Beauty and mate choice: What evolutionary biology can teach us

Authors

  • Enrique Font Cavanilles Institute of Biodiversity and Evolutionary Biology (UV, Spain).
  • Enrique V. Font‐Ferrer JIMB Foundation (Valencia, Spain).

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.7203/metode.13.24205

Keywords:

beauty, mate choice, evolution, evolutionary psychology, sexual selection

Abstract

We tend to regard beauty as the product of our education, the quintessence of cultural refinement, and we often emphasise the relative nature of beauty. That is why many find it shocking that the perception of beauty, especially human beauty, has a clear biological explanation, one that is largely independent from our education and culture. People are surprised because not only do the characteristics that define beauty originate in biology, but they are also universal and common to all members of our species.

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Author Biographies

Enrique Font, Cavanilles Institute of Biodiversity and Evolutionary Biology (UV, Spain).

Full professor in the Department of Zoology at the University of Valencia (UV) and director of the Ethology Laboratory (e3) at the Cavanilles Institute of Biodiversity and Evolutionary Biology (UV, Spain). He is an ethologist (University of Tennessee, Knoxville, USA), and his research deals with a variety of topics related to animal behaviour, especially behaviour and communication in lizards.

Enrique V. Font‐Ferrer, JIMB Foundation (Valencia, Spain).

Neuropsychologist and graduate in Psychology, with master’s degrees in General Health Psychology from the University of Valencia (UV) and in Clinical Psychology from the Instituto Superior de Estudios Psicológicos (ISEP). He is currently working on the implementation of a project to assist stroke patients and their families at the JIMB Foundation (Valencia, Spain).

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Published

2023-02-23

How to Cite

Font, E., & Font‐Ferrer, E. V. (2023). Beauty and mate choice: What evolutionary biology can teach us. Metode Science Studies Journal, (13), 153–159. https://doi.org/10.7203/metode.13.24205
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Issue

Science. The genesis of ideas (vol. 13, 2023)

Section

Beauty and nature

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