Journal article
The multivariate evolution of female body shape in an artificial digital ecosystem
Evolution and Human Behavior, Vol.36(5), pp.351-358
2015
Abstract
Human bodies exemplify complex phenotypes, likely to be subject to complex evolutionary forces. Despite the importance of body shape to health, social interactions and self-esteem, our understanding of body evolution and integration remains simplistically focused on simple ratios like waist-hip ratio (WHR), and body mass index (BMI), or manipulations of one or a few traits. Evolutionary selection analyses give a multivariate perspective, but highly correlated body measures create multicollinearity problems. Here we develop an original approach mimicking Darwinian selection to study how clonal lines of bodies, allowed to vary in 24 attributes via a mutation-like process, evolve in a digital ecosystem over 8 generations. Ten of 24 traits changed by more than one vertical bar S.D.vertical bar over seven generations of selection. Analyses of selection within generations, change in population mean, and change within clonal family lines all implicate slenderness, particularly narrow waists and long legs as the most important dimension of body attractiveness. WHR did not offer any improvement on waist girth as a predictor of attractiveness. Within the most successful clonal lineages, selection favored greater shapeliness, including larger busts, in addition to slenderness. Our results reveal the complex, multivariate nature of attractiveness, and that the success of simple ratios like WHR and BMI in previous studies is probably incidental to the importance of waist girth and general slenderness. Our results also suggest that the integration of the entire body phenotype is at least as important as any one trait, and that more than one way exists to make an attractive body.
Details
- Title
- The multivariate evolution of female body shape in an artificial digital ecosystem
- Authors
- Robert C Brooks (Author) - UNSW AustraliaJuliette P Shelly (Author) - UNSW AustraliaLyndon A Jordan (Author) - UNSW AustraliaBarnaby J W Dixson (Author) - UNSW Australia
- Publication details
- Evolution and Human Behavior, Vol.36(5), pp.351-358
- Publisher
- Elsevier Inc.
- DOI
- 10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2015.02.001
- ISSN
- 1879-0607
- Organisation Unit
- School of Health - Psychology; School of Health and Behavioural Sciences - Legacy; University of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland; Australian Centre for Pacific Islands Research
- Language
- English
- Record Identifier
- 99629736602621
- Output Type
- Journal article
Metrics
6 Record Views
InCites Highlights
These are selected metrics from InCites Benchmarking & Analytics tool, related to this output
- Collaboration types
- Domestic collaboration
- International collaboration
- Web Of Science research areas
- Behavioral Sciences
- Psychology, Biological
- Social Sciences, Biomedical
UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)
This output has contributed to the advancement of the following goals:
Source: InCites