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Does catty gossip help women snare a mate?

women and man

Women who watch beauty contests may put down participants for a reason, new research suggests (Image: Reuters/Kin Cheung)

Women who are ovulating find other women less attractive, says Canadian research. But not everyone is convinced this means women put down other women's attractiveness as part of a competition for men.

Psychologist Dr Maryanne Fisher of York University in Toronto reported her research in the Royal Society's journal Biology Letters.

Fisher investigated an evolutionary-based theory that hormones influence competition between women for potential mates.

She looked at the relationship between women's oestrogen levels and how attractive they thought other women's faces were.

The study assumed one potential strategy of women competing for males was to make rivals appear inferior, a phenomenon Fisher called derogation.

"It is probable that women compete in terms of attractiveness since this is one of the primary criteria used by men when selecting mates," she wrote. "Furthermore, because hormones influence the mate-selection process, they may also mediate competition."

The experiment involved asking 57 female and 47 male university students to say how attractive a set of females and male faces were, shown as random photographs on a laptop computer. Fisher also asked the women which part of their ovulatory cycle they were in.

Fisher excluded homosexual and pregnant students from the study, as well as those who had recently used oral or intravenous contraceptives, antidepressants, or had missed ovulatory cycles.

"During periods of high oestrogen, competition, and hence derogation, increased, as evidence by lower ratings of female facial attractiveness. By contrast, oestrogen levels did not significantly affect ratings of male faces," reported Fisher.

She argued that while the theory of female competition was "controversial", her findings suggested a potential competitive process.

Do women really compete this way?

But Australian researcher Professor Gisela Kaplan of the University of New England disagreed.

Kaplan has recently co-authored a book Gene worship: moving beyond the nature/nurture debate over genes, brain, and gender that analyses the scientific research on choosing a mate.

"[The Canadian study] looks like a good experiment, but it isn't. It really is very poor science," she told ABC Science Online.

"The methodology is fine and people get beguiled by methodology but the fallacies are in the basic assumptions."

Kaplan argued the experiment assumed that hormone levels in the body determine sexual desire and activity. She said this ran counter to "well established scientific fact".

While hormones such as oestrogen and progesterone are linked strongly to sexual activity in rats, behavioural endocrinology research had shown this was not the case in humans, she said.

"Humans and apes mate and have sexual activity throughout the year and independent of the cycle and it doesn't even necessarily increase during ovulation."

Kaplan also argued that Fisher also wrongly assumed that women are concerned with attractiveness of potential mates.

"There are countless studies to show that women choose males for a whole host of qualities, particularly honesty, income levels, interest in long-term partnerships and so forth and the attractiveness issue in all studies had played a minor role," she said.

"The main problem with that study is that it mixes up social and scientific facts and comes to conclusions that are meant to have biological relevance for the human species, when in fact the biological basis of the paper is the most questionable."

Tags: health, biology