Carlota Batres
Biographic Data
| ID | 631148 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Carlota Batres |
| GIVEN NAMES | Carlota |
| FAMILY NAME | Batres |
| SIGNATURE | BATRES C |
| AFFILIATIONS | Franklin & Marshall College |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-3833-7667 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 32 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 33 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 32 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2017 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
Makeup works by modifying factors of facial beauty
Investigating object orientation effects across 18 languages
Mental simulation theories of language comprehension propose that people automatically create mental representations of objects mentioned in sentences. Mental representation is often measured with the sentence-picture verification task, wherein participants first read a sentence that implies the object property (i.e., shape and orientation). Participants then respond to an image of an object by indicating whether it was an object from the sentenc…
Investigating perceptions of fetal resemblance
The function of love: A signaling-to-alternatives account of the commitment device hypothesis
A worldwide test of the predictive validity of ideal partner preference matching
10,358) across 43 countries and 22 languages to estimate preference-matching effect sizes. The most rigorous tests revealed significant preference-matching effects in the whole sample and for partnered and single participants separately. The "corrected pattern metric" that collapses across 35 traits revealed a zero-order effect of β = .19 and an effect of β = .11 when included alongside a normative preference-matching metric. Specific traits in t…
Measuring the semantic priming effect across many languages
(In)Alienable Worth? Cultural Logics of Dignity, Honor, and Face and their Links to Prosociality Across the World
Cultural logic is a set of cultural scripts and patterns organized around a central theme. The cultural logics of dignity, honor, and face describe different ways of evaluating a person’s worth and maintaining cooperation. These cultural logics vary in prevalence across cultures. In this study, we collaboratively develop and validate a measure capturing these cultural logics, which will allow us to map world cultures based on the prevalence of th…
Cross-cultural evidence for an association between agreeableness and sweet taste preferences
Love as a Commitment Device: Evidence from a Cross-Cultural Study across 90 Countries
Given the ubiquitous nature of love, numerous theories have been proposed to explain its existence. One such theory refers to love as a commitment device, suggesting that romantic love evolved to foster commitment between partners and enhance their reproductive success. In the present study, we investigated this hypothesis using a large-scale sample of 86,310 individual responses collected across 90 countries. If romantic love is universally perc…
Conservatism Negatively Predicts Creativity: A Study Across 28 Countries
Previous studies have found a negative relationship between creativity and conservatism. However, as these studies were mostly conducted on samples of homogeneous nationality, the generalizability of the effect across different cultures is unknown. We addressed this gap by conducting a study in 28 countries. Based on the notion that attitudes can be shaped by both environmental and ecological factors, we hypothesized that parasite stress can also…
Cultural Predictors of Facial Ethnicity Preference in the Miskitu and Mestizos of Rural Nicaragua
Both basic visual experience and cultural associations with race and ethnicity may contribute to the extent observers do or do not favor some facial ethnicity cues over others. Given that visual media contain a highly biased selection of faces, with Whiteness both over-represented and strongly privileged in film and television, communities for whom visual media are relatively novel may experience an additional, pervasive source of attitudes to fa…
Examining the “attractiveness halo effect” across cultures
Disgusting Democrats and Repulsive Republicans: Members of Political Outgroups Are Considered Physically Gross
The status of disgust as a sociomoral emotion is debated. We conducted a stringent test of whether social stimuli (specifically, political outgroup members) can elicit physical disgust, as distinct from moral or metaphorical disgust. We employed stimuli (male faces) matched on baseline disgustingness, provided other ways for participants to express negativity toward outgroup members, and used concrete self-report measures of disgust, as well as a…
Disgust sensitivity predicts sociosexuality across cultures
Predictors of enhancing human physical attractiveness: Data from 93 countries
People across the world and throughout history have gone to great lengths to enhance their physical appearance. Evolutionary psychologists and ethologists have largely attempted to explain this phenomenon via mating preferences and strategies. Here, we test one of the most popular evolutionary hypotheses for beauty-enhancing behaviors, drawn from mating market and parasite stress perspectives, in a large cross-cultural sample. We also test hypoth…
Author Correction: A multi-country test of brief reappraisal interventions on emotions during the Covid-19 pandemic
