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1 correction found
0 of 160 women preferred weaker-looking men.
The paper did not report that 160 women each chose stronger men over weaker men. Participants rated photos on 1–7 scales, and the published analysis used averaged ratings, not an individual-woman tally of preferences.
Full reasoning
The cited study does not report a result that “0 of 160 women preferred weaker-looking men.”
What the paper actually says is:
- Raters were assigned to rate photos for either physical attractiveness or physical strength.
- Attractiveness was rated on a 1–7 scale (“very unattractive” to “very attractive”), not by asking each woman to choose between a stronger-looking and weaker-looking man.
- The authors then analyzed average ratings across raters for each photographed man: “We computed the average ratings of attractiveness and strength for each photographed subject. We then regressed the average rating for strength against the average rating for attractiveness.”
- The paper also says that after checking for sex differences, male and female raters were combined in later analyses: “In future analyses, male and female raters were always combined.”
So the paper supports a strong aggregate correlation between looking strong and being rated attractive, but it does not report a published finding that zero out of 160 women individually preferred weaker-looking men. That claim misstates both the study design and the reported result.
2 sources
- Cues of upper body strength account for most of the variance in men's bodily attractiveness - PMC
Raters were instructed to rate either 'physical attractiveness' or 'physical strength'... For attractiveness, raters rated the men from '1 = very unattractive' to '7 = very attractive'... In future analyses, male and female raters were always combined... We computed the average ratings of attractiveness and strength for each subject and regressed the average rating for strength against the average rating for attractiveness.
- Dryad | Data: Cues of upper body strength account for most of the variance in men's bodily attractiveness
Data files: Ratings of Attractiveness - Set 1.sav; Ratings of Strength - Set 1.sav; Ratings of Strength and Attractiveness - Set 2.sav.