Talk:Ovulatory shift hypothesis

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment
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higher-pitched voices
"Women in the fertile phase are often rated as ... higher-pitched voices"

Are higher-pithed voices typically associated with sexual attractiveness or sexual activity? I was under the impression that high-pitched, "squeaky" voices are a common turn-off. See for example 10 Ways Your Voice Influences Other Minds. Dimadick (talk) 12:28, 17 December 2017 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the interesting question! The article you linked to lists a 2013 study which found that men did find higher-pitched female voices more attractive, but not if they were too high and squeaky like you describe. Other studies have found similar correlations between attractiveness and higher voice pitch: see these examples from 2002, 2008, and 2010. The one study that I know of that examined exact changes in voice pitch across the menstrual cycle showed that women's voices only increase in pitch by about 15 hertz at peak fertility. If you are familiar with music, in the typical female vocal range this is only a difference of about 1-2 musical notes (like going up from E to F or F#). So it is only a subtle increase that is not likely to venture into the annoying squeaky range. MountainRose (talk) 17:04, 18 December 2017 (UTC)

Sex and gender conflation
This article seems to conflate sex and gender pretty regularly; I'm going to guess that trans women, while women, do not experience ovarian shifts, while some trans men might well. Might I suggest someone alter the article so that it is consistent? (and, if possible, recognise and contextualise people with intersex conditions). Thanks! Copper Dreamer (talk) 04:15, 2 January 2018 (UTC)


 * Thanks so much for bringing up this important point. As the primary author of this article, it was not my intention to mischaracterize or exclude intersex, trans, homosexual, or any other gender/sexuality categories of individuals. Truly unfortunately, to my knowledge, there has been no published research on the ovulatory shifts of any of these groups, so I would not feel comfortable putting any speculative information about their experiences into the article, simply because of the lack of evidence. Although perhaps the fact that there is no research on these groups would be worth stating. On terminology, what would you suggest is the best way to make the article more clear? Should the words "man" and "woman" be replaced by only "male" and "female", as they are perhaps more suggestive of biological sex? Should a disclaimer be made at the beginning of the article that all of the following statements refer to biological sex? I assumed (though now realize that one should never assume) that with the introduction of the biological phenomenon of estrus at the beginning of the article that a reader would understand that the rest of the references to male/female/man/woman all refer to biological sex and not gender identity. But I am open to any suggestions on making the article more clear. MountainRose (talk) 20:41, 9 January 2018 (UTC)


 * Since the matter has been raised, I suggest you just add a note to the effect that the article refers to biological sex. You can use in the article, and ==Notes==  just before the list of References. Chiswick Chap (talk) 20:47, 9 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Thank you for your polite and excellent reply! I..don't think there's really any intersection between the OSH and sexuality, so that's probably moot ;p. On sex and gender, I like both of the above ideas - fixing it to male/female consistently (there's, afaik, not really a biological conception of 'man/woman' except in the sense that one model of gender is biological) and adding a note. Again, many thanks to the both of you :). Copper Dreamer (talk) 23:53, 9 January 2018 (UTC)


 * A+ footnote; I was wondering about the consistency? That is, a footnote is pretty small and simply changing it to male/female humans with a footnote about the lack of intersex coverage would probably simplify things for people who miss it. Copper Dreamer (talk) 15:47, 12 January 2018 (UTC)

Dated sources, SYNTH, extensive use of primary sources, and unbalanced
Issues discussed at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Medicine. Sandy Georgia (Talk)  23:24, 2 March 2021 (UTC)
 * Sandy Georgia (Talk)  05:02, 5 March 2021 (UTC)


 * This discussion has been archived here: Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Medicine/Archive_148 Samboy (talk) 02:42, 2 December 2021 (UTC)
 * See and  Sandy Georgia  (Talk)  03:03, 2 December 2021 (UTC)
 * Wiki Ed/University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA)/Psychology 220A (Fall, 2017) Sandy Georgia (Talk)  03:05, 2 December 2021 (UTC)

Some recent research on this (results are not being replicated)
This ovulatory shift hypothesis appears to be suffering from a pretty severe replication crisis:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1364661318302560 (also: )

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31122067/ (also: )

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1090513818300072 (also: )

Lay summary: https://www.livescience.com/61537-women-ovulatory-cycle-men.html

Since there are places on the Internet, generally misogynist spaces, where the ovulatory shift hypothesis is considered gospel truth, there will be an issue with keeping both this article neutral w.r.t. recent science, as well as Sexual_attraction.

