It’s a classic scenario: a man checks out another woman, and the woman he is with becomes angry with him for looking. It can lead to problems with emotional wellbeing and sexual health, as women feel that their man is liable to stray to another female, but now scientists have found that there may be a simple biological reason that men look at other women.
The study was carried out by researchers at the University of Glasgow and the University of Stirling and discovered that women are drawn to male faces that look familiar to them, whilst men are drawn to female faces that they have not seen before. This may be due to the way that men have evolved, to ensure that they achieve reproductive success. Men are biologically programmed to maintain the wellness of their genetic line by mating with as many different partners as possible. Thus, being drawn to unfamiliar faces could be a natural instinct, to ensure that men mate with women that they have not mated with before.
During the study, women were shown pictures of men’s faces, and had to rank them based on how attractive they seemed to them. It was discovered that the more times a woman saw a man’s face, the more attracted she became to him. Men who participated in the study were shown photos of women’s faces and they were asked to rank them on attractiveness. Unlike the women, men were found to rate women as less attractive when they saw them for the second time.
Participants included 83 women and 65 men. Researchers also found that men, like women, rated other men as more attractive the more times they saw them. This study seems to show that women find familiar faces trustworthy and, in turn, find this trustworthiness sexy. Men, however, find unfamiliarity sexy.
