using R for data visualization and introduce the "grammar of graphics" that underlies data visualization using the ggplot package. The tutorial then walks the reader through how to replicate plots that are commonly available in point-and-click software, such as histograms and box plots, and shows how the code for these "basic" plots can be easily extended to less commonly available options, such as violin box plots. The data set and code used in this tutorial and an interactive version with activity solutions, additional resources, and advanced plotting options are available at https://osf.io/bj83f/.

Over the past decade, a small literature has tested how trait-level pathogen avoidance motives (e.g., disgust sensitivity) and exposure to pathogen cues relate to preferences for facial symmetry and sexual dimorphism. Results have largely been interpreted as suggesting that the behavioral immune system influences preferences for these features in potential mates. However, findings are limited by small sample sizes among studies reporting supportive evidence, the use of small stimulus sets to assess preferences for symmetry and dimorphism, and design features that render implications for theory ambiguous (namely, largely only investigating women’s preferences for male faces). The current registered report used the standard two-alternative forced-choice approach to evaluate both men’s and women’s preferences for both facial symmetry and dimorphism in both same- and opposite-sex targets in a sample of 954 UK Caucasian participants and a pool of 100 young adult Caucasian stimuli. Participants were randomly assigned to either a pathogen prime or a control prime, and they completed instruments assessing individual differences in pathogen avoidance (disgust sensitivity and contamination sensitivity). Results revealed overall preferences for both facial symmetry and dimorphism. However, they did not reveal a relation between these preferences and disgust sensitivity or contamination sensitivity, nor did they reveal differences in these preferences across control and pathogen prime conditions. Null results of pathogen-avoidance variables were consistent across participant sex, target sex, and interactions between participant sex and target sex. Overall, findings cast doubt on the hypothesis that pathogen-avoidance motives influence preferences for facial symmetry or dimorphism.

Many initiatives to improve reproducibility incentivise replication and encourage greater transparency without directly addressing the underlying skills needed for transparent and reproducible data preparation and analysis. In this paper, we argue that training in data processing and transformation should be embedded in field-specific research methods curricula. Promoting reproducibility and open science requires not only teaching relevant values and practices, but also providing the skills needed for reproducible data analysis. Improving students’ data skills will also enhance their employability within and beyond the academic context. To demonstrate the necessity of these skills, we walk through the analysis of realistic data from a classic paradigm in experimental psychology that is often used in teaching: the Stroop Interference Task. When starting from realistic raw data, nearly 80% of the data analytic effort for this task involves skills not commonly taught—namely, importing, manipulating, and transforming tabular data. Data processing and transformation is a large and inescapable part of data analysis, and so education should strive to make the work associated with it as efficient, transparent, and reproducible as possible. We conclude by considering the challenges of embedding computational data skills training in undergraduate programmes and offer some solutions.

Face stimuli are commonly created in ways that are not explained well enough for others to reproduce them. In this paper, we document the irreproducibility of most face stimuli, explain the benefits of reproducible stimuli, and introduce the open-source R package webmorphR that facilitates scriptable face image processing. We explain the technical processes of morphing and transforming through a case study of creating face stimuli from an open-access image set. Finally, we discuss some ethical and methodological issues around the use of face images in research that may be ameliorated through the use of reproducible stimuli.

Science is often perceived to be a self-correcting enterprise. In principle, the assessment of scientific claims is supposed to proceed in a cumulative fashion, with the reigning theories of the day progressively approximating truth more accurately over time. In practice, however, cumulative self-correction tends to proceed less efficiently than one might naively suppose. Far from evaluating new evidence dispassionately and infallibly, individual scientists often cling stubbornly to prior findings. Here we explore the dynamics of scientific self-correction at an individual rather than collective level. In 13 written statements, researchers from diverse branches of psychology share why and how they have lost confidence in one of their own published findings. We qualitatively characterize these disclosures and explore their implications. A cross-disciplinary survey suggests that such loss-of-confidence sentiments are surprisingly common among members of the broader scientific population yet rarely become part of the public record. We argue that removing barriers to self-correction at the individual level is imperative if the scientific community as a whole is to achieve the ideal of efficient self-correction.

Research on links between peoples’ personality traits and their voices has primarily focused on other peoples’ personality judgments about a target person based on a target person’s vocal characteristics, particularly voice pitch. However, it remains unclear whether individual differences in voices are linked to actual individual differences in personality traits, and thus whether vocal characteristics are indeed valid cues to personality. Here, we investigate how the personality traits of the Five Factor Model of Personality, sociosexuality, and dominance are related to measured fundamental frequency (voice pitch) and formant frequencies (formant position). For this purpose, we conducted a secondary data analysis of a large sample (2217 participants) from eleven different, independent datasets with a Bayesian approach. Results suggest substantial negative relationships between voice pitch and self-reported sociosexuality, dominance and extraversion in men and women. Thus, personality might at least partly be expressed in people’s voice pitch. Evidence for an association between formant frequencies and self-reported personality traits is not compelling but remains uncertain. We discuss potential underlying biological mechanisms of our effects and suggest a number of implications for future research.

Trade-off theories of women’s masculinity preferences propose that women’s masculinity preferences vary according to the probability of reproduction. Consistent with the proposal that preferences for masculine men are stronger when probability of reproduction is higher, previous research reported that heterosexual women show stronger preferences for images of male faces displaying masculine shape characteristics than do homosexual women (Glassenberg et al., 2010). However, many reported findings for individual differences in women’s masculinity preferences have not been replicated in subsequent studies. Consequently, we carried out a direct replication of Glassenberg et al’s (2010) comparison of heterosexual and homosexual women’s preferences for sexually dimorphic face-shape characteristics. Replicating the results from Glassenberg et al. (2010), we found that heterosexual women (N = 20,360) showed stronger preferences for masculine men that did homosexual women (N = 1598). This finding is consistent with the proposal that women’s preferences for masculine men are stronger when the probability of reproduction is higher, presenting further evidence for trade-off theories of women’s masculinity preferences.

Over the past 10 years, Oosterhof and Todorov’s valence–dominance model has emerged as the most prominent account of how people evaluate faces on social dimensions. In this model, two dimensions (valence and dominance) underpin social judgements of faces. Because this model has primarily been developed and tested in Western regions, it is unclear whether these findings apply to other regions. We addressed this question by replicating Oosterhof and Todorov’s methodology across 11 world regions, 41 countries and 11,570 participants. When we used Oosterhof and Todorov’s original analysis strategy, the valence–dominance model generalized across regions. When we used an alternative methodology to allow for correlated dimensions, we observed much less generalization. Collectively, these results suggest that, while the valence–dominance model generalizes very well across regions when dimensions are forced to be orthogonal, regional differences are revealed when we use different extraction methods and correlate and rotate the dimension reduction solution. The stage 1 protocol for this Registered Report was accepted in principle on 5 November 2018. The protocol, as accepted by the journal, can be found at https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.7611443.v1 . Jones et al. examine the generalizability of the valence–dominance model of social judgements of faces in 41 countries across 11 world regions. They find evidence of both generalizability and variation, depending on the analytical method.