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Linesnap99
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This studies tested whether humans are more attracted to individuals displaying their bodies expansively, a behavior considered to express both dominance and openness.
postural expansiveness makes humans more romantically appealing. Nonverbal displays in initial romantic encounters are especially important in the modern dating landscape in which decisions about selecting a partner often are made after brief interactions that sometimes last only a couple minutes. With less time, people make rapid judgments about a person’s worth based on limited information.
Expansiveness in humans signals perceived and sometimes actual status and access to resources (15, 17, 18). Specifically, different ways of operationalizing expansiveness (e.g., stretched limbs) have been shown to be a nonverbal indicator of actual (17, 19), perceived (17, 20), and believed (15) verticality, a social dimension that organizes people by levels of power, dominance, status, hierarchy, and similar vertical attributes.
Given its link to resource acquisition, possession, and allocation control/sharing, the functional preference for dominance in mates may have emerged because it is linked to one’s own longer life span as well as to reproductive success and offspring survival. That is, the romantic relationship with the dominant person affords an opportunity to partake in these resources (23).
Specifically, expansive, open postures signaling dominance may have served to signal the extent to which an individual can successfully navigate social hierarchies and form alliances (24). A mate possessing these qualities, whether male or female, would be desirable in part because he or she could share the benefits of these adaptive survival-based attributes (e.g., additional resources, respect from the in-group) with mates and offspring.
the study concluded that postural expansion can dramatically increase a person’s chance of making a successful initial romantic connection.
postural expansiveness makes humans more romantically appealing. Nonverbal displays in initial romantic encounters are especially important in the modern dating landscape in which decisions about selecting a partner often are made after brief interactions that sometimes last only a couple minutes. With less time, people make rapid judgments about a person’s worth based on limited information.
Expansiveness in humans signals perceived and sometimes actual status and access to resources (15, 17, 18). Specifically, different ways of operationalizing expansiveness (e.g., stretched limbs) have been shown to be a nonverbal indicator of actual (17, 19), perceived (17, 20), and believed (15) verticality, a social dimension that organizes people by levels of power, dominance, status, hierarchy, and similar vertical attributes.
Given its link to resource acquisition, possession, and allocation control/sharing, the functional preference for dominance in mates may have emerged because it is linked to one’s own longer life span as well as to reproductive success and offspring survival. That is, the romantic relationship with the dominant person affords an opportunity to partake in these resources (23).
Specifically, expansive, open postures signaling dominance may have served to signal the extent to which an individual can successfully navigate social hierarchies and form alliances (24). A mate possessing these qualities, whether male or female, would be desirable in part because he or she could share the benefits of these adaptive survival-based attributes (e.g., additional resources, respect from the in-group) with mates and offspring.
the study concluded that postural expansion can dramatically increase a person’s chance of making a successful initial romantic connection.