Rules of Attraction

Men agree on what they find attractive in women much more than women do in men, new research says

By Perry Gattegno
CTW Features

So all those times women have claimed men are all looking for the same thing?

They may be on to something.

A new study published by Dustin Wood, an assistant professor of psychology at Wake Forest University, Winston-Salem, N.C., finds that men achieve a greater consensus on what they find attractive than women do.

Wood and co-author Claudia Brumbaugh of Queens College, Flushing, N.Y., presented photographs of men and women aged 18-25 to more than 4,000 participants and asked them to rate their attractiveness on a 10-point scale ranging from “very” to “not at all.” The raters ranged from ages 18 to more than 70.

The research team had already rated the photographs for various qualities, such as thinness, muscularity (men), curvaceousness (women), style, sensitivity, and masculinity/femininity. This list of factors helped researchers pinpoint common characteristics that appealed to men and women.

Men heavily weighed thinness, seductiveness and confidence and primarily used physical attributes as determinants of attractiveness. Women tended to pick thin, muscular men as attractive but disagreed on which men had those qualities. Some women found men very attractive that others said were not at all attractive.

Wood says this study has implications in the dating world as well as for studying the causes of eating disorders and how expectations of attractiveness affect behavior.

“The study helps explain why women experience stronger norms than men to obtain or maintain certain physical characteristics,” he says. “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 don’t. Their [men] overall judged attractiveness isn’t as tightly linked to their physical features.”

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