I hope to have time to update both articles and put them on my watchlist to make sure POV pushers aren’t suppressing current science on the matter. Samboy (talk) 02:28, 2 December 2021 (UTC)


 * In medical science this level of discrepancy is far from constituting a "severe replication crisis". This is the norm.
 * The studies did not use a standardized set of masculine vs non-masculine stimuli to assess shifts in preference in response to shifts in ovulatory cycle. They also had very low sample sizes: in the articles linked above, N = 78 and N = 157; compare this to studies reporting positive findings, with a sample size of N = 75 in the one that found an association between shifts in salivary estradiol and partner preferences. At this level, null findings can easily be attributed to individual or situational variation, or to differences in the types of stimuli used by different studies.
 * As a biologist I find all these findings notable enough to include in the article. Naturally, contradictory findings should be mentioned as well. As a note, I do not notice any signs of significant 'POV pushing' in the article or the talk page at this point―except from the editors here who are suggesting that information in the article should be removed entirely. That, more than anything, seems to indicate that they find the content offensive on a personal level. Bavio the Benighted (talk) 06:21, 2 December 2021 (UTC)


 * Perhaps you'll have a look at WP:MEDRS and consider what weight the article should give to secondary vs. primary sources. Sandy Georgia (Talk)  07:22, 2 December 2021 (UTC)
 * Based on the studies I have looked at (the three I listed above), newer studies are not replicating the older studies which claim that women change the kind of man they are attracted to when they are fertile (which, in misogynistic dark corners of the Internet, result in false claims such as the claim women frequently cheat on boyfriends or husbands who provide for them when they are fertile). Indeed, newer studies directly contradict those claims; e.g. Jones 2018 states that “The dual mating strategy hypothesis proposes that women’s preferences for uncommitted sexual relationships with men displaying putative fitness cues increase during the high-fertility phase of the menstrual cycle [...] the methods used in most of these studies have recently been extensively criticized”.  That’s a textbook example of a replication crisis, and discussion about the number of subjects in the studies is original research unless one can find a peer-reviewed medical reliable source bringing up concerns w.r.t. the sample size in these studies.  For the record, I respect WP:AGF, but, in a contentious subject like this, I also look at and note previous editing history.  For the record, you can look at my history: I am hardly a radical left-wing feminist but I draw the line with a biased representation of a dubious scientific theory which is being widely misused by radical right-wing misogynists.  I am not arguing that women change their attraction when they are fertile, but I am arguing that we don’t have solid evidence women secretly want to cheat on their husbands and boyfriends when they are fertile, much less actually cheat on their partners in large numbers. Samboy (talk) 09:06, 2 December 2021 (UTC)
 * This article sets off alarm bells for me. To see that reviews disagree about the topic is good info. I support your efforts to reexamine our coverage of this. – Novem Linguae (talk) 02:53, 2 December 2021 (UTC)
 * The only high quality source I could find on this (MEDLINE meta-analysis) spoke positively of the hypothesis. Not what I was expecting, but hard to argue with the sources. Might still need to gut all the WP:PRIMARY though. It is not Wikipedia's job to read all these individual studies and figure out what they mean (WP:OR). This goes for both the sources in the article and the sources on this talk page. To comply with WP:MEDRS and to avoid WP:UNDUE, we really should be using mostly WP:SECONDARY sources such as review articles and meta-analyses, and not single studies. – Novem Linguae (talk) 16:25, 2 December 2021 (UTC)
 * WP:MEDDATE should also be considered. Some of the primary sources are so old that, if the hypothesis had gained traction, there would be mention in secondary reviews by now.  The problem with the page now is that it is an extended analysis of primary sources, that tacks on a few words from secondary sources, often only at the end.  This article is re-debating the primary studies, which is why the potential COI is such a concern; the article is promotional, and for researchers at UCLA. I believe a Good article reassessment is needed, but I don't participate in the GA process, so am unfamiliar. Sandy Georgia  (Talk)  17:41, 2 December 2021 (UTC)