Situational factors shape moral judgements in the trolley dilemma in Eastern, Southern and Western countries in a culturally diverse sample
Affective Interpersonal Touch in Close Relationships: A Cross-Cultural Perspective
Interpersonal touch behavior differs across cultures, yet no study to date has systematically tested for cultural variation in affective touch, nor examined the factors that might account for this variability. Here, over 14,000 individuals from 45 countries were asked whether they embraced, stroked, kissed, or hugged their partner, friends, and youngest child during the week preceding the study. We then examined a range of hypothesized individual…
A multi-country test of brief reappraisal interventions on emotions during the Covid-19 pandemic
To which world regions does the valence-dominance model of social perception apply
Over the past 10 years, Oosterhof and Todorov’s valence–dominance model has emerged as the most prominent account of how people evaluate faces on social dimensions. In this model, two dimensions (valence and dominance) underpin social judgements of faces. Because this model has primarily been developed and tested in Western regions, it is unclear whether these findings apply to other regions. We addressed this question by replicating Oosterhof an…
Cultural Differences in Mate Preferences
Sex Differences in Mate Preferences Across 45 Countries: A Large-Scale Replication
Considerable research has examined human mate preferences across cultures, finding universal sex differences in preferences for attractiveness and resources as well as sources of systematic cultural variation. Two competing perspectives—an evolutionary psychological perspective and a biosocial role perspective—offer alternative explanations for these findings. However, the original data on which each perspective relies are decades old, and the li…
Attraction to Men and Women Predicts Sexual Dimorphism Preferences
Objectives: Sexual orientation categories are commonly differentiated in the partner preference literature. Yet little is known about how the variability within each category influences partner preferences.Methods: We investigated women’s (N = 27,611) preferences for sexual dimorphism in male faces in relation to self-reports of sexual attraction to men/women (from ‘not at all’ to ‘very’).Results: Self-identified heterosexual women reported consi…
Universality of the Triangular Theory of Love: Adaptation and Psychometric Properties of the Triangular Love Scale in 25 Countries
The Triangular Theory of Love (measured with Sternberg's Triangular Love Scale - STLS) is a prominent theoretical concept in empirical research on love. To expand the culturally homogeneous body of previous psychometric research regarding the STLS, we conducted a large-scale cross-cultural study with the use of this scale. In total, we examined more than 11,000 respondents, but as a result of applied exclusion criteria, the final analyses were ba…
Assortative mating and the evolution of desirability covariation
Universality of the Triangular Theory of Love: Adaptation and Psychometric Properties of the Triangular Love Scale in 25 Countries
The Triangular Theory of Love (measured with Sternberg's Triangular Love Scale - STLS) is a prominent theoretical concept in empirical research on love. To expand the culturally homogeneous body of previous psychometric research regarding the STLS, we conducted a large-scale cross-cultural study with the use of this scale. In total, we examined more than 11,000 respondents, but as a result of applied exclusion criteria, the final analyses were ba…
A worldwide test of the predictive validity of ideal partner preference matching
10,358) across 43 countries and 22 languages to estimate preference-matching effect sizes. The most rigorous tests revealed significant preference-matching effects in the whole sample and for partnered and single participants separately. The "corrected pattern metric" that collapses across 35 traits revealed a zero-order effect of β = .19 and an effect of β = .11 when included alongside a normative preference-matching metric. Specific traits in t…
A multi-country test of brief reappraisal interventions on emotions during the Covid-19 pandemic
To which world regions does the valence-dominance model of social perception apply
Over the past 10 years, Oosterhof and Todorov’s valence–dominance model has emerged as the most prominent account of how people evaluate faces on social dimensions. In this model, two dimensions (valence and dominance) underpin social judgements of faces. Because this model has primarily been developed and tested in Western regions, it is unclear whether these findings apply to other regions. We addressed this question by replicating Oosterhof an…
Situational factors shape moral judgements in the trolley dilemma in Eastern, Southern and Western countries in a culturally diverse sample
Love as a Commitment Device: Evidence from a Cross-Cultural Study across 90 Countries
Given the ubiquitous nature of love, numerous theories have been proposed to explain its existence. One such theory refers to love as a commitment device, suggesting that romantic love evolved to foster commitment between partners and enhance their reproductive success. In the present study, we investigated this hypothesis using a large-scale sample of 86,310 individual responses collected across 90 countries. If romantic love is universally perc…
