--- title: "Straight People Are Comically Wrong About What the Opposite Sex Finds Attractive" description: "In a new study, heterosexual people were found to be way wrong about what the opposite sex finds attractive." date: "2024-12-07" modified: "2024-12-07" authors: - name: "Noor Al-Sibai" job_title: "Senior Staff Writer" link: "https://futurism.com/authors/nooralsibai" url: "https://futurism.com/neoscope/straight-people-wrong-attractive" categories: - "Health & Medicine" - "Studies" tags: - "beauty standards" - "heterosexuality" - "relationships" - "straight people" --- # Straight People Are Comically Wrong About What the Opposite Sex Finds Attractive ![In a new study, heterosexual people were found to be way wrong about what the opposite sex finds attractive.]() *\Image: Getty / Futurism\* In a new study, heterosexual people were again found to be astonishingly misguided about what the opposite sex finds attractive. Published in the [journal *PLOS One*](), researchers from Scotland's University of St. Andrews wrote that they were inspired by prior findings that found straight people are often strikingly misinformed about what potential mates are looking for. Basically, men often believe think that women are attracted to musclebound chads while women frequently think men desire dainty feminine damsels — or, as the researchers summarized it, "women exaggerate the thinness that men like and men exaggerate the muscularity that women like." In reality, people are attracted to all kinds of things, and seldom to the extremes of the human form fetishized on Instagram and OnlyFans. Curious about whether that dynamic extends beyond bodies to faces, a team led by St. Andrews psychology professor David Perett — the head of the school's Perception Lab, which studies how people perceive each other — showed 153 straight people, evenly split between cisgender men and women, 3D modeled faces. The idea was to explore participants' perceptions of how traditional markers of femininity and masculinity — "sexual dimorphism," in the scientific parlance — affected the desirability of the 3D faces. Using a program that allows users to dial up and down various facial characteristics, Perett and his team first asked the participants to adjust the faces to look like their own, then ones they thought the opposite sex would find ideal for short or long-term relationships, and finally to depict what they themselves would be most attracted to for short and long-term dating. Analyzing the results, the Perception Lab researchers found a perfect reflection of the prior scientific findings about men and women misunderstanding each others' desire for body types. "Women overestimated the facial femininity that men prefer in a partner and men overestimated the facial masculinity that women prefer in a partner," they wrote in the study. (Along with the small sample size, one weak spot the researchers acknowledged is that all the 3D faces and participants were white, meaning further research is needed to generalize the findings to a wider and more representative population.) But the implications are still pretty intriguing, and not just because both straight men and women seem to be misunderstanding the dynamics of the dating pool; it also means, the researchers fretted, that many hetero folks are dissatisfied with their own appearance even when it's more desirable to potential mates than they understand — a toxic dynamic, especially when both male and [female influencers]() often [hawk body ideals]() that are [only desirable]() to a small subset of very online people. "These results," the scientists wrote, "indicate misperception of opposite-sex facial preferences and that mistaken perceptions may contribute to dissatisfaction with own appearance." Of course, none of this is rocket science if you're paying attention to pop culture. There's a reason that the elf-like Timothée Chalamet and the androgynous Tilda Swinton have attained such incredible starpower. But it is one more datapoint that pushes back against easy narratives around gender and sexuality — and shows, once again, that there's no one thing that's attractive to any large group of people. **More on beauty standards:** [*Stranded NASA Astronaut Hits Back Against Comments About Her Weight*]() ## Author At Futurism, I've often been drawn to unpacking the narratives that underlie technological, scientific and medical progress, with a special interest in areas of conflict and ambiguity that end up setting agendas and steering the fates of both elites and the hoi polloi. I'm a committed generalist, but I often find myself returning to work involving NASA and the private space sector, the effects of AI on media and society, and the mechanics of the pharmaceutical industry, with a specific focus on the spread of GLP-1 drugs like Ozempic and Wegovy. Prior to Futurism, I worked for publications ranging from Media Matters and Truthdig to Raw Story and Bustle. I'm also the author of "Myspace Scene Queens," a 2024 title in Instar Books' acclaimed "Remember the Internet" series. My work at Futurism has been cited by outlets including the New Yorker, Slate, Nieman Lab, the Verge, the MIT Technology Review, the Sunday Times, and the Daily Beast. I grew up in North Carolina, attended the University of North Carolina at Asheville, and now live in Brooklyn, New York. In my free time, I'm an avid reader and music fan; you can probably find me at a local poetry reading, concert, underground rave, or DJ set. I'm the proud parent of an ineffable orange cat named Mee-Mow. ### Author social links [Bluesky]()