Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Evidence That The Hormonal Contraceptive Pill Is Associated With Cosmetic Habits, Carlota Batres, Aurélie Porcheron, Gwenaël Kaminski, Sandra Courrèges, Frédérique Morizot, Richard Russell

Psychology Faculty Publications

Hormonal contraception is known to cause subtle but widespread behavioral changes. Here, we investigated whether changes in cosmetic habits are associated with use of the hormonal contraceptive pill. We photographed a sample of women (N = 36) who self-reported whether or not they use the contraceptive pill, as well as their cosmetic habits. A separate sample of participants (N = 143) rated how much makeup these target women appeared to be wearing. We found that women not using the contraceptive pill (i.e., naturally cycling women) reported spending more time applying cosmetics for an outing than did women who …