Hormones and Attraction: What We Think We Know vs. What the Science Says

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon (0:00)

What role do hormones play in building the traits we find attractive? You can't take testosterone at 45 and rebuild your facial skeleton, and taking more estrogen isn't going to suddenly make a woman more attractive. With estrogen, simply dictated beauty. Beauty standards wouldn't move, and they move constantly.

When you look at masculine traits against actual mating and reproductive outcomes, the face isn't the strongest indication. So I guess you can jaw max all you want, but there are things that are remarkably modifiable.

Do hormones affect how attractive you are to other people? Or do hormone levels of others, for example, high tea, high estrogen impact if you pick them as a partner or not? If there were two versions of John Doe, and one version of him had an 800 testosterone, and the other version of him had, let's say his testosterone was 200, are you going to be more attracted to the John Doe with the 800 of testosterone versus the 200 of testosterone because of hormones? Testosterone and estrogen don't just affect libido, muscle, bone and reproduction, but during development, particularly puberty, of course, they help shape some of the physical characteristics we associate with being male or female. Things like facial structure, voice, muscle, fat distribution, skin, and hair. So then the obvious question becomes, are those characteristics part of how we can tell if someone has good or high levels of hormones versus others? For example, there's been this long-standing idea that women are more attracted to highly masculine men when specifically they're ovulating. Now, this is a great evolutionary story.

It kind of makes sense when fertility is the highest. Women supposedly seek out signs of higher testosterone as an indication of, quote, better genes. And I will also say, no matter what your distraction of choice is, whether it's Instagram, any of this other stuff, your biology is still your biology. And there was a time, believe it or not, when we couldn't measure hormones the way that we do.

There was probably some kind of subconscious driver by the way someone smelled or looked or how strong they were.

And potentially, hormones impacted this. When researchers started doing larger, better studies and measuring women's hormones repeatedly, that story about ovulation and choosing a high T male became much harder to support. So what do we actually know?

What role do hormones play in building the traits we find attractive? And do your hormones level today have anything to do with how attractive you are?

Do women really prefer men with higher testosterone? Does attraction change across a woman's cycle? And maybe most importantly, is any of this modifiable? You can't take testosterone at 45 and rebuild your facial skeleton, and taking more estrogen isn't going to suddenly make a woman more attractive. But there are things that are remarkably modifiable. Can you guess what that is?

You guessed it, muscle. Muscle is modifiable. Strength is modifiable, and body composition is modifiable. There are things that we do know that can improve our overall body health. And those things don't just change the way you look. They do, but they interact with the endocrine system that we're talking about here. And there's going to be some other very interesting components to this podcast. So today, we're going to talk about hormones from a completely different perspective. Not just what happens to you if you have too much or too little. Two questions for you. First, can you see someone's hormone status?

And second, are we drawn to traits that hormones helped build? Now, your face. Your face is not a hormone panel. However, testosterone and estrogen do real work during development. Testosterone deepens the voice, drives muscle mass, changes the skeleton, and matures the face. Estrogen drives breast development, shifts fat distribution, changes skin, connective tissue, and also matures the skeleton. This is sexual dimorphism. If testosterone built a masculine face, then a man with a masculine face must have higher testosterone, right? Well, not exactly. Pound and colleagues looked directly at this and did not find the simple relationship people assume between a masculine face and baseline circulating testosterone. What they did find, frankly, was more interesting. Men with more masculine faces mounted a larger testosterone response after winning a competition. This potentially just indicates that winning has an impact on the hormonal system. I watched a very famous TED Talk by a woman with the last name Cuddy.

She talks about the power pose and how that increases testosterone. What's fascinating about this is that points to dynamic endocrine system and a relationship between our competitive experiences and our hormonal status. So a masculine face may tell you something about a person's developmental history. It doesn't tell you his or her testosterone today, but it may indicate a little bit about how their developmental history went. When I was younger and thinking about athletes, what was I seeing? With all the discussion around hormones, again, I want to know, does he have high T or low T? Does she have high estrogen or low estrogen? What influence does it potentially have on us as humans within relationships? So take two 15-year-old boys.