Scarlett Johansson. Not related in anyway to the study… but a fine example.

Well we all know the effect a curvaceous woman can have on men, but according to a new research published by researchers from Georgia Gwinnett College, the effect they have is similar to that of alcohol and drugs, at least in some ways.

Evolutionary speaking, for women, curvy figures are associated with fertility and an overall good health; in this way, it does make sense for men to find women with generous hips more attractive. In order to reach these results, researchers asked 14 men at the average age of 25 to rate how attractive they find women before and after they had surgery to give them more shapely hips. They didn’t reduce or add weight, but just redistribute it by implanting fat from the waist into the buttocks.

The men’s brains were scanned and revealed that after the surgery, the parts of the brain linked with rewards were activated, including regions related to alcohol or drug consumption. Long story short, when men see generous hips, their brain automatically starts to think something… rewarding will happen; a curvaceous woman works better than Erectzan.

“Hugh Hefner could have told us that by showing us how many zeroes are in his bank account,” said researcher Steven Platek, an evolutionary cognitive neuroscientist at Georgia Gwinnett College in Lawrenceville, Georgia. “But there’s more to it than buying Playboy, Maxim, or FHM. These findings could help further our understanding pornography addiction and related disorders, such as erectile dysfunction in the absence of pornography,” he explained. “These findings could also lend to the scientific inquiry about sexual infidelity.”

So what do women think about other curvy women? It’s the exact response you’d expect.

“It turns out women find similar optimally attractive female bodies as attention-grabbing, albeit for different reasons,” Platek said. “Women size up other women in an effort to determine their own relative attractiveness and to maintain mate guarding — or, in other words, keep their mate away from optimally designed females.”