A weird study of men's preference for filled out or thin women is said to show that hungry men prefer heavier women than satiated men.
[Researchers] recruited male university students as they entered or exited a campus dining hall during dinner time.
They asked the men to rate how hungry they were on a scale of one to seven. Using these responses, the researchers selected 30 hungry and 31 satiated men to take part in the study.
The men were then asked to rate the attractiveness of 50 women of varying weights, all within a healthy range, who had been photographed wearing tight grey leotards and leggings.
The hungry men rated more of the heavier women as attractive than the men who were full up. (BBC)
I don't know what to make of this -- if anything. There is an obvious evolutionary explanation, but it seems too pat to me. I haven't read the paper, which appears in The British Journal of Psychology, but it wouldn't surprise me if someday soon another study will find different results. This wouldn't make these results wrong, but I wouldn't be too confident of them at this point.
Unfortunately, this kind of stuff is fun to blog. Forgive me.
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"I don't know what to make of this -- if anything. There is an obvious evolutionary explanation, but it seems too pat to me."
IMO, this characterizes a whole lot of the research going on in evolutionary psychology. Irrelevant, controversy-inspiring conjecture supported by interesting but WAY WAY over-interpreted data. Science in the name of selling books and magazines.
This is actually a fairly long-running idea. They've examined food availability across nations (i.e. Africa vs. North America) and found stable relationships between food availability and what body shape is found to be attractive. They've also examined it over time in the United States, again finding that as food availability has fluctuated, the preferred body shape has fluctuated along with it. If anyone's interested, I could post the refs when I get to the office.
Of course, maybe I'm just irrelevant and inspiring controversy here.
While one hypothesis may be that hungry men subliminally expect the offspring of well-fed women to be healthy and viable, it may also be that hungry men subliminally think that they might exploit the well-fed women as a direct resource. A bird in the hand is worth two...
Why is it that the hard questions are never asked? Doh!
Maybe the hungry men are looking at the heavier women as 'supper'.
I realize there is some socio-historical linkages with this research but I cannot help to think that there MAY be some clearer and more direct explanations. I think the confounding factor is the men's weight themselves. Remember also that the "hungriness" was self-reported and men who are willing to express their lusts for food more strongly are more likely to admit their lusts for bigger women (given that moderate appetites and tastes for thinner women are considered social norms).
Tom DVM: Maybe the hungry guys look at the heavier women as knowing where the food is!!! --- On another note, has the reverse of this study been done? Do hungry women rate heavier men better that satiated women? Or, do women generally, hungry or not, rate men on the size of their wallets?
To Jim Westrich - The flaw you point out in the study could be addressed by asking men as they entered the dinning hall to rate their level of hungriness. Tagging one portion of them and letting them eat first so that you could have men who rate their 'hungriness' the same.