Forget boob job! Invest in push-up bra instead for boost in confidence

The unique study, led by scientists at Manchester University has prompted the study lead, Professor Geoff Beattie, to call for a stop to 'unnecessary boob jobs', the Daily Mail reported

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The micro-analytic study involved examining the behaviours of non-surgically enhanced women in push-up bras to monitor whether bigger cleavage gave a significant confidence boost.

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In all, 60 video recordings were made of female participants aged 20 to 55, filmed in three different everyday interactions.

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The researchers compared the footage of them wearing a push-up bra and wearing their own normal, everyday bra.

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Professor Beattie and his team evaluated the three vital micro-behaviours associated with confidence and observed their frequency within the recordings.

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Smiling, which represents positive emotion and signals confidence, increased significantly by 73 per cent when the women were wearing a push up bra.

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Averting gaze and breaking eye contact - usually linked with low confidence - decreased by 41 per cent.

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And self-comforting hand movements like stroking of the chin or wiping the forehand, which indicates low self-confidence, decreased by 64 per cent during the trial.

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Professor of Psychology at The University of Manchester, Beattie, dubbed the results 'striking'.

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The scientists revealed that women with an enhanced cleavage were more likely to maintain eye contact and showed fewer physical signs of low confidence

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"The differences are much more pronounced than expected," he said.

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"The study showed emphatically that wearing the cleavage-enhancing bra had a significant effect on nonverbal behaviours that are crucially associated with levels of self-confidence.

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"And we know that confidence impacts on performance, both at work and in our personal lives. Society places a huge amount of pressure to look a certain way and this impacts on women's perceptions of their own body image, ultimately affecting their confidence.

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Beattie insisted that for this study, he wasn't interested in what women 'reported about how they felt wearing the different bras'.

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"- this study was about the actual behaviours they displayed, subconscious indicators that can be much more revealing," he said.

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"My hope is that this research might deter women from seeking more drastic solutions to improve their confidence, such as breast augmentation, because it proves for the first time that what women wear can positively affect their behaviour," he added.

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This is the first academic study that proves a clear link between confidence and cleavage.

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