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      • Department of Psychology
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      Lumbar curvature: a previously undiscovered standard of attractiveness

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      Author
      Lewis, D. M. G.
      Russell, E. M.
      Al-Shawaf, L.
      Buss, D. M.
      Date
      2015
      Source Title
      Evolution and Human Behavior
      Print ISSN
      1090-5138
      Publisher
      Elsevier
      Volume
      36
      Issue
      5
      Pages
      345 - 350
      Type
      Article
      Item Usage Stats
      130
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      414
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      Abstract
      This paper reports independent studies supporting the proposal that human standards of attractiveness reflect the output of psychological adaptations to detect fitness-relevant traits. We tested novel a priori hypotheses based on an adaptive problem uniquely faced by ancestral hominin females: a forward-shifted center of mass during pregnancy. The hominin female spine possesses evolved morphology to deal with this adaptive challenge: wedging in the third-to-last lumbar vertebra. Among ancestral women, vertebral wedging would have minimized the net fitness threats posed by hypolordosis and hyperlordosis, thereby creating selective pressures on men to prefer such women as mates. On this basis, we hypothesized that men possess evolved mate preferences for women with this theoretically optimal angle of lumbar curvature. In Study 1, as hypothesized, men's attraction toward women increased as women's lumbar curvature approached this angle. However, vertebral wedging and buttock mass can both influence lumbar curvature. Study 2 thus employed a forced-choice paradigm in which men selected the most attractive woman among models exhibiting the same lumbar curvature, but for different morphological reasons. Men again tended to prefer women exhibiting cues to a degree of vertebral wedging closer to optimum. This included preferring women whose lumbar curvature specifically reflected vertebral wedging rather than buttock mass. These findings reveal novel, theoretically anchored, and previously undiscovered standards of attractiveness.
      Keywords
      Evolutionary psychology
      Lumbar curvature
      Mate preferences
      Physical attractiveness
      Permalink
      http://hdl.handle.net/11693/21125
      Published Version (Please cite this version)
      http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2015.01.007
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