I recently came across an article that also tackled tattoos from an evolutionary perspective albeit in a radically different manner (i.e., beyond the premise that tattoos serve as public signals of group membership). Three Polish scholars, Slawomir Koziel, Weronika Kretschmer, and Boguslaw Pawlowski, argued that tattoos might serve as honest signals of genetic quality (see also the paper by Wohlrab et al., 2009). In their 2010 paper published in Evolution and Human Behavior, Koziel et al. noted that getting a tattoo is not only painful but also it carries a wide range of health risks including the transmission of HIV and hepatitis, bleeding, bacterial infections, tissue trauma, skin allergies, and other post-tattoo medical conditions that might develop at the site of the tattoo including sarcoid-like granuloma and skin cancer (malignant melanoma and basal cell carcinoma). Koziel et al. theorized that in light of these health risks, individuals who might obtain a tattoo might do so because they possess good genes ("I can afford to engage in such dangerous practices because I am made of good stock."). If so, the researchers theorized that individuals possessing tattoos might possess greater body symmetry (or lesser fluctuating asymmetry) since this serves as a good signal of genetic quality and developmental stability.

To test their hypothesis, they measured body symmetry (left-right deviations along the lengths of the index and ring fingers, and for wrist breadth), and created composite measures of fluctuating asymmetry (FA). They then compared the average FA scores for tattooed individuals (64 men; 52 women) and their non-tattooed counterparts (38 men; 48 women). Other than the wrist metric, all other measures were in line with their hypothesis, namely tattooed individuals displayed lower FA scores than the non-tattooed group. Additional analyses revealed that men's data drove this effect. In other words, to the extent that tattoos are used as signals of genetic quality, men are more likely to partake in this form of signaling. On a related note, see my earlier post here wherein I discussed the relationship between body symmetry and dancing ability in men. I suppose that this implies that tattooed men who are good dancers are exceptionally symmetric!

Anecdotally, this tattoo finding makes sense in that many women argue that a tattoo can be sexy on some men, namely the bad boy archetype. Of course, bad boys are unlikely to look like Bill Gates. Rather, they are typically athletic and dominant men who display a wide range of masculinized morphological features (e.g., facial features that signal exposure to high levels of pubertal testosterone; see my earlier post here on facial features of military leaders). Tattoos on brawny firemen look good (see my earlier post on women's "fireman" fantasies here). The same tattoos on Mark Zuckerberg...not so much.

Source for Images:

http://bit.ly/oQVNj7

http:///www.tattoodonkey.com/pics/s/w/sweet-face-tattoo-picture-1...