Individual differences in pathogen disgust predict men’s, but not women’s, preferences for facial cues of weight

Individual differences in pathogen disgust predict men’s, but not women’s, preferences for facial cues of weight
Claire I Fisher et al.;
6 August 2013; Article in Press
Individual und Personality Differences

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Facial adiposity is negatively associated with health.

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Men’s pathogen disgust correlated with preference for lower level of facial adiposity.

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Attraction to weight cues may help offset the costs of vulnerability to disease.

Abstract

Previous research suggests that people who score higher on measures of pathogen disgust demonstrate (1) stronger preferences for healthy individuals when assessing their facial attractiveness and (2) stronger negative attitudes about obese individuals. The relationship between pathogen disgust and attractiveness judgments of faces differing in cues of weight has yet to be investigated, however. Here we found that men’s, but not women’s, pathogen disgust was positively correlated with their preference for facial cues of lower weight. Moreover, this effect of pathogen disgust was independent of the possible effects of moral and sexual disgust. These data implicate pathogen disgust in individual differences in preferences for facial cues of weight, at least among men, and suggest that the sex-specific effects of pathogen disgust on preferences for facial cues of weight may be different to those previously reported for general negative attitudes about obese individuals.