Hot Girls and Guitars

I recently read an interesting article on the Letters on Evolutionary Behavioral Science website about how a Guitar Increases Male Facebook Attractiveness.

"Music is a universal phenomenon that has genetic and brain-localized features. As such, it warrants

adaptive evolutionary explanations. While some scholars believe that music arose as a by-product of other adaptations, others argue that music is likely to have served some adaptive function, for example in coalition signaling or mother-child bonding. The sexual selection theory of music suggests that music serves as a signal in mate selection. While this claim is prevalent, it lacks empirical evidence. A facebook experiment revealed that women replied more positively to friendship requests from a man shown in a photo holding a guitar. These results offer initial support for the sexual selection theory of music."

The article went on to give the results of their experiment:

"While only five of the fifty women (10%) responded positively to the friendship request that was sent by the profile without a guitar, 14 of the 50 women (28%) responded positively to the friendship request that was sent by the profile with a guitar (p = .03, Fisher’s exact test)."

If you read the article they dive into the theory that the reason this occurs is that women perceive that the male had better motor skills and therefore would be a quality mate. Or perhaps the fact that there was something else in the photo it offered more information than the other photo.  They do go on to discuss variations and other studies that need to be done in order to really get to the answer.  I would like to suggest the following:

It is my opinion that women find men with guitars more attractive because the represent the tortured soul, bad boy that they find a need to nurture and 'change'.  This is why nice guys finish last.  This would go hand in hand with the motorcycle bad boy image and tattoos.  Lets face it.  A guy that is holding a guitar with tattoos (even fake ones) while on a Harley has no problem with women.  He doesn't need to know how to play the guitar or ride the bike.

Now to be fair they did the same experiment with an attractive woman holding the guitar.  There was no difference.  All the guys befriended the woman with or without the guitar.  Lets face it women if you read my post about how women can be more attractive to their man you just need to follow rules #61 and #62 - Show up naked with beer.