Last year's most important scientific finding was probably this work which once again proved that women find beards to be attractive (not to mention more masculine, healthy, and fatherly). This year, those same researchers have taken their work to the next level and asked whether their important results could be affected by the frequency of hairy faces. That is, maybe women only see beards as more attractive when they are exceptional and more rare. Similar to last time, they have male participants photograph themselves at 4 different stages of the beard cycle: clean shaven, light stubble (5 days growth), heavy stubble (10 days growth), and full beard. Relying on science's secret weapon, the survey, primarily female volunteers then rate these men's attractiveness levels. The catch is that this time the panels of men that were being rated were divided into different experimental treatments. These consisted of one where full beards were rare:
And one where clean shaven faces were rare:
There was also a treatment where the ratio of beards to bare faces was even. For each experiment the attractiveness of each facial hair stage was rated and recorded. The question is whether the attractiveness of any particular style would be affected by how frequently it was seen. The results are clearly shown in figure 2:
The clean shaven and full beard types show fluctuations in their attractiveness, each showing their highest ratings when their respective types were more scarce in the experimental treatment. Because of this the researchers suggest that a man's facial hair may be subject to negative frequency-dependent sexual selection which is the idea that in some cases the more rare a trait is, the more attractive it will seem and therefore will be selected for or chosen more often. This seems like a reasonable conclusion even if this paper also suffers from smallish sample sizes, demographic biases, and most glaringly, it does not account for the substantial and impressive variation that exists in facial hair types. I mean, they again completely ignore mustaches not to mention the myriad of beard types that exist!
You really think you can assign all of those to one catchall category? Hey, accounting for variables is hard so thats all understandable. The real problem has come from how these findings are being reported. Here are some of the overblown headlines:
Beards Are Less Attractive When They Are Everywhere
Science Says Beards Aren't Sexy Any More!
Men Without Beards Could Soon Have An Evolutionary Advantage
We Have Reached Peak Beard and Science Says the Hairy End is Nigh
While I can appreciate the term "peak beard" these reports are terribly misleading. They suggest that somehow beards are no longer attractive or that they will at least become so abundant that they will lose their appeal. That simply is not what this research is suggesting. Quite the contrary in fact! Yes, attractiveness seems to be affected by frequency, but take another look at figure 2. Look at the white bars on the left of each treatment. These represent the attractiveness of these types when clean shaven faces are rare, or in other words, when beards are most common. Full beard, heavy and light stubble all still have higher attractiveness ratings in this treatment than clean shaven faces. Yes, this is the treatment which has the highest attractiveness rating for clean shaven faces themselves, but its score pales in comparison to the scores for the other facial hair types for this treatment. The authors themselves even say "clean-shaven faces were rated lowest in all treatments". In other words, regardless of frequencies, facial hair more consistently was found to be attractive than being clean shaven. Somehow, all the media reports seem to have missed that part. Understandable considering how boring science papers are, but nevertheless they are misinterpreting the results of this paper! Even if we are approaching "peak beard" (whatever that is), bearded men do not need to worry. Yes, beards may score lower on the attractiveness ratings when they are everywhere, but not so low as to no longer be more attractive than clean shaven baby faces. No, science does not say beards are not sexy anymore and there is no indication that men without beards would have an evolutionary disadvantage under these conditions. In fact, quite the opposite appears to be true where men without beards, all clean shaven and smooth, always rank lower in overall attractiveness regardless of the current state of facial hair circumstances in the population. Beard trends come and go (generally changing every couple of decades), but it is not clear that this is because of any sort of negative frequency-dependent sexual selection. I suppose its possible that beards could become so oversaturated that the attractiveness scores of clean shaven faces in this condition could be greater than the bearded faces, but this seems unlikely. Besides to the surprise of no one who has ever asked a girl if she likes a guy with facial hair or not, stubble reigns supreme and appears to be unaffected by the beard population frequency. You know, this kind of stuff happens all the time where the media runs wild with a story and makes it as sensational as they can. You can really get away with this when it comes to science since no one wants to go and read actual science publications. Just remember whenever you read about the "latest scientific breakthrough", this may be happening and you might need to do some fact checking to verify the accuracy of the scientific results. In the mean time, it seems high time I get a beard back on my face!
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