BACKGROUND Unmet need for family planning points to the gap between women's reproductive desire to avoid pregnancy and contraceptive behaviour. An estimated 222 million women in low- and middle-income countries have unmet need for modern contraception. Despite its prevalence, there has been little rigorous research during the past fifteen years on reasons for this widespread failure to implemen...

Symmetry and masculinity in human faces have been proposed to be cues to the quality of the owner. Accordingly, symmetry is generally found attractive in male and female faces and femininity is attractive in female faces. Women’s preferences for male facial masculinity vary in ways that may maximise genetic benefits to women’s offspring. Here we examine sameand opposite-sex preferences for both...

Evidence indicating that sex-linked toy preferences exist in two nonhuman primate species support the hypothesis that developmental sex differences such as those observed in children's object preferences are shaped in part by inborn factors. If so, then preferences for sex-linked toys may emerge in children before any self-awareness of gender identity and gender-congruent behavior. In order to ...

Findings of previous studies demonstrate sex-related preferences for toys in 6-month-old infants; boys prefer nonsocial or mechanical toys such as cars, whereas girls prefer social toys such as dolls. Here, we explored the innate versus learned nature of this sex-related preferences using multiple pictures of doll and real faces (of men and women) as well as pictures of toy and real objects (ca...

Recently, the issue of diurnal preferences has been increasingly studied within the context of romantic relationships and sexual functioning. In the present paper we apply a dyadic design to investigate the role of romantic partners’ diurnal preferences in determining a variety of relationship outcomes. A sample of 91 heterosexual couples completed a set of questionnaires measuring relationship...

We tested the hypothesis that magnitudes of sex differences in human mate preferences would be inversely related to control of resources. Specifically, we predicted that the ideal partner age, maximum and minimum partner ages tolerated and preferences for "physical attractiveness" over "good financial prospects" of female participants would approach parity with that of men with increasing contr...

Little research has explored the child gender preferences of preadoptive parents. This study utilized a mixed-methods approach to explore child gender preferences (and individuals’ reasons for such preferences) in a geographically diverse, US sample of 93 heterosexual, 61 lesbian, and 48 gay male preadoptive couples. Heterosexual men were the least likely to demonstrate a gender preference and ...

Many studies have investigated the physical cues that influence face preferences. By contrast, relatively few studies have investigated the effects of facial cues to the direction and valence of others' social interest (i.e. gaze direction and facial expressions) on face preferences. Here we found that participants demonstrated stronger preferences for direct gaze when judging the attractivenes...