Economists discover hunger makes man horny, publish anyway

A legitimate academic research paper published in PLOS ONE examining the correlation between resource security and male preferences for female breast size. The study presents findings from two experiments testing whether economic scarcity influences attraction preferences, with a straightforward scientific abstract and standard journal publication metadata. Extracted text: OPEN ACCESS Freely available online PLOS ONE Resource Security Impacts Men's Female Breast Size Preferences Viren Swami, Martin J. Tovée 1 Department of Psychology, University of Westminster, London, United Kingdom; 2 Department of Psychology, HELP University College, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia; 3 Institute of Neuroscience, Newcastle University, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, United Kingdom Abstract It has been suggested human female breast size may act as signal of fat reserves, which in turn indicates access to resources. Based on this perspective, two studies were conducted to test the hypothesis that men experiencing relative resource insecurity should perceive larger breast size as more physically attractive than men experiencing resource security. In Study 1, 266 men from three sites in Malaysia varying in relative socioeconomic status (high to low) and figures varying in breast size for physical attractiveness. Results showed that men from the low socioeconomic context rated larger breasts as more attractive than did men from the medium socioeconomic context, who in turn perceived larger breasts as attractive than men from a high socioeconomic context. Study 2 compared the breast size judgements of 66 hungry versus 58 satiated men within the same environmental context in Britain. Results showed that hungry men rated larger breasts as significantly more attractive than satiated men. Taken together, these studies provide evidence that resource security impacts upon men's attractiveness ratings based on women's breast size. Citation: Swami V, Tovée MJ (2013) Resource Security Impacts Men's Female Breast Size Preferences. PLoS ONE 8(3): e57623. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0057623 Editor: Jessica Witt, Colorado State University, United States of America Received November 9, 2012; Accepted January 25, 2013; Published March 6, 2013 Copyright: © 2013 Swami, Tovee. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Funding: The authors have no support or funding to report. Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist. * E-mail: v.swami@westminster.ac.uk