ArticleProceedings. Biological sciences2017
Cues of upper body strength account for most of the variance in men's bodily attractiveness.
Article in Proceedings. Biological sciences, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 35 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
35 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- A meta-analysis of the association between male dimorphism and fitness outcomes in humans.eLife · 2022Pooled it
- Women's Preferences for Strong Men Under Perceived Harsh Versus Safe Ecological Conditions.Evolutionary psychology : an international journal of evolutionary approaches to psychology and behaviorTrial
- Sex Biases in Patterns of Parental Investment.Human nature (Hawthorne, N.Y.) · 2026Article
- Adaptive calibration in a world of human universals.Frontiers in psychology · 2026Article
- Life without sex: Large-scale study links sexlessness to physical, cognitive, and personality traits, socioecological factors, and DNA.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- Shape of You: Eye-Tracking and Social Perceptions of the Human Body.Behavioral sciences (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- Cross-cultural perception of strength, attractiveness, aggressiveness and helpfulness of Maasai male faces calibrated to handgrip strength.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- Comparing the impact of personal trainer guidance to exercising with others: Determining the optimal approach.Heliyon · 2024Article
- A botanical extract blend ofFrontiers in nutrition · 2024Article
- Status-impact assessment: is accuracy linked with status motivations?Evolutionary human sciences · 2023Article
- Men's perception of current and ideal body composition and the influence of media internalization on body judgements.Frontiers in psychology · 2023Article
- Psychiatric morbidity among men using anabolic steroids.Depression and anxiety · 2022Article
- Human third-party observers accurately track fighting skill and vigour along their unique paths to victory.Scientific reports · 2022Article
- Article
- Sexual orientation differences in pathways from sociocultural and objectification constructs to body satisfaction: The U.S. Body Project I.Body image · 2022Article
- Demographic predictors of objectification theory and tripartite influence model constructs: The U.S. Body Project I.Body image · 2022Article
- The degree to which the cultural ideal is internalized predicts judgments of male and female physical attractiveness.Frontiers in psychology · 2022Article
- The Value of Integrating Evolutionary and Sociocultural Perspectives on Body Image.Archives of sexual behavior · 2022Article
- An Evolutionary Perspective on Appearance Enhancement Behavior.Archives of sexual behavior · 2022Review
- The motive of competition but not courtship positively correlates with self-reported use of aggressive humor: A critical test of the contests- vs. mate-choice hypotheses.Frontiers in psychology · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Evolution equips sexually reproducing species with mate choice mechanisms that function to evaluate the reproductive consequences of mating with different individuals. Indeed, evolutionary psychologists have shown that women's mate choice mechanisms track many cues of men's genetic quality and ability to invest resources in the woman and her offspring. One variable that predicted both a man's genetic quality and his ability to invest is the man's formidability (i.e. fighting ability or resource holding power/potential). Modern women, therefore, should have mate choice mechanisms that respond to ancestral cues of a man's fighting ability. One crucial component of a man's ability to fight is his upper body strength. Here, we test how important physical strength is to men's bodily attractiveness. Three sets of photographs of men's bodies were shown to raters who estimated either their physical strength or their attractiveness. Estimates of physical strength determined over 70% of men's bodily attractiveness. Additional analyses showed that tallness and leanness were also favoured, and, along with estimates of physical strength, accounted for 80% of men's bodily attractiveness. Contrary to popular theories of men's physical attractiveness, there was no evidence of a nonlinear effect; the strongest men were the most attractive in all samples.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.