Researchers found that women who have higher levels
of the stress hormone cortisol are rated as having less attractive faces by men
than their more relaxed counterparts.
Since stress can suppress fertility, study researcher
Markus Rantala, a professor of biology at the University
of Turku in Finland
The scientists believe that a person’s face may carry
strong signals about their health and fertility, and stressed-out people are
generally less healthy. But even so, the findings also showed that the strength
of a woman’s immune system didn’t affect her sexual appeal to men.
Rantala and his team, whose research was published
Wednesday in the Royal Society journal Biology Letters, vaccinated 52 young
Latvian women around 20 years old against the virus hepatitis B. The
researchers then took blood samples to measure their immune response and
cortisol levels.
They asked 18 heterosexual male students to rate the
attractiveness of each woman from a photograph of their face. While there was
no link between a woman’s immune response and her attractiveness to the men,
women with lower levels of cortisol were rated as more attractive.
Body fat was also linked to attractiveness, with the
men rating the thinnest and the heaviest women as less attractive.
Source: ph.she.yahoo.com
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