Perceptions of threat track self-reported social, but not physical, aggression in women's faces

Abstract Unlike for men, cues of threat in women's faces have not been well-studied. Although morphological markers, such as facial width-to-height ratio (fWHR) and body mass index (BMI), have been associated with physical threat in men, evidence for these relationships in women is less clear. Further, because women's aggression is typically social rather than physical, it is possible that threat advertisement and assessment mechanisms evolved to track social rather than physical threat in women and thus involve different cues. This possibility has not been readily investigated. Here we present the results of a study involving more than 36,000 judgements of 98 women's faces from 635 independent raters on 12 different threat-related characteristics—one of the most comprehensive analysis of perceptions of threat in women's faces to date. Perceptions of threat/influence in women's faces were related to their actual social but not physical threat. Further, fWHR and BMI did not appear to account for this accuracy. Our results suggest that threat advertisement and assessment in women may track their propensity to socially rather than physically harm others.