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→Even chickens prefer sexually dimorphic human faces, to the same extent as humans
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The researchers note that 'no reinforcement was given on test trials', so the chickens were only trained to peck faces of the correct sex, they weren't guided to pick at any particular target. | The researchers note that 'no reinforcement was given on test trials', so the chickens were only trained to peck faces of the correct sex, they weren't guided to pick at any particular target. | ||
To test the behavior that the chickens had learned, the researchers counted the times the chicken picked at a given face within a certain time interval. Interestingly, it was discovered that human and chicken preferences for opposite sex faces were very highly correlated when varying the degree of sexual dimorphism of the presented faces (r² = 0.98); that is to say nearly identical. That means the chickens were nearly equally as likely to peck at the highly dimorphic faces as the human subjects were to prefer them as potential romantic partners. | To test the behavior that the chickens had learned, the researchers counted the times the chicken picked at a given face within a certain time interval. Interestingly, it was discovered that human and chicken preferences for opposite sex faces were very highly correlated when varying the degree of sexual dimorphism of the presented faces (r² = 0.98); that is to say nearly identical. That means the chickens were nearly equally as likely to peck at the highly dimorphic faces as the human subjects were to prefer them as potential romantic partners. This result even generalized to when the researchers added faces with even more exaggerated dimorphism not present during training, i.e. both humans and chickens agreed on the more exaggerated faces being more attractive. | ||
The findings provide support for the hypothesis that human preferences for sexually dimorphic faces are innate and hardwired in our 'lizard brain', that is, there is a deep-seated desire for such aesthetic features, and this desire even predates the evolution of modern humans, with the last common ancestor of humans and chickens [https://www.nature.com/news/2004/041206/full/041206-8.html thought] to have been a reptilian creature that lived more than 310 million years ago. The result strongly suggests that the preference for extremely masculine and feminine faces is not a cultural construct, but it inevitably emerges in biological brains. | The findings provide support for the hypothesis that human preferences for sexually dimorphic faces are innate and hardwired in our 'lizard brain', that is, there is a deep-seated desire for such aesthetic features, and this desire even predates the evolution of modern humans, with the last common ancestor of humans and chickens [https://www.nature.com/news/2004/041206/full/041206-8.html thought] to have been a reptilian creature that lived more than 310 million years ago. The result strongly suggests that the preference for extremely masculine and feminine faces is not a cultural construct, but it inevitably emerges in biological brains. | ||