Men with low testosterone (feminine men) invest in relationships and offspring more than men with high testosterone (masculine men). Women's attraction to testosterone dependent traits (e.g. masculine face shape) is enhanced during the late-follicular, fertile phase of the menstrual cycle. Attractive, feminine women have stronger preferences for masculine men as possible long-term partners than...

The use of gender-fair language is an important measure to boost gender equality. However, there is wide-spread scepticism as to the usefulness of avoiding male bias in language, even in gendered languages. For instance, in German all nouns carry grammatical gender, and role names are considered generic, even when their gender is masculine. We used a sentence-picture matching task to test wheth...

Finger length ratio (2D:4D) is a sexually dimorphic trait. Men have relatively shorter second digits (index fingers) than fourth digits (ring fingers). Smaller, more masculine, digit ratios are thought to be associated with either higher prenatal testosterone levels or greater sensitivity to androgens, or both. Men with more masculine finger ratios are perceived as being more masculine and domi...

For women, choosing a facially masculine man as a mate is thought to confer genetic benefits to offspring. Crucial assumptions of this hypothesis have not been adequately tested. It has been assumed that variation in facial masculinity is due to genetic variation and that genetic factors that increase male facial masculinity do not increase facial masculinity in female relatives. We objectively...

Like the protagonists in the previous works, Harry Haller does not fit comfortably into the social expectations of a middle-class, masculine identity. Because he conceives of himsetf as both man and wolf, he cannot feel synonymous with either image, cannot possess a single identity, masculine or otherwise. Like Törleß, Harry perceives more than one level of reality and in order to relieve his s...

In previous research, acoustic characteristics of the male voice have been shown to signal various aspects of mate quality and threat potential. But the human voice is also a medium of linguistic communication. The present study explores whether physical and vocal indicators of male mate quality and threat potential are linked to effective communicative behaviors such as vowel differentiation a...