Article:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/spea...4908ee1dde
This article was posted on Reddit. One of the authors of the study posted this comment:
"Whenever we publish social science research we can reliably count on two separate comments from the public:
This is obvious and a waste of taxpayer money.
This isn't true.
I'll do my best to address each.
Is it obvious?
Kind of, yes. The point of the study was not to test whether women find strong men attractive. We already knew that (and review previous research showing it in the paper). The main point of the study was to quantify how big of an effect this was when it comes to the male body. The answer was - it's virtually the entire thing. The questions "how strong does this guy look" and "how attractive is this guy" correlated at about .85 with each other. They're almost the same question.
There were other points as well, e.g. previous researchers suggested a kind of inverted-U shape between attractiveness and strength, claiming that very strong men would be found unattractive. There is some evidence for that with pictures of body builders, but we tested a normal population and found no evidence for it at all. This is important because the authors of the inverted-U hypothesis were making claims about how evolution designed women's mate choice mechanisms to respond to men who were too strong. That is only plausible now if there were competitive bodybuilders walking around in our ancestral environment (which is highly unlikely).
There is also a more complicated story about face processing. For those who said that it is obvious that women find the strongest bodies attractive, shouldn't it also be obvious that women should find the strongest looking faces attractive? It's odd, because they don't. There's a sizeable research body showing some women like boyish faces, e.g. think Michael J. Fox or the Beetles or Justin Bieber or whoever.
"It's not true!"
It is true that women prefer very strong bodies, but of course many of the caveats people are saying here are also true. Women prefer high status men, as indicated sometimes by money, jobs, cars, houses, and so on. Women prefer certain personalities and men with common interests and accents, and on and on. This study focused very narrowly on the visual assessment mechanisms in women and how they rate male bodies (sans face). No one thinks that women only value strength; in fact there's good evidence that women are less focused on physical attractiveness than men.
I hope that helps. Keep questions coming if you have them.
Link to reddit thread:
https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comment..._the_most/
I think anyone who has ever taken a cycle or has ever truly achieved jacked status already knew this. But for the nonbelievers, don't be afraid to bulk!
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/spea...4908ee1dde
This article was posted on Reddit. One of the authors of the study posted this comment:
"Whenever we publish social science research we can reliably count on two separate comments from the public:
This is obvious and a waste of taxpayer money.
This isn't true.
I'll do my best to address each.
Is it obvious?
Kind of, yes. The point of the study was not to test whether women find strong men attractive. We already knew that (and review previous research showing it in the paper). The main point of the study was to quantify how big of an effect this was when it comes to the male body. The answer was - it's virtually the entire thing. The questions "how strong does this guy look" and "how attractive is this guy" correlated at about .85 with each other. They're almost the same question.
There were other points as well, e.g. previous researchers suggested a kind of inverted-U shape between attractiveness and strength, claiming that very strong men would be found unattractive. There is some evidence for that with pictures of body builders, but we tested a normal population and found no evidence for it at all. This is important because the authors of the inverted-U hypothesis were making claims about how evolution designed women's mate choice mechanisms to respond to men who were too strong. That is only plausible now if there were competitive bodybuilders walking around in our ancestral environment (which is highly unlikely).
There is also a more complicated story about face processing. For those who said that it is obvious that women find the strongest bodies attractive, shouldn't it also be obvious that women should find the strongest looking faces attractive? It's odd, because they don't. There's a sizeable research body showing some women like boyish faces, e.g. think Michael J. Fox or the Beetles or Justin Bieber or whoever.
"It's not true!"
It is true that women prefer very strong bodies, but of course many of the caveats people are saying here are also true. Women prefer high status men, as indicated sometimes by money, jobs, cars, houses, and so on. Women prefer certain personalities and men with common interests and accents, and on and on. This study focused very narrowly on the visual assessment mechanisms in women and how they rate male bodies (sans face). No one thinks that women only value strength; in fact there's good evidence that women are less focused on physical attractiveness than men.
I hope that helps. Keep questions coming if you have them.
Link to reddit thread:
https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comment..._the_most/
I think anyone who has ever taken a cycle or has ever truly achieved jacked status already knew this. But for the nonbelievers, don't be afraid to bulk!
![[Image: AAEAAQAAAAAAAAI1AAAAJGUzNzAzZTI5LWIzN2Et...NGMyNA.jpg]](https://media-exp2.licdn.com/mpr/mpr/shrinknp_200_200/AAEAAQAAAAAAAAI1AAAAJGUzNzAzZTI5LWIzN2EtNGU2NC1iMzc2LWM3ZWE5ZGJjNGMyNA.jpg)
![[Image: sub-buzz-25154-1513707355-16.jpg?crop=10...ality=auto]](https://img.buzzfeed.com/buzzfeed-static/static/2017-12/19/13/asset/buzzfeed-prod-fastlane-02/sub-buzz-25154-1513707355-16.jpg?crop=1061:853;421,159&downsize=715:*&output-format=auto&output-quality=auto)