Close X
Friday, November 29, 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

Beware! Anti-odour clothes may leave you smelly

Beware! Anti-odour clothes may leave you smelly
Planning to buy an anti-odour shirt to stay fresh all day long? Think again as new research shows that anti-odour clothing may not be living up to its promise....

Beware! Anti-odour clothes may leave you smelly

Women think it's not necessary to take husband's last name

Women think it's not necessary to take husband's last name
Indian traditions tell women to take their husband's last name after marriage. But a survey has revealed that the majority of Indian women think it as an unnecessary practice....

Women think it's not necessary to take husband's last name

Is that a 'traffic signal' on Mars?

Is that a 'traffic signal' on Mars?
Are aliens using traffic signal to cross roads on Red Planet? Fun apart, NASA's Curiosity Mars rover has clicked a picture on the Martian surface that resembles a “traffic signal”.

Is that a 'traffic signal' on Mars?

Men with bulging bellies last longer in bed

Men with bulging bellies last longer in bed
Do not be ashamed of your bulging belly any more during sex. A fascinating research shows that men with larger bellies perform much longer between the sheets...

Men with bulging bellies last longer in bed

Yoga and meditation help people use gadgets better

Yoga and meditation help people use gadgets better
In recent years, there has been a lot of attention on improving the computer side of the brain-computer interface but very little attention to the brain side....

Yoga and meditation help people use gadgets better

Saudi man divorces wife for not closing car door

Saudi man divorces wife for not closing car door
The couple reportedly went out on a picnic and when they returned home, the wife got out, helped their children to do so and then moved to go into the...

Saudi man divorces wife for not closing car door