The faces of desirable mates and dates contain mixed social status cues

This article examines the perceptions of facial features and their relationship to the desire to form relationships. The authors, presenting digitalized faces to participants, maintain faces with large, immature looking eyes and mouths were perceived as submissive, whereas faces with small, mature looking eyes and mouths were perceived as dominant and lacking warmth, and found that both females and males were both more attractive to normal, unmanipulated faces.