Although it remains contentious, women's changeable attraction to masculine faces has been used to inform evolutionary ideas about human mating strategies. Typical experiments in this area use two-alternative-forced-choice (2afc) over a few pairs of similar images. The reliability of these measures is analysed suggesting that many studies have too few trials to be reliable. In the current experiment, fertility shifts in preferences for masculinised faces (and Africanised faces) were explored using both attractiveness ratings and a 2afc method over 80 pairs. The 2afc method showed a fertility shift in preferences whereas attractiveness ratings did not show a shift. Further, it was demonstrated how the size of the preferences shown in the 2afc tasks correlated with general face-matching performance. It is concluded that fertility is associated with improved face-processing accuracy and hence 2afc designs have poor validity as measures of masculinity preference. These issues of validity and reliability may have contributed to the contentious nature of fertility effects on preferences. Further, validity and reliability need to be considered in any study where a change in preference is identified using a comparative-preference task.

中文翻译：

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对月经周期影响研究中男性气质偏好测量的可靠性和有效性的挑战。

尽管仍有争议，但女性对男性面孔的多变吸引力已被用于为人类交配策略的进化思想提供信息。该领域的典型实验在几对相似图像上使用两个替代强制选择 (2afc)。对这些措施的可靠性进行了分析，表明许多研究的试验太少，不可靠。在当前的实验中，使用吸引力评级和超过 80 对的 2afc 方法探索了对男性化面孔（和非洲化面孔）偏好的生育变化。2afc 方法显示了偏好的生育率变化，而吸引力评级没有显示出变化。此外，还演示了 2afc 任务中显示的偏好大小如何与一般面部匹配性能相关。得出的结论是，生育能力与面部处理准确性的提高有关，因此 2afc 设计作为衡量男性气质偏好的有效性较差。这些有效性和可靠性问题可能导致生育率对偏好的影响存在争议。此外，在使用比较偏好任务识别偏好变化的任何研究中，都需要考虑有效性和可靠性。