For men wanting to be more attractive to the opposite sex, new research suggests grabbing a guitar. Researchers at the University of Bretagne-Sud and the University of Paris-Sud enlisted the aid of an attractive young man who approached 300 women between the ages of 18 and 22 and ask them for their phone number, according to the Counsel & Heal website on Tuesday. A third of time he carried a guitar case, a third of the time he carried a gym bag and another third he was empty-handed.
He was the least successful with the women when holding the sports bag, gathering phone numbers only nine percent of the time. When he approached women empty-handed, he received phone numbers 14 percent of the time. However, his success rate was highest with the guitar, with women offering up their phone number 31 percent of the time.
Findings were published earlier this month in the journal Psychology of Music.
In a separate study, Israeli researchers sent 100 female university students a friend request on Facebook from a man they didn't know -- with some women receiving a photo of the man holding a guitar, the other half without. When he held no guitar, only three percent of the women accepted his request, while 28 percent accepted the request when he held the instrument. That study was published in the Letters of Evolutionary Behaviorial Science.
Playing music "is perhaps associated with physical and intellectual abilities," wrote the researchers of the French study. Plus, the image of a guitar, or its case, could also be associated with successful musical stars, and possibly "imprint on a woman's mind the attractive concepts of wealth and status," writes Pacific Standard.