Close X
Wednesday, November 13, 2024
ADVT 
Interesting

Favouring sex specific traits an urban habit

Darpan News Desk IANS, 21 Oct, 2014 07:15 AM
  • Favouring sex specific traits an urban habit
If you are searching for a more masculine man for dating, remember that this is not what your ancestors looked for.
 
According to a study, sexual preference for masculine men and feminine women is an urban habit and probably not a consistent thread in human history.
 
"The highly developed environments with large, dense populations may have exposed individuals to a greater range of unfamiliar faces, providing the opportunity - and perhaps motive - to discover subtle relationships between facial traits and behaviour," said Andrew Clark, lecturer in psychology at the Brunel University in London.
 
This data challenges the theory that exaggerated sex-specific traits were important for social and sexual selection in ancestral environments.
 
To reach this conclusion, a team of psychologists, anthropologists and biologists surveyed 12 populations around the world from the primitive to the highly developed.
 
Surprisingly, only in the most industrialised and urbanised environments did people hold the opinion that highly feminine women and highly masculine men are attractive.
 
Researchers digitally morphed masculine and feminine faces from photographs of people to find out what choices people from small-scale societies made.
 
A total of 962 participants were shown sets of three, opposite-sex photos.
 
"We found that they did not place the same emphasis on 'sex typicality', that is, on highly feminine women and highly masculine men. In fact, they often favoured the neutral face and, sometimes, the least 'sex-typical' one," Clark added.
 
The team also found that the perception that masculine males tend to be aggressive increased with urbanisation.
 
The paper appeared in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

MORE Interesting ARTICLES

Sentencing in B.C. gang case set for December as defence attempts to toss case

Sentencing in B.C. gang case set for December as defence attempts to toss case
VANCOUVER - A sentencing hearing for two gang members convicted in a mass killing in the Vancouver area may happen in early December, but only if the court refuses to hear a defence application to have the case tossed out.

Sentencing in B.C. gang case set for December as defence attempts to toss case

Dark matter in Milky Way half of what we thought

Dark matter in Milky Way half of what we thought
A new measurement of dark matter in the Milky Way has revealed there is half as much of the mysterious substance as previously thought.

Dark matter in Milky Way half of what we thought

How 'love hormone' regulates sexual behaviour

How 'love hormone' regulates sexual behaviour
Researchers have uncovered a new class of oxytocin-responsive brain cells that regulates an important aspect of female sexual interest in male mice, suggesting that the same mechanism is followed in humans for selecting mate.

How 'love hormone' regulates sexual behaviour

Sharing workspace with opposite sex boosts productivity

Sharing workspace with opposite sex boosts productivity
Although men and women love to work in single sex offices, productivity goes up if they share space with the opposite gender, finds an interesting research.

Sharing workspace with opposite sex boosts productivity

Why beer tastes good to us

Why beer tastes good to us
The importance of yeast in beer brewing has long been underestimated but researchers from University of Leuven in Belgium now report that beer yeasts produce chemicals that mimic the aroma of fruits in order to attract flies that can transport the yeast cells to new places.

Why beer tastes good to us

Man Loses Pants After Allegedly Fleeing With Money From BC Transit Machine

Man Loses Pants After Allegedly Fleeing With Money From BC Transit Machine
VANCOUVER - A man who broke into a ticket vending machine at a Metro Vancouver SkyTrain station allegedly took off with lots of money but not his pants.

Man Loses Pants After Allegedly Fleeing With Money From BC Transit Machine