Do women like men with tattoos?
We conducted an experiment and evaluate the published science
Author: Chris Blonk
Do tattoos make you more attractive? We are always looking for ways to discover through science what women find attractive in men. To answer the question “Do women like men with tattoos?”, we asked 60 women to evaluate different pictures of men, both with and without tattoos. This is just a small study, but if tattoos are important, we will still observe a trend in the results at this level. I hypothesize that it does not matter whether a man has a tattoo or not, as long as the tattoo is not grotesque or very disruptive in some way. I chose two tattoos on the upper arm since it is one of the most popular places to get tattooed. For the last tattoo, I opted for one that is a bit more daring near the neck.
Method: 3 images of men with tattoos (photoshopped) are evaluated separately against 3 men without tattoos (original). We, therefore, have a control group for each of the images. We tested the images at different times (6 hours in between) in the hopes that the same women would not see both versions of each image.
Subjects: 60 women aged 25 - 34.
Test-environment: photofeeler.com
Data
Results
Attractive
Average score without a tattoo: 7.7
Average score with a tattoo: 7.7
Trustworthy
Average score without a tattoo: 6.0
Average score with a tattoo: 4.9
Smart
Average score without a tattoo: 6.2
Average score with a tattoo: 6.1
Results summarized
Women, on average, find men with tattoos equally attractive and smart as men without tattoos. However, they perceive men with tattoos as slightly less trustworthy.
How does our experiment stack up to other research on this topic?
One study using 299 women and the stimulus below, found no effect on attractiveness scores as rated by women regardless of the type of tattoo the man had, confirming our findings. In our experiment, women saw a man as less trustworthy with a tattoo. In this experiment, women saw the man as less likely to be a good partner when he had a tattoo. Molloy, K., & Wagstaff, D. (2021). Effects of gender, self-rated attractiveness, and mate value on perceptions tattoos. Personality and Individual Differences, 168, 110382. doi:10.1016/j.paid.2020.110382
Our findings were also confirmed by a third study using 2369 women that evaluated the stimulus that had a few different men also edited to have tattoos, like what we see below. Tattooed men: Healthy bad boys and good-looking competitors. February 2017. Personality and Individual Differences 106(2) DOI:10.1016/j.paid.2016.10.051
Too long, didn’t read
Do tattoos make you more attractive? Do women like men with tattoos? Getting a tattoo won’t make you more or less attractive, but it can negatively influence how trustworthy and dependable you seem. Tattoos can therefore be a potential negative when looking for a long-term partner. If you have a tattoo and you’re looking for a long-term partner, you may want to spend more time and effort building trust and a sense of security.