 * I second WP:MEDDATE. That meta-analysis is from 2014; three more recent studies, one from 2018 and two from 2019, directly contradict the earlier results and at least one makes a compelling case the older studies had methodological issues.  We should probably include the 2014 meta-analysis, but also include these three much more recent studies since they are more recent and have a very different conclusion. Samboy (talk) 18:08, 2 December 2021 (UTC)
 * It's been a long time since I looked at this, but IIRC, the article is also rife with WP:SYNTH, as many of the primary sources used do not even mention the hypothesis. Sandy Georgia (Talk)  18:17, 2 December 2021 (UTC)
 * The article is rife with problems, and has been on my list for almost a year, but I haven't gotten to it. I will have to find my notes, but it gives WP:UNDUE attention to concepts that are not supported by secondary sources.  It is written in such a way that the unsupported portions of the hypothesis are minimized, while that which the proponents of the hypothesis are pushing constitute most of the article, using mostly primary sources. When I looked at it earlier this year, I noted that most of the researchers reporting this are inter-connected, and the student editor who wrote the article was at one of those universities, so the sources aren't necessarily independent, and the writer might have had a COI.  From what I found when I looked almost a year, the article needs to be gutted. Sorry I never got to it, and I don't recall now where I put my notes ... but the article needs to be reduced to a few lines about an unsupported hypothesis. Sandy Georgia  (Talk)  03:01, 2 December 2021 (UTC)
 * I have added the three references I have above to the article (in both the lead and body) along with a single sentence saying “newer studies (subsequently published) do not show women changing the type of men they desire at different times in their fertility cycle.” Samboy (talk) 23:20, 2 December 2021 (UTC)
 * We shouldn’t really be arguing the case in the article, rather simply stating what secondary sources say. Another way this article creates POV is via how the statements are placed. Sandy Georgia  (Talk)  23:24, 2 December 2021 (UTC)
 * Here’s but one example from the lead, but the entire article is written this way:
 * Men in relationships tend to become more jealous of other men and protective of their partner when she is at high fertility.
 * That is cited to a primary study, yet stated as fact in Wikipedia’s voice. Almost the entire article is built that way.  This is what often happens in medical content when people in the field don’t understand that can’t write a journal article on Wikipedia— they have to summarize what secondary sources say.  The article is arguing the case, using mostly primary sources, some of which never mention this hypothesis. Sandy Georgia  (Talk)  23:43, 2 December 2021 (UTC)
 * I suppose we should tag the article. Maybe primary and pov? – Novem Linguae (talk) 07:44, 4 December 2021 (UTC)
 * I already tried that once,  which resulted in these (odd) discussions, with people talking about me without pinging me, and a false claim of edit warring:    So, obviously, I'm not doing any more tagging. My suggestion is to not only tag the article, but also initiate a WP:GAR. The apparent COI here should have been a red flag, and the GA pass might have been better had a medical editor, or someone otherwise knowledgeable about WP:MEDRS, done it. Sandy Georgia  (Talk)  18:39, 4 December 2021 (UTC)
 * Speaking of which: Sandy Georgia  (Talk)  18:42, 4 December 2021 (UTC)
 * Way over my drama cutoff threshold already, and I'm not keen on the WP:NPA breach either. No need to ping me further. Chiswick Chap (talk) 18:55, 4 December 2021 (UTC)
 * My opinion: I’m not a fan of tagging articles myself. If there’s a real problem with an article, and I agree this article does have real problems with tone and neutrality (the entire notion women want to cheat on their men when they are fertile is at best controversial, and at worst enables the fantasies and immoral behavior of online misogynist communities), we need to figure out how to fix it, instead of making it someone else’s problem.  As a compromise, I’ll put the tags on the talk page. Samboy (talk) 01:09, 5 December 2021 (UTC)
 * No need to put tags on the talk page. That's not where maintenance tags go. – Novem Linguae (talk) 01:24, 5 December 2021 (UTC)
 * I already added tags to the talk page; since editors removed the tags in the main article earlier this year, I don’t see consensus to add them to the main article (and I oppose adding the tags to the article, for the record). Also: The update tag isn’t needed any more because I have added three studies from 2018 and 2019 to the article, so I have removed it. Samboy (talk) 01:27, 5 December 2021 (UTC)
 * Maintenance tags of this type are for the benefit of readers, to alert them to the issues in the article. They don't serve readers if placed on talk pages. Sandy Georgia  (Talk)  06:41, 5 December 2021 (UTC)


