Men more helpful when women wear heels, says French study

A woman who needs help may be better off if she is wearing high heels, according to Nicolas Guéguen, professor of social psychology at the Université de Bretagne-Sud in France.

Prof Guéguen’s study, High Heels Increase Women’s Attractiveness, was published yesterday in the journal Archives of Sexual Behavior.

In experiments that tested the effect of women’s shoe styles on helping behaviour, a female confederate wore black shoes with either 0.5cm- or 9cm-tall heels.

The woman asked men and women to participate in surveys on gender equality or local eating habits, and pretended to drop a glove on the street.

The study found men’s helpfulness increased when the height of the heels the woman wore increased.

However, heel height had no effect on how willing women were to help.

“Women’s shoe heel size exerts a powerful effect on men’s behaviour,” Prof Guéguen said.

He said more research has to be done on whether this effect is due to any change in gait associated with wearing high heels, or the misattribution of sexual appeal and intent to women in heels.

Prof Guéguen's past research has found that waitresses who wear red earn larger tips from male diners, while a man who approaches women at random while carrying a guitar case is successful in obtaining their phone numbers 31 per cent of the time - a better outcome than when carrying a gym bag (9 per cent) or nothing at all (14 per cent).