High Heels Exact Power Over Men, Study – Why Women Should Wear Heels

High Heels Exact Power Over Men, Study – Why Women Should Wear Heels
Christopher Philip

A new study by French researcher Nicolas Guéguen of the Université de Bretagne-Sud says that women can get more of the results they crave simply by wearing high heels.

Over four short studies, it was found that women were more likely to get help from men simply by sporting high heels over flats. High heels also drew greater attention from men and permitted the women to convince men to help them faster than those wearing more sensible shoes.

The study is the first to investigate the nonverbal effect that woman’s heels has on men’s behaviour and is published in the journal Archives of Sexual Behavior.

Many studies have looked at how physical features including body size, style, and colour of woman’s clothing affect the behaviour of men, however, until now, little empirical support was provided for the effect that heels play on men.

In the first two studies, women were tracked wearing either a high heel or flat shoe as they approached men and women on the street for help in completing a survey. The third experiment assessed the effects of heels on another type of helping behaviour; this time, the female confederates dropped a glove on the street and the researchers measured which condition, high heeled or flat shoed, produced the most helping. The final experiment tracked 36 women in a night club to see how women would fair on the dating scene.

In all conditions men were quicker to help when confronted with a heeled woman, rather than one wearing flats. In the dating context, women wearing heels were also approached more quickly than those wearing flat shoes. Interestingly, heels had no affect on the helpfulness of other women. High heels or not, women reacted similarly regardless.

The study showed that men’s behaviour is strongly influenced by a woman’s shoe heel and, therefore, also her appearance. Simple and easily applied cues such as heels elicited the types of helping and dating results that women desired based on the context.

Guéguen has postulated that because women in the media are commonly seen wearing heels in a sexual context, that men have begun to associate positive attributes to the nonverbal cue. In future, he also wished to explore whether heels affect a woman’s walking gait and perhaps, he figures, this too plays a role on men’s reactions by making women appear more fertile or vulnerable.

Nevertheless, women should be cautious and conscious about how seemingly trivial decisions including wearing heels or not, affects the perceptions of others. While receiving greater helping might seem like a great side-effect of wearing heels, the unfortunate reality is that heels are not a cue which can be easily tailored to a specific audience. In other words, heels are a “broadcast cue” which may solicit attention from a large base of men which may, or may not meet a woman’s specific standards.

Certainly, heels should be worn to impress a date, but when worn in public, may attract unwanted attention. It is our duty to understand how our nonverbals elicit reactions from others and we should tailor our cues to the types of results we desire.

Resources

Guéguen, Nicholas. High Heels Increase Women’s Attractiveness. Archives of Sexual Behavior. 2019. DOI 10.1007/s10508-014-0422-z