This scene is probably all too familiar to you. It’s Friday night and you’re out in a club, hoping to hook up. You see this woman you’d like to approach, but you’re anxious about how your advances will be received. Wouldn’t you like to be able to read a cue that would at least give you some idea if the object of your desires is in the club for the same “nefarious” reasons as you?
Well, now you may have. According to the findings from a recent study, men and women with shorter, wider faces tend to be more sexually motivated and a have stronger sex drive than those with faces differently configured.
This study was led by Dr. Steven Arnocky of Nipissing University in Canada. His team investigated the role that facial features play in sexual relationships, and their findings were published in Springer’s journal Archives of Sexual Behaviour.
The study involved two groups of men and women, whose sexual habits were documented and whose faces were then carefully measured, under controlled conditions. In both groups, men and women with faces with higher width-to-height ratios (aka high FWHR) disclosed more frequent sexual encounters/needs than those with thinner and longer faces. (Hmm, maybe that’s the origin of the saying, “why the long face?”)
Past research has shown a link between facial features and certain psychological and behavioral traits. It’s been found, for instance, that more square-faced men and women (those with a high FWHR), tend to be more aggressive, dominant, deceitful and more driven to succeed than their counterparts with longer and narrower faces.
But this is the first study that delves into the link between FWHR and sexual psychology. Researchers say that the differences in face proportions may be due to testosterone levels during certain developmental periods, such as in utero or puberty.
The findings of this survey are interesting, but certainly not a green light to all of a sudden swarm all square-faced women or men with a cocksure attitude of a happy ending. For one, the subjects in this study were young (university students), white and heterosexual, so further study on other demographics is required for validation. Plus, sexual behavior is influenced by a variety of things such as cultural and religious mores, which vary from individual to individual.
But maybe more disappointing to men is this finding in the Nipissing University study: although both men and women with a high FWHR (shorter, wider faces) had a stronger sex drive than those with a low FWHR, only males in this study were more prone and receptive to casual sex and infidelity.
So, that woman in the club you’ve had your eye on for a one-night stand? Approach—but still with some caution and fairly ambivalent expectations!