Differential effects of makeup on perceived age
Makeup accentuates three youth-related visual features - skin homogeneity, facial contrast, and facial feature size. By manipulating these visual features, makeup should make faces appear younger. We tested this hypothesis in an experiment in which participants estimated the age of carefully controlled photographs of faces with and without makeup. We found that 40- and especially 50-year-old women did appear significantly younger when wearing mak…
Familiarity with Own Population's Appearance Influences Facial Preferences
Previous studies have found that individuals from rural areas in Malaysia and in El Salvador prefer heavier women than individuals from urban areas. Several explanations have been proposed to explain these differences in weight preferences but no study has explored familiarity as a possible explanation. We therefore sought to investigate participants' face preferences while also examining the facial characteristics of the actual participants. Our…
The function of love: A signaling-to-alternatives account of the commitment device hypothesis
Conservatism Negatively Predicts Creativity: A Study Across 28 Countries
Previous studies have found a negative relationship between creativity and conservatism. However, as these studies were mostly conducted on samples of homogeneous nationality, the generalizability of the effect across different cultures is unknown. We addressed this gap by conducting a study in 28 countries. Based on the notion that attitudes can be shaped by both environmental and ecological factors, we hypothesized that parasite stress can also…
Fear of Violence among Colombian Women Is Associated with Reduced Preferences for High-BMI Men
Recent studies reveal that violence significantly contributes to explaining individual's facial preferences. Women who feel at higher risk of violence prefer less-masculine male faces. Given the importance of violence, we explore its influence on people's preferences for a different physical trait. Masculinity correlates positively with male strength and weight or body mass index (BMI). In fact, masculinity and BMI tend to load on the same compon…
Aggressor or protector? Experiences and perceptions of violence predict preferences for masculinity
Familiarity with Own Population's Appearance Influences Facial Preferences
Previous studies have found that individuals from rural areas in Malaysia and in El Salvador prefer heavier women than individuals from urban areas. Several explanations have been proposed to explain these differences in weight preferences but no study has explored familiarity as a possible explanation. We therefore sought to investigate participants' face preferences while also examining the facial characteristics of the actual participants. Our…
Male Protection
The Psychological Science Accelerator: Advancing Psychology Through a Distributed Collaborative Network
Concerns about the veracity of psychological research have been growing. Many findings in psychological science are based on studies with insufficient statistical power and nonrepresentative samples, or may otherwise be limited to specific, ungeneralizable settings or populations. Crowdsourced research, a type of large-scale collaboration in which one or more research projects are conducted across multiple lab sites, offers a pragmatic solution t…
Assortative mating and the evolution of desirability covariation
Sexual Infidelity Versus Emotional Infidelity
Fear of Violence among Colombian Women Is Associated with Reduced Preferences for High-BMI Men
Recent studies reveal that violence significantly contributes to explaining individual's facial preferences. Women who feel at higher risk of violence prefer less-masculine male faces. Given the importance of violence, we explore its influence on people's preferences for a different physical trait. Masculinity correlates positively with male strength and weight or body mass index (BMI). In fact, masculinity and BMI tend to load on the same compon…
Differential effects of makeup on perceived age
Makeup accentuates three youth-related visual features - skin homogeneity, facial contrast, and facial feature size. By manipulating these visual features, makeup should make faces appear younger. We tested this hypothesis in an experiment in which participants estimated the age of carefully controlled photographs of faces with and without makeup. We found that 40- and especially 50-year-old women did appear significantly younger when wearing mak…
Cultural Differences in Mate Preferences
Sex Differences in Mate Preferences Across 45 Countries: A Large-Scale Replication
Considerable research has examined human mate preferences across cultures, finding universal sex differences in preferences for attractiveness and resources as well as sources of systematic cultural variation. Two competing perspectives—an evolutionary psychological perspective and a biosocial role perspective—offer alternative explanations for these findings. However, the original data on which each perspective relies are decades old, and the li…
Attraction to Men and Women Predicts Sexual Dimorphism Preferences
Objectives: Sexual orientation categories are commonly differentiated in the partner preference literature. Yet little is known about how the variability within each category influences partner preferences.Methods: We investigated women’s (N = 27,611) preferences for sexual dimorphism in male faces in relation to self-reports of sexual attraction to men/women (from ‘not at all’ to ‘very’).Results: Self-identified heterosexual women reported consi…
