Surprising traits men find attractive

In theory, blondes have more fun. And what’s more wholesome than a blue-eyed blonde? Brown-eyed girls shouldn’t despair, though, as a study from the University of Tromso in Norway suggests that when it comes to potential mates, it’s only blue-eyed men that show a preference for blue-eyed women.

The study is pretty fascinating stuff. It asked 443 individuals a series of questions based on the hair and eye color of their current and past partners. They also presented participants with a series of photos in which the models’ eyes had been manipulated to change color, while leaving the rest of their appearance the same. They found that while women and brown-eyed men showed no preference over selecting partners (or being attracted to) any particular eye color, they also found that blue-eyed men overwhelmingly chose (and were attracted to) blue-eyed women.

The study also suggests there’s a very practical reason for this, and it’s all down to genetics. If you think back to some of the earliest things you learned about genetics in junior high, it’s that blue eyes are recessive. The only way a child can have blue eyes is to be born to two blue-eyed parents, or to two people who each carry part of the recessive gene for blue eyes. When two blue-eyed parents have a brown-eyed child, there could be something fishy going on. Blue-eyed people don’t carry the genes for brown eyes (they’d have brown eyes themselves), so the reasoning goes that a blue-eyed man will be more attracted to a blue-eyed woman. The study’s authors say that, conscious or subconscious, blue-eyed men’s preference for blue-eyed women might be linked to one extra layer of paternity protection.

Other studies suggest that parents’ influence on what characteristics men find attractive goes even beyond age. Another study from the University of St. Andrews looked at a phenomenon known as imprinting, well known to exist in the animal world and, until recently, largely unexplored in humans.

The study looked at how likely men (and women) are to be attracted to certain hair and eye color in their chosen partners, and they found that for men, the best indicator of preferences was the hair and eye color of their mothers. When nearly 700 volunteer participants (including 394 men) were asked about the hair and eye color of themselves, their parents, and their partners, they found that overwhelmingly, men were attracted to the same coloring that their mothers had. The same correlation didn’t appear when comparing their father’s hair and eye color, and while researchers aren’t entirely sure what’s going on here, they did suggest that it’s possible that the early connection between mother and son formed a sort of subconscious bond that suggests safety, familiarity, and comfort linked to the eye and hair color they knew first.

Another study, this one done by the University of Tokyo, found that men showed significant preference for women who shared something else with their mother: height. When they looked at volunteers who reported their own heights, along with their parents’ and their partners’ heights, they found that men were much more likely to be attracted to a woman of similar height to their mother.

According to a pair of Australian researchers, one thing that men find surprisingly attractive is a simple one that anyone can do — just tilt your head the right way.

They took a series of faces that were manipulated to appear as they were being viewed from different angles, and volunteers were then asked to rate the attractiveness of those faces, along with how feminine or masculine they were. They found that men were most attracted to faces when women tilted their heads forward enough that they were looking slightly up.

The results were significant and suggested that nothing more than a simple adjustment to the way we carry ourselves could make someone measurably more attractive. They suggested that it has something to do with height, and that when a man sees a woman who tilts her head forward and looks up at him, she’s presenting herself in such a way that accents height differences and, in turn, traditional ideas about masculinity and femininity.

While you might think that a husky voice would be a sexy one, studies have shown that what men are really attracted to is a higher-pitched voice. According to one study done by University College London, high-pitched voices were found to be almost universally more attractive to men, mostly because of the features, figure, and youth they imagined to go along with that voice. Volunteers were asked to listen to a series of voices and then rate them based on their appeal, and researchers found that there was sort of a sweet spot in pitch. Men rated high-pitched voices more attractive, but only to a certain point. When the voice got too high-pitched, the attractiveness declined. By the end of the study, they concluded that in order to be most attractive, a voice should be moderately high-pitched and slightly breathy, all which reportedly signaled that the speaker had a small frame.

Weirdly, they were also able to draw comparisons between their results and results that had been already found in the animal kingdom. There, males and females often have different pitch and tone to their voice, as they’re used for different reasons. That further led the team to the conclusion that men prefer moderately high-pitched voices not only because of the physical qualities they imply, but also because they impart the idea of submissiveness and make confrontation seem unlikely.

If your voice doesn’t fall into the realm of “moderately high-pitched,” there’s no need to fear. According to a study from the Journal of Evolutionary Psychology, women who are talking to a man they’re attracted to tend to speak in a higher pitch without even realizing they’re doing it.

When it comes to overall body shapes, we always hear that it’s the hourglass figure that’s most attractive. That might not be entirely true, though, and according to research done by professors at the University of Texas, it’s only the last part of the traditional trio of measurements that really matters.

Professor Devendra Singh took a look at the differences in how male and female bodies store fat, coupled with indicators of health and fertility. She found that when women have a waist to hip ratio (WHR) of between .67 and .8, they’re thought to be the most attractive to men. She conducted a series of experiments that not only surveyed men as to what shape they found most attractive, but also looked back through the last few decades at everything from Miss America contestants to Playboy models. The overwhelming majority of the men she surveyed agreed that the most attractive shape had to do with that magic WHR number, no matter what their age group was.

Other studies seem to show that no matter what the actual size of a woman is, it’s the ratio that’s more important than the weight or build. From women like Beyonce to Kate Moss, it didn’t matter how much they weighed. It was the ratio that men found most attractive.