WHEN IT comes to attracting diners, most restaurants tend to go for eye-catching décor, exotic ingredients or a fancy menu.
However, if an establishment is looking to get the thumbs up from men, they may only need to hire attractive female staff.
Or at least that's what a new scientific study coming out of Canada is claiming.
The research revealed that some men actually believe food tastes better when its served by someone pretty. By contrast, a handsome waiter made no difference to women.
Scientists from the University of British Columbia and Simon Fraser University in Canada explained that it's all because physically attractive women are able to change men's expectations when it comes to experiences like a meal at a restaurant.
The men tested were found to rate a meal as more delicious when served by a woman wearing make-up with her hair down compared to a woman who might look tired, have bad skin or her hair up.
A total of 195 people of both sexes were surveyed, with the results revealing that women tended to prioritise concerns like location and noisiness when it came to visiting a restaurant.
A follow-up experiment of 603 people found men shown pictures of an attractive waitress before they even looked at the menu tended to rate their experience higher than if the woman that served them was unattractive.
Researchers then gave 61 men a glass of orange juice or a less tasty cracker accompanied by a yeast-based vegetable spread. They were then shown pictures of attractive and unattractive women.
The study, from the Journal of Retailing, found men given the cracker by a woman wearing make-up with her hair down, rated it as more delicious on a scale of one to 15 than if the woman had acne, bags under her eyes, imperfect teeth or her hair up.
Commenting on the findings, study author Dr. Lily Lin said:
"Despite the wealth of evidence that attractive servers generally enhance the overall experience, to our knowledge, no work has examined whether this cue has an effect on sensory perceptions like taste - an outcome that is of obvious interest to restaurants since repeat consumption is less likely after an unsatisfactory dining experience."
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