Research published in the Archives of Sexual Behavior examined the effect of womenโs shoes on menโs behaviour and established that women wearing high heels move a man to be more helpful than when they don flats.
โWomenโs shoe heel size exerts a powerful effect on menโs behavior,โ says study author Nicholas Guรฉguen of the Universitรฉ de Bretagne-Sud in France, highlighting how his study reveals menโs age-old weakness for attractive physical attributes.
The study consisted of four experiments. In the first experiment โ which involved 90 men โ Guรฉguen had a 19-year-old woman wear either flat shoes or high heels and attempt to get pedestrians to stop and answer a survey on gender equality. While wearing flats, 40 per cent of men responded but that figure doubled to 80 per cent when she was in high heels.
In a second experiment โ involving 180 women and 180 men โ four women wearing either flat shoes or high heels asked participants to complete a survey on local food habit consumption. Data showed that men were more obliging to the women in heels.
In a third experiment, Guรฉguen tested peopleโs spontaneous urges to be helpful when a woman โ wearing different heel sizes โ dropped her glove in the street. Results indicated that menโs helpfulness increased along with the height of the heels the woman was wearing. However, heel height had no influence on other womenโs willingness to help.
Just in case you didnโt think this was some serious science, here are some of the results: โThe difference between the medium heels condition and the high heels condition approached significance, ฯ 2(1, N = 60) = 3.07, p = .08, ั = .22.โ
In other words, โOur results showed, that, in general, spontaneous help was offered more easily to women as soon as the length of their shoe heels increased,โ Guรฉguen wrote.
In the final experiment Guรฉguen took his research to a bar and found that men were quicker to approach and start chatting with a woman depending on her footwear โ 14 minutes when she was wearing flats and only 7 minutes if wearing heels.
โWomenโs shoe heel size exerts a powerful effect on menโs behaviour,โ said the studyโs author in a summary.
โThe results of these studies once again reveal how men focus on womenโs physical attributes when judging and interacting with members of the opposite sex.โ
Guรฉguen speculated that because models are so often depicted wearing high heels men have โstarted to associate the wearers of high-heeled shoes with those having sexual intent.โ
So, is this a new reason to pop out and purchase a new pair of shoes?
