Though it's a phenomenon known the world over, science has confirmed it. The more attracted men are to a woman, the less they are inclined to suit up with latex armor when engaging in casual sex.
A new study, published in the British Medical Journal Open, carries forward research links between sexual behavior and attractiveness that were explored in other studies. Those previous studies used just a couple of pictures of the opposite sex to gauge reactions from participants and didn't account for things such as sexual history and background, noted the authors of this current study.
So for this latest study, researchers presented 51 heterosexual men, between the ages of 18 and 69, with pictures of 20 women. The men rated the attractiveness of the women, the likelihood that the women carried an STD and their willingness to have sex with them with or without a condom.
The study took into account the participants' self-perceived attractiveness. That self image could factor in sexual preferences and their perception of their partner's likelihood of carrying an STD.
The researchers also looked at how respondents may be impacted by the condom use intentions of other men like themselves, which may cause the participants to merely submit the "correct" answer.
"The more attractive a participant judged himself to be, the more he believed that other men like him would engage in condomless sex and the less likely he was to intend to use a condom himself," the study's report stated.
The men who stated they'd be more willing to have sex with the women they felt had lower STD risks also indicated that they'd be less inclined to use condoms while doing so. And the men more willing to have sex with "riskier" women were less inclined to pop on a condom during the casual encounters.
"It seems possible that these diverse findings stem from genuine diversity in the male population," the report stated. "The current study found no overall relationship between judgements of STI likelihood and judgements of attractiveness."
The common thread the researchers found was that, despite the level of risk, the men were more willing to throw caution to the wind for a bit of pleasure with women they find hard to resist.
While it was a much larger sample size than previous research, the researchers conceded that their results could change drastically with a much more diverse pool of participants. The majority of the study's participants were white British males.
