Do Men Like Women's Breasts?
It's a difficult question - but I do my best to answer it in a new interview with the Times!
I was interviewed recently by journalist Tom Whipple for an article in the Times titled “Straight man’s ‘love of breasts is innate, not imposed by culture.’”
The article is about a study reported in Archives of Sexual Behavior exploring the origins of men’s sexual interest in women’s breasts. Here’s an excerpt from the paper.
Female breasts elicit sexual arousal in men, but there is much speculation about the underlying cause of this phenomenon. Some argue that breast size and shape are cues of a woman’s age, sexual maturity, fecundity, fertility, and/or nutritional status, whereas others espouse a cultural rationale, such that social norms biding women to cover their upper bodies lead men to desire what is hidden. To address this issue, we asked 80 men from the Dani people (Papua, Indonesia) about their sex-related behaviors and attitudes regarding their partners’ breasts. The older participants were raised in times when toplessness was a norm among Dani women, while the younger ones were raised when customs had changed such that Dani women covered their breasts in public… [T]he degree of exposure to breasts did not influence men’s responses… This study offers preliminary support for the hypothesis that male sexual interest in female breasts is an evolutionarily based tendency and neither an effect of the Westernization of clothing habits (and thus, covering female breasts in public) nor the “sexualization of what is hidden.”
Here’s an excerpt from the Times article:
Steve Stewart-Williams, professor of psychology at the University of Nottingham Malaysia, said that while academic fashions have gone the other way, this reflected other, earlier, research.
“Anthropologists [Clellan S] Ford and [Frank A] Beach argued in the 1950s that breasts are important in foreplay in every culture, including those that deny the sexual relevance of breasts.”
Stewart-Williams, author of The Nature-Nurture-Nietzsche Newsletter, said that for this reason he was not surprised by the findings. “I knew it!” he said. “I’ve often heard people argue that men’s love of breasts is just an invention of western culture, and that there are cultures out there where breasts are no big deal to men.
“It’s always struck me as implausible — could western culture have randomly created a male obsession with women’s elbows or nostrils? I find the new study persuasive. And it also strikes me as a win for common sense over an eccentric academic theory.”
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Coming Soon to the Nature-Nurture-Nietzsche Newsletter…
My weekend post for this weekend is titled “10 Highly Replicable Findings from Psychology.” I wrote it because, since psychology’s replication crisis caught the public’s attention, I’ve heard a lot of people claim the entire field is bunk. It’s not true. Plenty of the field is bunk, sure - but psychology also has a large body of solid findings. In my new piece, I’ll highlight ten that I think are particularly well-established and particularly interesting.
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Related Reading
Tom Whipple interviewed me a few years ago about the gender-equality paradox: the finding that many sex differences are larger, rather than smaller, in more gender-equal nations. As I said in that piece,
It seems completely reasonable to think that, in cultures where men and women are treated very differently and have very different opportunities, they’ll end up a lot more different than they would in cultures where they’re treated more similarly and have a similar range of opportunities.
But it turns out that this has it exactly backwards. Treating men and women the same makes them different, and treating them differently makes then the same. I don’t think anyone predicted that. It’s bizarre.
You can check out the whole piece here, and read my own writing on the topic here, here, and here.
From the Archive
12 Things Everyone Should Know About Evolutionary Psychology
This is the latest post in my “12 Things Everyone Should Know” series. You can access the full collection here.
Who's More Likely to Say Yes to an Offer of Sex From a Stranger, Men or Women?
In one of the most famous studies in psychology, psychologists Russell Clark and Elaine Hatfield had accomplices approach young men and women on a busy U.S. campus and say “Hi. I’ve been noticing you around town lately, and I find you very attractive.” The accomplices then made one of the following propositions:
Decoding the Gender-Equality Paradox
One of the most surprising discoveries of the last few decades is known as the gender-equality paradox. This refers to the fact that, for a large number of traits, sex differences are larger, rather than smaller, in more gender-equal nations. The finding is surprising because it seems entirely plausible that, in cultures where men and women are treated differently and play different roles in society, sex differences will tend to be magnified. Even if there’s an innate contribution to many sex differences, this seems like a reasonable expectation. But the reasonable expectation turns out to be wrong. In fact, it’s not just wrong; it has things back-to-front, at least for some traits.
I don't like women's breasts.I love them.If women's breasts have one fan...I am alone in this world.If women's breast have no fan...I am dead.If women's breast are liked by everybody...then I am everybody.
Excellent as always. I was having this discussion yesterday. I was just explaining to a friend that the replication crisis doesn't nullify all findings in psychology. That would be nearly impossible.