Are Tall Men 'Slayers'?

Slenderchad isn't real, he can't hurt you

Chad: the central figure of black pill lore. He is thought to revel in an endless parade of sexual escapades by virtue of his genetic superiority. The features which receive the lion’s share of attention from black pillers are facial attractiveness and height. These are thought to be the main determinants of men’s sexual and romantic success, the only real dispute is over the relative importance of each.

Today, we’ll be putting height under the microscope to see how strongly it actually correlates with men’s sexual partner count. Are tall men the ‘slayers’ (highly promiscuous men) which black pillers make them out to be?

Let’s begin with a study by Frederick & Jenkins (2015) which seems like it’s started to garner a bit of attention as of late. This study analyzed data from an online survey posted to MSNBC.com, which seems like it was conducted in 2006. The sample consisted of 60,058 heterosexuals between the ages of 18-65, with a mean age of 37.

The graph below displays mean lifetime sex partner counts by height. What it reveals is that while the shortest men report marginally fewer partners, past 5’7 there isn’t a notable effect. The difference between a 5’2 gnome and a 6’2 quarterback was a mere 4 partners, roughly one-third of the mean partner count of the latter.

Frederick & Jenkins (2015)

In the table below, very short for men was categorized as 5'2–5'4, short as 5'5–5'7, average as 5'8–5'10, tall as 5'11–6'1, very tall as 6'2–6'4, and extremely tall as 6'5+.

A rule of thumb based on Cohen’s suggestion is that a d value of 0.2 represents a small effect size. The difference between very short and tall men was d = –.22, so barely qualifying.

Frederick & Jenkins (2015)

The linear regression model, which controlled for education, BMI, and ethnicity, revealed an effect size of 0.07, falling to 0.05 when including ethnicity interaction effects (0.04 for women).

Seffrin & Ingulli (2021) employed data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health, using lifetime sex partners as reported in Wave IV, conducted in 2008 when subjects were 24–32. For men, their regression analysis yielded a coefficient of 0.03 for height, with no effect on non-romantic sex partners or infidelity.

Owing to height being a readily quantifiable metric, there are numerous high-quality large datasets, so we can afford to be picky. We’re not missing anything important by excluding studies with a few dozen to a few hundred subjects.

For the following meta-analysis, I drew on three nationally representative US surveys:

• General Social Survey (GSS)

• National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES)

• National Survey of Family Growth (NSFG)

I obtained the effect size for Mosing et al. (2015)—which utilized data from the Swedish Twin Registry—from data provided by Lidborg et al. (2022).

The pooled random effects estimate: .04. This would mean height explains well under 1% of the variance in men’s lifetime sex partners.

Meta-analysis on men's height and lifetime female sex partners (large datasets/studies only).

We do see some heterogeneity, mainly driven by the big fat zero from NHANES. In this survey, as well as Add Health, height was objectively measured rather than self-reported, so it might actually be closer to the reality. Still, while it seems like men and women both slightly over-report their height on average, self-reported and objectively measured height correlate remarkably well, typically at .95 or higher.

While it’s not always a good idea to mix bivariate (just two variables) and partial effects (e.g. the regression coefficients from Frederick & Jenkins and Seffrin & Ingulli) in a meta-analysis, I ran a regression on the NSFG data controlling for age, education, ethnicity, and BMI and the effect of height didn’t significantly differ.

A similar graph to that seen in Frederick & Jenkins is produced when including all ethnic groups, but when restricting the sample to non-Hispanic whites, the line becomes almost completely flat¹.

Running separate correlations between height and lifetime sex partners for Hispanics, non-Hispanic whites, non-Hispanic blacks, and non-Hispanic others produced an effect size of .01 for whites and between .08–.1 for the others. There’s also the fact that different ethnic groups vary in both height and sexual partner histories (e.g. Hispanics are both shorter and report slightly fewer sex partners) which could skew the results when not controlled for.

Now let’s look at NHANES. Running separate correlations produced no significant results for any groups this time (–.02–.02).

For the following graph, I set the maximum age to 50. Since the first survey was conduced in 1999–2000, the oldest participants will have been born around 1950—meaning they will have entered their sexual prime during the peak of the sexual revolution, which black pillers believe was the beginning of the end for ‘sub-8’ men.

I also ran some regressions on the NSFG surveys which had STD data available and found no effect of height on having been tested or treated for an STD in the past year:

Logistic regression on having been treated for an STD in the past year

Height also seems to have no relation to men’s number of one-night stands specifically:

Meta-analysis on men’s height and total number of one-night stands

Nor extra-pair copulation partners:

Meta-analysis on men’s height and total number of extra-pair copulation partners.

But what about dating apps?

