Birth Control Probably Doesn’t Change Who You’re Attracted to, Study Finds

A commonly touted theory about how women’s attraction to men works might be all wrong, suggests a new paper published this week in Psychological Science. Prior, small experiments have found that birth control pills and ovulation could change a woman’s sexual preferences. Now, a large new study has found that women’s preferences for men’s faces are reliably stable, regardless of whether they’re taking birth control pills or whether they’re ovulating.

Some previous experiments have found that women taking hormonal contraceptives or experiencing their period were more likely to favor male facial features that are less associated with testosterone, like a rounder jaw or thinner eyebrows. But these studies may have been flawed from the get-go, according to Ben Jones, a professor at the University of Glasgow’s Institute of Neuroscience and Psychology in the UK and lead author of the new work.

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