A study by Dr William Brown and colleagues in Brunel University's School of Social Sciences and School of Engineering and Design, published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), has revealed an explanation for the correlation between attractiveness and bodily characteristics like height, breast size, long legs, broad shoulders or a curvy figure.
The study also explored the degree of asymmetries between the left and right sides of the body, which is widely believed to be an indirect measure of developmental quality in many species including humans.
Using Brunel's high-tech 3D optical body scanner to accurately measure human body proportions, the study was the first of its kind. Co-author, Dr Jinsheng Kang from Brunel's School of Engineering and Design, explains the methodological benefits of this new technology: "The 3D body scanner accurately extracts hundreds of measurements of the human body, including volume, in six seconds and removes a potential source of measurement error, the human experimenter."
Through their research at Brunel's Centre for Cognition and Neuroimaging, Dr Brown and a team of scientists identified a property dubbed 'body masculinity', a mathematical fusion of traits including greater height, wider shoulders, smaller breasts and shorter legs.
Key findings of the study included: