Although female faces were always preferred over female faces, women posed a problem for Perret when judging the attractiveness of men. Their opinions varied greatly and they couldn't seem to reach a consensus! After studying the problem, Perrett discovered that women preferred masculine-looking men when they were at the peak of their fertility. This may be because when women are very fertile; their body tells the brain that it must procreate. A male with a masculine appearance is more likely to produce healthy offspring. When women were less fertile, they preferred feminine-looking men, who they believed would make good, caring partners (Penton-Voek, 1999). It was also found that women who considered themselves very attractive preferred masculine men, while women who considered themselves slightly attractive gravitated toward feminine-looking men. Little et al. suggested that this was because masculine men were supposedly reluctant to invest time and resources in a family, but might invest heavily in very attractive women. Although physical traits are important, such as symmetry or masculinity-femininity, social cues also play an important role. an important role in attractiveness. Our expression and where we look can communicate our emotional state and influence how attractive others perceive us to be. When someone smiles, we understand that they are happy and that where they are looking is the center of their attention. Brain imaging allowed researchers to gather information about which part of the brain is stimulated when processing attractive and unattractive faces. They found that the part of the brain most active at these times was the part that processed rewards. When looking at an attractive face, there are high levels of ...... middle of paper ...... biased views for the symmetry preferences of human faces. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B, 270, 1759-1763. Perrett, DI, May, KA, & Yoshikawa, S. (1994). Facial shape and judgments of female attractiveness. Nature, 368, 239-242. Perret, DI, Lee, KJ, Penton-Voak, IS, Rowland, DR, Yoshikawa, S., Burt, DM, Henzi, SP, Castles, DL and Akamatsu, S. (1998). Effects of sexual dimorphism on facial attractiveness. Nature, 394, 884-887. Penton-Voek, IS, Perret, DI, Castles, DL, Kobayashi, T., Burt, DM, Murray, LK and Minamisawa, R. (1999) The menstrual cycle modifies face preference. Nature, 399, 741-742. Jones, BC, DeBruine, LM, Little, AC, Conway, CA, & Feinberg, DR (2006). Integrating physical gaze direction into an expression with physical attractiveness when forming facial preferences. Psychological science, in press.