What makes a man attractive to a woman?
The science of what makes a guy attractive
Author: Chris Blonk
What do women find attractive in men? Many articles give the layperson's take on what makes a man attractive to a woman. I will instead summarize some of the most exciting scientific research that has been done to answer the question; what makes a guy attractive? I will only focus on what you can change to make yourself more attractive to women. Your genetic looks, ethnicity, height, age, or plastic surgery are outside the scope of this article.
Warning!
Scientific studies usually emphasize average preferences. We know that preferences differ a lot between individuals, so no matter your personality quirks, or what you look like, there are women on this planet that will find you attractive. The advice here is how to make you more attractive to women on average. Not how to make you more attractive to one specific person. Women do not always prefer the same things.
He has few downsides
One study has shown that whether a man is considered attractive has more to do with the absence of bad qualities, rather than the presence of good qualities. This is related to prospect theory in behavioral economics. Bad counts stronger than good, and people disproportionately seek to avoid the bad more than they try to seek the good. Here is how that relationship is presented, showing how bad qualities count stronger than good qualities. That’s why for some of the attractive traits in this article, I have taken the information from studies focusing on dealbreakers and turn-offs women have and flipped them to reveal the opposite positive quality.
Relationship Dealbreakers: Traits People Avoid in Potential Mates
He follows a healthy lifestyle
According to this study, women listed “unhealthy lifestyle” as the most important dealbreaker for both short-term and long-term relationships. If we flip this on its head, it means that a healthy lifestyle is one of the main factors that make a man attractive to women. A healthy lifestyle is related to physical health habits, like a regular sleep schedule, eating healthy food, and avoiding harmful drugs. But it’s also related to our mental health. Our mental health can also be improved by what we eat, how we sleep, whether we attempt to be social, and by going to therapy when times are tough. If you think smoking or a beer gut makes you more attractive to the average woman, think again. Women, on average, place great importance on health. Both mental and physical.
He is active and motivated
Being lazy has been identified as one of the biggest turn-offs for women when they asked 2797 women to list their dealbreakers. Relationship Dealbreakers: Traits People Avoid in Potential Mates. What is the opposite of being lazy? It’s being active, motivated, and engaged in life. This might include being motivated and excited to work, socialize, and engage in physical activities. There are many ways to improve your energy. They involve focusing on your sleep, exercise, and eating healthily. If you’re dealing with depression, you may also experience low energy levels. In that case, talking to someone can help. Whether that be a therapist, a good friend, or a family member is up to you. It also helps to be around happy, active, and motivated guys.
The attractive male body
Body fat percentage and BMI
According to one study, women prefer the same male body for short-term and long-term relationships. That was a body with a BMI of 26 and a body-fat percentage of 15%. Misperceptions of opposite-sex preferences for thinness and muscularity. Note that this is high on the BMI scale, objectively overweight. With only 15% body fat, it does mean that this male person’s added weight comes mostly from having more muscle. In a different study using pictures of real men this time, 29 women rated 69 males on attractiveness on an 11-point scale. The body fat percentage that women preferred in this study was 12%. Adiposity, compared with masculinity, serves as a more valid cue to immunocompetence in human mate choice
The first image below shows the 15% body fat variant from the first study, and the second is a photograph of someone with 12% body fat.
Muscles? Yes, please!
When it comes to muscles, is bigger always better? Outside of extreme examples of certain pharmacologically enhanced bodybuilders, it seems women find bigger muscles more attractive, and this relationship is linear. The bigger the muscles, the more appealing they find the man to be. This was discovered in a cross-country study when 160 women in Australia and the US rated pictures of 192 men on attractiveness and perceived strength.
You can see how straight the relationship is in the scatterplot showing the correlation, indicating that there did not seem to be an upper limit where women feel like there is too much muscle on anyone in this sample set. It’s unlikely that this sample of men contained professional bodybuilders, so it’s possible the relationship would eventually flatten out or form a U-curve. I believe there is a point where you can have too much muscle to be attractive to the average woman. However, it’s probably difficult to achieve this level of muscularity without pharmacological means. The study also did not find any evidence that some smaller subset of women prefers weaker-looking men. Cues of upper body strength account for most of the variance in men's bodily attractiveness
These findings don’t mean you should show off your muscles in your dating profile pictures, which we have previously tested in our article Shirtless on Tinder. But it means you should probably be lifting weights regularly if you want to appear more attractive. Just don’t be a show-off about it!
Should you focus on your working out your forearms since they are typically visible when you’re wearing a t-shirt? We tested that here.
And what about tattoos? Should you get those? We tested that here.
A well-kept appearance
A disheveled appearance is another extremely common turn-off for women that they found in the dealbreaker study. What is the opposite of a disheveled appearance? Looking well-kept, tidy, and clean. Here are 10 ways you can improve on this point:
Schedule regular haircuts, so your hair never gets too out of control
Trim your facial hair regularly
Use a hair dryer and styling clay to make sure your hairstyle is on point
Iron or steam your clothes to avoid wrinkles
Repair, wash, or donate clothes that are stained, with holes in them, or otherwise don’t look their best
Ensure your shoes are clean. Minimalist white sneakers can give you a well-kept look, provided they are actually clean!
