Facial hair strongly influences people's judgments of men's socio-sexual attributes. However, the nature of these judgments is often contradictory. The levels of intermediate facial hair growth presented to raters and the stage of female raters' menstrual cycles might have influenced past findings. We quantified men's and women's judgments of attractiveness, health, masculinity and parenting abilities for photographs of men who were clean-shaven, lightly or heavily stubbled and fully bearded. We also tested the effect of the menstrual cycle and hormonal contraceptive use on women's ratings. Women judged faces with heavy stubble as most attractive and heavy beards, light stubble and clean-shaven faces as similarly less attractive. In contrast, men rated full beards and heavy stubble as most attractive, followed closely by clean-shaven and light stubble as least attractive. Men and women rated full beards highest for parenting ability and healthiness. Masculinity ratings increased linearly as facial hair increased, and this effect was more pronounced in women in the fertile phase of the menstrual cycle, although attractiveness ratings did not differ according to fertility. Our findings confirm that beardedness affects judgments of male socio-sexual attributes and suggest that an intermediate level of beardedness is most attractive while full-bearded men may be perceived as better fathers who could protect and invest in offspring.
Androgen-dependent facial and bodily traits are positively associated with men's health (Thornhill & Gangestad, 2006), immunity (Rantala et al., 2012), dominance and competitive ability (Archer, 2009). Masculine men may also achieve greater mating and reproductive success (Rhodes, Simmons, & Peters, 2005). Yet averaged across experiments, women either prefer less masculine faces (Perrett et al., 1998) or weakly prefer masculine faces (Rhodes, 2006). However, women's preferences for facial cues of masculinity vary, growing strongest when men are rated for short-term relationships (Little, Connely, Feinberg, Jones, & Roberts, 2011), and during the most fertile part of their menstrual cycle (Gangestad & Thornhill, 2008).
The beard is a highly sexually dimorphic androgen-dependent trait that varies markedly among men (Randall, 2008). While this implies a sexually selected origin for beardedness, there is no consensus on the relative importance of female mate choice and male-male competition in shaping facial hair. Given that facial hair growth begins at puberty and continues throughout adulthood, it is not surprising that beards augment perceptions of maturity and masculinity (Addison, 1989 and Neave and Shields, 2008). However, associations between other personality traits and beards are highly polarized. On the one hand, bearded men are ascribed positive attributes such as self-confidence, courage, sincerity, generosity and industriousness (Kenny and Fletcher, 1973, Pellegrini, 1973 and Hellström and Tekle, 1994). On the other hand, beards are judged as less socially appeasing and more aggressive (Addison, 1989, Muscarella and Cunningham, 1996 and Neave and Shields, 2008).
