Journal
EVOLUTION AND HUMAN BEHAVIOR
Volume 31, Issue 3, Pages 193-200Publisher
ELSEVIER SCIENCE INC
DOI: 10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2009.09.008
Keywords
Attractiveness; Achuar; Quichua; Age preference; Coalitional bias
Ask authors/readers for more resources
This study investigated male attractiveness rankings in a small-scale Amazonian society. In the rural community of Conambo, Ecuador, men and women practice self-sufficient horticulture, men hunt, and, traditionally, men have experienced a high rate of mortality due to homicide. We tested whether male attractiveness rankings would be related to male age, warriorship, hunting ability, status, coalitional affiliation, and female age. Twenty-five women aged between 14 and 78 years ranked photographs of 29 local men aged between 16 and 74 years for attractiveness in addition to warriorship, hunting ability, and status. Results revealed that male age was negatively correlated (r=-.683, p=.01) with female rankings of male attractiveness. Warriorship (r=.517, p=.005), status (r=.489, p=.008), and hunting ability p=.001) were found to be positively correlated with attractiveness, after controlling for age. Additionally, females showed a bias for males in their in-group when ranking attractiveness (one-sample t test: T-29=16.727, p<.001). Attention is given to male age and coalitional affiliation as factors important in attractiveness rankings; warriorship and hunting ability also serve as ecologically salient features of male social worth. These findings contribute to a broader understanding of human attractiveness research by adding a new case study to the literature that documents previously unreported findings from a cultural context that is significantly different from the standard university-level student sample. (C) 2010 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available