The scientific experiment you never knew you needed has confirmed what we were all concerned about—whether men with guitars are hotter than men without them. Guys who play guitar have been pulling at our heart strings for years, but now not one, not two, but three science experiments have officially confirmed that they are categorically hotter, because these things need to be thorough.
The first experiment was featured in a study in The Psychology of Music which saw a 20-year-old man possessing a “high level of physical attractiveness” (who decided on this hot-meter is unknown), approached 300 young women on the street to ask them out on a date, using the exact same ‘pick-up’ script.
When the man was armed with a guitar case, 31% of women gave him their number, compared to the lacklustre 14% that did when he was empty handed.
As a side test, the researchers reported that when the hot guy was donning a sports bag, only 9% of the women asked gave their number to the guy. Just a guess, but is that because we know that we are going to have to stand on the sidelines at games on the weekend?
An Israeli study also investigated into the great guitar debate. The experiment studied 50 women (in Letters of Evolutionary Behavioural Science and discovered that ladies were three times as likely to accept a friend request on Facebook from a guy if he was strumming a guitar in his profile picture.
The researchers also tested with the same identical message of, “Hey, what’s up? I like your photo,” from a woman’s account, swapping her profile picture featured from one without a guitar to one with a guitar and it made nada difference. Apparently the dudes just didn’t care about the girl’s string-playing ability.
These studies support the sexual selection of music theory, based off the Dawinian idea that music was developed in early societies as a part of courtship rituals. AKA peacocking to usher over a ladyfriend. Pacific Standard did an investigation into ‘The Mating Advantage of Male Musicians’ to reveal that guitar players suggest an air of physical, intellectual and emotional depth—which are all characteristics that ladies supposedly froth over. Though, we should probably flag up that none of these studies really looked into whether the ladies giving out their number or accepting friend requests were after long or short-term relationships.
Meaning that the guitar guys may have just been strung along for some fun.
