Lewis David M G, Russell Eric M, Al-Shawaf Laith, Ta Vivian, Senveli Zeynep, Ickes William, Buss David M
School of Psychology and Exercise Science, Murdoch University, Murdoch, WA, Australia.
Department of Psychology, The University of Texas at Arlington, Arlington, TX, United States.
Front Psychol. 2017 Nov 13;8:1875. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2017.01875. eCollection 2017.
Despite the widespread use of high-heeled footwear in both developing and modernized societies, we lack an understanding of this behavioral phenomenon at both proximate and distal levels of explanation. The current manuscript advances and tests a novel, evolutionarily anchored hypothesis for why women wear high heels, and provides convergent support for this hypothesis across multiple methods. Using a recently discovered evolved mate preference, we hypothesized that high heels influence women's attractiveness via effects on their lumbar curvature. Independent studies that employed distinct methods, eliminated multiple confounds, and ruled out alternative explanations showed that when women wear high heels, their lumbar curvature increased and they were perceived as more attractive. Closer analysis revealed an even more precise pattern aligning with human evolved psychology: high-heeled footwear increased women's attractiveness when wearing heels altered their lumbar curvature to be closer to an evolutionarily optimal angle. These findings illustrate how human evolved psychology can contribute to and intersect with aspects of cultural evolution, highlighting that the two are not independent or autonomous processes but rather are deeply intertwined.
尽管高跟鞋在发展中社会和现代化社会都广泛使用，但我们在近因和远因层面的解释上都缺乏对这种行为现象的理解。当前的论文提出并检验了一个关于女性为何穿高跟鞋的新颖的、基于进化的假说，并通过多种方法为该假说提供了一致的支持。利用最近发现的进化而来的配偶偏好，我们假设高跟鞋通过对女性腰椎曲度的影响来影响她们的吸引力。采用不同方法、消除多种混淆因素并排除其他解释的独立研究表明，女性穿高跟鞋时，她们的腰椎曲度增加，并且被认为更具吸引力。进一步分析揭示了一种与人类进化心理学更精确的模式：当穿高跟鞋改变她们的腰椎曲度使其更接近进化最优角度时，高跟鞋增加了女性的吸引力。这些发现说明了人类进化心理学如何能够促进文化进化并与之交叉，强调这两者不是独立或自主的过程，而是紧密交织在一起的。
