Why men and women find longer legs more attractive:
While all of the people were the same height, the length of their legs was altered to make them equal to the Polish average or longer by 5%, 10% or 15%. The team found that regardless of the volunteers' own body shape and leg length, people whose legs were 5% longer than average were rated as the most attractive. The next most appealing was an average leg length, or those that were 10% longer than normal.
There's plenty of research on leg-length and its correlates to attractiveness. But the more important insight here is the rank order, and confirmation that higher than typical phenotypic values are more attractive, but not the highest. In other words, the peacock effect has limits, and attractiveness tends to decrease beyond a certain point. I couldn't find leg length data, but the average American man is ...
