Misattribution of musical arousal increases sexual attraction towards opposite-sex faces in females.

ABSTRACT: Several theories about the origins of music have emphasized its biological and social functions, including in courtship. Music may act as a courtship display due to its capacity to vary in complexity and emotional content. Support for music's reproductive function comes from the recent finding that only women in the fertile phase of the reproductive cycle prefer composers of complex melodies to composers of simple ones as short-term sexual partners, which is also in line with the ovulatory shift hypothesis. However, the precise mechanisms by which music may influence sexual attraction are unknown, specifically how music may interact with visual attractiveness cues and affect perception and behaviour in both genders. Using a crossmodal priming paradigm, we examined whether listening to musi

SUBMITTER: Marin MM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5593195 | biostudies-literature | 2017

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature