Gender differences in sexual attraction and moral judgement: research with artificial face models

Abstract

Sexual attraction in humans is influenced by cultural or moral factors and some gender differences can emerge in this complex interaction. A previous study (Author, 2015) found that men dissociate sexual attraction from moral judgement more than women do. Two experiments consisting of giving attractiveness ratings to photos of real opposite-sex individuals showed that men, compared to women, were significantly less influenced by the moral valence of a description about the person shown in each photo. There is evidence of some processing differences between real and artificial computer-generated faces. The present study tests the robustness of Author’s findings and extends the research to an experimental design using artificial face models as stimuli. A sample of 88 young adults (61 females, 27 males, average age 19.32, SD = 2.38) rated the attractiveness of eighty 3D artificial face models generated with the FaceGen Modeller 3.5 software. Each face model was paired with a “good” and a “bad” (from a moral point of view) sentence depicting a quality or activity of the person represented in the model (e.g., s/he is an altruistic nurse in Africa vs. s/he is a prominent drug-dealer). Results were in line with the previous findings and showed that, with artificial faces as well, sexual attraction is less influenced by morality in men than in women. This gender difference is consistent with an evolutionary perspective on human sexuality.