Facial attractiveness has been linked to the averageness of a face, & more tentatively to a speaker’s vocal attractiveness, via the “honest signal” hypothesis, holding that attractiveness signals good genes; no link

Zäske, Romi, Stefan R. Schweinberger, and Verena G. Skuk. 2018. “Attractiveness and Distinctiveness in Voices and Faces of Young Adults.” PsyArXiv. July 9. doi:10.31234/osf.io/2avu3

Abstract: Facial attractiveness has been linked to the averageness (or typicality) of a face. More tentatively, it has also been linked to a speaker’s vocal attractiveness, via the “honest signal” hypothesis, holding that attractiveness signals good genes. In four experiments, we assessed ratings for attractiveness and two common measures of distinctiveness (“distinctiveness-in-the-crowd”- DITC and “deviation-based distinctiveness”-DEV) for faces and voices (vowels or sentences) from 64 young adult speakers (32 female). Consistent and strong negative correlations between attractiveness and DEV generally supported the averageness account of attractiveness for both voices and faces. By contrast, indicating that both measures of distinctiveness reflect different constructs, correlations between attractiveness and DITC were numerically positive for faces (though small and non-significant), and significant for voices in sentence stimuli. As the only exception, voice ratings based on vowels exhibited a moderate but significant negative correlation between attractiveness and DITC. Between faces and voices, distinctiveness ratings were uncorrelated. Remarkably, and at variance with the honest signal hypothesis, vocal and facial attractiveness were uncorrelated, with the exception of a moderate positive correlation for vowels. Overall, while our findings strongly support an averageness account of attractiveness for both domains, they provide little evidence for an honest signal account of facial and vocal attractiveness in complex naturalistic speech. Although our findings for vowels do not rule out the tentative notion that more primitive vocalizations can provide relevant clues to genetic fitness, researchers should carefully consider the nature of voice samples, and the degree to which these are representative of human vocal communication.