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Cyclic variation in women’s preferences for masculine traits

Potential hormonal causes

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Abstract

Women’s preferences for several male traits, including voices, change over the menstrual cycle, but the proximate causes of these changes are unknown. This paper explores relationships between levels of estradiol, progesterone, luteinizing hormone, follicle stimulating hormone, prolactin, and testosterone (estimated using menstrual cycle information) and women’s preferences for male vocal masculinity in normally cycling and hormonally contracepting heterosexual females. Preferences for vocal masculinity decreased with predicted progesterone levels and increased with predicted prolactin levels in normally cycling—but not hormonally contracepting—women. Adaptive explanations for menstrual variation in women’s preferences for masculine traits are discussed and evaluated in light of these findings.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Neuroscience Program, Michigan State University, 108 Giltner Hall, 48824, East Lansing, MI

    David Andrew Puts

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  1. David Andrew Puts
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Correspondence to David Andrew Puts.

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David Puts received his doctorate in biological anthropology from the University of Pittsburgh in 2004 (under the name David Andrew Putz). He is interested in sexual selection and human sex differences; has written a textbook on human sexuality; and is currently a postdoctoral fellow in neuroscience in the laboratory of Marc Breedlove and Cynthia Jordan at Michigan State University researching the development of sex differences in the brain and behavior.

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Puts, D.A. Cyclic variation in women’s preferences for masculine traits. Hum Nat 17, 114–127 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12110-006-1023-x

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12110-006-1023-x

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