
Why men are attracted to women with small feet  - fogus
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn19118-why-men-are-attracted-to-women-with-small-feet.html
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aphyr
22 year old gay male here--I chose right, left, right, right. For the women, I
thought the right faces looked happier and more engaging. I was pretty
confident in my answers except for #2, the first male in the series. I think
the transparent hair across the forehead was skewing my reaction.

If heterosexual males and females preferred the left images far more often,
it's strange that I would have chosen the right for both. I wonder if these
results are typical for my subgroup, and if so, why?

Gotta love having hardwired sexual preferences for a non-reproductive
orientation! It's like asking whether you prefer carburetors or fuel injection
on your bumper car. :)

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inerte
What do you mean with 4 choices, and a male? I just found two faces on the
article and I tried to follow the links but didn't see where these 4 options
are.

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gloob
The popup when you enter the page isn't actually spam, and isn't actually some
customer satisfaction thing. It took me a few minutes to figure that out,
though.

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orangecat
Obligatory: <http://xkcd.com/570/>

Heterosexual male, picked all four left, although only the first was obvious
for me.

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callmeed
_"Women with smaller feet have prettier faces, at least according to the men
who took part in this study. So do women with longer thigh bones and narrower
hips, as well as women who are taller overall."_

Seems odd because short women usually don't have large feet (at least from my
experience).

My wife is only 4'11" but has small feet.

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johkra
I thought the right face was more attractive - it looks "warmer" (nicer,
friendlier) than the left one. I must be doing something wrong, like
preferring women with whom I would like to be friends. ;-)

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superuser2
I agree. The one on the left seems to have the hallmarks of objective
attractiveness, but I could much more easily see myself spending time with the
one on the right.

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jokermatt999
Perhaps it's because the right looks more "human". The over compositing will
result in attractive features, but it also seems like it can have an almost
uncanny valley effect where it's rejected for being too perfect.

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superuser2
I can see that being true, but they're both composites. I don't know, the left
one is what I'd call "hot", though it's not really attractive to me. The right
one seems to fit "cute" much better.

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foomarks
This article makes no mention that preference might reflect contemporary
culture and times.

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rflrob
I think the underlying assumption is that by selecting traits that one has
relatively little control over (foot size, thigh length, etc.), then showing
participants a physically unrelated trait (i.e. the face), that they're
somehow insulating from contemporary culture.

One could still make the critique that contemporary culture values as
attractive traits that are correlated with these other markers, whereas other
cultures and times do not, but that argument starts getting a little
convoluted itself.

Keep in mind that this work hasn't yet been published (just reported at a
conference), so the actual paper will probably be a bit more careful about
claims that they make.

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patrickgzill
Is it just me or do the two women's morphed faces not seem to be lit exactly
the same? The right morph seems to have been photographed in harsher light.

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PostOnce
The difference in the space between lower lip in chin is great, also, the one
on the right seems to have a squarer jaw, and less-highly-arched eyebrows,
along with paler lips. Wider neck too.

In summary, the one on the right looks more like a man. Personal opinion, but
I think I've provided some evidence to support it.

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carbocation
Let's say I told you that one of these two women had acromegaly. Which would
you pick? The one on the right, most likely. She would also have large feet
due to her acromegaly. I suspect that growth hormone (not acromegaly per se)
is the link that explains their findings.

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luckyland
What about men who couldn't date a girl with a beautiful face that also had
large feet?

This article doesn't spend much time talking about why men are attracted to
small feet.

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rue
Key quote:

> _Atkinson's explanation makes sense, says David Perrett, a psychologist at
> the University of St. Andrews, UK, who studies facial attractiveness. Since
> faces and bodies are shaped by the same hormones, he says, you should be
> able to predict the attractiveness of one body part by looking at another._

So it is (perhaps obviously) not so much the small feet but the overall
physiology, bone structure etc., they tend to be indicative of.

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mikecane
Of those two facial morphs, I wonder which people would think had the higher
IQ?

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klochner
Agreed - as with the men (sex vs. long term mate), there are alternate survey
questions that would be interesting.

IMHO, the "less attractive" one looks more athletic.

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mikecane
So, you think the one on the right would have a lower IQ? Yeah, she looks more
athletic, but I think she'd have the higher IQ too. Maybe that's just me.

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sliverstorm
I think the parents were alluding to the unconscious deduction many many
people have been shown to make- that more attractive people are smarter.

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mikecane
It's funny how things have changed since when I was a kid in the 1960s. Back
then, attractive people were generally thought NOT to be smart because they
were more social than unattractive (average-looking) people. I hold this
belief to this day and in my personal life it has been rarely wrong.

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sliverstorm
At least in the US, that was hot on the heels of a lot of great scientists,
and the nation's pride (the moon landing) was an absolute triumph of the
brainy types.

I wasn't alive back then, but I've always gotten the impression attractive
people were seen as less intelligent as a direct backlash from scientists and
other brainy things being 'in'.

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hugh3
With only eight faces per morph, I'm not entirely convinced that there's
enough data points here. But perhaps there were a lot more pictures involved
in the actual study than we're being shown here.

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huhtenberg
This reminds me of another study that found that a child of a smoking mother
is more likely to end up in prison than that of a non-smoker.

Correlation is not a causation.

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ellyagg
Did you read the article? What are you claiming is the wrongly attributed
cause here? They didn't claim small feet cause pretty faces. They speculated
on potential root causes that might affect feet and faces at the same time,
but they certainly didn't say they proved any cause.

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huhtenberg
> What are you claiming is the wrongly attributed cause here?

They offer a theory that explains their findings, but I am unconvinced their
findings are accurate. The sample size of 60 is just too small to average out
such subjective parameter as attractiveness, which among other things greatly
depends on non-physiological parameters such as lighting during a photo shoot,
or a facial expression.

For example, if the girl on the right were to pout just a bit, or had darker
hair, or if her hair were darker, or if she was wearing a different color, the
preferences might've fallen her way instead. There are other variable
parameters affecting the selection that have nothing to do with the bone
structure or hormones.

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michaelneale
Ok more and more HN is reedit. Yes I flag, no I shouldn't comment but enough
please !

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ax0n
I'm sure there are a few really bad sexist jokes in reply to the title. I'll
refrain from airing them here.

