# Perceiving female physical attractiveness and expressive traits from body features and body motion

## TL;DR

This study explores how body features and body motion influence perceptions of female physical attractiveness and expressive traits.

## Contribution

The study identifies distinct roles of body features and motion in predicting physical attractiveness versus expressive traits.

## Key findings

- Body features predict physical attractiveness better than body motion in both pictures and videos.
- Body motion is more important than body features for predicting expressive traits in videos.
- Neither body features nor motion effectively predict expressive traits in static images.

## Abstract

The perception of female physical attractiveness is known to be predicted by body features(e.g. BMI). However, the role of body motion (e.g. postures) and the relative contribution of each type of cues are unclear. Little research reported how body cues modulate the perception of female expressive traits (e.g. warmth).

We photographed and filmed 15 female posers and recorded their anthropometric data. In picture stimuli, each poser adopted neutral, instructed attractive, or spontaneous attractive and unattractive postures. In video stimuli, posers introduced a place in neutral or passionate manner. Fifty-four perceivers watched these pictures and silent videos and rated their physical attractiveness and feminine expressive traits on 7-point scales.

Lasso regression and proportion of variance explained analyses revealed that Body features demonstrated stronger predictive power for physical attractiveness than body motions across both picture and video stimuli. However, for feminine traits, body motions showed greater predictive validity in videos, whereas neither body features nor body motions effectively predicted feminine traits in static images.

Different roles of body features and body motion play for perceiving different levels of personal characteristics in social perception. Perception of expressive traits appears to rely more substantially on body motions, whereas the judgment of physical attractiveness depends more fundamentally on body features.

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s40359-025-03522-1.