Evolutionary Psychology of Human Physical Appearance and Body Movement

人性在很大程度上是普遍的。这包括某些美容标准和男性和女性互动的方式。人们对外表吸引力的一致判断与这样一种假设是一致的，即美既不是任意的，也不是受文化限制的，而是存在着普遍的基于生物学的美的标准，这些标准是由潜在的进化选择压力形成的。考虑到某些美的标准是跨文化的，人类似乎已经进化出了检测和评估伴侣价值的诚实线索的机制，并且仍然根据基本的生物学原则选择伴侣。虽然进化心理学家在这一观点上达成了一些共识，但吸引力研究中仍然存在一些悬而未决的问题。首先，几乎所有关于身体吸引力的研究都使用静态刺激（面部和/或身体的图像）。事实上，我们对身体动力学的吸引力一无所知，比如步态或舞蹈。其次，在现代计算机技术的帮助下，许多研究面部外观的方法最经常依赖于图像变形技术（即图像的数字混合），从而忽视了明显的皮肤状况对面部吸引力的重要性。第三，最近在人类面部形状研究方面的进展表明，简单的面部度量方法（即面部距离的测量）不能准确地把握和描述面部形状的变化。新技术，如“几何形态测量方法（GMM）”，将生物形态视为一个单一的几何整体，并能够以创新的方式量化和可视化形状变化。通过目前的申请，我请求资助建立一个研究小组，该小组将集中并进一步研究人类吸引力的这三个方面，以便更好地了解身体吸引力的生物学，其感知以及人类择偶的可能后果。鉴于人类对美的痴迷，特别是在西方社会，对身体吸引力的生物学本质的洞察不仅对生物学而且对医学和社会科学都有影响。

Human nature is to a large extent universal. This includes certain beauty standards and the ways in which males and females interact. The consensus of people’s judgments of physical attractiveness is consistent with the supposition that beauty is neither arbitrary nor culture bound, but that there are general biologically based standards of beauty, shaped by underlying evolutionary selection pressures. Given that some beauty standards are universal across cultures, it seems likely that human beings have evolved mechanisms for detecting and assessing honest cues of mate value, and still choose partners according to fundamental biological principles. Although there is some agreement among evolutionary psychologists on this perspective, a number of open questions in attractiveness research remain. Firstly, almost all studies on physical attraction have used static stimuli (images of faces and/or bodies). There is virtually nothing known about the attractiveness of body dynamics, such as gait or dance. Secondly, with the aid of modern computer technology, numerous approaches to the study of facial appearance have relied most frequently upon image morphing techniques (i.e. digital blending of images), thereby neglecting the importance of apparent skin condition for facial attractiveness. Thirdly, recent advances in the study of human facial form have demonstrated that the simple facial-metric approach (i.e. the measurement of distances in a face) cannot accurately grasp and depict the variation of facial form. New technologies, such as ‘geometric morphometric methodology (GMM)’, consider biological form as a single geometric whole, and are able to quantify and visualize shape variation in an innovative way. With the present application, I request funding for the establishment of a research group that will concentrate and further investigate these three aspects of human attractiveness in order to better understand the biology of physical attraction, its perception, and possible consequences for human mate selection. In view of the human obsession with beauty, particularly in the Western society, insights into the nature of the biology of physical attractiveness will have implications not only for the biological but also for the medical and social sciences.