Blame evolution for men staring at other women: study

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Press Trust of India London
Last Updated : Jun 27 2013 | 4:35 PM IST
Women have evolution to blame for their men's roving eye, according to a new study.
Researchers from the University of Stirling and the University of Glasgow found that men's roving eye is the result of evolution and their urge to reproduce with multiple partners.
In the study, women rated male faces that look familiar as more attractive, while men found someone they have never seen before as more attractive.
Researchers showed a group of 83 women and 65 men pictures of five men and five women, individually, and asked them to rate their attractiveness.
Participants were then shown the pictures again, but with another picture that they had not seen before, The Times reported.
Researchers found that the second time round the women rated the men higher. The men, perhaps distracted by the new picture, rated the women they had previously seen as lower.
"Men found female faces they had already seen less attractive and less sexy, especially for short-term relationships," researchers wrote in the study published in the journal Archives of Sexual Behaviour.
"There is a tendency for males to pursue a large number of partners as they can dramatically increase their reproductive success by mating with multiple females," they said.
Scientists claim the results may prove the so-called Coolidge effect - the idea that what women value in a man is familiarity, and what men value in women is novelty - is true.
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First Published: Jun 27 2013 | 4:35 PM IST

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