Power Increases Women’s Preference For Facial Self-Resemblance

Facial features are one of important clues of kin recognition. Facial self-resemblance has been known as a cue that humans respond to in a manner consistent with it being a cue of kinship. However, women’s response to it does not always consistent with what has been described as a cue of kinship.There are a total of two experiments in this study, we manipulated the power condition (high-power vs. low-power) of female participants and found that the high-power condition led females significantly prefer self-resemblance (the cue of kinship) to the non-resemblance compared with low-power condition.Combined with the theory of social structure, our results implied that in our male advantaged society, women’s favor toward nepotism was suppressed due to their reduced power in social life.