譯述凡爾郎教授大作「重點」於下；他的證據是否充分，論述是否在理，請看官們自行評論。

1)  身強力壯的男性傾向支持對自己有利的政策；
2)  身強力壯增加男人外表的吸引力；
3)  對男女兩性來說，身強力壯減低一個人的焦慮和沮喪；
4)  身強力壯的人有較多的憤怒和與他人的衝突。  

以我的淺見，決定一個人焦慮、沮喪、和憤怒等頻率與強度的直接因素是基因和生活經驗(大腦網路連接)。體力強弱決定的是：特定情境是否足以導致一個人產生這些情緒。例如：一個沒什麼力氣的人，大概從小就學會了逆來順受；一個身強力壯的人，大概從小就養成天不怕地不怕的個性。自然沒有焦慮、沮喪、或憤怒可言。用佛家術語來說：體力不是產生情緒的「因」，它只是導致情緒顯現的「緣」。

最後，在這裏我不得不再度批評「演化心理學」的「認知偏差」。男女交往以身材為優先考量(如肌肉男、大胸女)是人之常情。一般人第一個想到的是：什麼時候能「上」？第二個想到的是：上了有「多爽」，不可能會有「保護後代」這種遠見；跟優生、繁衍等概念更沒有半點關係。


How Physical Strength Affects Mood, Behavior, and Politics

Of muscles and minds.

Michael E. W. Varnum, 07/17/23

KEY POINTS

*  Stronger men are more likely to support policies that benefit themselves.
*  Strength is an important determinant of men's physical attractiveness.
*  Strength is linked to less anxiety and depression for both sexes.
*  Stronger people report more frequent anger and conflict.

Psychologists tend to think more about the mind than the body. There are, of course, notable exceptions to this trend, with scientists in recent years exploring how physical cues and sensations (i.e., Schwarz & Lee, 2018; Shapiro, 2019), or the contents of our guts (i.e., Aktipis & Guevara Beltran, 2021; Alcock, Malley, & Aktipis, 2014) may shape how we feel and make judgments about others and the world around us. Today we tackle another way in which our bodies affect our psychology: physical strength.

Policy Preferences

It turns out that stronger people are more likely they are to support policies that would benefit themselves and others around them. This is particularly true for men. In a series of studies, Michael Bang Petersen and his colleagues (2013) found that support for policies that would redistribute economic resources varied as a function of both men’s social class and their upper body strength. Men who were stronger were more likely to support such policies if they were lower in socio-economic status, and less likely to do so if they were higher in status. These effects were found in samples in societies that differ in many ways, including the U.S., Argentina, and Denmark, suggesting that this may be a fairly universal pattern. The authors argue that greater strength may incline people to support policies that would enhance their resources, as in ancestral times stronger people would be in a better position to win in physical conflicts or disputes.

Attractiveness

Upper body strength also appears to be an important determinant of men’s attractiveness. When shown a series of photographs of men whose physical strength differed, estimates of a male target’s strength were a powerful predictor of how attractive raters found them. In fact, over 70 percent of the variability in ratings of attractiveness of different targets was explained by the raters' estimates of their upper-body strength (Sell, Lukazsweski, & Townsley, 2017).

Why might this be? One theory is that upper-body strength provides a cue to a male partner’s potential to protect one’s offspring, and in fact, research suggests that men with stronger physiques are perceived as more capable of such protection (Brown, Donahoe, & Boykin, 2022).

Anxiety, Depression, and Anger

Physical strength doesn’t just matter for men. In fact, recent work suggests that differences in upper body strength may also help us understand differences in anxiety observed between men and women. Another set of recent studies, which measured grip strength, found that the higher average levels of anxiety reported by women vs. men in these samples could be explained, at least in part, by differences in physical strength (Kerry & Murray, 2021). Among both men and women, perceived physical formidability was also negatively linked to anxiety and depression. Thus, to some extent, sex differences in these aspects of mental health appear to be related in part to average differences in physical strength.

Physical strength has also been explored in terms of its links to anger. Another set of studies measured strength in terms of how much weight participants could lift. The researchers found that the more weight men could lift, the more likely they were to report frequently experiencing anger, the more likely they were to say they had been involved in physical fights in the past, and the more likely they were to succeed in interpersonal conflicts (Sell, Toobey, & Cosmides, 2009).

There were trends in a similar direction for women, but the effects were much smaller and generally not significant. Interestingly, for women, one’s perceived physical attractiveness was a better predictor of anger as well as self-reported success in personal conflicts.

Conclusion

Taken together, this brief survey of findings suggests that our bodies indeed shape our mental processes and our behavior. Individual differences in strength can help us understand the kinds of policies people are likely to support, how prone they are to anger, and how likely they are to suffer from anxiety or depression. Physical strength also plays an important role in determining men’s attractiveness and it may help us to understand sex differences in the prevalence of certain mental health symptoms.

References

Aktipis, A., & Guevara Beltran, D. (2021). Can some microbes promote host stress and benefit evolutionarily from this strategy?. BioEssays, 43(1), 2000188.
Alcock, J., Maley, C. C., & Aktipis, C. A. (2014). Is eating behavior manipulated by the gastrointestinal microbiota? Evolutionary pressures and potential mechanisms. BioEssays, 36(10), 940-949.
Brown, M., Donahoe, S., & Boykin, K. (2022). Physical strength as a cue to men’s capability as protective parents. Evolutionary Psychological Science, 8(1), 81-88.
Kerry, N., & Murray, D. R. (2021). Physical strength partly explains sex differences in trait anxiety in young Americans. Psychological Science, 32(5), 809-815.
Petersen, M. B., Sznycer, D., Sell, A., Cosmides, L., & Tooby, J. (2013). The ancestral logic of politics: Upper-body strength regulates men’s assertion of self-interest over economic redistribution. Psychological Science, 24(7), 1098-1103.
Schwarz, N., & Lee, S. W. (2018). Embodied cognition and the construction of attitudes. In The handbook of attitudes (pp. 450-479). Routledge.
Sell, A., Lukazsweski, A. W., & Townsley, M. (2017). Cues of upper body strength account for most of the variance in men's bodily attractiveness. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 284(1869), 20171819.
Sell, A., Tooby, J., & Cosmides, L. (2009). Formidability and the logic of human anger. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA, 106, 15073–15078.
Shapiro, L. (2019). Embodied cognition. Routledge.

Michael E. W. Varnum, Ph.D., is an associate professor and social psychology head in the department of psychology at Arizona State University.