Preference for Women's Body Mass and Waist-to-Hip Ratio in Tsimane' Men of the Bolivian Amazon: Biological and Cultural Determinants

Piotr Sorokowski, Krzysztof Kościński, Agnieszka Sorokowska and Tomas Huanca

PLOS ONE, 2014, vol. 9, issue 8, 1-10

Abstract: The issue of cultural universality of waist-to-hip ratio (WHR) attractiveness in women is currently under debate. We tested men's preferences for female WHR in traditional society of Tsimane'(Native Amazonians) of the Bolivian rainforest (N = 66). Previous studies showed preferences for high WHR in traditional populations, but they did not control for the women's body mass.We used a method of stimulus creation that enabled us to overcome this problem. We found that WHR lower than the average WHR in the population is preferred independent of cultural conditions. Our participants preferred the silhouettes of low WHR, but high body mass index (BMI), which might suggest that previous results could be an artifact related to employed stimuli. We found also that preferences for female BMI are changeable and depend on environmental conditions and probably acculturation (distance from the city). Interestingly, the Tsimane' men did not associate female WHR with age, health, physical strength or fertility. This suggests that men do not have to be aware of the benefits associated with certain body proportions - an issue that requires further investigation.

Date: 2014
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0105468 (text/html)
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id= ... 05468&type=printable (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:plo:pone00:0105468

DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0105468

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in PLOS ONE from Public Library of Science
Bibliographic data for series maintained by plosone ().