Several studies have reported positive correlations between women’s own attractiveness and their mate preferences. A recent study also reported a similar correlation between men’s mate preferences and their own self-rated attractiveness. Surprisingly, however, relatively little is known about the relationship between measures of own condition and men’s and women’s attractiveness judgments of same-sex individuals. Here, we investigated how men’s and women’s self-rated attractiveness and self-rated sex-typicality predict their preferences for exaggerated sex-typical shape cues in both same-sex and opposite-sex faces. Our findings provide further support for models of condition-dependent mate preferences in both women and men; people who judged themselves as more attractive had stronger preferences for exaggerated sex-typical shape cues in opposite-sex faces. Additionally, we show a novel relationship between self-rated sex-typicality and perceptions of same-sex, but not opposite-sex, faces; people who judged themselves as possessing more exaggerated sex-typical traits had stronger preferences for exaggerated sex-typical shape cues in same-sex faces. While self-rated attractiveness appears to be an important predictor of men’s and women’s preferences for potential mates, self-rated sex-typicality appears to be a more important predictor of men’s and women’s preferences for potential social allies.
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