Australian scientists have found no evidence for the widespread hypothesis that beauty is an evolutionary trait of healthy genes. According to their research, beauty is more indicative of dominance than good health.
Beauty is “big business,” and whether you like it or not, our appearance affects the way we are treated, from how much we are cared for in early childhood to our success at a job interview.
It turns out that when we look more closely, beauty is rooted in our evolutionary history, and many studies indicate that traits we find attractive in others can be indicative of good health, which allows biologically justified choice of a mate for the birth of healthy and strong children.
However, recently, a group of Australian scientists, who decided to test this hypothesis, unexpectedly could not find a direct connection between these signs.
“If what we prefer attractive people is an evolutionary device that helps us find a strong and healthy mate, then health would have to imply reproductive success for humans. But our results did not provide any evidence that health increases reproductive success in humans,”wrote a team led by Gillian Rhodes, who has devoted much time to studying the value of beauty at the University of Western Australia in Perth.
Instead of health, according to the findings of scientists, especially when it comes to men, in the course of strong selective pressure in the fight for a partner, beauty began to signal which of them are the most dominant in the competition for women. Other scientists were skeptical about the findings of the new study, which we will return to later in this article.
The study itself was published in the Royal Society Open Science.
Promotional video:
Darwin put forward the theory of sexual selection
The study of beauty dates back to a theory called sexual selection, which was formulated by Charles Darwin in 1971, 12 years after his theory of evolution.
The theory solved the puzzle that plagued Darwin about how a peacock could have such a large tail. After all, he, apparently, does not perform any useful function, and besides, it makes the bird vulnerable to predators.
Darwin's thought was that the tail was a signal to the females that the male in front of them was so strong that he could have such a tail no matter what. Thus, the idea of mate choice and sexual selection was born as a powerful driving force of evolution.
Peacock at the Zoo "Fairy Tale" in Crimea
RIA Novosti, Sergey Malgavko
Oddly enough, Darwin did not consider that the human concept of beauty is evolutionarily determined, instead he associated it with our cultural traditions, and here the great biologist once made a mistake as an exception.
Sexual selection has been validated in studies of all living things - from spiders to mammals - and many of these studies have linked reproductive success to health.
Testosterone - the human peacock's tail
For humans, the most famous example is the masculine facial features of men, that is, a prominent chin, eyebrows and a beard, which indicate good health.
More specifically, masculine traits are associated with higher levels of the sex hormone testosterone, which is known to suppress immunity, among other things. And just as a strong and healthy peacock is able to wear a large tail, so a masculine face indicates a greater strength and health of an individual.
There are even separate studies that show that women find masculine faces especially attractive at the time of the menstrual cycle when the chance of conception is greatest.
The offspring is most important for evolution
There are other studies that lead to similar conclusions.
But Gillian Rhodes and her colleagues argue that the main proof that this is the case is just missing. More precisely, it was not possible to prove that the relationship between appearance and health also results in a larger number of children, which is the most important indicator for evolution.
To do this, Australian scientists collected data on the health status of university students and compared it with reproductive success - that is, that they are conducive to having children.
Measuring the attractiveness and health of students
The scientists took saliva and urine samples from 101 male and 80 female students to measure physiological signs of health. In saliva, they determined the instantaneous ability of the immune defense to fight bacteria, and in the urine they measured the level of cell damage, which is known to be associated with the risk of developing various diseases from arthritis to diabetes.
Male participants also donated sperm samples to determine their quality. The students were then asked to indicate how attractive they found the photos of the rest of the opposite sex on a scale from 1 to 9. Finally, all participants in the experiment were asked to fill out a questionnaire on when they had sexual debut and how many sexual relationships they had.
No link between health and reproductive success
The scientists used the answers to the questionnaire as a measure of reproductive success, that is, early debut and a large number of partners in relation to age was equated with high reproductive success.
Surprisingly, contrary to the hypothesis that beauty is a sign of good health, scientists have found no connection with physiological health and reproductive success.
Thus, the widely held hypothesis does not seem to hold water.
Skeptics among peers: a problematic study
However, other scientists are skeptical. “I think this is a problematic study. This is clearly not a "myth destroyer," says Professor Trine Bilde, who studies sexual selection at the Institute of Biological Sciences at the University of Aarhus.
She believes that these scientists forget about the first link in this chain from "beauty" (what we think is attractive), to the degree of human health and how high a person's reproductive success rate, considering only the relationship between the latter two.
Therefore, it is impossible to calculate the entire path in which the traits that we associate with the concept of beauty acquired a connection with reproductive success. The study did not convince Markus Rantala, an evolutionary biologist and assistant professor at the University of Turku in Finland, who studies the biological signals behind beauty.
“It is very challenging to measure reproductive success by asking questions about the number of partners, because we know from practical experience that most men greatly exaggerate this figure. So personally I doubt the results,”says Markus Rantala.
There was no way for academics to respond to criticism before the deadline, but in an article by Gillian Rhodes and colleagues, he admits that the questionnaire itself is not a reliable source.
However, they said other research suggests that similar answers can still be used to work with certain topics. In this case, only too extensive and long-term studies, including the genetic determination of paternity, could become an alternative.
Masculine facial features signal dominance more than health
Jillian Rhodes and her colleagues believe the study's findings are correct and point to another possible connection - at least when it comes to males.
Rather than suggest that masculine facial features are a sign of good health (since the body can handle high testosterone levels), scientists point out that testosterone (and thus masculinity) is associated with aggression and dominance. So perhaps masculine facial features are more about who is the most aggressive and dominant among competing males than about health.
Therefore, women's preferences are based on which man is more likely to become the dominant male than on who has the best health.
“This is an interesting alternative hypothesis that can clarify our views. But if we want to understand it in a modern context, we must understand that what we see each other as attractive resources must now be understood much more broadly,”says psychologist Asger Neumann, visiting lecturer at Aarhus University and partner of the HumanAct project, dedicated, among other things, to work with love relationships and relationships in couples.
The modern choice of a partner is based on many more aspects
Asger Neumann says that in terms of evolutionary history, both the aggression hypothesis and the beauty / health hypothesis are rooted in very different living conditions than those in which people live today.
In other words, evolutionary traits developed in other, much more primitive conditions, on the basis of which a simpler "resource image" was built, which implies obtaining various things, resisting diseases, obtaining food and building housing.
“What we consider each other's resources today covers much more than anything else. Now, for example, we include here creative and social resources that make a potential partner attractive,”says Asger Neumann.
“In this regard, physiological signs began to matter less and, perhaps, the results of the study reflect this. So we can say that the initial hypothesis is not wrong - it's just that it is much more difficult to fit it into the modern context, since there are many more different answers to how we signal our good resources."
Rasmus Kragh Jakobsen