“Women are supposed to be passive and admiring toward men, part of that could be expressing interested in these feminine fields,” Park told LiveScience. “It’s really about how much you endorse traditional gender role attitudes.”

Park is currently investigating reasons why this might be and how it might be reversed. She notes that each woman has different reactions to the same romantic trigger. Some of the less traditional participants even had no or opposite reactions.

“The less they engage in traditional gender roles, the less likely they are to show these effects,” Park said.