What’s More Important? Her Pretty Face Or A Smokin Bod?

Okay guys, if you absolutely HAD to choose, which of a girl's features would you prefer at the expense of the other, from her neck up or from the neck down? Sorry, can't choose both, even if you've already got your perfect woman on your arm. This is hypothetical gentlemen. Before reading on just answer that question and this one too: Are you looking for a long-term relationship are you enjoying the single life? Alright, now I'm going to try and read your mind. Allakhazam! Bibbity Bobbity Boo! Abracadabra!

If you're looking to get involved with a woman to eventually settle down, chances are you'll take more notice of her face initially over her body. However if you're into her simply for a good time, you'll probably check her body out first says a Pysch study from the University of Texas.

"Men's priorities shift depending on what they want in a mate with facial features taking on more importance when a long-term relationship is the goal," says psychology graduate student Jaime Confer, who co-authored the research with graduate student Carin Perilloux and psychology professor David Buss. "Mating is central to the engine of natural selection. This research helps clarify people's preference."

Nearly 400 college students (male and female) were asked if they'd choose to date someone based on seeing just their body or their face alone. How the test worked was each participant was shown a picture of a woman but both her body and face were covered with a box. Each student was instructed to remove only one box uncovering either her face or her body but not both. Each student also had to define their short-term or long-term dating predisposition beforehand. For men, the overwhelming majority of those looking to settle down uncovered her face  while those that were interested in casual hook-ups uncovered the body box more often than not.

Her body (hip/waist ratio, etc.) indicates how fertile she might be and even though it seems like a contradiction, a guy on the prowl doesn't want to get a girl pregnant but somehow he's subconsciously wired to look for those cues in her body anyway. This is probably due to the fact that a woman's biological clock ticks much faster than a guy's. Interesting. So, what about the female students? What boxes did they pick?

Well, turns out that unlike the men, women no matter their dating stage didn't place as much value on a man's body over his face. A guy is not usually a fertility risk in terms of age so a woman would naturally not be concerned with that and therefore is interested more in his facial features.

While previous studies have targeted specific attractive features on both women and men such as facial symmetry and hip/waist ratio, this is the first study to tackle general facial of body preference. Without reading this study if you were to ask me what I thought about general attractiveness between women and men, I'd have predicted the same results from both observation and personal experience so this study sounds on target to me but is obviously not always the case. Both sexes from my observation are initially obsessed with physical attraction and then move to personality once chemistry has already been established. If you're wondering what part of her body I would've checked out first I'd have to say I'd uncover her face. But if you were to catch me 10 or so years ago I can't guarantee that I would've chosen the same.

Now it's your turn... What would YOU do? Both women and men are free to vote... Pick your orientation and then choose your preference. Let's see where our listeners fall compared to the study:

[TIME]