“Drawing” Conclusions About Perceptions of Ideal Male and Female Body Shapes

Abstract

Preferences for bodily traits (e.g., waist-to-hip ratio; WHR) have been widely documented through the use of stimulus sets (e.g., line drawings, photographs). The purpose of the present study was to explore preferences for bodily traits using a method that does not constrain the range of possible values for each trait. Participants drew a figure depicting the most attractive member of the opposite sex they could imagine and a figure depicting a member of their own sex that they believed members of the opposite sex would find maximally attractive. Participants drew some traits similarly to values identified in previous research (e.g., WHR); however, other traits (e.g., leg-to-body ratio) were drawn differently from values documented through the use of stimulus sets. Additional analyses showed that men were fairly accurate in predicting what women prefer in a man’s bodily traits, but women underestimated the ideal WHR and overestimated the ideal bust-to-waist ratio considered by men to be maximally attractive. In contrast to our predictions, participants’ morphological trait preferences were independent of their sociosexual orientations. While the unconstrained drawing task produced slightly different results than those obtained through the use of stimulus sets for some traits, its sensitivity to a larger range of potential values renders it a powerful method of exploring morphological trait preferences.