Original Article
Adaptive preferences for leg length in a potential partner

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2007.09.002Get rights and content

Abstract

It has been shown that height is one of the morphological traits that influence a person's attractiveness. To date, few studies have addressed the relationship between different components of height and physical attractiveness. Here, we study how leg length influences attractiveness in men and women. Stimuli consisted of seven different pictures of a man and seven pictures of a woman in which the ratio between leg length and height was varied from the average phenotype by elongating and shortening the legs. One hundred men and 118 women were asked to assess the attractiveness of the silhouettes using a seven-point scale. We found that male and female pictures with shorter than average legs were perceived as less attractive by both sexes. Although longer legs appeared to be more attractive, this was true only for the slight (5%) leg length increase; excessively long legs decreased body attractiveness for both sexes. Because leg length conveys biological quality, we hypothesize that such preferences reflect the workings of evolved mate-selection mechanisms. Short and/or excessively long legs might indicate maladaptive biological conditions such as genetic diseases, health problems, or weak immune responses to adverse environmental factors acting during childhood and adolescence.

Section snippets

Adaptive preferences for leg length in a potential partner

A principal morphological trait that influences male attractiveness (at least in Western societies) is height (Pawlowski & Koziel, 2002, Pierce, 1996). There are several biological reasons why taller men are perceived as more attractive by women (see review Pawlowski, 2000). Body height was found to be positively related to reproductive success for men (Nettle, 2002a, Pawlowski et al., 2000) and negatively for women (Nettle, 2002b). It is worth noting, however, that all these results are for

Materials and method

Stimuli were created electronically from black and white photographs of a man and a woman. These two individuals were chosen because their leg to torso length proportions were very close to the mean for Polish adults (Gedliczka, Pochopeń, Szklarska, & Welon, 2001). The mean index in the Polish population of height to perineum/total height is 0.516 for men and 0.513 for women. We used this index because, in blackened silhouette pictures, the best referential point for leg length is the perineum

Results

We found significant differences in attractiveness assessments both for male (F6,1296=155.6, p<.0001, eta2=.42) and female pictures (F6,1296=146.9, p<.0001, eta2=.41) with different leg lengths (see Fig. 1). These preferences were independent of the raters' sex (male stimuli: F6,1296=1.15, p=.33, eta2=.01; female stimuli: F6,1296=1.4, p=.2, eta2=.01). Post hoc least significant difference (LSD) Fisher tests revealed that apart from the lack of difference between the original picture and +10%,

Discussion

The results of our investigation clearly indicate that leg length influences both male and female body attractiveness. Figures with legs shorter than the average of the population were perceived as less attractive. This confirms our prediction that relatively short legs might be a cue to maladaptive biological conditions such as health problems (Davey Smith et al, 2001; Gunnell et al., 2003; Gunnel et al., 2005; Lawlor et al., 2002; Lawlor et al., 2004), low resistance to adverse environmental

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Lynda Boothroyd, Tamsin Saxton, and Agnieszka Szagdaj for all their suggestions and proof reading and Marcin Chylek for his help with stimuli preparation. We are also very grateful to the anonymous reviewers and the editor whose suggestions allowed us to improve this manuscript.

References (41)

  • H.S. Mitchell

    Nutrition in relation to stature

    Journal of American Dietetic Associations

    (1962)
  • R.L. Moreland et al.

    Exposure effects in person perception: Familiarity, similarity, and attraction

    Journal of Experimental Social Psychology

    (1982)
  • B. Pawlowski et al.

    The impact of traits offered in personal advertisements on response rates

    Evolution and Human Behavior

    (2002)
  • V. Swami et al.

    The leg-to-body ratio as a human aesthetic criterion

    Body Image

    (2006)
  • K.G. Ashton et al.

    Is Bergmann's rule valid for mammals?

    American Naturalist

    (2000)
  • D.M. Bramble et al.

    Endurance running and the evolution of Homo

    Nature

    (2004)
  • P.R. Cavanagh et al.

    Stride length in distance running: Velocity, body dimensions, and added mass

    Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise

    (1989)
  • A.D. Dangour et al.

    Sitting height and subischial leg length centile curves for boys and girls from Southeast England

    Annals of Human Biology

    (2002)
  • G. Davey Smith et al.

    Leg length, insulin resistance, and coronary heart disease risk: The Caerphilly Study

    Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health

    (2001)
  • P.B. Eveleth

    Differences between populations in body shape of children and adolescents

    American Journal of Physical Anthropology

    (1978)
  • B. Flugel et al.

    Anthropologischer Atlas

    (1983)
  • A. Gedliczka et al.

    Atlas miar czlowieka

    (2001)
  • J.S. Gillis et al.

    The male-taller norm in mate selection

    Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin

    (1980)
  • D. Gunnell

    Can adult anthropometry be used as a ‘biomarker’ for prenatal and childhood exposures?

    International Journal of Epidemiology

    (2002)
  • D. Gunnell et al.

    Childhood leg length and adult mortality: Follow up of the Carnegie (Boyd Orr) survey of diet and health in pre-war Britain

    Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health

    (1998)
  • D. Gunnell et al.

    Associations of height, leg length, and lung function with cardiovascular risk factors in the Midspan Family Study

    Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health

    (2003)
  • D. Gunnel et al.

    Do height-related variations in insulin-like growth factors underlie the associations of stature with adult chronic disease?

    Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism

    (2005)
  • D.A. Lawlor et al.

    Association between leg length and offspring birthweight: Partial explanation for the trans-generational association between birthweight and cardiovascular disease: Findings from the British Women's Heart and Health Study

    Paediatric and Perinatal Epidemiology

    (2003)
  • D.A. Lawlor et al.

    The association between components of adult height and type II diabetes and insulin resistance: British Women's Heart and Health Study

    Diabetologia

    (2002)
  • D.A. Lawlor et al.

    Associations of components of adult height with coronary heart disease in postmenopausal women: The British women's heart and health study

    Heart

    (2004)
  • Cited by (38)

    • Wearing high heels as female mating strategy

      2020, Personality and Individual Differences
      Citation Excerpt :

      Slovak females with a lower reported body height showed a stronger preference for high heels in both self-reported wearing and in the would-be mating scenario. We suggest that high heels could add to physical attractiveness particularly amongst females with a lower body height, because female legs slightly longer than average are sexually more attractive to males (Sorokowski et al., 2011; Sorokowski & Pawlowski, 2008; Swami, Einon, & Furnham, 2006, 2007). Longer legs are associated with better health (e.g., Gunnel et al., 2005; Lawlor, Ebrahim, & Davey Smith, 2002; Lawlor, Taylor, Davey Smith, Gunnell, & Ebrahim, 2004) which may ultimately explain male preference for longer legs in females.

    • The impact of dominance on partner's height preferences and height-related mate choices

      2015, Personality and Individual Differences
      Citation Excerpt :

      Human mate preferences have been widely investigated over the last several decades (Buss, 1994; Buss & Schmitt, 1993) and many studies have shown interesting connections between morphological traits and mating success. In particular, facial attractiveness (Perret et al., 1998), waist-to-hip ratio (Singh, 1993), body-mass index (Fallon & Rozin, 1985), shoulder-to-hip ratio (Horvath, 1979), leg-to-body ratio (Sorokowski & Pawlowski, 2008), and height or stature (Lerner & Karabenick, 1974) appear to be essential mate-choice criteria. The current study will focus on mate preferences and mate choices related to partner height, which seems to be one of the most important variables influencing human mate preferences.

    View all citing articles on Scopus
    View full text