Research from the University of Arkansas found that men with greater upper body strength are perceived as being conservative.
Lead author of the study, Dr. Mitch Brown, told the Daily Mail that “physically strong men are indeed more likely to espouse conservative viewpoints.”
For the study, 203 students were asked to guess the political orientation of eight men and rank their strength.
Stronger men were thought to be more conservative, likely due to competitiveness within right-wing beliefs.
“Strong men have considerable bargaining power that would have historically led to win contests for resources more easily,” Brown explained.
The correlations of the study have been disputed by clinical psychologists Dr. Gurpreet Kaur and Dr. Louise Goddard-Crawley.
According to Kaur, “People of various political orientations can possess varying degrees of physical strength, and it’s not a reliable indicator of their political beliefs.”
Goddard-Crawley similarly stated, “Attempting to explain political orientation solely based on physical strength oversimplifies the issue.”
Reporting from The Daily Mail:
From Dr. Brown: "This is ultimately a study to see if there is a lay heuristic of strong men as conservative (i.e., a stereotype). It could be that these stereotypes reflect a kernel of truth. "Future research should assess the previously identified association between strength and conservatism while seeing if perceivers can accurately track people's ideology through this morphology."
