Men find women's bodies more attractive in winter

London, September 28: Flaunting your body in an off-shoulder dress – maybe that’s all you need to turn-on your man in the chilly winters, for researchers of a new study claim woman's bare flesh in winter is the biggest turn-on for men.

Basing the findings of the study on the economics law of scarcity, researchers from the Wroclaw University in Poland believe that as fewer female bodies are on display in wintry weather, so the rarity makes them more attractive.

Adding more to this, researchers believe seasonal variation may also have an impact on mate choice and on levels of adultery.

For the study, a group of 114 men were asked to rate a woman’s body for attractiveness at different times of the year. They were shown pictures, full body portraits of women in black swimsuits, exposed breasts of different sizes, and faces of young women, every three months over a period of five seasons.

While full body portraits and breasts were rated most attractive in autumn and winter, they scored the least in summers.

Interestingly, no such seasonal variation in ratings existed for faces, for they scored equally in all seasons. Researchers believe that a stagnant scoring for woman's faces may be because of the fact that they are on view all year round.

Subsequently, researchers also tested how attractive the men in the study found their own partner. Researchers found a same seasonal pattern, with a peak in autumn and winter.

However, when asked to rate their own attractiveness, men, convincingly found themselves attractive all throughout the year, with no seasonal variation.

“Hypothetically, since in summer men are much more often exposed to more uncovered woman's bodies than in winter, our prediction was that stimuli presented to men in summer will be assessed as less attractive than the same stimuli presented to the same men in winter,” said the researchers

"As predicted, ratings of body and breast attractiveness were lower in summer than winter. This effect might also contribute to observed behavioral fluctuations related to human male-female interactions" researchers highlighted.

"The effect we found might cause seasonally different levels of male assessment of female attractiveness or affect males' mate choice decisions," they averred.

The findings of the study feature in the current edition of the journal Perception.