Facial hair is a secondary sexual characteristic that men develop from puberty. Women do not have sufficient testosterone levels to grow facial hair, making it a sexually dimorphic trait. Darwin’s theory of sexual selection asserts that sexually dimorphic traits, such as facial hair, are naturally selected through one of two processes: intersexual selection or intrasexual selection. Intersexual selection refers to the process by which characteristics are preferred by the opposite sex and therefore have an evolutionary advantage. Intrasexual selection refers to competition between members of the same sex. There are inconsistent findings regarding intersexual selection as the process through which facial hair has been advantageous, so I tested the alternative hypothesis that it has evolved via intrasexual selection. I explore two different behavioural contexts that may be influenced by, or may influence beardedness. The first study looked at the association between operational sex ratio of single adults in a city on beardedness, and found that beardedness did not increase with a male-biased sex ratio. The second study presented participants with paired fighters in a mixed-martial-arts bout and asked them to select which fighter they thought won the bout. Results showed that male participants showed a marginally significant bias towards bearded fighters, whereas there was no significant effect for women. The findings for study one are inconsistent with the theoretical framework
Facial hair, like many masculine secondary sexual traits, plays a significant role in perceptions of an array of sociosexual traits in men. While there is consensus that beards enhance perceptions of masculinity, age, social dominance, and aggressiveness, the perceived attractiveness of facial hair varies greatly across women. Given the ease with which facial hair can be groomed and removed entirely, why should some men retain beards and others choose to remove them? We hypothesized that men with relatively sexist attitudes would be more likely to allow their facial hair to grow than men with less sexist attitudes. Men from the USA (n = 223) and India (n = 309) completed an online survey measuring demographic variables, ambivalent sexism, and facial hair status. After controlling for demographic variables, men with facial hair were significantly higher in hostile sexism than clean-shaven men; hostile sexism was a significant predictor of facial hair status over and above demographic variables; and facial hair was more frequent among ambivalent and hostile sexists than among benevolent and non-sexists. It is suggested that sexist men choose to grow facial hair because it maximizes sexual dimorphism and augments perceived masculinity and dominance.
Everything we examined (2)
This check searched the claim as stated. It did not run a separate search for evidence against it.