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Cause & Effect reversed for Muscular Men?

July 11, 2007 by Candice H. Brown Elliott (not verified), 2 years 19 weeks ago
Comment id: 24194

I can't help but wonder if cause and effect are being reversed in the study when muscularity and higher number of sex partners is found to correlate. Could the effect, the correlation be caused by a joint underlying higher testosterone level? That is, the higher testosterone that leads to more muscularity also causes higher libido which may lead to higher number of sex partners due to the men's choices, rather than the women's. A second point is that the women in the study found the "toned" man's body to be the most sexually attractive. This is presented as being above average muscularity. Perhaps it may be in a modern industrialized society, but would it have been above average in a healthy hunter/gatherer society in which our species evolved? I believe that "toned" was probably the average, the norm, for the hunter/gatherers. This suggests that high muscularity is *NOT* a desirable trait in reproductive success. That women are not attracted to above average muscularity, the average being what would have been the norm in paleolithic times. I personally suspect that studies using multivariate methodologies might find that being taller is more important than being muscular. I also suspect that demonstrating skill, such as singing, dancing, music, etc. may be a way to demonstrate excess fitness to potential sex partners/mates, and has been selected for over muscularity in humans, which compared to our great ape cousins, is highly neotanous and notably less muscular in both sexes.

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