A new study has demonstrated that assuming that humans want their men to be manly and their women feminine is a new urban habit.
A team of psychologists, anthropologists and biologists, led by Brunel University London, surveyed 12 populations around the world, showed that only in the most industrialised and urbanised environments did people hold the well-worn opinion that highly feminine women and highly masculine men are attractive.
Lecturer in psychology at Brunel University London, Andrew Clark, said that they digitally morphed masculine and feminine faces from photographs of people to find out what choices people from small-scale societies made.
Clark added that they found that they didn't place the same emphasis on 'sex typicality', that is, on highly feminine women and highly masculine men. In fact, they often favored the neutral face, and sometimes the least "sex-typical' one.
The study surveyed 962 participants were they were shown sets of three opposite-sex composite and digitally manipulated photos. For each set of photographs, representing five different ethnic groups, participants were asked which face was most attractive and which appeared most aggressive.
The team suggested that highly developed environments with large, dense populations may have exposed individuals to a greater range of unfamiliar faces, providing the opportunity and perhaps motive to discover subtle relationships between facial traits and behavior.
