For some women, nagging their boyfriends or husbands to take out the trash or help with the dishes is a regular occurrence. Now, a new study claims there may be a way for women to encourage men to be more helpful, by wearing high heels.

Published in the Archives of Sexual Behavior, the study reveals that men are more likely to pay attention to women and be quicker to help them when they are wearing high heels than when they are wearing flat shoes.

Study author Nicolas Guéguen, of the Université de Bretagne-Sud in France, notes that past research has shown that a woman’s appearance – including their body size and style of clothing – can influence a man’s behavior toward them.

But he says only one study has looked at how the size of women’s shoe heels affect men’s attitudes. As such, he set out to investigate further. The study consisted of four experiments. In the first experiment – which involved 90 men – Guéguen analyzed their responses to a 19-year-old woman wearing either flat shoes or high heels after she asked them to complete a survey on gender equality.

In a second experiment – involving 180 women and 180 men – four women wearing either flat shoes or high heels asked participants to complete a survey on local food habit consumption.

In a third experiment, Guéguen assessed the helpfulness of 180 men and 180 women when a woman dropped a glove in the street while wearing high heels and while wearing flat shoes. The final experiment took place in a bar, where Guéguen monitored the behavior of 36 young men toward women who were wearing flat shoes and women who were wearing heels.