Gentle-men prefer faces: Intelligence, life history strategy, and sexual preference for attractive faces over attractive breasts, buttocks, and legs

We utilised data from the OkCupid dating site to study preferences for body parts in attraction judgements. We found that most people (71%) have a stated preference for faces, with nonEuropeans finding other parts more important: lower parts (“butt/legs”; 8%), chest (“chest/breasts”; 3%), and Other (18%). We regressed these preferences on likely causal variables. We found that slower life history speed, female sex, and higher intelligence predict preference for faces and negatively for buttocks/legs/chest, replicating previous research. We further found that most non-European ethnicities have a stronger preference for buttocks and legs, in particular Africans, Hispanics, and Amerindians (Native Americans). We explored how these patterns may help to explain cultural differences in mating display for different body parts and how they may be explicable in evolutionary terms.