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Although male masculinity is associated with health benefits, it is also associated with negative personality traits and behaviors. For example, high-testosterone men are less likely to marry, more likely to divorce and have more marital problems than lower testosterone men (Booth & Dabbs, 1993).
Men with higher testosterone are also less likely to feel a need to respond to infant cries than men with lower testosterone (Fleming, Corter, Stallings & Steiner, 2002). Masculine male faces are also ascribed antisocial traits, such as low warmth, low emotionality, dishonesty, low cooperativeness and poor quality as a parent (Boothroyd, Jones, Burt & Perrett, 2007; Perrett et al., 1998). Masculine men are also perceived to have more interest in short-term than in long-term relationships (Kruger, 2006), and masculine men have more short-term, but not long-term, partners than feminine men do (Rhodes, Simmons & Peters, 2005).
Attraction to masculinity is a function of the tradeoffs between the benefits of greater genetic health and the costs of lower investment in relationships and children (Fink & Penton-Voak, 2002; Gangestad & Simpson, 2000; Little, Jones, Penton-Voak, Burt & Perrett, 2002).
Factors that affect the relative importance of these costs and benefits affect this tradeoff. For example, the benefits of genetic health for offspring can only be attained when women are able to conceive and preferences for masculine traits are accordingly greater when conception risk is high (for reviews, see Fink & Penton-Voak, 2002; Gangestad & Simpson, 2000; Gangestad & Thornhill, 2008; Jones et al., 2008). Additionally, the paternal investment costs associated with partnering with a masculine man are less important in short-term relationships than in long-term relationships. Accordingly, women prefer more masculine men for short-term than for long-term relationships (Burt et al., 2007; Little et al., 2002; Little, Cohen, Jones & Belsky, 2007