Wayne Hooke of The Psychology of Beauty says

Using photographs of real men, Peters, et.al (2009) found no evidence of a preference for either masculinized or symmetric male faces or bodies in ovulating women.

Photos by Flickr user spongemonkey.
Used under a Creative Commons license.Previous studies that have found a relationship between ovulation and attraction to masculine features have used computer-morphed images that are weak in ecological validity. This study used photographs of actual men, like the ones below.

Masculinity, attractiveness, and symmetry ratings of the stimuli appear to approximate a normal distribution, strengthening the ecological validity of this study. The only noteworthy limitation in this design is that there were no objective measurements of masculinity or symmetry – only subjective ratings were used.

The authors were also careful to use precise measurements of ovulation to ensure that the ratings of women in the ovulatory phase were well-within the previously identified six-day long sexually active phase of the menstrual cycle.

Read the quote in context here.

Evolutionary Psychologists, of course, had proposed that magic uteruses make women… what?... pickier during ovulation? And it sounds like if you cherry pick your criteria sufficiently you can get that result. The tricky thing about science isn’t that it’s flawless. Quite the opposite (being a human endeavor, not because it’s science.) What’s cool about science, though, is over time it’s institutionally self-correcting. Scientist A says X, scientist B says that doesn’t sound right, scientist B tries to reproduce scientist A’s findings.

I often carp that pop Ev-Psych (the Ozzie-and-Harriet-assumption-conserving stuff you’re likely to hear about, not the real stuff that’s still mostly in the basic foundation-building phase) is made up mostly of loser types trying to justify why they can’t get dates with “superior” men or women. For which reason, ironically, ginning up data that says ovulating women prefer symmetrical jock types a) makes sense but also b) also shows lack of imagination. Here’s how.

Near as I can understand it, the original researchers were saying that when women ovulate they prefer more handsome men. They also claim that women are more horny when they’re ovulating. Put the two together and you get an explanation for why horny babes never hook up with ev-psych doods.
Photos by Flickr user spongemonkey. Used under a
Creative Commons license.

But let’s slow that waaaaaayyyyy down and play it again. Ev-psych assumes that no matter how much it looks like we use sophisticated mental processes to modify or even disregard bodily impulses we’re actually really, really, really simple moist robots utterly controlled by extraordinarily sophisticated, highly conditionally-expressed genes. Like the alleged genes in women for both extra pickiness and horniness during ovulation.

But…

Doesn’t it seem like the whole idea of horniness is to override pickiness? And aren’t women only something close to ovulating six days out of the month? Which means women usually aren’t ovulating? And don’t women usually decline dates with ev-psych doods?

So doesn’t it seem like ev-psych doods should be cherry-picking data to show that women won’t date them prefer more symmetrical-looking men even more when they’re not ovulating instead?

And when women are ovulating and their adolescent-porn-fantasy genes are turning them into helpless fembots of lust and they still won’t date sociobiologists? Sadly for the EP community Holly offers only non-genetic explanations.

(via ResearchBlogging)