Talk:WikiJournal of Science/Evolved human male preferences for female body shape
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WikiJournal of Science
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This article has been through public peer review.
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DOI: 10.15347/WJS/2021.001
QID: Q100400677
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Suggested citation format:
Rebecca Chastain; Daniel Taub (12 January 2021). "Evolved human male preferences for female body shape". WikiJournal of Science 4 (1): 1. doi:10.15347/WJS/2021.001. Wikidata Q100400677. ISSN 2470-6345. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiversity/en/2/2d/Evolved_human_male_preferences_for_female_body_shape_.pdf.
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This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction, provided the original author and source are credited.
Dan Graur 
(handling editor) contact
Thomas Shafee contact
Martin Brüne
Don Lucas
Article information
Plagiarism check
Pass. Report from WMF copyvios tool: No overlaps detected. T.Shafee(Evo﹠Evo)talk 03:22, 16 August 2020 (UTC)
Peer review 1
Review by Martin Brüne , LWL University Hospital, Dept. of Psychiatry, Division of Social Neuropsychiatry and Evolutionary Medicine, Ruhr University Bochum, Germany
These assessment comments were submitted on , and refer to this previous version of the article
The paper is well written and concise. There is little to add, from my point of view, except that the authors may consider presenting some more details on the relevance of breast shape and size for attractiveness ratings. Also, some older literature is entirely missing, suggesting that the shape of the two female breasts imitate the shape of the buttocks, perhaps as an adaptation to the preferred missionary position of intercourse. I am not sure, if this hypothesis is correct or not, but it should be mentioned, I feel (perhaps in a small historical introduction to the topic).
Kościński K. Breast firmness is of greater importance for women's attractiveness than breast size. Am J Hum Biol. 2019 Sep;31(5):e23287. doi: 10.1002/ajhb.23287. Epub 2019 Jun 24. PMID: 31237051
Peer review 2
Review by Don Lucas , Northwest Vista College, San Antonio, Texas
These assessment comments were submitted on , and refer to this previous version of the article
A review of the manuscript titled, “Evolved Human Male Preferences for Female Body Shape” for potential publication in WikiJournal of Science.
Summary: This manuscript is a brief review of the research literature concerning human heterosexual males’ sexual attraction; specifically, when it comes to the shape of the female body. The research literature has two camps on this topic. One camp argues there is a universal female body shape all heterosexual males are attracted to and the second camp argues the female body shape most attractive is malleable and changes with geographical location and culture. After reviewing the literature, the authors make a clear and logical argument for the second camp being closest to the truth. The extant research literature demonstrates one part of sexual attraction for heterosexual males is the shape of a female’s body and this shape differs with time, place, culture, and even the male’s psychophysiology (e.g., how hungry he is).
Content critique: This manuscript would be perfect in presenting this review and argument if not for one significant shortcoming: Throughout the manuscript, it “attempts” to explain this one part of a male’s sexual attraction by evolution when there is no evidence of evolution causing this attraction. The simple explanation for this relative attraction is learning. Unfortunately, the authors never address this simple explanation, but instead assume evolution is driving this phenomenon.
Suggested content changes: Before publication, I suggest the authors remove their assumptions interwoven throughout the paper about “evolutionary processes” and stick to what the paper is empirically about—one thing that drives heterosexual males’ sexual attraction to females. If the authors want to hypothesize WHY males include body shape in their repertoire of items they find sexually appealing, then the authors can designate a paragraph or two at the end of the manuscript that addresses a VARIETY of hypothetical explanations—evolution, learning, conditioning, reinforcement, etc.
Format critique: All the page numbers of the manuscript are “2.”
Reviewer: Don Lucas, Ph.D., Northwest Vista College, San Antonio, Texas.
Don Lucas, Ph.D., is a full professor of psychology at NVC, and the coordinator of its psychology department. Dr. Lucas has been teaching human-sexuality courses for over 22 years, and has authored the only modules that specifically address human sexuality on nobaproject.com (Lucas & Fox, 2018a; 2018b)—the most popular open resource site on the Internet used to create readings for college psychology courses. Dr. Lucas has been conducting research on various topics (psychophysics, family & domestic violence, life satisfaction, and human sexuality) within psychology for the past 28 years. In the past five years he has authored over two-dozen abstracts published at various research conferences—mostly focusing on human sexuality. Dr. Lucas is a fellow of the Association for Psychological Science; and a fellow of the Southwestern Psychological Association—only the third fellow in the history of SWPA (http://www.swpsych.org/Fellows).
Author response to reviews
We have made revisions to our manuscript, Evolved human male preferences for female body shape, in response to comments from the reviewers.
Reviewer 1 suggested that we add discussion of the role of breast shape and size on human male mate preferences, particularly the older hypothesis that breasts evolved to mimic buttocks. We have added a new paragraph (the third paragraph of the article, page 2 of the manuscript) that deals with this material.