Regarding the Frederick & Jenkins study, the incel wiki provides these caveats:

Some criticise this study due to the age of the sample, the date of the study, and the selection method (users of a mainstream media TV companies website in the United States), claiming this may not be representative of contemporary dating.

We’ve established that the sample’s representativeness doesn’t seem to have been an issue. Probably the most common objection to the data I’ve presented though is that for the most part it precedes the introduction of dating apps, which are thought to have ruined the dating landscape for the majority of men, funneling all of the women to a minority of morphologically gifted alphas.

Is it now six feet or bust, with tall men enjoying the spoils of a Muslim martyrs in paradise? To test this, I have done another meta-analysis, this time restricting the studies to those conducted after the introduction of dating apps and featuring young male samples².

What do we see? A virtually identical estimate of 0.05 for the random effects model. Tall men don’t appear to be any more ‘chad’ than before.

Meta-analysis of young men’s height and sexual partner number post-dating apps

There’s a meme graph that purports to show height filters set by women on Bumble, with close to 70% of men below 6 feet tall filtered out. This may be an instance of a meme graph being outright fabricated. While it lists Statista as a source, it doesn’t appear to exist on their website, and Bumble themselves deny ever releasing such information. Regardless, even assuming it were real there would be a selection bias due to women with stronger height preferences being more likely to set a filter. Then there are the more general points regarding dating apps: they’re not that commonly used by women, gender imbalance, hook-ups rarely occurring through them, etc.

Why aren’t more tall men slaying?

We’ve established that height has for all intents and purposes no connection to men’s ‘sexual success’. What are we to make of this? Even a lot of ‘normies’ would probably be surprised by these results, as the ‘tall pussy magnet’ is hardly an uncommon trope. There’s also no shortage of studies showing women prefer taller men—though of course only up to a point, and the height differences people desire are largely dependent their own height. How do we square this with the null results? Here are some potential reasons:

• For most women, it might be the case that men taller than themselves have passed the bar and anything past that point is at most a bonus, so even most short men have an adequate dating pool.

• When it comes to overall physical attractiveness, height might be an overrated component. In Kordsmeyer et al., 80 female raters rated eight sets of video recordings of men on sexual attractiveness. These ratings had a nonsignificant .12 correlation with the men’s height.

• Since most sexual activity occurs within the confines of a relationship, this limits the room for variance. On the other hand, a similar proportion of men across the height distribution were promiscuous, and it doesn’t seem like there is a relationship between height and non-relationship partners either (it’s difficult to see how there could realistically be one for one-night stands but none for lifetime sex partners). There is also the idea that serial monogamy can lead to ‘de facto polygyny’ through sequential sharing of ‘high value men’, and this would also cause a positive correlation with lifetime sex partner count if height was a large component of this value.

• Taller men may tend to have a more long-term mating orientation, practicing quality over quantity. After all, height correlates with intelligence, education level and socioeconomic status, even if only weakly. However, there was no correlation between height and sociosexuality (which measures preference for uncommitted sex) in Mosing et al. I also found no association between height and short- or long-term mating orientation in the raw data provided by Fajardo et al. (2022). Controlling for educational attainment in the NSFG only strengthened the effect of height by about 0.004. It’s possible that these things only weakly capture people’s underlying mating strategy, which itself is only loosely connected to height.

• Even for men, promiscuity is less about desirability and more about disposition and behaviour. Personality traits like sociosexuality, extraversion, and dark triad traits seem to correlate more strongly with sexual outcomes than do physical traits.

• Some have argued that intrasexual competition has played a bigger role than female choice in men’s mating success, and may still operate today in a more subtle form (though you'd think height would be beneficial here as well).

• There are also of course other considerations aside from body count. Another criticism of this data is that it doesn’t say anything about partner quality—it could be the case that taller men’s partners are more attractive and that the shorter men are ‘scraping the bottom of the barrel’. Since we see assortative mating for attractiveness, there may also be cross-trait assortment for attractiveness in women and height in men³.

• Shorter men may exert more effort to compensate.

Conclusion

So far, my search for the game changing effect height is supposed to have has come up empty. I’ve also failed to find it in the case of reproductive success, which tends to show a quadratic effect whereby very short and tall men are somewhat less fertile. Relationships aren’t looking much more promising either. It’s possible that tall men’s relationships are more pleasant owing to greater enthusiasm from their partner. These questions will likely be covered in future installments. At this stage, I don’t think it’s possible to squeeze out an effect anywhere near as dramatic as what internet discourse would have you believe, but I try to be charitable. For now, at least, you can stop letting slenderchad keep you up at night.

