The Beautification from an Evolutionary Perspective

Beautification, defined here as the process of improving appearance through ornaments, modifications, and displays, is considered an adaptive strategy shaped by sexual selection across animal species, including humans. From the peacock’s dazzling plumage and bowerbirds’ decorated bowers to human cosmetics, clothing, tattoos, and body modifications, beautification can function in mate attraction, intrasexual competition, and social signaling. Although ornamentation in non-human animals has a rich research tradition in behavioral ecology and evolutionary biology, connections to human beautification, most often studied in psychology and anthropology, remain limited. Integrating these perspectives may clarify universal principles of sexual selection originally proposed by Charles Darwin.

In non-human animals, beautification is often explained through costly signaling theory, sensory exploitation, and condition-dependent ornament expression. In humans, evolutionary psychology has examined cosmetics, fashion, and body modification as self-promotional strategies that may signal health, fertility, genetic quality, and resource-holding potential. Yet key gaps remain: integration between human and non-human findings is still scarce; individual differences and ecological context need more attention; and debates about evolved mechanisms versus cultural learning in human beautification call for comparative, cross-cultural investigation.

At the same time, evolutionarily informed research points to both the broad prevalence of beautification as a sexually selected trait and substantial diversity in its expression, including sex- and age-based variation across cultures. Finally, digital technologies and social networks create novel contexts for human beautification, raising questions about how evolved psychological mechanisms operate in modern environments and underscoring the need for unified theoretical frameworks that bridge evolutionary psychology, anthropology, and related disciplines.

This Research Topic seeks to synthesize scientific knowledge about beautification from an evolutionary standpoint across taxa, disciplines, and methodologies. Building on the general principles of sexual selection theory, this collection focuses on studies that stringently test evolutionary hypotheses at the individual or cross-cultural level. We invite contributions presenting new experimental, empirical, or theoretical evidence on the evolution, development, and expression of beautification behaviors across the animal kingdom, including humans, drawing on behavioral ecology, evolutionary psychology, anthropology, and related fields.

We invite articles that address, but are not limited to, the following themes:

• Cross-species analyses of ornamentation, display behaviors, and mate choice
• Expensive signaling and honest advertising of genetic quality, health, and condition
• Sensory exploitation and supernormal stimuli in the evolution of aesthetic preferences
• Expression of condition-dependent ornaments and their linkage with fitness.
• Intrasexual competition and the role of beautification in dominance and status signaling
• Evolutionary functions of cosmetics, clothing, tattoos, jewelry, and body modifications
• Sex differences in beautification strategies
• Individual differences predicting beautification investment; that is, mating effort, sociosexual orientation, and mate value
• Resource availability, pathogen prevalence and predation risk on beautification investment
• Social competition intensity and its impact on appearance enhancement
• Regulation of ornament expression by hormones and physiology
• Neural substrates of the perception of beauty
• Digital beautification and self-presentation on social media from an evolutionary perspective
• Evolved beautification psychology's relation to body image, self-esteem, and mental health
• Cross-cultural and comparative methods for the study of appearance enhancement.

Article types and fees

This Research Topic accepts the following article types, unless otherwise specified in the Research Topic description:

• Brief Research Report
• Conceptual Analysis
• Data Report
• Editorial
• FAIR² Data
• FAIR² DATA Direct Submission
• General Commentary
• Hypothesis and Theory
• Methods
• ... View all formats

Articles that are accepted for publication by our external editors following rigorous peer review incur a publishing fee charged to Authors, institutions, or funders.

Article types

This Research Topic accepts the following article types, unless otherwise specified in the Research Topic description:

• Brief Research Report
• Conceptual Analysis
• Data Report
• Editorial
• FAIR² Data
• FAIR² DATA Direct Submission
• General Commentary
• Hypothesis and Theory
• Methods
• Mini Review
• Opinion
• Original Research
• Perspective
• Policy and Practice Reviews
• Registered Report
• Review
• Specialty Grand Challenge
• Systematic Review
• Technology and Code

Keywords: Beautification, Evolutionary Psychology, Sexual Selection, Mate Choice, Ornamentation, Self Image, Body Modification, Sex Differences

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.