Published online Jun 3. Mary-Ellen Brierley , 1 Kevin R. Brooks , 1, 3 Jonathan Mond , 1 Richard J. Stevenson , 1, 3 and Ian D. Kevin R. Richard J. Ian D. Cosimo Urgesi, Editor. Author information Article notes Copyright and License information Disclaimer.
Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist. Received Feb 14; Accepted May This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
This article has been cited by other articles in PMC. Abstract The dominant evolutionary theory of physical attraction posits that attractiveness reflects physiological health, and attraction is a mechanism for identifying a healthy mate.
Introduction Sexual Strategies Theory proposes that face and body attractiveness judgements reflect psychological adaptations for identifying healthy and fertile potential mates [ 1 , 2 ], with the most attractive individuals expected to be the healthiest and most fertile [ 3 ].
Participants For the stimulus acquisition phase, participants were individuals females , of mean age Procedure Stimulus acquisition Subjects completed a simple demographic questionnaire, in which they were asked to provide their age, sex and ethnicity, before their height was measured using a standard tape measure. Open in a separate window. Fig 1. A subject standing in the frontal anatomical position. Stimulus Manipulation Photographs were resized to x pixels and bodies were delineated with landmark points and aligned to ensure they are upright and in the middle of the screen, using PsychoMorph [ 46 ] Fig 1.
Table 1 Differences in fat and muscle mass and body height of subjects in the endpoint average images, and results of independent samples t-tests. Height Muscle Fat Muscle Male Fat Fat 7. Fig 2. A female identity transformed across levels of fat and muscle continua. Fig 3. A male identity transformed across levels of fat and muscle continua.
Data collection Observers were presented with the subject identities one at a time in an applet developed in Matlab version a, operating the Psychophysics Toolbox. Statistical methods For each trial, the coordinates of the frame chosen were saved, such that each trial had a score from 0—12 in the fat dimension and a score from 0—12 in the muscle dimension. Fig 4. Fig 5. Fig 6. Conclusion We examined the role of body fat and muscle mass on the apparent health and attractiveness of male and female bodies.
Acknowledgments The authors would like to thank Dan Sturman for Matlab programming; Kristy Kolc, Dan Sturman, Rachael Johnson, Chloe Bickersteth and Robyn Ordman for help with image collection; Cosimo Urgesi and three anonymous reviewers for comments on an earlier version of this manuscript.
References 1. Psychol Rev. Physical attractiveness of face and body as indicators of physical fitness in men. Evol Hum Behav. Facial adiposity: A cue to health? Healthy body, healthy face? Evolutionary approaches to attractiveness perception. Carotenoid and melanin pigment coloration affect perceived human health.
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Judging the health and attractiveness of female faces: is the most attractive level of facial adiposity also considered the healthiest? Elsevier Ltd ; ; 8 : —3. Elsevier Ltd ; ; — The attractive female body weight and female body dissatisfaction in 26 countries across 10 world regions: results of the international body project I.
Personal Soc Psychol Bull. Weeden J, Sabini J. Physical attractiveness and health in Western societies: a review. Psychol Bull. Women are into dating fat guys. But why do girls like fat guys? Here are five scientific reasons why women love fat men. So whether or not those extra pounds translate to a sense of humor, women are likely to assume that fat guys are funny. Chubby guys are better in bed, according to a survey of 2, British women. Thirty-eight percent reported that overweight or plus-size men were superior lovers.
Men with noticeable bellies and higher BMIs last 7. The present findings also have relevance to societal increases in body weight. Previous work has shown that obese individuals are commonly seen as less desirable mates, 11 , 12 but based on the present findings, one might predict that mate preferences concerning overweight individuals may become less negative.
Here, we examined visual attraction toward overweight men, which is more common and presumably more socially acceptable than obesity, so it may be the case that exposure does not enhance attraction toward obese men. Given that obesity is now becoming prevalent in many parts of the world, we may start to see shifts in mate preference toward partners of slightly heavier body weights. The potential role that stigma has in explaining the present findings warrants attention.
The context in which participants were exposed to obesity in the present study also warrants discussion. Research indicates that obesity stigma may have increased in recent years, 28 and one consequence of this is that obese individuals are often portrayed in a negative manner in the media, 13 as opposed to the neutral manner of exposure used in the present studies.
Thus, it may be the case that the type of visual exposure to obesity which occurs through viewing popular media does not normalise heavier body weights. The present studies were designed to examine the effect that exposure to different body weights has on female attraction to overweight men. As we observed consistent evidence that exposure to obese men was associated with increased female attraction toward an overweight man, this now raises a question of whether a similar pattern of results would be observed when examining male attraction toward overweight women.
The use of standardized images of actual healthy, overweight and obese individuals is a strength of this work, as often body image studies rely on artificial or perceptually extreme images, 15 , 16 making it difficult to ascertain whether findings will transfer over to judgements made about actual people. Given that we examined attraction and mate choice shortly after exposure to a relatively small number of bodies, it is not clear from the present studies how long these effects would last for.
A final limitation was that we only examined attraction toward Caucasian men, so further research examining how exposure to heavier body weights influence attraction amongst other ethnicities would now be interesting. Optimum body-mass index and sexual attractiveness. Lancet ; : Article Google Scholar. Female and male perceptions of female physical attractiveness in front-view and profile. Br J Psychol ; 92 : — Evol Hum Behav ; 26 : — Body images, body-size perceptions, and eating behaviors among African-American and white college women.
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Physical attractiveness and health in western societies: a review. Psychol Bull ; : — When facial attractiveness is only skin deep. Perception ; 33 : — Evaluating online labor markets for experimental research: Amazon.
Political Analysis ; 20 : — Question of the Week: When my husband and I first started dating, I was extremely attracted to his physical appearance. When I tell him he needs to lose weight he gets angry and really hurt. Is it unfair of me to want him to lose weight? Some couples who have been married for years will tell you that their physical attraction to each other has intensified over the years while others say that their attraction to each other has lessened anyway, even without weight gain.
While changes in appearance are inevitable due to the natural aging process, pregnancy and other health conditions, these kinds of changes are a little more acceptable to some because they are involuntary.
It seems like a different story, however, when a spouse gains weight due to their own lack of effort in eating right and exercising. Grey hair and wrinkles will bestow themselves on everyone, but when voluntary weight gain creeps in, do spouses have the right to demand change?
You knew who the person you were marrying was and you should have accepted that a major change was probably not going to happen.
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