 * "This ovulatory shift hypothesis appears to be suffering from a pretty severe replication crisis" I can't say I am entirely surprised. Evolutionary psychology has a tendency to attribute just about anything to biological factors, and ignore other possible explanations. I read the Jones, Hahn, and Debruine article in its entirety. It raises plenty of questions about both the methodologies used in various tests, and about aspects of this hypothesis that were apparently never tested.:


 * First alarm bell, the tiny samples used in many of the tests. " the mean sample size in within-subject studies reporting significant effects of fertility on facial masculinity preferences published before 2018 is 40 and the median is 34"
 * Second problem. The studies were supposed to study women's behavior during certain phases of their position in their menstrual cycle. Most of the studies used self-reporting to determine these phases, and did not actually consider that these reports may be inaccurate.
 * The hypothesis insists that women's desire for extra-pair mating will increase during the ovulatory phase, while desire for in-pair mating will decrease. Some of these studies found instead that desire for both in-pair and extra-pair mating had increased, as well as an increased desire for sexual activity without any partners (masturbation). Their conclusion is that the increase in sexual desire during the ovulation period may not be target-specific. In other words, the desirability of the available sexual partners may be irrelevant.
 * The hypothesis suggests that the evolutionary benefit for extra-pair mating would be the birth of offspring with higher fitness. This has not actually been tested, nor has it been tested that the short-term sexual partners were actually fitter or healthier than the long-term partner.
 * The hypothesis assumes that pretty much all heterosexual, ovulating women are likely to seek extra-pair mating. A byproduct of this would be high-levels of "extra-pair paternity" all over the world. Genetic studies in several countries of Europe and Africa instead found extra-pair paternity rates to represent less than 2% of the population, per generation. Studies have found a higher than average rate of extra-pair paternity in a Nigerian tribe. But it appears that the tribe experienced a high extra-pair paternity rate in couples wed through arranged marriages, while it was uncommon for couples who were wed by their own free will. The women's preferences concerning sexual partners had not changed, they simply were not satisfied with their husband to begin with. Dimadick (talk) 02:40, 5 December 2021 (UTC)
 * It is my impression that the ovulatory shift hypothesis is a product of an era when Evolutionary Psychology thought that cheating was more widespread than what we know today, now that we have widespread genetic testing. The first paper presenting this theory looks to be from 1998 (Gangestad/Thornhill 1998), and I think the papers stopped supporting the extra-pair mating hypothesis before 2014 when the latest meta-reviews were made. Right now, it looks like we have a 2014 meta-study which makes a good case for extra-pair mating preferences when a woman is fertile, another which which has the opposite conclusion, and a number of post-2014 papers which make a strong case for women not having extra-pair mating preferences.  I agree with SandyGeorgia that we can have a section for post-2014 papers, not just the one sentence mention we have now, and that we should probably remove pre-2014 papers (just use the two 2014 meta studies) as per WP:MEDDATE.  Press articles I have read are pretty consistent that extra-pair mating preferences are not as common as evolutionary psychology once thought 20+ years ago, but we shouldn’t use press in this article as per WP:MEDPOP.  Samboy (talk) 04:28, 5 December 2021 (UTC)
 * It may be out of topic, but I was wondering whether any of the studies made questions about the women's prior sexual history. Whether some of the women have past experiences with multiple concurrent partners, or whether their preferences had been shaped by positive experiences with previous partners did cross my mind. Dimadick (talk) 23:47, 9 December 2021 (UTC)

