Abstract
Recent studies investigating the relationship between sexual desire and sexual attraction have found that heterosexual women's reported sexual desire is positively correlated with their reported attraction to both own- and opposite-sex individuals, but that heterosexual men's reported sexual desire is positively correlated with their reported attraction to opposite-sex individuals only. These findings have led to the proposal that sexual desire is a generalized energizer of sexual attraction in heterosexual women (i.e., influences women's attraction to both men and women), but only energizes heterosexual men's sexual attraction to women. Here we show that heterosexual men's scores on the Sexual Desire Inventory-2 were positively correlated with their preferences for exaggerated sex-typical shape cues in opposite-sex, but not own-sex, faces. Together with previous research showing that heterosexual women's reported sexual desire is positively correlated with their preferences for exaggerated sex-typical shape cues in both own- and opposite-sex faces, our findings present novel converging evidence for sex-specific relationships between sexual desire and attractiveness judgments of own- and opposite-sex individuals.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 1281-1285 |
| Number of pages | 5 |
| Journal | Archives of Sexual Behavior |
| Volume | 40 |
| Issue number | 6 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - Dec 2011 |
Keywords
- Attraction
- Face perception
- Mate choice
- Sex drive
- Sexual desire
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- General Psychology
- Arts and Humanities (miscellaneous)