Evolutionary Psychology - Emmy Noether Research Group

Human nature is to a large extent universal. This includes certain beauty standards and the ways in which males and females interact. The consensus of people’s judgments of physical attractiveness is consistent with the supposition that beauty is neither arbitrary nor culture bound, but that there are general biologically based standards of beauty, shaped by underlying evolutionary selection pressures. Given that some beauty standards are universal across cultures, it seems likely that human beings have evolved mechanisms for detecting and assessing honest cues of mate value, and still choose partners according to fundamental biological principles. Although there is some agreement among evolutionary psychologists on this perspective, a number of open questions in attractiveness research remain.

This research group concentrates on aspects of human attractiveness in order to better understand the biology of physical attraction, its perception, and possible consequences for human mate selection. In view of the human obsession with beauty, particularly in the Western society, such insights into the nature of the biology of physical attractiveness will have implications not only for the biological but also for the medical and social sciences.