I just noticed this while doing my usual, random scrolling through Google Scholar. Basically, for those of you who don't know, in studies of human attractiveness, there are two competing hypotheses of how three measures of human attractiveness (face, voice and body odour) relate to each other. According to the backup signals hypothesis, the three are linked, meaning that people with attractive faces are also more likely to have attractive voices and body odour, and so on, while according to the multiple messages hypothesis, the three are independent of each other.
Well, I just noticed this, but when you look closer at it, there's much more stuff supporting the backup signals hypothesis for women than it is men.
For example, here's a recent study from this year which flat-out found this to be only true for women, while men's faces, voices and body odours were independent of each other:
A test of multimodal communication in humans using 881 judgements of men and women’s physical, vocal, and olfactory attractiveness
Compare this recent study with one from 2005, which already cited a lot of other studies, all supporting the hypothesis that women's faces, voices and body odours are linked and reflect each other:
The voice and face of woman: One ornament that signals quality?
Of course, there's also research supporting the same for men, and a lot of research rejecting the backup signals hypothesis entirely. Such as this metastudy, also from this year, which proved the backup signals hypothesis for both sexes, but decided that since the correlations were very weak, that it actually somehow refuted it and supported the multiple messages hypothesis instead
:
Cross-modal associations of human body odour attractiveness with facial and vocal attractiveness provide little support for the backup signals hypothesis: A systematic review and meta-analysis
Nevertheless, and while admittedly as a simple result of researchers studying female beauty more, in pure quantity, there's a lot more research claiming that all forms of female attractiveness are interconnected.
So, what does that mean? That means that men have a much better excuse for being shallow and picky. If men see some ugly woman on the street, they are more justified in immediately making the jump to thinking that she must also smell and sound bad, along with looking bad, than a woman would be in a reverse situation. Similarly, again, purely by the quantity of research supporting this, men have much more of an excuse to not want to have children with an ugly woman, as since she probably also smells and sounds bad and there's a genetic basis for it, there's a chance her children will inherit all of that as well, while for ugly men, their voices and odours are more likely to be normal and not have a genetic basis for being what they are, so there's no reason for them to think that their children will be universally ugly.
Well, I just noticed this, but when you look closer at it, there's much more stuff supporting the backup signals hypothesis for women than it is men.
For example, here's a recent study from this year which flat-out found this to be only true for women, while men's faces, voices and body odours were independent of each other:
A test of multimodal communication in humans using 881 judgements of men and women’s physical, vocal, and olfactory attractiveness
Compare this recent study with one from 2005, which already cited a lot of other studies, all supporting the hypothesis that women's faces, voices and body odours are linked and reflect each other:
The voice and face of woman: One ornament that signals quality?
Of course, there's also research supporting the same for men, and a lot of research rejecting the backup signals hypothesis entirely. Such as this metastudy, also from this year, which proved the backup signals hypothesis for both sexes, but decided that since the correlations were very weak, that it actually somehow refuted it and supported the multiple messages hypothesis instead
:Cross-modal associations of human body odour attractiveness with facial and vocal attractiveness provide little support for the backup signals hypothesis: A systematic review and meta-analysis
Nevertheless, and while admittedly as a simple result of researchers studying female beauty more, in pure quantity, there's a lot more research claiming that all forms of female attractiveness are interconnected.
So, what does that mean? That means that men have a much better excuse for being shallow and picky. If men see some ugly woman on the street, they are more justified in immediately making the jump to thinking that she must also smell and sound bad, along with looking bad, than a woman would be in a reverse situation. Similarly, again, purely by the quantity of research supporting this, men have much more of an excuse to not want to have children with an ugly woman, as since she probably also smells and sounds bad and there's a genetic basis for it, there's a chance her children will inherit all of that as well, while for ugly men, their voices and odours are more likely to be normal and not have a genetic basis for being what they are, so there's no reason for them to think that their children will be universally ugly.
