Search Here

Strangely, women feeling more threatened by a risk of crime might also like to team up with more physically dominant partners (PPFDM), says a recent study.

Earlier, research seemed to indicate that women who have been brought up in high-crime areas tend to want more dominant partners to protect them. Now, researchers at the University of Leicester discovered that women drawn to dominant men feel the risk of victimization, even though the risk among those who participated in the study was low.

The findings were published in the journal Evolution and Human Behavior.

"PPFDM appears to be associated with women's self-assessed vulnerability. Women with strong PPFDM feel relatively more at risk, fearful, and vulnerable to criminal victimisation compared to their counterparts, regardless of whether there are situational risk factors present," Hannah Ryder from the University of Leicester's Department of Neuroscience, Psychology and Behaviour, said in a news release. "Our research suggests that the relationship between feelings of vulnerability, as measured by fear of crime, and women's preference for physically formidable and dominant mates is stable, and does not update according to environmental circumstances or relative level of protection needed."

Two studies were conducted. Women were asked to perceive images and real life situations showing varied risks for a crime. These showed examples of robbery and sexual assault.

The members were then asked to rate their "perceived risk of victimization".

In both studies, a scale that was administered to check out the women's PPFDM and also measure the link between their PPFDM score and their risk perception scores.

The studies showed that their fear of crime varied based on various factors such as location and time. The overall fear of crime was related to PPFDM.

Yet, the relationship between PPFDM and fear remained constant regarding "risk situation, perpetrator gender or crime type". Hence, the "psychological mechanisms underlying the relationship between perceived risk of victimisation and PPFDM are general in nature," according to the study.