Hungry Men Like Heavier Women More

It seems that ancient wisdom can still be applied successfully to modern time's events. A new study has found that men that have an empty stomach would rather fancy plump women, while men with a full stomach would go for slimmer ones.

The study has investigated preferences in women of 61 male college students and is published in The British Journal of Psychology. It is still unclear how a physiological need like hunger can have such a great influence on attraction rules. The reason why empty bellied men would vote for heavy weight women has not been tracked down yet.

However, experts say that it all depends on social, cultural and psychological factors. People from geographical area where food is not available anywhere and anyhow would rather like to go out with plump women. On the other hand, males in rich regions, where food is abundant, choose slender females as partners.

It could be only a matter of "psychologically" filling an empty stomach...

Dr Martine Tovée from Newcastle University, co-author of the study, believes that biological factors are also involved in this kind of preference and he explained: "Your cognitive state, your drives and your interests are dependent on your underlying physiology, your blood sugar levels and your hormone levels and these depend upon hunger."

The team investigated the tastes in women of 61 students by stopping them as they were entering or leaving an eating place in the campus, during dinner time. Researchers asked the boys to rate their hunger on a scale between 1 and 7, then showed them photos of 50 women of varying body weights and asked them to pick the one with whom they would like to go out sometime.

The results showed that males with empty stomachs that entered the place to grab some food chose plumper women, while those that were leaving and have already eaten voted for slimmer women.

"This shows how physiology does impact on our perceptions and thought processes. Obviously, we only saw a small shift in preference but it is a significant shift. If you were to extrapolate it onwards to people missing many meals and getting hungrier and hungrier over a longer period of time you might start to see a bigger shift," Dr. Tovée stated.

The team plans to further investigate how women behave under the same given situations and what would their choices consist in. "Research suggests women's ability to judge not only their own but also other people's body shape is linked to their own body mass. As their body mass declines they tend to overestimate body mass. So the more weight they lose, the bigger they think they are," the doctor added.