Controversial study sparks outrage after revealing what age men and women find most attractive

People have reacted to data revealing the ages men and women typically like to date depending on their own age.

It's pretty common knowledge than men will often date women substantially younger than them no what what age they are, cough, Leonardo DiCaprio - and data has actually proven this.

From DiCaprio and Bradley Cooper, to Alec Baldwin and Nicolas Cage; there are dozens of celebrities famed for dating women substantially younger than them.

Bradley Cooper is reportedly dating Gigi Hadid who is 20 years his junior. (Gotham/GC Images)

And it turns out these famous faces aren't alone in preferring to have a relationship with a younger woman as a data from the 2014 book Dataclysm found that men at every age are mostly attracted to women in their early 20s.

Author of the book Christian Rudder used numbers from OkCupid, the dating site he co-founded, to show how women and men differ in the ages of the people they're attracted to.

While men consistently found that women in their early 20s were the most attractive, women were more likely to find men that were closer in age to themselves the most attractive.

For example, both men aged 28 and 47 said they were most interested in dating women around the age of 20.

In contrast, women aged 28 found that men aged 29 were the most attractive to them and women aged 47 said they looked to date someone aged 39.

There's 26 years between Alec and Hilaria Baldwin. (Sonia Moskowitz/Getty Images)

While the data is a decade old it has recently resurfaced after British academic and author Hannah Fry discussed it on Instagram.

Hannah looked pretty unimpressed with the findings, as was many of her 388,000 followers.

She wrote in the caption: "This (admittedly quite heteronormative) example is taken from Dataclysm by Christian Rudder.

"The book is a few years old now, but a really fun read and definitely worth your time."

"The way this literally made me say 'Ew' out loud," one person commented in response to the data.

"This is so gross," said another, while a third added: "DISGUSTED but not surprised, unfortunately."

Others defended the data though and claimed that men's attraction to younger women is purely primal.

One argued: "How is this remotely surprising. Do we know anything about nature. Should I point out that we are animals? Programmed to reproduce? With fertility most likely in younger women? I mean come on people."

But someone else clapped back with: "Why do people use this pseudo scientific bs about biology to justify men not growing up."

What do you think?

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