Beauty is in the eye of your friends - being-human - 17 January 2007 - New Scientist:
"It is a classic image: a group of young women sighing over the latest heartthrob. But do they all really share identical taste for, say, Brad Pitt, or that cute guy in physics class? A new study suggests that, in fact, women will look more favourably on the men that other women find attractive.
Female guppies, quail and finches tend to mate with males that look like the males they have seen other females paired with. Such “mate choice copying” can pay off. If it is difficult to choose the best mating material, or takes a lot of time and energy, it makes sense to go with what works for the other girls.
Yet although human mate selection suffers just such difficulties, there has been little evidence that women do this, until now.
Ben Jones at the University of Aberdeen in Scotland, and colleagues, showed 28 men and 28 women pairs of male faces and asked them to rate their attractiveness. The photos had been already been rated by 40 women as of about equal attractiveness."
"It is a classic image: a group of young women sighing over the latest heartthrob. But do they all really share identical taste for, say, Brad Pitt, or that cute guy in physics class? A new study suggests that, in fact, women will look more favourably on the men that other women find attractive.
Female guppies, quail and finches tend to mate with males that look like the males they have seen other females paired with. Such “mate choice copying” can pay off. If it is difficult to choose the best mating material, or takes a lot of time and energy, it makes sense to go with what works for the other girls.
Yet although human mate selection suffers just such difficulties, there has been little evidence that women do this, until now.
Ben Jones at the University of Aberdeen in Scotland, and colleagues, showed 28 men and 28 women pairs of male faces and asked them to rate their attractiveness. The photos had been already been rated by 40 women as of about equal attractiveness."
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