Abstract
Human mate choice is influenced by limb proportions. Previous work has focused on leg-to-body ratio (LBR) as a determinant of male attractiveness and found a preference for limbs that are close to, or slightly above, the average. We investigated the influence of two other key aspects of limb morphology: arm-to-body ratio (ABR) and intra-limb ratio (IR). In three studies of heterosexual women from the USA, we tested the attractiveness of male physiques that varied in LBR, ABR and IR, using figures that ranged from −3 to +3 standard deviations from the population mean. We replicated previous work by finding that the optimally attractive LBR is approximately 0.5 standard deviations above the baseline. We also found a weak effect of IR, with evidence of a weak preference for the baseline proportions. In contrast, there was no effect of ABR on attractiveness, and no interactions between the effects of LBR, ABR and IR. Our results indicate that ABR is not an important determinant of human mate choice for this population, and that IR may exert some influence but that this is much smaller than the effects of LBR. We discuss possible reasons for these results, including the limited variability in upper limb proportions and the potentially weak fitness-signal provided by this aspect of morphology.
Highlights
Judgements did depend on the intra-limb ratio (IR), the effect was not especially strong, F2,338 = 3.35, p = 0.036, ηp2 = 0.019; in contrast, there was a pronounced effect of leg-to-body ratio (LBR), F2.82,952.74 = 383.11, p < 0.001, ηp2 = 0.531
The effects of LBR did not depend on arm-to-body ratio (ABR), F15.50,5237.87 = 1.13, p = 0.323, ηp2 = 0.003, or IR, F5.64,952.74 = 0.38, p = 0.880, ηp2 = 0.002; the effects of ABR were not modulated by IR, F81 352 = 1.33, p = 0.223, ηp2 = 0.008, and there was no three-way interaction F30.99,5237.87 = 1.19, p = 0.216, ηp2 = 0.007
These results demonstrate a pronounced effect of changes in LBR, a weaker effect of changes in IR and no effect of changes in ABR
Summary
Study 1 examined the effects of LBR, ABR and IR, and whether these different limb proportions interact to shape attractiveness. We tested values that were a given number of standard deviations above/below the population mean. This approach has the advantage that the chosen values relate directly to the frequency of particular proportions in the population; it ensures that the manipulation is comparable across the different ratios. Because this study is the first to investigate the effects of ABR and IR, and because it uses a factorial design, we chose values that were relatively extreme to maximize the chance of detecting an effect and to keep the number of stimulus combinations manageable, while ensuring that the values were within the population distribution. We varied IR within subjects, and used more IR values, in Studies 2 and 3
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