Research published in the Scandinavian Journal of Psychology finds that cues to ambient darkness decrease women’s willingness to engage with physically strong men.
Throughout evolutionary history, physical threats have driven humans to develop perceptual systems that identify potential dangers in the environment. When evaluating men, women in particular weigh the risks and benefits of associating with those who exhibit physical strength. Although upper body strength is typically desirable for its implications of protection and genetic fitness, its link to aggression and threat makes it ambivalent in certain situations.
Mitch Brown and colleagues sought to investigate how ambient darkness—a condition associated with heightened perception of threats—affects women’s preference for strong men.
Existing literature suggests that women feel a heightened sense of vulnerability in dark environments, which may alter how they perceive social targets. Darkness is associated with both uncertainty and an increased readiness to detect social threats. Thus, the researchers hypothesized that women might be less willing to engage with strong men in dark settings, given the potential costs associated with formidable men in ambiguous environments.
The research team recruited a sample of 124 women from a Southeastern U.S. sorority, targeting this group based on their heightened relevance to safety concerns in campus settings. Participants (~ average age of 19 years), viewed a single image of a male target in a simulated environment that was either dark or light, with the lighting level manipulated through digital editing.
The male target in the image was modified to appear either physically strong or weak. This was achieved by altering the male target’s upper body strength—using a composite measure of handgrip and chest press strength—while keeping other physical characteristics constant by grafting his head onto different body types. Participants rated their willingness to engage with the man in nine specific scenarios, such as asking him for directions or feeling comfortable if he smiled, on a 5-point scale.
The researchers found that ambient darkness had a significant impact on women’s willingness to engage with physically strong men. When presented in a dark environment, the physically strong target was met with lower willingness to engage from participants, whereas the weak target in the same dark setting was rated as more approachable and comfortable to interact with. This suggests that in darker environments, perceived strength in men may be more strongly associated with potential threat than with protection or attractiveness.
Interestingly, these differences were context-specific. The strong target did not elicit different engagement levels between the light and dark environments, indicating that his attractiveness was relatively stable across conditions and that darkness itself did not make him appear more appealing.
In contrast, the weak man was seen as significantly more approachable in dark conditions than in light, suggesting that in the presence of potential environmental threats, women may favor social interactions that feel less risky.
Overall, these findings point to a nuanced social adaptation in women’s preferences, where environmental cues, like darkness, heighten the perceived costs associated with strength in men, encouraging preference for those who appear less physically formidable in darker settings.
The study’s reliance on edited images to simulate ambient darkness is a potential limitation. Future research could explore real-world interactions under actual light conditions to enhance ecological validity.
The research, “The Effects of Cues to Ambient Darkness on Women’s Willingness to Engage With Physically Strong Men,” was authored by Mitch Brown, Katherine Wolfe, and Bridget A. O’Neil.
