While contracting STDs or getting your partner pregnant are pretty big concerns, a new study suggests that men are less likely to use a condom if they find their partner “very attractive.”
The British scientists behind the unusual scientific study warn that, for men, practicing safe sex pretty much gets thrown out the window when they’re intimate with women they find beautiful. They say their findings shed light on the “limits” to rational thinking when men are in the bedroom.
“Traditional approaches to sex education tend to assume an element of rational behaviour – in the sense that people will try to reduce the risks they take once these risks have been pointed out to them. This study shows – in an innovative way – that there are limits to this self-protective and careful approach,” the study’s lead researcher, Anastasia Eleftheriou, told Global News in an email.
“Men are more willing to have condomless sex with attractive women,” she said.
Eleftheriou is a public health researcher at the University of Southampton.
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There, she and her team worked with 51 straight men for their study. The men were between 19 and 61 years old and English-speaking. They lost their virginity, on average, at age 18. They had, on average, about 10 sexual partners – one said he had 60 in his past.
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The scientists presented the men with photos of 20 women and asked them to rate their attractiveness. They were also asked to rate if there was a chance the women had STDs, and if they’d have unprotected sex with these hypothetical partners.
Turns out, the men tended to forgo condom use if they thought their potential partner had a pretty face.
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The tricky part is the men were divided on whether looking good meant the women were more likely to have an STD. Some men thought that attractive women could be more promiscuous while others felt that a beautiful appearance was an indicator of good health. This divide has been found in other studies, too.
The risk of contracting STDs from a beautiful partner didn’t scare men into using a condom, though. They still suggested they’d go bare back in the hypothetical situation.
Eleftheriou and her colleagues have a few guesses why.
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It’s “a hang-over from evolutionary approaches as men want to reproduce with women they find to be more attractive, or young men attach more social status to having sex with an attractive woman, and so are willing to take more risks to acquire this status,” she explained to Global.
It works in reverse, too. If men didn’t find their partners as attractive, they were more likely to wrap it up during hypothetical sex.
The scientists say their findings come with “important implications” that could change the way we look at promoting safe sex.
“Young people need to be well-informed of the different ways in which they – and others – make decisions, and need to be supported and encouraged to engage with the realities of their social and sexual lives,” Eleftheriou said.
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Right now, her findings only apply to straight men with straight women. Her hope is to expand her research to other types of sexual encounters, such as homosexual relationships, to see if similar patterns come up.
The full findings were published in the BMJ this month.
carmen.chai@globalnews.ca
Follow @Carmen_Chai
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