Reviewer 2 suggested that we have made an assumption or an hypothesis that evolution has shaped heterosexual male mate preferences, and that we should remove this interpretation throughout the article. However, it is the authors that we cite, not we ourselves who have interpreted mate preferences in an evolutionary context. While there may be non-evolutionary explorations of related topics, the focus of our review, as indicated in the title of our article (Evolved human male preferences for female body shape), is the discussion of the research literature on the possible role of evolution in these mate preferences. We have added clarification of the focus of our article to the second paragraph of the main body of the article (page 2).
Reviewer 2 also pointed out that all of the page numbers in our manuscript were “2.” We have corrected this error in the revised draft.
As an aside, we have noticed that the peer-review page for our article lists the authorship as Daniel Taub and Rebecca Chastain. Our intended order of authorship is Chastain and Taub.
We thank you and the reviewers for your thoughtful readings and efforts on behalf of our manuscript.
- Editor's note: The author order has now been corrected. T.Shafee(Evo﹠Evo)talk 22:38, 20 October 2020 (UTC)
- Editor's note: The reviewers have now both responded
- Martin Brüne - I believe the authors did a fine job in revising their manuscript.
- Don Lucas - I am satisfied with the changes made by the authors.
- T.Shafee(Evo﹠Evo)talk 05:04, 16 November 2020 (UTC)
- Editor's note: The reviewers have now both responded
- Editor's note: The author order has now been corrected. T.Shafee(Evo﹠Evo)talk 22:38, 20 October 2020 (UTC)
Editorial comment
Comments by Thomas Shafee 
,
These editorial comments were submitted on , and refer to this previous version of the article
After discussion with the editorial board, we are happy to proceed with publishing. However, one addition that would be very useful is a short methods section since the article focuses on a particular aspect of the topic. This need not be a full formal PRISMA statement, since this is not a systematic review, however it would be valuable to indicate the search strategy and inclusion/exclusion criteria for the sources used.
We have added information (text in red on page 2 of the current version, attached) to further specify the literature we are reviewing. We prefer not to include a distinct methods section as this work was performed as a narrative review rather than a systematic review.
About the abbreviation "SES".
The abbreviation SES is first used in a sentence within the section:
Evidence that male mate preference for female body shape has evolved to vary predictably by population with resource availability
"Variation in female body shape preferences could be indicative of the body type representative of success in the local environment, such that males in rural or low-socioeconomic environments (SES) will favor heavier females because being heavy is indicative of higher resource acquisition relative to the population when resources are scarce and hunger is common"
Being its first appearance in the text, inside a parenthesis following a expression, im confident that most reader interpret this as a definition of the abbreviation, due to the convention of following the unabbreviated expression with its abbreviation inside a parenthesis, signaling to the reader that both might be used interchangeably throughout the text from this point onwards. With that in mind, the natural conclusion most arrive is that SES stands for "low-socioeconomic environment(s)" This immediately falls apart when we get to "low-SES" and "high-SES" (low-low-socioeconomic environment?). But even if we assume that SES stands for just "socioeconomic environment" , we still have problems!
The text treats SES as a magnitude of sorts, something quantifiable. This section outright refers to it within the context of an arithmetic operation:
"differences in SES must reach a certain threshold in order to significantly impact male use of female body shape cues."
But these are not contexts SES seems to fit in, or at least what we were told SES to be, the "socioeconomic environment" . Even the expression given at its first appearance, "low-socioeconomic environments (SES) ", doesn't make much sense , what is a low-socioeconomic environment?
is it a socioeconomic environment that is low, or is it an environment that is socioeconomically low?
in the former: what does it mean for it to be low? is there a hidden variable, implicitly assumed to be low in the expression "low-socioeconomic environment"?
in the latter: again, is there some hidden variable, that is considered to be socioeconomic, and is implied to be low in the expression?
As a disclaimer, im not familiar with the area, but it is my understanding that a text such as yours should do it its best to be as inclusive as possible , and this article absolutely does that, the only exception being the very section that includes the whole SES thing, and i believe a simple but consistent definition of SES would do this article a great service. Otherwise it is very confusing to anyone that doesn't already know what SES stands for.
I decided to write up how my mind, completely unfamiliar with the area, worked trough the section, i feel like this might be valuable insight , considering how reviewers can't simply emulate not knowing what SES stands for, so issues like these might go unnoticed . That being said, i obviously googled SES almost immediately after reading it, together with various combinations of terms found close by... And every result unanimously told me that SES actually stands for "socioeconomic status" , which makes a lot sense, and works perfectly with how the article uses the abbreviation... except when it says "SES status" (socioeconomic status status?). I'm 99% this is a typo, but the remaining 1%, brought about by my unfamiliarity with the area, stops me simply editing the article ...
Summing up the issues:
1) Confusing/wrong use/definition of SES, being first introduced with "low-socioeconomic environments (SES)", implying SES = low-socioeconomic environments
2*) "SES status" having a redundant "status", unwrapping it to "socioeconomic status status"
* only if SES indeed stands for "socioeconomic status", which im fairly - yet not completely - certain is the case.