Survey

Gender: Male __ Female __ Other __ .

Sexual Orientation: Heterosexual __ Homosexual __ Other __.

1. Which face shape do you think looks the most like yours?

2. Which face shape most resembles your father's face shape?

3. Which face shape most resembles your mother's face shape?

4. Which face shape is the most attractive to you?

Outline
Introduction: (based on online research, and questions we want answered.. purpose of
research)

Background research: (genetic diversity, facial structure preferences) (articles which can relate
back to the research we are going to conduct)

Hypothesis: Whereas both males and females tend to prefer a partner with similar facial
structures as that of their own, males tend to lean toward facial structures that resemble their
mothers, and females lean toward facial structures that resemble that of their fathers.

Materials and methods:

- Online survey and printed copy
- Internet (Facebook, email, Twitter)
- In person
- Online image of the various facial structures

Precautions taken to avoid biased (relates to methods):

- Focused on facial structures specifically rather than any other facial
characteristics
- Anonymous survey
- Removed face structure labels
- Did not guide them through the survey

Results and graphs:

110 participants took the survey. (35 male, 75 female)
- Out of the 110 participants, 101 were heterosexual. The other 9 were either
homosexual, or identified as other. Overall, we are not able to input information that is
not from heterosexual individuals in our overall results.

Results for ( males tend to lean toward face structures that resemble their mothers, and females
lean towards face structures that resemble that of their fathers):
Out of the 101 eligible participants only 14 chose for the Which face shape is the most
attractive to you? question in the survey similar facial structures that resembled that of their
mothers/fathers.
Of 68 heterosexual females that completed our survey, we found that only 10 supported our
hypothesis. Likewise, of the 33 heterosexual males that participated, only 4 supported our
hypothesis.

The data we obtained refute all three of our hypotheses that both male and female
heterosexuals tend to prefer a partner with similar facial structures as that of their own, males
tend to prefer facial structures that resemble their mothers, and that females prefer facial
structures that resemble that of their fathers.

Graphs/Figures:
1. Did the participants preferences match their own? (y/n) 18 yes, 83 no
2. (for female..) did it match their fathers? (y/n) NO 10 yes, 58 no
3. (for male) did it match their mothers? (y/n) NO 4 yes, 29 no

Discussion & Future Research:

Discussion will summarize the findings of our experiment & related back to our hypothesis.
Future research options:
- More time to survey more people in order to obtain more accurate estimations
- More resources: access to more distinguishable facial structures to use as
examples
- These will help find more accurate results

Related articles to use :

Morrison, Edward R., Paul H. Morris, and Kim A. Bard. "The Stability Of Facial Attractiveness: Is It What
YouVe Got Or What You Do With It?". Journal of Nonverbal Behavior 37.2 (2013): 59-67. Web.

Zebrowitz, Leslie A. et al. "Looking Smart And Looking Good: Facial Cues To Intelligence And Their
Origins". Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 28.2 (2002): 238-249. Web.
 Lab report rough draft:

Heterosexual Attraction: Facial Structures

Johnny Diep, Adriana Equihua, Brandon Fujishima, Neyra Patricio

Biology 11 Honors, Rodriguez, Spring 2017

Pasadena City College

Background Research
 Human attraction is a very complicated subject when talked about in biological terms and
the reasoning behind it. The reasons humans are attracted to the opposite sex are more often
described as physical traits of the opposite sex in heterosexuals. Sexual selection is a form of
natural selection where individuals have a higher potential to attract mates which results in more
offspring. This is illustrated in the animal kingdom predominantly. For example, a peahen will
only mate with a peacock that shows his large and colorful feathers. Many male animals have
adornments like the peacocks feathers and their purpose is to upsurge their chances of
procreation with a female mate.
In humans, there are multiple studies on the subject of human attraction. One of them was
by Mr. Ed Morrison, Dr. Paul Morris, and Professor Kim Bard. Their experiment was called
The stability of facial attractiveness: is it what youve got or what you do with it? They formed
an experiment to test their hypothesis on human attraction. Per their hypothesis, if physical
attractiveness is suggested to be an indicator of good quality genes, it should be stable. However,
transient factors such as facial expression affect facial attractiveness, suggesting it is not stable.
They compared the relative importance of variation between faces with variation within faces
due to facial expressions (Morrison, Morris and Bard 59-67).
They used a pool of sixty-four male and sixty-four female participants with a mean age of
19.61 years. They were shown pictures one at a time in random order with a randomly chosen
expression. The pictures shown were of fourteen men and sixteen women models displaying
six basic emotional expressions including anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, surprise and a
neutral expression. The positive aspect of this particular experiment is that it was the first of its
kind to tie together relative strengths of attraction between faces (facial identity) and the
variation within faces attributable to emotional expression. The disadvantage of their experiment
was that the models photographed were actors, models, and students in their early twenties
which may be biased because they may be more attractive than the general population. It also
causes the experiment to hold less variation in attractiveness. They found that when judging
attractiveness, facial identity is much more important than emotional expression.
The study concluded that their hypothesis was incorrect, thus someone that is attractive
stays attractive regardless of facial expression. The purpose of our study is to test (add
whether) both males and females tend to prefer a partner with similar facial structures as that
of their own; (we hypothesize that) males tend to lean toward facial structures that resemble their
mothers , and females lean toward facial structures that resemble that of their fathers.