Replace your phone case when it gets worn out
Keep your nails trimmed
Keep your eyebrows under control by trimming them and getting rid of any unibrow action
Make sure to trim the hair from your nose and ears if they’re visible
Want tips on how to prepare for a first date? See our first date guide.
He is non-needy
More than 1000 women rated “neediness” as the third worst deal breaker. Relationship Dealbreakers: Traits People Avoid in Potential Mates. What is the opposite of being needy? Mark Manson coined the term “non-neediness” in his dating advice book Models. Here are 5 ways in which you can appear non-needy:
Reduce contact with women that seem disinterested or hesitant
Give love, attention, and effort only to women that reciprocate it to the same degree. The giving of love, affection, and interest should feel more or less 50/50 between you. If you do all the work here, you’re love-bombing and needy.
Put about equal effort into texting as she does. Wait approximately as long as she does to respond, and write more or less equally long messages. Again, aim for about 50/50 effort between you.
Be okay with fucking things up during a date. Get comfortable with being silly and goofy, or making a move that fails. When you are non-needy, you do not care that much if any one particular person likes you. You are okay with showing her who you are and being vulnerable. If she doesn’t like who you are, that’s completely fine, because you are an attractive, non-needy man, and it’s easy for you to meet other women.
Do not invest all your dating efforts into one woman unless she has shown that she is also putting all her effort into you. Keep your emotional eggs in more than one basket until it’s clear that your love is mutual and exclusive.
He is confident, and yes, you can improve your confidence
Lack of confidence is a problematic deal breaker for many women. In the dealbreaker study, it placed 6th among the top deal breakers. Relationship Dealbreakers: Traits People Avoid in Potential Mates. But is confidence even something you can change, or are you born with it? Researchers from Singapore and California joined forces to test this.
The study was set up using a speed dating format. Before the speed dating event, they separated 68 men into three groups. One group watched a 3-hour video tutorial on how to do better at speed dating. Another group received a video tutorial on how to be better at having conversations. The third was a control group that received no learning material. They then let the 68 men speed-date women from another university. What did they find? Women rated the men in the speed dating tutorial group as more socially confident and attractive than those in the control group. The conversation tutorial group did almost as well as the speed dating tutorial group. They also found that the men who had received the speed dating tutorial felt more confident than the control group. What does this mean? Learning about social skills as it relates to dating can improve your confidence in this area. They also replicated the results in 2 more studies.
What kind of facial hair do women prefer?
If you have dark hair and can grow a beard, the “heavy stubble” is considered the most attractive facial hair option by women in a study where 358 women evaluated 10 European-looking men with dark hair. This facial hair style was rated as more attractive than being clean-shaven, having light stubble, or having a full beard. This depends on whether you can grow heavy stubble and make it look good. It does not work for everyone. And this study did not include men with lighter hair or very dark skin. Below is an example of the type of images they used and how women scored the different hairstyles.
In a follow-up study, researchers also discovered that these findings held, no matter if women were looking for something long-term or short-term:
So consider the heavy stubble if you want to look more attractive to women, as long as you can grow heavy stubble without looking too weird or disheveled. We already talked about how women dislike a disheveled-looking man, so if you go for stubble, make it look well-kept.
He lives close to the type of women he likes
In surveys, many women find it a deal breaker if a man lives far away. Relationship Dealbreakers: Traits People Avoid in Potential Mates. So if you want to be an attractive man, live close to the types of women you are attracted to. Living in the middle of nowhere will severely hurt your attractiveness. I know from many of my friends that moving to a bigger city often improved their dating life.
He mostly avoids video games
According to this scientific study: Relationship Dealbreakers: Traits People Avoid in Potential Mates, a guy spending a lot of time on video games is a common turn-off to women. While the negative stereotypes around video gaming seem to have weakened over the last few years, there are still plenty of examples of women complaining that their boyfriend or husband spends too much time in front of the screen and too little time paying attention to them. So if you want to be an attractive man, ensure that video games do not take your attention too much away from your social life and your closest relationships. Some female gamers love to date male gamers. However, according to the research, women usually dislike heavy gamers.
What women find attractive in a husband
Lastly, let’s talk about the things that matter for the long-term success of a relationship. Psychologists interviewed and surveyed 184 married women to evaluate what qualities they found attractive in their husbands. This is a great way to study what men and women actually choose, rather than just question their preferences for hypothetical dream guys. Women found these to be the most important qualities:
Kind, considerate, honest, and dependable
Likes children
Easy-going and adaptable
Socially exciting
Artistic or intelligent
Preferences in human mate selection
When it comes to a marriage partner, women value being treated well. Someone who cares, listens, and is there for her. A man that’s also smart and can keep contributing to socially exciting interactions in the relationship. This preference for being adaptable and friendly supports research by Gottman, who found that couples where the husband was more open to accepting his wife’s influence, were more likely to stay married. Predicting Marital Happiness and Stability From Newlywed Interactions, page 19
Too long, did not read;
You wondered what makes a guy attractive or what do women find attractive in men. Well, here are some of the things that make a man attractive to a woman, according to science:
Healthy lifestyle, active, and motivated
Body-fat percentage around 12-15%
Muscular
Maintains a well-kept appearance
Non-needy
Confident (and yes, you can improve your confidence)
Facial hair: Heavy, well-kept stubble
Lives nearby
Avoids excessive gaming
Kind and dependable (for marriage)
