Men living in Harsh Conditions are Likely to Find Pretty Faces Unattractive: Study

Men living in harsh environmental conditions find 'pretty faces' less appealing, according to a study.

Looks and physical appearance of men and women have been stereotyped to portray their social superiority and power. Women's femininity is associated with fertility and the primal instinct of men makes them sexually attracted to tender looking females. A team of international researchers discovered environmental factors and living conditions also play a part in attractiveness of women to men. Their study involved about 1,972 heterosexual men living in 28 different countries aged between 18 and 24 who were shown many pictures of women's faces to note their opinion on beauty and desirability.

Each participant viewed feminine and masculine versions of Caucasian women that were digitally modified to have fuller lips, big eyes, and protruding jaws.  It was observed that a majority of men found feminine faces sexually appealing. Seventy percent of the time participants who were from affluent countries like Sweden, Japan and Singapore preferred the feminine versions of women's pictures. While men from countries like Nigeria and Nepal with unstable state of economy and jarring living conditions chose less feminine faces.

The study explained that men living in harsh conditions are drawn to strong female partners because their offsprings have higher chances of survival  as such females are better able to manage resource scarcities. And also stronger looking women are well equipped with survival skills, which will be passed on to their children. Men from harsher environments find these qualities more attractive in a woman than being dainty and tender looking.

"It might pay off for men in hard conditions to develop a preference for women who are not very highly feminine, because feminine women are perceived to be less socially dominant," Urszula Marcinkowska, researcher from University of Turku in Finland told Live Science.

Furthermore, men living amid challenging environments are likely to have lower levels of testosterone than those living in healthy and comfortable conditions.  Past studies have associated low testosterone levels and attraction for masculine female counterpart.

"It seems like there's a trade-off going on, where in the harsher environments, men are putting less preference on femininity. You could see how these preferences may or may not shift to see how deep-seated they are," Dan Kruger, an evolutionary psychologist at the University of Michigan, involved in the study, told the Live Science.

More information is available online in the journal Biology Letters.