Well, sometimes all we want is a big soft cuddle….
Stress makes men appreciate heavier women
Increased stress in men is associated with a preference for heavier women, according to research published Aug. 8 in the open access journal PLOS ONE.
The researchers, led by Viren Swami of the University of Westminster in London, compared how stressed versus non-stressed men responded to pictures of female bodies varying from emaciated to obese. They found that the stressed group gave significantly higher ratings to the normal weight and overweight figures than the non-stressed group did, and that the stressed group generally had a broader range of figures they found attractive than the non-stressed group did.
These results, the authors write, are consistent with the idea that people idealize mature morphological traits like heavier body size when they experience an environmental threat such as stress.
Source: Public Library of Science
Image: Luigi Diamanti/Freedigitalphotos.net
The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance. – Aristotle
