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Study: Men Don't Find Heroic Women Attractive

UNITED KINGDOM (CBS) – File this one under infuriating research findings: A new study out of the UK finds that men don't find women acting "heroic" attractive.

The research, which is published in Evolution and Human Behavior, involved 92 women studying in Britain who were presented with hypothetical profiles of men performing brave acts in either war, sports or business. Those women were then asked questions to figure out how attracted they were to the different men.

While women were definitely attracted to the soldiers, the so-called displays of heroism in sports or business had no bearing on how attractive the men were to the study's participants.

A second similar experiment was then conducted in Holland involving both men and women. Again, women found the men in combat quite attractive, but men, on the other hand, found female heroes less attractive than their less heroic and more stereotypically "feminine" counterparts.

"This provides evidence for the hypothesis that gender differences in intergroup conflict can have an evolutionary origin, as only males seem to benefit from displaying heroism," says Joost Leunissen, a psychologist at the University of Southampton and co-author of the study, in a release. "In light of the physical dangers and reproductive risks involved, participating in intergroup aggression might not generally be a viable reproductive strategy for women."

To read more on the research, click here.

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