To test this theory, researchers set up a series of experiments in which they had hundreds of participants look at photos of hands holding different objects: handguns, handsaws, power drills and caulking guns. (The hands matched one another in size and appearance.)<\/p>\n
Participants were asked to look at the photos and estimate the size of the person holding each object and how muscular he was by choosing one of six body types.<\/p>\n
In one round of the experiment involving 628 viewers, the researchers found that men whose hands held a .357-caliber handgun were thought to be almost 5 feet, 10 inches \u2014 more than 2 inches taller than men whose hands held a caulking gun.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Men with drills were also on the higher end of the height and strength scale \u2014 perhaps because of viewers’ estimates of the strength it would take to hold a drill \u2014 but they were still judged to be about half an inch shorter than the gun toters.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Next, they’ll study why women with guns are so much sexier than other women.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Humans, like most animals, have an evolutionary proclivity toward fighting for scarce things – mates, resources, spaces at the bar, whatever. And like most animals, humans are adapted to see those who are bigger, stronger and more capable of harming them. \u00a0Hence – according to UCLA researchers – people\u00a0A \u00a0think men in photographs with guns […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-27432","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-geekery"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27432","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=27432"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27432\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27436,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27432\/revisions\/27436"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=27432"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=27432"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=27432"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}