Mental Health

The Hotter, The Better: Men More Charitable in Front of Sexier Women

By Christine Hsu | Update Date: Jul 10, 2013 03:30 PM EDT

New research reveals that men behave better in front of women.  What's more, researchers found that men do more good deeds in front of more attractive women.

Researchers call this behavior "peacocking" after the male peacocks display of its tail to attract females. Researchers found that the more beautiful the woman, the more grand and frequent the good deeds a man will do.

While men perform more good deeds when they are being watched, the latest study shows that the same finding does not apply to women, who perform the same regardless of whether they are being watched.

For the study, participants were asked to play a "public good" game on a computer in a group. The participants were each given £3 ($4.50) at the start and could either decide to put it into a group account that would then be doubled at the end of the study and distributed between 6 random participants, or keep the money in a private account, according to the Daily Mail.

 The participants were watched by either a male observer, female observer or no one.

Researchers found that men donated significantly more money when female observers were watching them, whereas women's donations remained more or less the same in all three conditions. Interestingly, the study also found that men's donations correlated positively with their attractiveness rating of the female observer.

The study, published in the British Journal of Psychology reveals that men also volunteer more time to charitable acts when female observers were watching them. What's more, men performed more good deeds the more attractive they rated the female observer to be.

Researchers said the findings suggest that men will compete with each other through public charity to impress the opposite sex.

Past studies reveal that while women tend to give on the small scale, and help friends and family within their social network, men tend to perform good deeds that are more public and noticeable, and are often towards strangers or on a large scale.

"These findings support the idea that men compete with each other by creating public goods to impress women. Thus, a public good is the human equivalent of a peacock's tail," researchers concluded. 

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