Dr Lynda Boothroyd
Lecturer, Department of Psychology, University of DurhamOnline research
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TeachingOffice Hours: Durham Office: Room 77, Tuesdays 2-3Queen's Campus Office: Room D333, Mondays 2-3 Courses: Introduction to Social & Developmental Psychology (PSYS1021) Social & Developmental Psychology (PSYC2021) Abnormal & Social Psychology (PSYS2111) The Evolution of Human Behaviour (PSYC3141) Take Part in Research - Rate Some Faces! |
 Durham Campus Office: Room 77, Tel 0191 334 3289 Queen's Campus Office: Room D333, Tel 0191 334 0107 |
Current research news:Judging sexual strategy from facesA research paper currently published in Evolution and Human Behavior shows that we may be subtly aware of other people’s attitudes to sex. Three groups of undergraduate students were photographed and completed a questionnaire called the sociosexual orientation inventory (SOI) which asks about past sexual behaviour (e.g. number of one night stands) and current attitudes – such as "is sex without love okay"? Observers were then shown either real individuals faces or ‘average’ images of faces, and it seemed that across the studies, observers were often able to distinguish between those who scored low on the SOI (and thus are not generally keen on casual sex) and those with high scores (who tend to have had more partners and be more comfortable with uncommitted sex).However, what is far more interesting, is that despite the subtlety of the explicit awareness of who-thinks/does-what, there is a very strong tendency for women to be attracted to men who score low on the SOI – i.e. men who are less interested in casual sex. Men have the opposite preference with female faces; they strongly prefer the ‘high SOI’ women. In fact, even other women thought that high SOI females were more attractive. Furthermore, high SOI men were also viewed as looking more masculine. This backs up previous work which showed that more masculine men were perceived as being less likely to commit to a long term relationship; now we can see that men who are less likely to be in a long term relationship (although the questionnaire doesn’t actually ask about that) also look more masculine. These convergent lines of evidence support the idea that part of the variation in women’s preferences for male masculinity is due to the negative connotations it has for long term partnerships. |