References

1. Frederick, D. A., & Jenkins, B. N. (2015). Height and Body Mass on the Mating Market: Associations With Number of Sex Partners and Extra-Pair Sex Among Heterosexual Men and Women Aged 18–65. Evolutionary Psychology, 13(3). https://doi.org/10.1177/1474704915604563

2. Seffrin, P., & Ingulli, P. (2021). Brains, brawn, and beauty: The complementary roles of intelligence and physical aggression in attracting sexual partners. Aggressive behavior, 47(1), 38–49. https://doi.org/10.1002/ab.21934

3. Mosing, M. A., Verweij, K. J. H., Madison, G., Pedersen, N. L., Zietsch, B. P., & Ullén, F. (2015). Did sexual selection shape human music? Testing predictions from the sexual selection hypothesis of music evolution using a large genetically informative sample of over 10,000 twins. Evolution and Human Behavior, 36(5), 359–366. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2015.02.004

4. Lidborg, L. H., Cross, C. P., & Boothroyd, L. G. (2022). A meta-analysis of the association between male dimorphism and fitness outcomes in humans. eLife, 11, e65031. https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.65031

5. Strong, H., Luevano, V. X. (2014). Prenatal androgen exposure predicts relationship-type preference but not experience. Poster presented at the annual meeting of the Association for Psychological Science.

6. Kordsmeyer, T. L., & Penke, L. (2017). The association of three indicators of developmental instability with mating success in humans. Evolution and Human Behavior, 38(6), 704–713. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2017.08.002

7. Kordsmeyer, T. L., Hunt, J., Puts, D. A., Ostner, J., & Penke, L. (2018). The relative importance of intra- and intersexual selection on human male sexually dimorphic traits. Evolution and Human Behavior, 39(4), 424–436. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2018.03.008

8. Međedović, J., & Bulut, T. (2019). A life-history perspective on body mass: Exploring the interplay between harsh environment, body mass, and mating success. Evolutionary Behavioral Sciences, 13(1), 84–92. https://doi.org/10.1037/ebs0000136

9. Polo, P., Muñoz-Reyes, J. A., Pita, M., Shackelford, T. K., & Fink, B. (2019). Testosterone-dependent facial and body traits predict men's sociosexual attitudes and behaviors. American journal of human biology : the official journal of the Human Biology Council, 31(3), e23235. https://doi.org/10.1002/ajhb.23235

10. Rhodes, G., Simmons, L. W., & Peters, M. (2005). Attractiveness and sexual behavior: Does attractiveness enhance mating success? Evolution and Human Behavior, 26(2), 186–201. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2004.08.014

11. Prokop, P., & Fedor, P. (2013). Associations between body morphology, mating success and mate preferences among Slovak males and females. Anthropologischer Anzeiger; Bericht uber die biologisch-anthropologische Literatur, 70(2), 121–135. https://doi.org/10.1127/0003-5548/2013/0284

12. Von Borell, C. J., Kordsmeyer, T. L., Gerlach, T. M., & Penke, L. (2019). An integrative study of facultative personality calibration. Evolution and Human Behavior, 40(2), 235–248. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2019.01.002

1. Some info about the surveys used in the NSFG graph: 50+ was the cap for lifetime sex partners. In most surveys the upper age bound was 45 though in one it was 50. 15 was the lower age bound but I set it to 18. In one survey the lower height bound was 63 inches and below, in one 65 and below, and in the others 64 or below. In one of them the upper age bound was 77 inches or above, and in the rest it was 76 and above. This is why there might appear to be less data points in some of these bins than you’d expect. I recoded height and partner counts past the limits shown in the NHANES graph to make it more readable.

2. In the NSFG and GSS data, I set the age range to 18-30 and this time used the question on sex partners in the past year for the correlations so as to avoid encounters that pre-dated dating apps. This is also the measure used for Kordsmeyer et al. (where T2 was a follow up survey 18 months after the first), Mededovic & Bulut, and Polo et al. For Kordsmeyer & Penke, total number of one-night stands was used, and for von Borell et al., sociosexual behaviour was used (which combines sex partners in the past year, total ONS, and total sex partners without long-term relationship intentions). In terms of participant ages, the range was 19-30 with a mean of 23.7 for Kordsmeyer & Penke, 18-34 with a mean of 24.2 for Kordsmeyer et al., a mean of 23.7 for Mededovic & Bulut (for the whole sample including women), 18-38 with a mean of 22.4 for Polo et al., and 18-29 with a mean of 21.5 for von Borell et al. It can take a bit of time for studies to be published, but generally the data would've been collected some time within the prior year.

3. One study found a nonsignificant correlation of .12, but a significant correlation of .27 when instead measuring the women’s attractiveness relative to the man’s, I guess implying that it compensated for lower facial attractiveness in men.