You’ve all heard of Hungry Man Dinners but what about Hungry Man’s taste in…women?
According to a recent study published in the Journal of Social, Evolutionary and Cultural Psychology, researchers found that the hungrier the man, the bigger his preference for, well, larger women.
The study asked a group of mixed gender participants to first gauge their hunger then gauge their preferred traits in a partner. Personality qualities included “strong, mature, independent, competent” and physical traits included height, weight and age.
Researchers found, oddly enough, that men who were hungry overwhelmingly went for the personality characteristics of a bolder woman. They also preferred “ideal mates from the heavier category (greater than 130 lbs).” Women’s choices, meanwhile, were similar to men’s regarding the question of maturity, but showed little to no preference regarding weight.
The study explains this phenomenon with evolution. “Hunger signals the need for nutritional input, which is a signal of resource scarcity and should lead the individual to engage in behaviors and show preferences in line with that state of scarcity or threat.” (They even noted earlier research which found that Playboy centerfold models were older, heavier and taller “during historical periods of threat.”)
The way I see it though, men lust after the voluptuous for deeper reasons than Sir Mix-a-Lot would have us believe. This proclivity toward the curvy may be rooted in the need for someone to fulfill that hunger (a hunger not solely limited to food).