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The Putative Son’s Attractiveness Alters the Perceived Attractiveness of the Putative Father

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Abstract

A body of literature has investigated female mate choice in the pre-mating context (pre-mating sexual selection). Humans, however, are long-living mammals forming pair-bonds which sequentially produce offspring. Post-mating evaluations of a partner’s attractiveness may thus significantly influence the reproductive success of men and women. I tested herein the theory that the attractiveness of putative sons provides extra information about the genetic quality of fathers, thereby influencing fathers’ attractiveness across three studies. As predicted, facially attractive boys were more frequently attributed to attractive putative fathers and vice versa (Study 1). Furthermore, priming with an attractive putative son increased the attractiveness of the putative father with the reverse being true for unattractive putative sons. When putative fathers were presented as stepfathers, the effect of the boy’s attractiveness on the stepfather’s attractiveness was lower and less consistent (Study 2). This suggests that the presence of an attractive boy has the strongest effect on the perceived attractiveness of putative fathers rather than on non-fathers. The generalized effect of priming with beautiful non-human objects also exists, but its effect is much weaker compared with the effects of putative biological sons (Study 3). Overall, this study highlighted the importance of post-mating sexual selection in humans and suggests that the heritable attractive traits of men are also evaluated by females after mating and/or may be used by females in mate poaching.

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Acknowledgments

David Livingstone and Adam Pazda improved the English of the article. The Editor and two anonymous referees made insightful comments on earlier drafts of this article.

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  1. Department of Biology, Faculty of Education, Trnava University, Priemyselná 4, 918 43, Trnava, Slovakia

    Pavol Prokop

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Prokop, P. The Putative Son’s Attractiveness Alters the Perceived Attractiveness of the Putative Father. Arch Sex Behav 44, 1713–1721 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10508-015-0496-2

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