Sex drive is positively associated with women’s preferences for sexual dimorphism in men’s and women’s faces

Reported sex drive was recently found to be positively associated with heterosexual women’s attraction to both men and women (Lippa, 2006). This finding was interpreted as evidence that sex drive is a generalized energizer of women’s sexual behaviors and responses, rather than energizing behavior and responses towards potential mates only. Here we show that reported sex drive is positively associated with heterosexual women’s preferences for sexual dimorphism in both men’s and women’s faces (Studies 1 and 2). These findings complement those reported by Lippa (2006), since our own studies and Lippa’s show that sex drive is positively associated with heterosexual women’s judgments of both men and women. Our findings for associations between reported sex drive and women’s preferences for sexual dimorphism implicate sex drive as a possible source of individual differences in women’s face preferences and present novel converging evidence that sex drive is a generalized energizer of women’s sexual behaviors and responses.