Original ArticleAdaptive preferences for leg length in a potential partner
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.
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