The ovulatory-shift fight
Two meta-analyses in the same year. The honest atlas keeps both and refuses the calendar hack.
Folk claim
Women want dominant men at peak fertility. Time the ask to the luteal phase. Estradiol is the dial.
What the papers say
Gildersleeve, Haselton, and Fales (2014) reported cycle shifts toward masculine and dominant cues. Wood, Kressel, Joshi, and Louie (2014) reported that those shifts mostly vanish under a different meta-analytic lens. Estradiol is the named mediator in the positive story. Neither paper licenses a negotiation calendar, and neither identifies dominance-strategy as this atlas uses the term.
When two competent metas collide, the stamp is contested. Cite both. Do not sell a cycle hack.
What the positive meta claimed
Gildersleeve et al. aggregated cycle-shift studies and reported that preferences for purported good-gene cues rose near ovulation. That is the paper Instagram needed. It is also a paper about facial masculinity and scent, not about who becomes CFO.
What the other meta took away
Wood et al. argued that researcher degrees of freedom and fertile-window coding were doing more work than hormones. A reader who only cites Gildersleeve is doing advocacy. A reader who only cites Wood is doing the mirror image.
What this atlas does with a split literature
The edge stays on the atlas, stamped spurious-until-settled (contested confidence), with both DOIs. Inquire will not tell you to change a pitch meeting. If a preregistered, large, hormonal-assay study later identifies a narrow effect, we upgrade the stamp. We do not upgrade the folklore.
Edges in this case
Meta-analysis · Contested
Estradiol→Dominance strategy
Cycle-phase 'preference for dominance' is a contested meta-finding, not a hormone dial.
Sources
Cite this page
What Causes What. “The ovulatory-shift fight.” https://whatcauseswhat.org/cases/cycle-shifts (atlas updated 2026-08-31).