Dr Lynda Boothroyd

Lecturer, Department of Psychology, University of Durham

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Facial attraction
Father absence

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I am interested in the evolution and development of social behaviours. From the perspective of evolutionary psychology I want to discover more about the 'ultimate' reasons for our behaviours; what past selection pressures seem to have shaped our brains and our behaviours? From a developmental perspective I'm interested in understanding how these 'adaptations' become instantiated across development. The human brain is staggeringly complex and flexible and many of our behaviours are the result of our innate behavioural biases combining with our environment to produce our adult behaviours.

I'm interested in aspects of behaviour such as aggression, attraction and parenting, and in aspects of biology such as testosterone, the menstrual cycle and timing of puberty.

My two current main areas of research are in Facial Attraction and Father Absence.

Facial Attraction

I've been conducting rsearch into facial attraction since my undergraduate dissertation and my PhD was carried out in the PerceptionLab in St Andrews which has a worldwide reputation for facial perception research.

Key questions I am interested in are:
What are the adaptive (i.e. evolutionary) benefits to women in choosing a facially masculine man?
How does healthiness relate to male facial masculinity?
What are the sources of individual differences in attraction to various physical traits?
How do we learn what faces to be attracted to?

Recent research:

Judging sexual strategy from faces

A 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.

Percieved personality traits of masculine and healthy male faces

Research conducted both during my PhD in St Andrews, and since I came to Durham, published this month in Personality and Individual Differences shows that while women see facial masculinity as both a good and bad thing in male faces (old news!), they see facial health as unifomily a good thing.

Both male and female observers considered more masculine faces to be more dominant, but less likely to be committed to, and faithful in, a long term relationship. On the other hand, healthy faces were seen as both more dominant, ambitious and wealthy than, but also as better long term partners and parents than, less healthy faces.

The fact that people see the choice between masculine and feminine, and the choice between healthy and unhealthy, as two completely different choices in terms of what you're likely to get in your partner, helps to explain why women's preferences for masculinity do not seem to have anything to do with their preferences for healthiness (Boothroyd et al, 2005), despite the predictions of the Immunocompetence Hypothesis.

Attraction to Father's Facial Features

Research by myself and my co-workers, Agnieszka Wiszewska (who collected the data) and Bogus Pawlowski (her supervisor), which is appearing in Evolution & Human Behaviour has shown that women who report a good relationship with their fathers are more attracted to faces which have similar facial dimensions - particularly in the central region of the face.

Does this mean that Freud was right? Well no - according to Freud normal people should resolve their 'complexes' in childhood and stop feeling attracted to their parents before puberty. This research shows that we learn what is good in a face partly from the faces of men to whom we have a strong positive relationship. Further research may show whether this is just fathers or, for example, whether elder siblings may play a role.

Father absence

I am interested in the way that the presence or absence of a biological father from the family home during childhood relates to a woman's physical, behavioural and psychological outcomes in adolescance and adulthood. Father absence theory has been a subject of research for nearly three decades. Here is a brief guide to father absence theory.

Recent research:

Father-daughter relationships and physical attraction

It's been known for years that the presence or absence of a woman's biological father from the family home relates to her reproductive development - there is a tendancy for 'father absent' girls (those whose biological fathers do not live with them throughout their childhood) to reach puberty earlier than other girls. They also tend to enage in sexual relationships at an earlier age and are more at risk of teenaged pregnancies. Less was known, however, about who they had these relationships with - i.e. how might father absence relate to attraction?

This new study shows that the better a relationship a woman reports with her father, the more she's attracted to masculine men, and also suggests that women who experienced 'father absence' may prefer less masculine men than those who did not. Since masculine men are thought to be 'high quality' and harder to engage in a long term relationship, it may be that difficult or disrupted family relationships in childhood have an impact on a woman's sense of what she can 'compete' for. This would fit with our previous research into father absence and physical appearance.

Boothroyd, L.G. & Perrett, D.I. (2008) Journal of Evolutionary Psychology, 6, 187-205

Parental separation and facial appearance

On the 24th May, Proceedings of the Royal Society of London published a piece of my research investigating how family background (particularly parental separation) relates to physical development. You can find the abstract at the PRS website. I have written a summary of the paper in layman's terms, plus a 'What does this mean for me?' for those who have concerns about their own families.

Right now I am running a new study to try and investigate whether all the patterns we see relating parental divorce to physical development in daughters (timing of puberty in this case) is really a result of the divorce, or whether it's actually just genetic. Women who are interested should click here to help me with my research!