Hey fellas: when a woman looks you up and down, her brain is working double-time.
By Melissa Noble — Written on Aug 28, 2009
As we've mentioned before, men are pretty simple beings when it comes to sizing up who they are attracted to. Some studies even narrow a sexual decision happening in as little as ten seconds—a simple once over, yay/nay and then off to a fantasy football draft. Attraction Pheromones May Not Exist
Us ladies? Blame it on feminine intuition or inherent pickiness, but a new study proves that women are multi-layered when deciding aesthetic attractiveness. It is a two-step process, which makes us a bit more complex. Women Are Confusing Flirts
In a recent study in the latest issue of the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology a group of researchers sought out to analyze what exactly goes on in our pretty little heads when deciding whom we're most attracted and why.
The researchers rounded up 50 heterosexual women and showed them pictures of both men and women. Each woman had to rate on a scale from 1 to 7 as to whether they saw each man as a future date or each man or woman as a future lab partner.
Lab partner? Well, we guess that's a scientist's version of "friend." Science Proves That Women Do More Work At Home Than Men
Anyway, the article says "date" and lab partner" were meant to weed out sexual attraction from aesthetic appeal. They theorized women would be more likely to want to splice embryos with someone they find good-looking but not necessarily hot or sexy.
After the results were tallied, the scientists then took the same headshots and split the faces horizontally, shifting both parts away from each other so that the feature were no longer aligned. The scientists then asked the same question—date or lab partner?— to a new group to see if the halved faces had any effect. Would women be less likely to be sexually attracted to split faces?
On the contrary. Instead they found the dateable pile (i.e. sexually attractive for whatever reason—square jaw, rugged stubble, etc.) was pretty stable. As were any results with the female pictures.
However, there were some discrepancies with the ladies when deciding who they wanted to see in a lab coats. The split images really affected whom they trusted with their beakers.
The scientists concluded that women are drawn to sexy faces regardless of whether the disjoinged square jaw or sweltering eyes are in the wrong place. Yet women need the entire face before truly trusting. Or as they say, women use and can separate "two ways of assessing facial appeal."
Complex creatures we are indeed.