Do women find bearded men more attractive?
Men love their beards. But does science love them too. We take a look at the stats, and see if there is data to back the conventional wisdom that “beard is best”.
The 2013 study by Barnaby J. Dixson and Robert C Brooks analyzed the role of facial hair in women’s perceptions of attractiveness and other key factors. The results are striking, regardless of if you are after a good time, or a long time.
In 2013, participants revealed their perceptions of men’s attractiveness, health, masculinity and parenting ability.
Facial Hair Attractiveness
After judging a number of pictures featuring men with varying degrees of facial hair, most women found full-bearded men to come out top overall.
Women saw men with full beards to be the most healthy, and the best suited to parenting. As a matter of fact, the study showed that as facial hair length increased, the men were viewed as more masculine.
Good news for those gentlemen unable to grow a full beard - heavy stubble will still do the trick, and is even preferred by some women on the raw attractiveness index. Men on the other hand tend to prefer to see fuller beards on men.
These findings were doubly confirmed by another study published by the Journal of Evolutionary Biology in 2016. Instead of asking a few hundred people, this study asked over 8,500 women to rate men with different lengths of facial hair. Women were shown pictures of men who were clean shaven, wearing light stubble, heavy stubble, and a full beard. The study confirmed Dixson and Brookes 2013 findings; women were more attracted to those who had some sort of facial hair.
Worth noting, this study also found that women were not only more attracted to them, but expected to have longer relationships with bearded men. Facial hair was viewed as an indicator of a “male’s ability to successfully compete socially with other males for resources,” as they “render men with an older, more masculine, socially dominant and aggressive appearance.”
Example Man
This study showed men with full beards to be the most masculine, aggressive, and socially mature, while light stubble was preferred for both short and long-term partners. Essentially men with facial hair were found to be more attractive in general. It doesn’t matter what type of facial hair you have.
“As long as you’re sporting something, you can expect to be viewed more favorably by the opposite sex, statistically speaking.”
While scientific studies show positive results for bearded men in controlled lab settings, we’ve also found evidence of this in the wild.
AdonisClothing, a US-based online store focused on men’s apparel, noticed something with their product page listings. After examining their data, they believed that product pages where the male models had beards correlated to more purchases. AdonisClothing estimated their shopper base to be roughly 70% female, so they decided to run a statistically controlled A/B split test. Essentially, they showed the same webpage to shoppers over a set number of days, with unknowing particants seeing a version with a clean shaven model, or a version with digitally enhanced whiskers.
The test ran for 15 days total. After 36,000 visitors the test results showed that bearded models outperformed the add to cart rate of clean-shaven options by 49.7%, leading to a 33% increase in online orders. The results were contrasting enough to achieve a 98% statistical significance.
So… our neuroscientist friends and real world tests both conclude;
