Study shows: Men more likely to help women in high heels

A study authored by Nicholas Guéguen of the Université de Bretagne-Sud in France revealed that men are more likely to be helpful toward a woman if she is in high heels.

The study – the first of its kind – was published in Springer’s journal Archives of Sexual Behavior.

It investigated the effect of women’s shoes on men’s behavior through a series of different tests. Results indicated that not only was a man more likely to help a woman dressed in shoes with high heels, he was also more likely to approach a woman more quickly if she was wearing a high-heeled pair of shoes.

“Women’s shoe heel size exerts a powerful effect on men’s behavior,” Guéguens said; as he noted that his study affirms a man’s time-tested tendency to gravitate towards attractive physical attributes.

The study analyzed the reactions of 90 randomly selected male participants aged 25 to 50.
In the study, a 19-year-old female participant wore shoes with a 0.5-cm heel, a 5-cm heel, and a 9-com heel, and asked men to help in three different circumstances.

First, while wearing the flat shoes, she asked the men to respond to a survey on gender equality. In the second test, she wore the shoes with the 5-cm heel and asked the men to respond to a survey on local food consumption habits. For the third test, men and women on the streets of France were observed while walking behind the female participant – wearing the shoes with the highest heels – who was made to “accidentally” drop a glove.

The results indicate that the rate of responsiveness and helpfulness of the men doubled from the lowest to the highest heel heights.

Guéguens also did a test 180 men and 180 women to observe how they reacted when four young women of the same height, weight and shoe size, and dressed in similar clothing in the same colour, dropped a glove in three separate instances, while wearing three different pairs of shoes in the same height categories as in the first experiments.

The tests showed that the heel heights made no difference in the reactions of the female group; whereas the male group’s readiness to help increased by 33-percent from the flat shoes to the 9-cm shoes.

To strengthen the study, Guéguen conducted an experiment in a bar; in which he observed 36 men from the ages of 20 to 58, and how they responded to a female accomplice wearing shoes of different heel heights.

Guéguen found that men were quicker to approach the accomplice when she wore the 9-cm heels, than when she wore the flat shoes. Men went up to the accomplice within 7-minutes in the former case, and within 13-minutes in the latter.

The study’s author theorizes that  the findings may have been impacted by the change in bearing or gait as a result of wearing high heels, the overall dainty and sleek appearance of the foot when in a pair of high heels, and the association of high heels with sexual intentions.