London: A new study has proved that men prefer less powerful women.In the study, led by Gettysburg College in Pennsylvania, psychologists showed positioning of people's photos played a vital role in determining how attractive and powerful he/she is perceived to be by the opposite sex.
According to lead researchers Brian Meier and Sarah Dionne, a powerful person is perceived as one, who stays at the top while less powerful are below.
So when people think of power differences, they literally think of spatial differences too.
During the study, researchers recruited 29 men and 50 women aged 19 were asked to look at images of people and rate their attractiveness on a scale of 1-750.
The participants were shown, in a random order, all of the images and advised that they would see images repeated during the study. Each image was both seen and rated twice. The only difference between the two viewings of each image was that image position was adjusted.
For example, if an image was first viewed on the bottom of the screen, it would later appear on the top.
The researchers discovered that men rated the same images of women as 1.8pct more attractive when the images were on the bottom of the screen than when they were on the top.
Women, in contrast, rated images of men at the top of their screen as 1.5pct more attractive than when those same images were at the bottom.
"That this study shows changes in human attraction because of mere changes in screen position is impressive. This is a big step forward from our reaction-time findings," Nature magazine quoted psychologist Thomas Schubert at the Lisbon University Institute as saying.
These findings could help explain why men in heterosexual partnerships are taller than their partners more frequently than would be expected from the range of heights of men and women.
Men seem to prefer shorter women, and women prefer taller men.
"Height might actually be a cue to power and, as we are finding in our study, attractiveness," said Meier.
Source: ANI