Universality of the Triangular Theory of Love: Adaptation and Psychometric Properties of the Triangular Love Scale in 25 Countries
The Triangular Theory of Love (measured with Sternberg's Triangular Love Scale - STLS) is a prominent theoretical concept in empirical research on love. To expand the culturally homogeneous body of previous psychometric research regarding the STLS, we conducted a large-scale cross-cultural study with the use of this scale. In total, we examined more than 11,000 respondents, but as a result of applied exclusion criteria, the final analyses were ba…
Affective Interpersonal Touch in Close Relationships: A Cross-Cultural Perspective
Interpersonal touch behavior differs across cultures, yet no study to date has systematically tested for cultural variation in affective touch, nor examined the factors that might account for this variability. Here, over 14,000 individuals from 45 countries were asked whether they embraced, stroked, kissed, or hugged their partner, friends, and youngest child during the week preceding the study. We then examined a range of hypothesized individual…
A multi-country test of brief reappraisal interventions on emotions during the Covid-19 pandemic
To which world regions does the valence-dominance model of social perception apply
Over the past 10 years, Oosterhof and Todorov’s valence–dominance model has emerged as the most prominent account of how people evaluate faces on social dimensions. In this model, two dimensions (valence and dominance) underpin social judgements of faces. Because this model has primarily been developed and tested in Western regions, it is unclear whether these findings apply to other regions. We addressed this question by replicating Oosterhof an…
Disgust sensitivity predicts sociosexuality across cultures
Predictors of enhancing human physical attractiveness: Data from 93 countries
People across the world and throughout history have gone to great lengths to enhance their physical appearance. Evolutionary psychologists and ethologists have largely attempted to explain this phenomenon via mating preferences and strategies. Here, we test one of the most popular evolutionary hypotheses for beauty-enhancing behaviors, drawn from mating market and parasite stress perspectives, in a large cross-cultural sample. We also test hypoth…
Author Correction: A multi-country test of brief reappraisal interventions on emotions during the Covid-19 pandemic
Situational factors shape moral judgements in the trolley dilemma in Eastern, Southern and Western countries in a culturally diverse sample
Examining the “attractiveness halo effect” across cultures
Disgusting Democrats and Repulsive Republicans: Members of Political Outgroups Are Considered Physically Gross
The status of disgust as a sociomoral emotion is debated. We conducted a stringent test of whether social stimuli (specifically, political outgroup members) can elicit physical disgust, as distinct from moral or metaphorical disgust. We employed stimuli (male faces) matched on baseline disgustingness, provided other ways for participants to express negativity toward outgroup members, and used concrete self-report measures of disgust, as well as a…
(In)Alienable Worth? Cultural Logics of Dignity, Honor, and Face and their Links to Prosociality Across the World
Cultural logic is a set of cultural scripts and patterns organized around a central theme. The cultural logics of dignity, honor, and face describe different ways of evaluating a person’s worth and maintaining cooperation. These cultural logics vary in prevalence across cultures. In this study, we collaboratively develop and validate a measure capturing these cultural logics, which will allow us to map world cultures based on the prevalence of th…
Cross-cultural evidence for an association between agreeableness and sweet taste preferences
Love as a Commitment Device: Evidence from a Cross-Cultural Study across 90 Countries
Given the ubiquitous nature of love, numerous theories have been proposed to explain its existence. One such theory refers to love as a commitment device, suggesting that romantic love evolved to foster commitment between partners and enhance their reproductive success. In the present study, we investigated this hypothesis using a large-scale sample of 86,310 individual responses collected across 90 countries. If romantic love is universally perc…
Conservatism Negatively Predicts Creativity: A Study Across 28 Countries
Previous studies have found a negative relationship between creativity and conservatism. However, as these studies were mostly conducted on samples of homogeneous nationality, the generalizability of the effect across different cultures is unknown. We addressed this gap by conducting a study in 28 countries. Based on the notion that attitudes can be shaped by both environmental and ecological factors, we hypothesized that parasite stress can also…
Psychology (27 works) · Social Psychology (22 works) · Evolutionary Psychology and Human Behavior (19 works) · Developmental psychology (12 works) · Consumer Behavior in Brand Consumption and Identification (8 works) · Sociology (8 works) · Biology (7 works) · Social Psychology (6 works) · Demography (5 works) · Medicine (5 works)