Fathers See Stronger Family Resemblances than Non-Fathers in Unrelated Children’s Faces

Even after they have taken all reasonable measures to decrease the probability that their spouses cheat on them, men still
face paternal uncertainty. Such uncertainty can lead to paternal disinvestment, which reduces the children’s probability to
survive and reproduce, and thus the reproductive success of the fathers themselves. A theoretical model shows that, other
things being equal, men who feel confident that they have fathered their spouses’ offspring tend to enjoy greater fitness
(i.e., leave a larger number of surviving progeny) than men who do not. This implies that fathers should benefit from exaggerating
paternal resemblance. We argue that the self-deceiving component of this bias could be concealed by generalizing this resemblance
estimation boost to (1) family pairs other than father-child and (2) strangers. Here, we tested the prediction that fathers
may see, in unrelated children’s faces, stronger family resemblances than non-fathers. In Study 1, 70 men and 70 women estimated
facial resemblances between children paired, at three different ages (as infants, children, and adolescents), either to themselves
or to their parents. In Study 2, 70 men and 70 women guessed the true parents of the same children among a set of adults.
Men who were fathers reported stronger similarities between faces than non-fathers, mothers, and non-mothers did, but were
no better at identifying childrens’ real parents. We suggest that, in fathers, processing of facial resemblances is biased
in a manner that reflects their (adaptive) wishful thinking that fathers and children are related.