Sentence removed
I have removed this sentence from the lead:


 * Some researchers who found an increased preference for masculine traits near ovulation within each cycle also observed variation between cycles―in all cases, attraction towards "high testosterone" men was correlated with salivary estradiol. [ref name="Roney 14–19"]

Here is the reference:

This is a 2008 paper, so I do not see why it belongs in the lead as per WP:MEDDATE Samboy (talk) 05:24, 5 December 2021 (UTC)


 * Agree. I am going through the citations searching for reviews and indicating |type= which demonstrates that most of the sections are built exclusively from primary studies, some very old, and are WP:SYNTH. Sandy Georgia (Talk)  06:40, 5 December 2021 (UTC)
 * Gave up, too many edit conflicts. Not a third of the way through checking sources for type. Sandy Georgia (Talk)  07:50, 5 December 2021 (UTC)
 * For future reference, put at the top of the page if you’re doing a lot of work and do not want edit conflicts.  Samboy (talk) 07:58, 5 December 2021 (UTC)

Section removed
This entire section, about a "modern study" is built around one very dated primary study; WP:MEDRS-compliant review should be available by now, fourteen years later. (So far, every section I have looked at, starting at the bottom, is built from exclusively primary sources, but at least they have more than one, and more recent.) Sandy Georgia (Talk)  06:39, 5 December 2021 (UTC)

Lap dancer tips
One of the first modern studies to explore whether women have truly concealed ovulation utilized a simple task: have professional lap dancers record the amount of tips they receive for each day of their ovulatory cycle. The study found that women not using hormonal contraceptives earned significantly more money on the days they were most fertile, compared to other days in the cycle. The researchers suggest that women may be more attractive to men during the fertile window, indicating that women do possess an estrus phase and that their ovulation is not completely concealed.

Risk-taking and inbreeding avoidance
Although a majority of research on the ovulatory shift hypothesis indicates that women consistently attempt to seek out and attract men during peak fertility, some studies have shown that high-fertility women strategically avoid two specific types of mating situations: rape and incest. Several studies have shown that women at peak fertility are more likely to avoid risky situations where sexual assault may be more likely to occur. Researchers have argued that natural selection should have designed women to be especially wary of rape during the fertile window, because women would not be able to selectively choose the genetic qualities they would prefer for their offspring, and that a man willing to engage in rape may actually possess some unfavorable genes. Women may also selectively avoid incest, another situation where deleterious genes could be passed on to her offspring. Studies have found that females of other species tend to avoid male kin during the fertile window, and one study showed a similar result in humans: that women avoid speaking to their fathers when they are at peak fertility.

This section was built entirely from very dated primary studies and animal studies; needs WP:MEDRS-compliant secondary sourcing, still reviewing and noting source types throughout article. Sandy Georgia (Talk)  07:27, 5 December 2021 (UTC)

