Socioeconomic Status Is Not Related with Facial Fluctuating Asymmetry: Evidence from Latin-American Populations

QUINTO-SÁNCHEZ, MIRSHA; CINTAS, CELIA; SILVA DE CERQUEIRA, CAIO CESAR; RAMALLO, VIRGINIA; ACUÑA-ALONZO, VICTOR; ADHIKARI, KAUSTUBH; CASTILLO, LUCÍA; GOMEZ-VALDÉS, JORGE; EVERARDO, PAOLA; DE AVILA, FRANCISCO; HÜNEMEIER, TÁBITA; JARAMILLO, CLAUDIA; ARIAS, WILLIAMS; FUENTES, MACARENA; GALLO, CARLA; POLETTI, GIOVANI; SCHULER-FACCINI, LAVINIA; BORTOLINI, MARIA CÁTIRA; CANIZALES-QUINTEROS, SAMUEL; ROTHHAMMER, FRANCISCO; BEDOYA, GABRIEL; ROSIQUE, JAVIER; RUIZ-LINARES, ANDRÉS; GONZÁLEZ-JOSÉ, ROLANDO; QUINTO-SÁNCHEZ, MIRSHA; CINTAS, CELIA; SILVA DE CERQUEIRA, CAIO CESAR; RAMALLO, VIRGINIA; ACUÑA-ALONZO, VICTOR; ADHIKARI, KAUSTUBH; CASTILLO, LUCÍA; GOMEZ-VALDÉS, JORGE; EVERARDO, PAOLA; DE AVILA, FRANCISCO; HÜNEMEIER, TÁBITA; JARAMILLO, CLAUDIA; ARIAS, WILLIAMS; FUENTES, MACARENA; GALLO, CARLA; POLETTI, GIOVANI; SCHULER-FACCINI, LAVINIA; BORTOLINI, MARIA CÁTIRA; CANIZALES-QUINTEROS, SAMUEL; ROTHHAMMER, FRANCISCO; BEDOYA, GABRIEL; ROSIQUE, JAVIER; RUIZ-LINARES, ANDRÉS; GONZÁLEZ-JOSÉ, ROLANDO

PLOS ONE

PUBLIC LIBRARY SCIENCE

Año: 2017 vol. 12

1932-6203

The expression of facial asymmetries has been recurrently related with poverty and/or disadvantagedsocioeconomic status. Departing from the developmental instability theory,previous approaches attempted to test the statistical relationship between the stress experiencedby individuals grown in poor conditions and an increase in facial and corporal asymmetry.Here we aim to further evaluate such hypothesis on a large sample of admixed LatinAmericans individuals by exploring if low socioeconomic status individuals tend to exhibitgreater facial fluctuating asymmetry values. To do so, we implement Procrustes analysis ofvariance and Hierarchical Linear Modelling (HLM) to estimate potential associationsbetween facial fluctuating asymmetry values and socioeconomic status. We report significantrelationships between facial fluctuating asymmetry values and age, sex, and geneticancestry, while socioeconomic status failed to exhibit any strong statistical relationship withfacial asymmetry. These results are persistent after the effect of heterozygosity (a proxy forgenetic ancestry) is controlled in the model. Our results indicate that, at least on the studied sample, there is no relationship between socioeconomic stress (as intended as low socioeconomicstatus) and facial asymmetries.