
Cues of men's upper-body strength account for most variance in attractiveness - mkempe
http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/284/1869/20171819
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volgo
This is actually pretty comforting (at least for me). It means you can
significantly alter your attractiveness, and you're not stuck with what you
have!

"Contrary to popular theories of men's physical attractiveness, there was no
evidence of a nonlinear effect; the strongest men were the most attractive in
all samples"

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Madmallard
They care about things that you cant alter, like the shoulder bone structure
and jawline. And of course height

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sshine
You can't (easily) alter the jawline bone, but you can alter the surrounding
muscles with physical exercise.

[https://www.healthline.com/health/fitness-
exercise/jawline-e...](https://www.healthline.com/health/fitness-
exercise/jawline-exercises)

I've personally witnessed a change after six months of crossfit every day.

Maybe it's that all the wrinkly faces you make when you exert yourself. ;-)

~~~
acconrad
Wow what a joke of a link.

You know what gets you a defined jawline?

Getting down to a legit 7% body fat. Your jaw will have no fat to hide behind.

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MarkMc
But in the real world women don't judge men by looking at photographs of their
bodies. They interact with them and make an assessment based on many
dimensions like handsomeness, physique, wealth, education, personality, etc.

~~~
johannes_ne
Dating apps (e.g. Tinder) are quite popular though.

~~~
rasz
I think you meant Grindr, try posting bare chest pic on Tinder and see how far
it gets you.

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geebee
I just read this. Here's my biggest objection:

"In both sets of photographs, the subjects' faces were obscured. See figure 1
for sample photographs. Set 1 photos included both front and side views; Set 2
photos had only front views."

So far, it seems like the conclusion should be that upper body strength
accounts for variance in attractiveness _when the only available information
is visual imagery of a man 's body, with the face obscured._. That's a big
enough qualifier that I think the conclusion in the title is misleading, and
claims a broader conclusion than can be justified from this study.

The study authors did address this somewhat in question d: "Research on facial
attractiveness reveals that some women prefer more feminized and less dominant
faces". It sounds like they way they studied this was to see if preference for
more feminized faces might translate into a similar preference for bodies, and
they found that it did not. However, this doesn't address the possibility that
faces might count for more variance if the raters had seen them, right? Again,
I may be missing something here, but I'm not seeing it so far from the study.

Lastly, does anyone know how the study specifically controlled for _upper_
body strength? Were there any images of men who were athletic but had most of
their strength in their lower body? I'm not seeing it here, may have missed
it.

At this point, I do think that the claim in the title is too substantial given
then evidence from this study. I'd say that there certainly does appear to be
evidence that upper body strength accounts for variance in attractiveness when
a rater has access only to non-facial physical features, but even then, I'm
not entirely sure the study adequately controlled for other athletic physical
traits.

~~~
DoreenMichele
Actual Title:

 _Cues of upper body strength account for most of the variance in men 's
bodily attractiveness_

So, yes, they were measuring bodily attractiveness. That was the whole point
of the study.

~~~
geebee
Arg. Well thank you for posting. The hn title lacked that word and I didn’t
catch it in the study but it is indeed there.

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shalmanese
This measures two self assessed factors so it's very well possible that at
least some of the correlation runs in the opposite direction. That is, more
attractive people, all else being equal, are rated as being more physically
strong.

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xupybd
Well, in that case, I'm off to the gym.

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Toast_25
Roidrage, here I come!

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expertentipp
> Lukazsweski

Tehy cpoleetmly wrkeecd his suanrme.

