When the researchers compared the men’s measures of physical strength with their economic values, they found that the less musclebound men were both less socially dominant and more likely to support socio-political egalitarianism. In other words, yes, the strong men were less likely to be “socialist,” if you can call it that.

After controlling for time the men spent in the gym, the relationship between strength and social dominance—that belief in a “dog-eat-dog” world—remained. So it’s not just that gym rats are more socially dominant. However, after controlling for gym time, the association between physical strength and economic redistribution didn’t hold up.

So, what could be going on here?

The lead author of the study, Michael Price, a senior psychology lecturer at Brunel University London, chalks this up to evolutionary theory. In our ancestral past, men’s physical size determined their status and resources, so bigger men would have been fine with a survival-of-the-fittest type system.

In the study, the relationship between strength and an aversion to redistribution was especially robust among the wealthier men. Among the poorer men, support for economic redistribution was not related to strength. This partly, but not entirely, replicated an earlier study, which found that strength and cut-throat capitalism were correlated among wealthy men, while the poor, strong men actually supported redistribution—suggesting that the poorer men were just looking out for their self-interest. They might be strong, the thinking goes, but they would still need redistributive policies to get ahead in the world.

Colin Holbrook, an anthropology researcher at the University of California, Los Angeles, says plenty of research supports the idea that status and prestige are linked to size and strength—as evidenced by the fact that tall men make more money than shorter ones do. If your big body earns you lots of privileges—as it likely did, in past millennia—it’s only natural that you don’t want to give these privileges away to others.

What’s more, these big dudes might have been, historically, more likely to prevail in a fist-fight, Holbrook says. “Imagine a world in which there are no tasers or handguns,” he told me. “Physical muscularity and size are the primary determinants of who is going to win in a conflict.” Hoarding resources for yourself is exactly the kind of thing that will invite conflict—just ask Czar Nicholas II—but if you’re beefy and strong, you don’t much care, since you’ll win anyway.

For people who aren’t satisfied by the evolutionary explanation, there could be a different connecting factor for today’s men: narcissism. “If you’re a very self-centered, self-interested person, you might be very motivated to work out in the gym and be less egalitarian,” Price said.