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Have we reached 'peak beard'?
The ebb and flow of men's beard fashions may be guided by Darwinian selection, according to a new study.
The more beards there are, the less attractive they become - giving clean-shaven men a competitive advantage, say scientists in Sydney, Australia.
End Quote Prof Rob Brooks University of New South WalesThis might be why we've hit 'peak beard'"
They asked women and men to rate the appeal of different faces with "four standard levels of beardedness".
The team's study has been published in the Royal Society journal Biology Letters.
In the experiment, both beards and clean-shaven faces became more attractive when they were rare.
The pattern mirrors an evolutionary phenomenon - "negative frequency-dependent sexual selection", or to put it more simply "an advantage to rare traits".
The bright colours of male guppies vary by this force - which is driven by females' changing preferences.
Scientists at the University of New South Wales decided to test this hypothesis for men's facial hair - recruiting volunteers on their Facebook site, The Sex Lab.
"Big thick beards are back with an absolute vengeance and so we thought underlying this fashion, one of the dynamics that might be important is this idea of negative frequency dependence," said Prof Rob Brooks, one of the study's authors.
"The idea is that perhaps people start copying the George Clooneys and the Joaquin Phoenixs and start wearing those beards, but then when more and more people get onto the band wagon the value of being on the bandwagon diminishes, so that might be why we've hit 'peak beard'."
"Peak beard" was the climax of the trend for beards in professions not naturally associated with a bristly chin - bankers, film stars, and even footballers began sporting facial hair.
Some argue the peak ended in January, when Jeremy Paxman, the BBC Newsnight presenter, shaved his beard off, saying "beards are SO 2013".
In the experiment, 1,453 women and 213 men were asked to rate the attractiveness of different samples of men's faces.
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Jeremy Paxman's beard briefly trended on Twitter
Some were shown mostly "full" beards. Others were shown mostly clean-shaven faces. A third group were shown an even mixture of all four varieties - clean-shaven, light stubble, heavy stubble and full beard.
Both women and men judged heavy stubble and full beards more attractive when presented in treatments where beards were rare than when they were common.
Likewise, clean-shaven faces were least attractive when common and more attractive when rare.
"Negative frequency-dependent preferences may therefore play a role in maintaining variation in men's beards and contributing to changing fashions," the researchers conclude.
They plan to continue their pogonophilic investigations and are looking for volunteers for their latest experiment testing how people like faces with varying levels of beardedness.
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