Number of friends and self-perception among Jamaican children: the role of attractiveness and fluctuating asymmetry

Self-Perceived Facial Attractiveness, Fluctuating Asymmetry, and Minor Ailments Predict Mental Health Outcomes

Objective

Phenotypic markers associated with developmental stability such as fluctuating asymmetry, facial attractiveness, and reports of minor ailments can also act as indicators of overall physical health. However, few studies have assessed whether these markers might also be cues of mental health. We tested whether self- and other-perceived facial attractiveness, fluctuating asymmetry, and minor ailments are associated with psychopathological symptoms in a mixed sample of 358 college students, controlling for the effects of body mass index, age, and sex.

Methods

We applied the Symptom Checklist-90-Revised (SCL-90-R) questionnaire to assess psychopathological symptoms, a battery of questionnaires about self-perceptions of facial attractiveness, and gathered information about the number of previous minor ailments as well as demographic data. Other-perceived attractiveness was assessed by an independent mixed sample of 109 subjects. Subjects’ facial fluctuating asymmetry was determined by geometric morphometrics.

Results

The results revealed that in both men and women, higher self-perceived attractiveness and fewer minor ailments predicted lower scores of Somatization, Obsessive–Compulsive, Interpersonal Sensitivity, Depression, Anxiety, Phobic Anxiety, Paranoid Ideation, Psychoticism, and a General Psychopathology Index. Higher facial fluctuating asymmetry was associated with higher Interpersonal Sensitivity, but did not contribute to its prediction when controlling for the other studied variables.

Conclusions

The observed strong associations between self-perceived attractiveness, minor ailments, and psychopathology indicate common developmental pathways between physiological and psychological symptomatology which may reflect broader life history (co)variation between genetics, developmental environment, and psychophysiological functioning.

Season of birth and biomarkers of early-life environment

OBJECTIVE

Early-life conditions play an important role in human development, affecting health status and survival. Conditions in utero partly depend on the external environment and thus vary in relation to the season of birth. The aim of this study was to investigate if people born in different seasons of the year differ in values of biomarkers that reflect conditions during fetal development.

METHODS

The study was conducted among Polish rural women recruited at the Mogielica Human Ecology Study Site. The participants were 234 women aged 45 to 92 (mean = 60.2; SD = 10.44). The indicators of early-life environment analyzed in the study were: Absolute Finger Ridge Count (AFRC), the difference between mean number of ridge counts in both thumbs and both little fingers (Md15), overall facial fluctuating asymmetry (OFA), central facial asymmetry (CFA), right and left hand 2D:4D.

RESULTS

Values of biomarkers of fetal development did not vary among groups of women born in different seasons of the year.

CONCLUSIONS

Lack of differences in values of biomarkers according to birth season may indicate that: (a) season of birth is not a good indicator of early-life conditions; (b) tested biomarkers do not reliably reflect the prenatal environment; (c) season of birth does not fully overlap with the sensitive periods of biomarker development and thus fails to capture differences in developmental conditions.