High Heels Affect Men In Interesting Ways, Study Reveals

Not too many men can stay indifferent when they notice a pair of high heels walking by — or sitting for that matter, a new French study reveals.

Flats are more comfortable for most women, but if you are trying to get men’s attention, your best bet is to wear high heels, according to Dr. Nicolas Guéguen, a psychologist at the Université de Bretagne-Sud in Rennes, and the scientist behind the study.

“Women’s shoe heel size exerts a powerful effect on men’s behavior,” the researcher says in a statement.

Contrary to what readers may be thinking, the study — a first of its kind — shows that men tend to be more helpful to a pair of high heels, as opposed to the more traditional flat shoes. Results were published in the Springer journal Archives of Sexual Behavior.

There have been several studies around the world which indicate that physical features, such as body size and the style and color of a woman’s clothing, greatly influence a man’s behavior towards and judgment of a woman, the Huffington Post reports.

Women know that men find high heels sexy and will probably pick the woman wearing them over the one who isn’t, but only one previous study looks at how men are affected by the heel size of a woman’s shows. The subjects of the study were four women, who were asked by Guéguen to fill out a survey with male reactions towards them when they wore flats or two- or four-inch heels.

“He also tested whether or not people’s spontaneous urge to help changed when the same woman – again wearing shoes with different heel sizes – dropped a glove. The findings show that men’s helpfulness increased along with the height of the heels a woman was wearing. However, heel height had no influence on other women’s willingness to help.”

The study also found that women wearing high heels at a bar had better chances of striking a conversation with men they didn’t know, than those wearing flats. Guéguen suggests more studies need to be done in this field, but adds that results “reveal how men focus on women’s physical attributes when judging and interacting with members of the opposite sex.”

For men, high heels simply make a woman look sexier, it’s as simple as that. Guéguen explains the reasoning like this. Beautiful models are dressed scantily, therefore guys associate any woman wearing high heels with the ones they see in magazines or television.

[Image via Shutterstock]