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14.08.2009

Women with larger cup size draw more men

When it comes to relationships, it's a meat market out there. Women want men with a muscular-but-not-too-muscular body, with a face that shows not-too-much-but-not-too-little testosteroneexposure. And men are no better either. In fact men are pigs, and this is convincingly shown in a study done by the psychologist Nicolas Guégen, working at the Université de Bretagne-Sud. The study was published some years ago in Body Image.

Guégen did an experiment using a student with an A cup size. Aged 20, the student was not outstandingly beautiful. The psychologist got her to go to discos and kept count of the number of men who approached her. He had instructed the student not to give them the come on, and to tell them that she was waiting for her boyfriend. On the following occasion the researcher repeated the experiment, but used a latex leaf to increase the student's cup size to a B. And the last time Guégen got the student to go to the disco with a C cup size. Each time the student wore the same clothes. Guégen also did the same series of tests, but had the student sit outside a bar.

The table below shows how often men came up and spoke to the student. The larger her cup size, the more men she had to fend off.

The researcher published the results of a similar experiment in another journal, also in 2007. On this occasion he showed that a female student got a lift more easily if she had a larger cup size. [Percept Mot Skills. 2007 Dec;105(3 Pt 2):1294-8.] The larger the cup size of Guégen’s student, the more often men stopped. It made no difference however to how often women stopped for her.

Guégen does not have an answer to why men find women with a larger cup size more attractive. Maybe it's the result of cultural influences, such as exposure to TV images. But, he speculates, maybe biological mechanisms also play a role. "From an evolutionary perspective, the male is under the pressure to disseminate his genes", he writes. "Perhaps large breasts are perceived by men as a sign of fertility and males seek women perceived to be highly fertile to increase the probability of gene transmission."

Source:
Body Image. 2007 Dec;4(4):386-90.