Male Physical Attractiveness Part II: Chicks Dig Scars

(Continued from: Male Physical Attractiveness Part I or: You Shallow, Shallow Ladies)

The attractiveness of facial symmetry seems to have woven itself thoroughly into the nerdier shallower echelons of pop culture. Long-story short: symmetry is a reflection of developmental stability via genetic quality and/or resistance to parasites that would cause asymmetrical development.

In the eternal quest for defense of my own ego via self-justification, I need a loophole. You see, my brother did me the favor of breaking my nose via airborne frozen pine cone when I was about 13. Hence, the ol’ schnoze is somewhat lacking in symmetrical perfection on the Y-axis. Don’t get me wrong, the nose remains perfect, but the angle relative to my face is no longer exacly 90°. Fortunately, it’s almost balanced out by the scar bestowed upon me after my cousin tagged my face with a “snowball” (ice-packed dog bone embedded in the faintest veneer of snow).

Side Note: The comparing scar stories conversation has to be one of the Top 10 moments of any human relationship. So no, I’m not going to tell you about the rest of them now. Why are you trying to progress our relationship so fast? I’m starting to feel suffocated.

Prerequisite

Short-Term vs. Long Term Mating Strategies

Human matings can last a few years, a few months, a few weeks, a few days, or even a few minutes. One end of this temporal continuum may be called short-term mating. This temporal dimension turns out to be critical to many components of mating, perhaps none more central than the qualities desired. Furthermore, humans display remarkable creativity in their ability to mix and match mating strategies. It is not uncommon, for example, for a person to engage in one long-term committed mateship with heavy investment in children, while simultaneously pursuing an extramarital affair, or series of affairs, on the side.

Humans, in short, are neither solely monogamous, nor solely promiscuous; neither polygynous nor polyandrous. Which items on the menu of strategies a particular person chooses is heavily dependent on contexts. (Buss 2002)

Chicks Dig Scars: Sometimes

Post-traumatic scarring has been shown to increase perceived social worth in certain circumstances. In particular, women find facial scars on men more attractive in the short-term mating context, but not in the long-term context (Burriss et al. 2009). In a straightforward study, attractiveness ratings were gathered by showing images of non-scarred faces to raters. The same images were shown and rated with scars digitally added.

The increase in attractiveness was significant, but not overwhelming. The authors noted that the relatively light scarring used for the test may have tempered the attractiveness gain of the scarred faces in the short-term context. The image above shows the maximum intensity of digital scarring used in the study.

The Folk Wisdom of Scarification

In modern Western cultures, scarification can be associated with generally negative connotations. This makes sense when noting that modern Western cultures place higher values on strict monogamy (legal marriage) by way of religion, politics, and other reproductive-interest-driven mechanisms of socialization. As such, short-term mating strategies are taboo and hard to disentangle from the cultural framework. However…

In many non-Western cultures, scars derived from ritual scarification (intentional scarring) are prized. Scarification is employed to enhance beauty and symmetry in men and women and its use is positively associated with polygyny, warfare against other cultural groups, and with pathogen prevalence. Scarification is also employed to mark rites of passage in men and women, and in particular the passage from childhood to adulthood. It has therefore been suggested that intentional scarring, as well as other forms of visible body modification such as tattooing, may serve to promote solidarity amongst men as well as advertise or simulate genetic quality, signal sexual maturity, and aid in attracting and securing mates. (Burriss et al. 2009)

For those who’ve earned their scars the old-fashioned way, don’t hide ’em…

Yanomamö men often shave their heads and rub red pigment into their scalps to increase the visibility of their scars, thus demonstrating their bravery and ability to withstand and recover from an enemy’s blow. (Burriss et al. 2009)

Mechanism

Consistent with the practice of ritual scarification in non-Western cultures, Burris et al suggest scarification acts as a costly signal for heroism. In a study pitting heroism (and/or bravery) against altruism, women found heroism more attractive in men than altruism in both short and long-term mating contexts. However, the attraction to heroism was again more pronounced in the short-term context (Kelly & Dunbar 2001).

In every comparison between brave and non-brave potential partners, both for the short-term and long-term, bravery was always preferred. In evolutionary terms, there must have been some considerable advantages to choosing a brave mate. Sexual selection theory offers two general reason why bravery might be selected for in males. One is that such males can offer benefits to a female in terms of provision of food and/or defense. Anthropological evidence supports both suggestions. In traditional societies, the provision of meat acquired by hunting is generally a male province. Hunting for game often involves some degree of personal ris, either from the prey itself or from a dangerous environment. The best hunters enjoy social respect and increased sexual favors… Alternatively, brave men may simply provide better protection for women and their offspring against both marauders and from neighboring tribes and other members of their own group. Among the Ache, for example, the risk of infanticide by other males increases dramatically if a woman’s husband dies or leaves the group. The second advantage for a female of selecting a brave male may be that bravery is an honest cue for good quality genes, not least because only those males with good genes will be able to withstand the costs imposed by risk-taking. (Kelly & Dunbar 2001) *also see my post on The Adventure Gene.

It seems very likely that scars do act as a proxy for heroism, and that heroism is evolutionarily valuable. However, a dose of inductive reasoning to connect the dots until more research is done. What women found attractive about men with scars wasn’t explicitly studied here (or elsewhere as far as I know).

It would also be interesting to further explore why women don’t find men with scars more attractive in the long-term mating context. If scars are a proxy signal for heroism, and heroism is attractive in both contexts, then scars should be attractive in both. Perhaps stigmatization or other social mechanisms mitigate the effect. It’s also true that scars are an imperfect signal of heroism. Since we do see a rise in women’s ratings of men’s attractiveness in altruism in the long-term context, this could combine with the noise in the scarification signal to reduce its effect enough to be rather easily offset by social influence.

As far as my own self-justification, it looks like bad news. Off-axis broken noses are more likely to be read as developmental instability (bad) than any sort of heroism or ability to survive attacks. “Frozen projectile wounds don’t always heal. Chicks dig scars. Sometimes beauty is only skin deep.”

References
Buss, D.M. (2002). Human Mating Strategies. Samfundsokonomen, 4, 47-58. [pdf]

Burriss, R, H Rowland, and a Little. “Facial scarring enhances men’s attractiveness for short-term relationships.” Personality and Individual Differences 46, no. 2 (January 2009): 213-217. [pdf]

Kelly, Susan, and R I M Dunbar. “Who Dares, Wins: Heroism versus Altruism in Womenʼs Mate Choice.” Human Nature 12, no. 2 (2001): 89-105.

Other Articles In This Series
Male Physical Attractiveness Part I or: You Shallow, Shallow Ladies