Attractiveness, attraction, and sexual selection: Evolutionary perspectives on the form and function of physical attractiveness

Publisher Summary This chapter reviews recent empirical advances that in turn explain origin of attractiveness preferences. It discusses several evolutionary models of human social behavior and their predictions regarding the function of attractiveness. It also evaluates the ability of these models to account for recent findings in the attractiveness literature. Further, the chapter examines a number of questions and implications of the applications from an evolutionary perspective. The chapter concludes by addressing the potential criticisms of an evolutionary theory of physical attractiveness. Many social scientists believe that attractiveness lies in the eye of the beholder. However, consensus, which refers to the extent to which ratings of an individual's attractiveness provided by different judges converge, is typically assessed by examining whether different people rank order the attractiveness of a particular set of targets similarly. Three types of consensus include within-culture or within-ethnic consensus, within-culture or cross-ethnic consensus, and cross-cultural or cross-ethnic agreement.

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