The Civic Platform - A Political Journal of Ideas and Analysis

Author/s 1. Vera Pivonkova, Faculty of Humanities, Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic;
2. Jitka Lindova, Faculty of Humanities, Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic;
3. Anna Kotrcova, Faculty of Humanities, Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic;
4. Ales Kubena, Faculty of Science, Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic;
5. Jan Havlicek, Faculty of Humanities, Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic;

Abstract Evolutionarily based theories predict that feminine morphological features should correspond to female fertility and reproductive success. Previous studies have found that attractive women are rated as more feminine. Moreover, one recent study showed that female femininity as assessed by photogrammetric measurements was connected with levels of oestrogen, a ‘female’ hormone. Some authors have suggested that cues of masculinity or femininity could constitute signals of dominance and non-dominance, respectively. In our study, we focused on the association between facial femininity and psychological characteristics. In previous studies, female femininity has been assessed by subjective ratings or by photogrammetric methods. Yet these methods can meet with confounds such as individual rater variability or methodological limitations of photogrammetric techniques. Therefore, femininity in our study was assessed by anthroposcopy, a technique which is commonly used in the field of plastic surgery for the qualitative assessment of morphological features. The anthroposcopic approach provides more complex information on relative proportions of physical features rather than absolute metric data. In our sample, we took both frontal and profile neutral-expression facial photographs, and anthropometrical head measurements, of 119 female students. Participants also completed Cattell’s 16PF questionnaire. Due to the great morphological complexity of most facial features, we carried out an anthroposcopic analysis of the two photographs (frontal view and profile) for each subject. We created a femininity index (16 features), which included the most distinctive sexually dimorphic features: facial form; size of arcus superciliares and glabella; forehead height and profile; tubera frontalia; chin width, height, shape and profile; eyebrow thickness; nose height; direction of nose tip; shape of nose profile; lip thickness; and height of eye opening. Anthropometrical head measurements included the following measures: face width, jawbone angle width, depth of jawbone, cheekbone arch, jawbone arch, distance between the inner corners of the eyes, distance between the outer corners of the eyes, inter-pupilary distance, nose width, mouth width, physiognomic face height, morphological face height, upper face physiognomic height, upper face anatomical height, nose height, nose depth, nose width and lower face height. We used linear regression to assess the relationship between the anthroposcopy index of femininity and the anthropometric measurements. We found a negative correlation with face width, jawbone angle width, depth of jawbones, cheekbone arch and jawbone arch. Assessment of the relationship among the anthropometric measurements, with Principal Component Analysis with varimax rotation, revealed six separate components. The first component explained 23.8% of variability and was loaded with the anthropometrical measurements, which simultaneously correlated negatively with the femininity index (face width, jawbone angle width, depth of jawbones, cheekbone arch and jawbone arch). Of the six components, it was the only one that was positively correlated with the index of femininity. These results showed that our index of femininity based on the classification of individual morphological features (i.e. anthroposcopy) and their position relative to the other facial feature was intercorrelated with objectively assessed metrical data. The femininity index correlated with two primary factors from Cattell’s personality questionnaire: negatively with the factor Low integration (undisciplined self-conflict) and positively with the factor High tension. Additionally, the femininity index correlated positively with one secondary factor, Anxiety. We suggest that these morphological features and psychological characteristics might develop under the control of steroid hormones, particularly during puberty.