Male stress levels and preferences for female body size

Male attraction to various female forms has varied through the ages due to certain features that were valued in a particular location or era. Evolution depends on the survival of the fittest, at least in Darwin's eyes and many evolutionists that have come after, but that can mean very different things to different people. Of course, there is the case of the butterfly group which survived for many years with white and black-winged varietals, but then became all black-winged when the forest they nested in was burned. Many similar examples can be found in studies that suggest that survival is related to attractiveness also. The ability of a man or woman to survive is subconsciously determined in the brain, and then translated to a hierarchical system of attractiveness. Thus, the reason that attractiveness elements have changed over time for men with regard to women, is because society has changed. If men in poor areas of the world were surveyed, they would probably have a very different idea about what made a woman attractive than those men in relatively financially secure and safe regions. Along these lines, a study was conducted with the goal of trying to determine if men under stress would consider a different female body size attractive. This paper summarizes the study's goals, methods, results and discussion to determine if the authors reached any statistically significant conclusions with regard to the research question.

Goal

The researchers were interested in how men saw women when they were under stress and whether any difference would show itself even if the subject knew that an experiment was being conducted and that the stressor would be short lived. They assumed that men under stress would choose a woman with a fuller body shape, and they gave two primary reasons or their assumption. First, other research had shown that "heavier body sizes are perceived as more physically mature" (2). The reason for this is that generally, an individual's mother and women who are approximately her same age have had a larger body size than the typical model or other female body-type role model presented to the public. Thus, when a man is under stress, he will seek out a person who, being perceived as a more mature woman like his mother, will act in the same nurturing way his mother did. Because of the stress, the male prefers someone who will be nurturing at that moment rather than a perfect sexual partner.

The other reason they believed that men would prefer a larger female body type when they were under stress is due to evolution. For many years, people who were larger were better able to survive than people who were more prone to being thin. When food is in short supply, the person with the larger average body size will have a better survival rate. Also, women who were larger tended to have more material wealth than ones who exhibited a smaller body type. Thus, larger women were preferred because of their ability to survive (1).

The study had the stated goal of providing some solid, empirical data to the archival information that had existed previously (1), and to determine what could be done for further study.

Results

The authors conducted statistical analysis of the raw numbers they received from the experiment and determined that there was some statistically significant difference in their ratings of the women. The researchers first wanted to make sure that the two samples were effectively balanced, and they were, then they wanted to determine what the differences were with regard to the attractiveness selections. To accomplish this, they "examined ratings of the figure perceived as the most physically attractive (ideal), the largest and thinnest figures rated as attractive, and the attractiveness range" (3). They found that the stress group had a larger attractiveness ideal, a wider range of women that they found attractive, but did not differ from the control group when choosing the thinner end of the scale was analyzed (meaning that both groups rated the thinner women in the scale the same for attractiveness). The researchers also found that there variable controls ("covariate age, BMI and appetite sensation) were not significant with regard to the between group differences in level of attractiveness ratings (3).

Discussion

The researchers proved that their hypotheses were valid. The men in the stress/study group did have a statistically significant wider attractiveness range and they also had believed that a larger body type had ideal attractiveness. The researchers concluded that "the present results are consistent with the suggestion that individuals are more likely to idealize mature morphological traits, including a heavier body size, when they experience environmental threat, whether from economic, proprioceptive, or social sources" (4). They speculate that the reason for this is that the women, as they had assumed from previous research, were regarded as more nurturing if they had a larger body size, more mature, and had an increased ability to assuage the stress. The researchers were also intrigued by the wider range of female body sizes which were rated as attractive. They surmised that this was due to the fact that the men needed to have a comforter in this case and that they were giving a wider range of who would fit that mold. This study also confirmed past research conducted with other groups that lived in more stressful environments.

The researchers then list a number of limitations that have to be considered when looking at this study. These were that the men in the control group could have been effected by their boredom, the stress portion of the study did not control for all necessary factors, and that this cannot be extrapolated to women because the instruments used do not allow such a conclusion with women participants. The final statement was that because the same physiological responses are common in different types of stress, they did believe that the results could be extrapolated to include more than just psychological stress (5).

Work Cited

Swami, Viren, and Martin J. Tovee. "The Impact of Psychological Stress on Men's Judgments of Female Body Size." Plos One 7.8 (2012): 1-5. Print.