Men and women living in a rural community in Bakossiland, Cameroon were asked to rate the attractiveness of images of male or female figures manipulated to vary in somatotype, waist-to-hip ratio (WHR), secondary sexual traits, and other features. In Study 1, women rated mesomorphic (muscular) and average male somatotypes as most attractive, followed by ectomorphic (slim) and endomorphic (heavily built) figures. In Study 2, amount and distribution of masculine trunk (chest and abdominal) hair was altered progressively in a series of front-posed male figures. A significant preference for one of these images was found, but the most hirsute figure was not judged as most attractive. Study 3 assessed attractiveness of front-posed male figures which varied only in length of the non-erect penis. Extremes of penile size (smallest and largest of five images) were rated as significantly less attractive than three intermediate sizes. In Study 4, Bakossi men rated the attractiveness of back-posed female images varying in WHR (from 0.5-1.0). The 0.8 WHR figure was rated markedly more attractive than others. Study 5 rated the attractiveness of female skin color. Men expressed no consistent preference for either lighter or darker female figures. These results are the first of their kind reported for a Central African community and provide a useful cross-cultural perspective to published accounts on sexual selection, human morphology and attractiveness in the U.S., Europe, and elsewhere.
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 5. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 08 July 2026.
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#8,798,667
of 32,273,179 outputs
Outputs from Archives of Sexual Behavior
#2,364
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#52,179
of 216,872 outputs
Outputs of similar age from Archives of Sexual Behavior
#21
of 37 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 32,273,179 research outputs across all sources so far. This one has received more attention than most of these and is in the 71st percentile.
So far Altmetric has tracked 4,418 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a lot more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 34.0. This one is in the 44th percentile – i.e., 44% of its peers scored the same or lower than it.
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