Dr. Iris Holzleitner's Outputs (35)

Preferences for facial femininity/masculinity across culture and the sexual orientation spectrum (2025)
Journal Article

Judgments of attractiveness have many important social outcomes, highlighting the need to understand how people form these judgments. One aspect of appearance that impacts perceptions of attractiveness is facial femininity/masculinity (sexual dimorph... Read More about Preferences for facial femininity/masculinity across culture and the sexual orientation spectrum.

Misperception of the facial appearance that the opposite-sex desires (2024)
Journal Article

Thin and muscular have been characterised as body shape ideals for women and men, respectively, yet each sex misperceives what the other sex desires; women exaggerate the thinness that men like and men exaggerate the muscularity that women like. Body... Read More about Misperception of the facial appearance that the opposite-sex desires.

Evaluating the pedagogical effectiveness of study preregistration in the undergraduate dissertation (2023)
Journal Article

Research shows that questionable research practices (QRPs) are present in undergraduate final-year dissertation projects. One entry-level Open Science practice proposed to mitigate QRPs is “study preregistration,” through which researchers outline th... Read More about Evaluating the pedagogical effectiveness of study preregistration in the undergraduate dissertation.

No increased inbreeding avoidance during the ovulatory phase of the menstrual cycle (2022)
Journal Article

Mate preferences and mating-related behaviours are hypothesised to change over the menstrual cycle to increase reproductive fitness. Recent large-scale studies suggest that previously reported hormone-linked behavioural changes are not robust. The pr... Read More about No increased inbreeding avoidance during the ovulatory phase of the menstrual cycle.

Re-evaluating the relationship between pathogen avoidance and preferences for facial symmetry and sexual dimorphism: A registered report (2022)
Journal Article

Over the past decade, a small literature has tested how trait-level pathogen-avoidance motives (e.g., disgust sensitivity) and exposure to pathogen cues relate to preferences for facial symmetry and sexual dimorphism. Results have largely been interp... Read More about Re-evaluating the relationship between pathogen avoidance and preferences for facial symmetry and sexual dimorphism: A registered report.

Does facial attractiveness really signal immunocompetence? (2021)
Journal Article

The dominant theory of facial attractiveness judgments is that they evolved to identify healthy individuals with strong immune systems. Here, we summarize results of recent tests of this hypothesis, concluding that it has little compelling empirical... Read More about Does facial attractiveness really signal immunocompetence?.

Do 3D face images capture cues of strength, weight, and height better than 2D face images do? (2021)
Journal Article

Objectives: A large literature exists investigating the extent to which physical characteristics (e.g., strength, weight, and height) can be accurately assessed from face images. While most of these studies have employed two-dimensional (2D) face ima... Read More about Do 3D face images capture cues of strength, weight, and height better than 2D face images do?.

Does self-rated attractiveness predict women’s preferences for facial masculinity? Data from an Arab sample (2021)
Journal Article

Objectives: Because more attractive women may be better able to attract and/or retain masculine mates, many researchers have proposed that women who consider themselves to be more physically attractive will show stronger preferences for men displayin... Read More about Does self-rated attractiveness predict women’s preferences for facial masculinity? Data from an Arab sample.

Facial masculinity increases perceptions of men’s age, but not perceptions of their health: Data from an Arab sample (2020)
Journal Article

Masculine characteristics in men’s faces are often assumed to function as health cues. However, evidence for this assumption from empirical tests is mixed. For example, research on Western women’s face perceptions found that masculinized versions of... Read More about Facial masculinity increases perceptions of men’s age, but not perceptions of their health: Data from an Arab sample.

Are sexual desire and sociosexual orientation related to men’s salivary steroid hormones? (2020)
Journal Article

Objective: Although it is widely assumed that men’s sexual desire and interest in casual sex (i.e., sociosexual orientation) are linked to steroid hormone levels, evidence for such associations is mixed. Methods: We tested for both longitudinal and c... Read More about Are sexual desire and sociosexual orientation related to men’s salivary steroid hormones?.

Kin recognition and perceived facial similarity (2020)
Journal Article

Facial similarity between individuals informs kinship judgments in third-party kin recognition. Indeed, one study found that similarity and kinship judgments encapsulate the same information (Maloney & Dal Martello, 2006). Yet, another study found th... Read More about Kin recognition and perceived facial similarity.

Women’s preferences for sexual dimorphism in faces: Data from a sample of Arab women (2020)
Journal Article

Many previous studies have investigated the effects of manipulating sexually dimorphic shape characteristics in face images on attractiveness judgments. However, results have been mixed and show considerable cross-cultural variability, particularly f... Read More about Women’s preferences for sexual dimorphism in faces: Data from a sample of Arab women.

Stability of women’s facial shape throughout the menstrual cycle (2020)
Journal Article

Facial characteristics can serve as a cue for judgements of multiple human traits, from maternal tendencies, overall fertility to sexual openness. In this study, we tested previously found fluctuations in facial shape throughout the menstrual cycle.... Read More about Stability of women’s facial shape throughout the menstrual cycle.

Evidence head tilt has dissociable effects on dominance and trustworthiness judgments, but does not have category-contingent effects on hypothetical leadership judgments (2020)
Journal Article

Previous research has found that physical characteristics in faces that influence perceptions of trustworthiness and dominance have context-contingent effects on leadership perceptions. People whose faces are perceived to be trustworthy are judged to... Read More about Evidence head tilt has dissociable effects on dominance and trustworthiness judgments, but does not have category-contingent effects on hypothetical leadership judgments.

Comparing theory-driven and data-driven attractiveness models using images of real women's faces (2019)
Journal Article

Facial attractiveness plays a critical role in social interaction, influencing many different social outcomes. However, the factors that influence facial attractiveness judgments remain relatively poorly understood. Here, we used a sample of 594 youn... Read More about Comparing theory-driven and data-driven attractiveness models using images of real women's faces.

Contribution of shape and surface reflectance information to kinship detection in 3D face images (2019)
Journal Article

Previous research has established that humans are able to detect kinship among strangers from facial images alone. The current study investigated what facial information is used for making those kinship judgments, specifically the contribution of fac... Read More about Contribution of shape and surface reflectance information to kinship detection in 3D face images.

The influence of body composition effects on male facial masculinity and attractiveness (2019)
Journal Article

Body mass index (BMI) and its facial correlates influence a range of perceptions including masculinity and attractiveness. BMI conflates body fat and muscle which are sexually dimorphic because men typically have more muscle but less fat than women.... Read More about The influence of body composition effects on male facial masculinity and attractiveness.

A data-driven study of Chinese participants' social judgments of Chinese faces (2019)
Journal Article

Social judgments of faces made by Western participants are thought to be underpinned by two dimensions: valence and dominance. Because some research suggests that Western and Eastern participants process faces differently, the two-dimensional model o... Read More about A data-driven study of Chinese participants' social judgments of Chinese faces.

Birth order does not affect ability to detect kin (2019)
Journal Article

Previous studies suggest that birth order affects kinship detection ability. Kaminski et al. (2010) argued that firstborns use contextual cues (e.g., maternal perinatal association) to assess kinship in their own family, leading to a disadvantage in... Read More about Birth order does not affect ability to detect kin.

Facial masculinity is only weakly correlated with handgrip strength in young adult women (2018)
Journal Article

Objectives: Ancestrally, strength is likely to have played a critical role in determining the ability to obtain and retain resources and the allocation of social status among humans. Responses to facial cues of strength are therefore thought to play... Read More about Facial masculinity is only weakly correlated with handgrip strength in young adult women.