Edit conflicts
my intent was to flag each study type so that we could examine which sections (if any) rely at all on secondary sources. Editing citations to check each in Pubmed to add a |type= (and then flag those that repeat throughout the article) is extremely tedious and time-consuming work, and it's no fun to lose it to an edit conflict. I lost a good deal of what I had done, and can't finish that work with edit conflicts, as you are changing the article as I am looking up citations. I will try again another time. I have not done even a third of the article, and have found almost entirely dated primary studies so far. Sandy Georgia (Talk)  07:48, 5 December 2021 (UTC)
 * I’m doing the same work you are doing; I’m looking at the PMIDs and seeing if they are reviews or not. If they are not reviews and are from 2014 or earlier, I just deleted the information.  There was a lot of “women cheat on their partners with macho men” nonsense I just axed.  I’ll let you edit the article unhindered.  Samboy (talk) 07:50, 5 December 2021 (UTC)
 * I just added to indicate it shouldn’t be edited while you are doing your work. Samboy (talk) 07:54, 5 December 2021 (UTC)
 * Thanks, but too tired now to continue; it's all yours. Sandy Georgia (Talk)  07:58, 5 December 2021 (UTC)
 * Also, I don't like deleting too fast because of leaving behind named refs; could you please repair?
 * Cite error: The named reference :8 was invoked but never defined (see the help page
 * Thx, Sandy Georgia (Talk)  08:02, 5 December 2021 (UTC)
 * I usually find it more helpful to flag all the types before deleting, as then others can follow, and we can also flag the instances where the same citation is used in another part of the article. Right now, most of the article is cited to primary sources, some of them may or may not be adequate use of primary sources, most of them are very old, but I still don't typically like to delete or move content to talk for possible citing to secondary sources until a) I'm finished checking all sources, and can see what hangs together, or b) an entire section is clearly unsalvageable (as the two above). So, if you prefer to just delete as you go, that will ultimately be the bulk of the article, and I'll leave this to you, then. I don't disagree with that approach; it's just not the way I usually work.  Regards, Sandy Georgia  (Talk)  07:57, 5 December 2021 (UTC)
 * The section I axed was pretty bad. I felt like I took a wrong turn and was in a quarantined subreddit or something.  I’ve removed the template; it’s for just this kind of tiring work.  FYI, If we delete a primary reference used elsewhere in the article by accident, there are bots which will restore the reference.  There’s also bots which fill out citations if we have the DOI.
 * Well, most of the article is pretty bad; I've been saying that for some time, as I did examine it quite closely earlier in the year :) But particularly when dealing with problematic synthesis and primary sources, I do prefer a methodical approach, as others can more easily see what had to go and why.  As I said, it's all yours; I'm off for the day, and have to work on other things tomorrow.  At any rate, you've done a lot of improving here, so I hope you'll keep going.  We just have different style :)  Best regards,  Sandy Georgia  (Talk)  08:06, 5 December 2021 (UTC)
 * This article has been pretty bad for a while—I wrote in my diary back in August that this article really needs a good cleanup—so it’s time to be a bit drastic.   I’ve removed all of the orphaned refs; I’ve also removed the 2014 letters going back and forth about p-curves in the then meta-reviews, since we now have the 2018 review.  Samboy (talk) 08:18, 5 December 2021 (UTC)

The Sexual attraction article
Just a heads up that the Sexual attraction article had the same kind of outdated information this article has had until recently: The notion that women want to be unfaithful to their partners when fertile. Since that notion is from studies two decades ago, and since newer studies have not replicated those results, I have made similar edits to Sexual attraction that we have made here: Removing entire paragraphs based on old, outdated, non-replicated studies.

People watching this article may want to keep an eye on that article too. Samboy (talk) 02:28, 19 December 2021 (UTC)

Merger proposal of Strategic pluralism
I propose merging Strategic pluralism into Ovulatory shift hypothesis. While the title of the source page implies a broader subject, its content is actually limited to what is described here (see Talk:Strategic pluralism). Additionally, Strategic pluralism is much more poorly sourced than this one and presents evidence uncritically.

I think merging might be an option if some additional valuable information can be found in that article, but perhaps a deletion is warranted as well. Fato39 (talk) 13:55, 2 December 2022 (UTC)


 * I support this merge, since Strategic pluralism makes the same dubious claims of women wanting to commit adultery when ovulating which we removed from this article. Samboy (talk) 23:39, 17 December 2022 (UTC)
 * Oppose, as these are quite different topics. I've deleted one misplaced sentence on the Strategic pluralism article, and this should make the distinction clearer to readers. Strategic pluralism is about difference in choices made for long-term and short-term relationships; Ovulatory shift is about shifts in behavior within the ovulatory cycle. Klbrain (talk) 11:42, 13 August 2023 (UTC)
 * Closing merge proposal given the uncontested objection with stale discussion. Klbrain (talk) 12:36, 21 September 2023 (UTC)