Skip navigation

I try to understand how evolution shaped our preferences, and what its consequences are in our contemporary lives. ​My main area of expertise is the perception of faces and bodies.

My work has covered various topics such as parent-offspring conflict over mate choice, variation in female beauty standards through history, sexual selection on age at menopause, the developmental origins of economic preferences, and mate preferences for homogamy in facial features. ​

​I mix various methods and academic fields. For example, I use eye-tracking techniques, laboratory-based and online experiments, geometric morphometric analyses, image manipulation of faces, artworks datasets, and fieldwork in China.

My co-authors come from biology, economics, psychology, marketing, and anthropology.

  • Please visit the Pure Research Information Portal for further information
  • What Do Parents Want? Parental Spousal Preferences in China, Raiber, E., Ren, W., Bovet, J., Seabright, P., Wang, C. Apr 2023, In: Economic Development and Cultural Change
  • Men say “I love you” before women do: Robust across several countries, Watkins, C., Bovet, J., Fernandez, A., Leongómez, J., Żelaźniewicz, A., Corrêa Varella, M., Wagstaff, D. 1 Jun 2022, In: Journal of Social and Personal Relationships
  • Methodological issues when using face prototypes: A case study on the Faceaurus dataset, Bovet, J., Tognetti, A., Pollet, T. 28 Oct 2022, In: Evolutionary Human Sciences
  • Do sex hormones at birth predict later-life economic preferences?: Evidence from a pregnancy birth cohort study, van Leeuwen, B., Smeets, P., Bovet, J., Nave, G., Stieglitz, J., Whitehouse, A. 23 Dec 2020, In: Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences
  • Comparing theory-driven and data-driven attractiveness models using images of real women's faces, Holzleitner, I., Lee, A., Hahn, A., Kandrik, M., Bovet, J., Renoult, J., Simmons, D., Garrod, O., DeBruine, L., Jones, B. 1 Dec 2019, In: Journal of experimental psychology. Human perception and performance
  • Evolutionary theories and men's preferences for women's waist-to-hip ratio: Which hypotheses remain? A systematic review, Bovet, J. 4 Jun 2019, In: Frontiers in Psychology
  • National income inequality predicts cultural variation in mouth to mouth kissing, Watkins, C., Leongómez, J., Bovet, J., Żelaźniewicz, A., Korbmacher, M., Varella, M., Fernandez, A., Wagstaff, D., Bolgan, S. 1 Dec 2019, In: Scientific Reports
  • Parent–offspring conflict over mate choice: An experimental study in China, Bovet, J., Raiber, E., Ren, W., Wang, C., Seabright, P. 1 Nov 2018, In: British Journal of Psychology
  • The evolution of feminine beauty, Bovet, J. 21 Aug 2018, Exploring Transdisciplinarity in Art and Sciences, Cham, Springer
  • Women's attractiveness is linked to expected age at menopause, Bovet, J., Barkat-Defradas, M., Durand, V., Faurie, C., Raymond, M. 1 Feb 2018, In: Journal of Evolutionary Biology

Biological Sciences PhD December 09 2014

Back to top