Materials and Methods

We gathered information from 101 participants (68 females, 33 males) via online survey.
We distributed the survey through different forms of social media, as well as through email and
text message. Our participants were both females and males. All participants were asked for their
sexual orientation; however, only data from heterosexual participants is eligible for this specific
study. The number of participants prior to the non heterosexual individuals being factored out
was 110 (75 females, 35 males). All participants were asked for their gender, sexual orientation,
as well as a variety of questions. Those questions asked participants to choose from an online
image of the various facial structures. They were required to select the facial structure which best
resembled their own, as well as which resembled that of their mothers and fathers, and lastly
what facial structure they found to be the most attractive.
Many precautions were taken to avoid a bias. Those who participated on the survey
remained anonymous other than their gender we have no other form of characterizing them.
Facial structure labels were removed from the images, therefore no participants were able to
choose a facial structure based on the face labeled circle, heart, oval shaped, etc. Another
precaution that was taken was we did not guide the participants through the survey. Each
participant took the survey on their own terms.

Results and Graphs

Figure 1:

Figure 1 depicts the substantial difference between the individuals preferred partners who had
similar facial structures to themselves. The vertical bars in figure 1 shows the proportions between those
who preferred a partner with a facial structure similar to their own. Yes represents the portion of the
population that prefer a partner with a similar facial structure to themselves. No represents the rest of
the surveyed population that do not prefer a partner with a similar facial structure. Of the 101
heterosexual participants, only 18 preferred a partner who had a facial structure similar to their own.

Figure 2:
 Figure 2 shows a noticeable difference in that heterosexual women who preferred a partner with
a facial structure equivalent to that of their father were the minority. The column Yes represents the
portion of the population that have a preference for a partner who shares the same facial structure of their
father, while the No column represents those who do not share the same preference. Of 69
heterosexual female participants only 10 preferred a partner with a similar facial structure to their father.

Figure 3:
 Figure 3 shows the difference between the heterosexual men who preferred a partner with a
facial structure similar to that of their mother and those who do not. Just like figure 1 and figure 2, Yes
represents the portion of males who preferred the facial structure of their mother in that of their partner,
while No represents those who do not have look for a partner who has the same facial structure as their
mother. Of the 33 heterosexual male participants, only 4 preferred a partner with a facial structure that
resembled their mothers.

Discussion & Future Research

Contrary to our predictions, the self-reflective survey yielded an unprecedented result:

only roughly 17.82% of the valid participant responses (18/101 heterosexual individuals)
indicated that the participants prefer a facial structure to that of their own. Moreover, the
following surveys revealed that only 13.79% of the male participants preferred a similar facial
structure to their mothers, with only 14.24% of the females following suit. Ultimately, the
evidence that was gathered collectively refuted our hypotheses. Considering our carefully
constructed experiment to eliminate bias to obtain fair evidence, the results yielded suggest that
the facial attraction element of mate choice is not correlated with individual likeness and
similarity to an individuals parent. Despite a small percentage of the participants indicating that
there is a preference based on those things, that proportion of data is too insignificant to conclude
otherwise.
 Our first hypothesis suggested that both sexes prefer a partner of the opposite sex to have
a similar facial structure to that of their own. The research team came to this assumption on the
basis of personal experience. The general consensus within the group was that we all noticed that
many heterosexual couples that we have encountered have similar facial qualities. There were
not any specific traits that we focused on, but we ruled that the members within the couple
generally look alike. During the initial brainstorming for this experiment, various articles were
discussed regarding mate choice, including how humans strive to find long term mates with
similar qualities that they themselves embody. After discussing previous academic findings
regarding the relationship between mate choice and parental attachment, we also speculated that
individuals might prefer facial structures similar to their parent of the opposite sex. Based on the
previous speculation and discussion of prior research, the team hypothesized that individuals
seek romantic partners that look similar to themselves and to their parent opposite sex.

Because the entirety of our predictions was incorrect, we can expand our research to
determine how humans conduct mate filtering in regards to facial attractiveness. Further
experimenting can be directed towards determining other factors that werent accounted for
when we analyzed facial attractiveness and preferences. We can take our current blueprints for
our experiment and further expand. By gathering the choices of both males and females
respectively, we can observe any trends of preferred faces/attributes from both sexes. Moreover,
the participants can be questioned for their specific desired traits as well (nose shape, eye width,
cheekbone height, etc.).

References:
Morrison, E. R., Morris, P. H., & Bard, K. A. (2013). The stability of facial attractiveness: Is it
what you've got or what you do with it? Journal of Nonverbal Behavior, 37(2), 59-67.
doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10919-013-0145-1