Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: http://hdl.handle.net/1893/35329
Appears in Collections:Psychology Journal Articles
Peer Review Status: Refereed
Title: No evidence that sociosexual orientation moderates effects of conception probability on women's preferences for male facial masculinity
Author(s): Lee, Anthony J.
Jones, Benedict C.
Zietsch, Brendan P.
Jern, Patrick
Connolly, Henry
Marcinkowska, Urszula M.
Contact Email: anthony.lee@stir.ac.uk
Keywords: Multidisciplinary
Issue Date: 23-Jun-2023
Date Deposited: 30-Jun-2023
Citation: Lee AJ, Jones BC, Zietsch BP, Jern P, Connolly H & Marcinkowska UM (2023) No evidence that sociosexual orientation moderates effects of conception probability on women’s preferences for male facial masculinity. <i>Scientific Reports</i>, 13 (1), Art. No.: 10245. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-37404-6
Abstract: Although many researchers have proposed that women will show stronger preferences for male facial masculinity when conception probability is high, empirical tests of this hypothesis have produced mixed results. One possible explanation for these inconsistent findings is that effects of conception probability on women’s preferences for facial masculinity are moderated by additional factors not typically considered in these empirical tests. One such potential moderator is individual differences in women’s openness to uncommitted sexual relationships (i.e., individual differences in women’s sociosexual orientation); women who are more open to uncommitted sexual relationships might show stronger positive effects of conception probability on masculinity preferences, as their sexuality is more overt and sexual attitudes and behaviours are more diversified. Consequently, we analysed data from three independent samples (N = 2304, N = 483, and N = 339) to assess whether sociosexual orientation moderates the hypothesised positive effect of conception probability on women’s facial masculinity preferences. Analyses showed no evidence that higher conception probability increased preferences for facial masculinity or that sociosexual orientation moderated the effect of conception probability on women’s preferences for facial masculinity. While it remains possible that factors other than sociosexual orientation moderate effects of conception probability on masculinity preferences, our null results suggest that the mixed results for the effects of conception probability on facial masculinity preferences in previous studies are unlikely to be a consequence of failing to consider the moderating role of sociosexual orientation.
DOI Link: 10.1038/s41598-023-37404-6
Rights: Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. Reprints and Permissions
Licence URL(s): http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

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