There is much more agreement among men about what is attractive in opposite sex, than there is among women, whose definition of what makes a man attractive is less well-defined, a new U.S. study has found.

"Men agree a lot more about who they find attractive and unattractive than women agree about who they find attractive and unattractive," said a principal author of the study, Dustin Wood, an assistant professor of psychology at Wake Forest University in North Carolina.

To come up with this conclusion, Mr.. Wood and his team involved more than 4,000 participants with the ages between 18 and 70 years old. These included more than 1,300 heterosexual male participants, about 2,700 heterosexual female participants, about 125 homosexual men and almost the same number of homosexual women. All the participants were shown photographic images of men and women between the ages of 18 and 25 years, and asked to rate their levels of attractiveness on a scale from 1 (not attractive at all) to 10 (very attractive).

The subjects examined nearly 100 photos of both men and women. Before they started judging the images for attractiveness, the investigators rated the images for how seductive, confident, thin, sensitive, stylish, curvaceous (female), muscular (male), traditional, masculine, feminine, classy, well-groomed, or upbeat the people on the pictures looked.

Men have traditionally said that they would choose a woman who is well-educated and intelligent. However, the results of the experiment proved that men based their preference on physical appearance, namely how thin and seductive they are. They also were found to rate more confident women as more appealing. As to female participants, they demonstrated more variation, compared to their male counterparts. Most of women said that they find thin and muscular men the most attractive, but while one picture would be rated attractive by one woman, another woman would find it as not attractive. So, in general it was impossible to say in advance who the women would go for.

The study found that even when the homosexual men looked at the photographs of the other men, they were able to come to an agreement about who looked attractive to them, when compared to the heterosexual women who examined the same photos. The homosexual men also showed more agreement when looking at pictures of the women, compared to the homosexual women.

"The study shows we can quantify the extent to which men agree about which women are attractive and vice versa." Mr. Wood said. The different factors helped the experts to find out what common characteristics were the most appealing to both women and men. Women who are trying to impress men are likely to be found much more attractive if they meet certain physical standards, and much less if they do not, the experts wrote.

And in spite of the fact that men are rated as more attractive by women when they meet these physical appearance standards as well, their overall judged attractiveness is not as closely associated with their physical features, Mr. Wood said and also added that the age of the participants also played a role in attractiveness ratings with older subjects more likely to rate people as attractive if they were smiling.

Tags: Gender Studies, Attraction and Flirting, Men's Studies

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