Throughout the course of evolutionary history, mammalian female species like monkeys, dolphins and bears have always swooned over the strongest males in the group.
Now a new study published by Griffith University in Australia on Wednesday, has revealed the same is still true for human women.
Wide shoulders, big muscles and abundant physical strength are still the most important underlying factors that subconsciously affect a woman’s judgement when choosing a partner.
“Among our ancestors, one variable that predicted both a man’s genetic quality and his ability to invest resources in the woman and her offspring, was the man’s formidability,” author of the study, Dr Aaron Sell from the School of Criminology and Criminal Justice at Griffith University said.
“Therefore, modern women should still have mate choice mechanisms that respond to cues of a man’s fighting ability.”
“One crucial component of a man’s ability to fight was his upper body strength.”
The study surveyed 150 women and asked them to rate men’s attractiveness based on a series of photographs.
Researchers found that it was possible to accurately predict how attractive a man’s body would appear to women from three main features which included physical strength, height and how lean the subject was.
But out of the three categories, physical strength was by far the most important, with all 150 women in the study unattracted to photographs of weak looking men.
“The rated strength of a male body accounts for a full 70 percent of the variance in attractiveness,” Sell said.
“The effect of height and weight on attractiveness may indicate that women are responding to cues of health or to the benefits that height and lean bodies have in protracted aggression, hunting and other aspects of fighting ability.”
But despite women’s preference for stronger looking bodies, the study also highlighted that females did not always prefer stronger looking faces.
source: http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2017-12/13/c_136822643.htm