Is a pretty face more important than a beautiful body? Sept 2009

Being watched by someone who’s attractive can make you more trustworthy. We also find out how the type of relationship you’re looking for might be related to your ability to read faces, and discover whether it’s the face or the body that contributes most to a person’s physical attractiveness.

If you'd like to see the Sociosexual Orientation Inventory used by Sacco, you can find it here.

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Face or body? Tom Currie and Tony Little have published new research showing whether the body or the face is more important to attractiveness. wbeem/Flickr

The articles covered in the show:

Smith, F. G., DeBruine, L. M., Jones, B. C., Krupp, D. B., Welling, L. L. M., & Conway, C. A. (In Press). Attractiveness qualifies the effect of observation on trusting behavior in an economic game. Evolution and Human Behavior. Read summary

Sacco, D. F., Hugenberg, K., & Sefcek, J. A. (2009). Sociosexuality and face perception: unrestricted sexual orientation facilitates sensitivity to female facial cues. Personality and Individual Differences, 47, 777-782. Read summary

Currie, T. E., & Little, A. C. (In Press). The relative importance of the face and body in judgments of human physical attractiveness. Evolution and Human Behavior. Read summary