I wouldn't call it reproductively focused, that's way more than most men think when they meet a pretty woman. I'd say carnally focused; reproductively focused comes a few hours later if they've forgotten a condom.
I would still call it "reproductively focused". Condoms and being legally forced to support your biological kids have both been invented since we stopped evolving ;-)
Yeah, but there are always those women who are "IT" hot. You know, the ones that wouldn't get a second glance out in the bars, but look pretty good in the workplace talking about hardware and whatnot.
on my previous company, there was this hot admin..... . i mean hot.
Sometimes it was hard to concetrate, but sometimes it was actually motivating. It brought the competitiveness out of me, and I actually was pretty productive, while i was not thinking about stuff.....
But the upside of the whole thing that I drank a lot of water, since the kitchen was on that way, and I got to upgrade my wardrobe to look good.
One of my sister's friends, a short average looking bald gay man is constantly hit on by very attractive women (he lives and works in NYC). He says it might be due to the fact that he is totally non-plussed by beautiful women (since he has no sexual interest in them)
There is always desensitization training. In one day, you could probably approach fifty attractive women and effectively tame your fear. I've never done that, and I think it would be a courageous (courage comes after the action) personal exercise (probably to attempt in a city you do not live in)
My dad acted in the Theatre and so I had been doing Theatre tech since about 11 years old (and have many, many beautiful women as friends). With that experience in mind I can verify you sister's friend's claim.
When you come right down to it there are two things you have to realize about women.
1. As hard as it is for Men to comprehend the truth is attractiveness isn't that high on a woman's list. It's not that women don't like an attractive man it's just lower on the list. Here's an example I use to explain it to men. I, as someone who dated a lot of theatre women, like dating professional dancers (for reasons I won't be so crass as to spell out here). But I'll certainly be interested in a beautiful, smart, funny woman who isn't a dancer. Attractiveness to women is like being a dancer to me. It's a plus but not a deal breaker. Hence "average looking bald guy" isn't necessarily a deterrent.
2. Attracting women in general boils down to one simple concept: Stand out from the crowd in a good way. No women wants a guy that seems average to her. So when your sister's gay friend shows a lack of interest in a woman every other man drools over it makes that woman wonder why and gives the guy a sense of mystery to him. Hence he stands out in an appealing way which makes women want to take a shot with him and see why he's different.
It seems to me that men would actually very much like to believe that women don't care about attractiveness, but we do. If it was the case that women don't care about attractiveness, why is it that (if research is to be believed) most couples tend to be about the same level of attractiveness? Probably because women actually do very much care about attractiveness. Is it possible to have some personality attribute that would outweigh average or below-average looks? Yes, but not nearly as common as most men it seems would like to believe.
I am having a hard time buying the hot women hitting on average bald gay guy story. It is fun to flirt with gay men, definitely, but not because we actually want to get with them, and NYC women know how to spot gay men. There's something missing to this friend of a friend of a sister of a... story.
First, might I suggest you read a comment before replying to it. I never said women didn't care about attractiveness in fact I said just the opposite.
Second, most couples in my experience aren't of equal levels of attractiveness (and I'd like to see the research you quote because I don't know how levels of attractiveness could be gauged effectively enough to conduct such research). In fact, I'd say just the opposite in that there is legitimate research that says women are prone to date/marry men older than they are which would mean other traits rank higher than attractiveness (which of course fades as we age).
Beyond that, looking at the extreme, have you ever looked at the husbands of SuperModels?
You didn't say that women don't care about attractiveness, but you did say that attractiveness "isn't all that high on a woman's list." So while your position was a bit misrepresented, I don't think you can quite claim to have said "the opposite."
This is all a question of degree. I do think that physical attractiveness does play a very big role in both directions. But clearly women do place a somewhat lower premium on it than men do.
Just to add to the anecdotal useleness, rich men do attract women, but women swoon over Brad Pitt or that twilight star waaaaaay more than they every will over "the donald".
Brad Pitt is both rich and famous. I'm not sure he does much to make your point.
At 46 years old, Brad Pitt is also about twice the age of the women who get the most attention from men. In order to make a fairer comparison, imagine a man who's very handsome, but whose career and overall signals of success are on par with the physical attractiveness of "the donald".
Thanks for the link but that's just drivel. The scenario is designed to eliminate every other factor by creating a situation in which the interactions can only be superficial (as the article points out). If you do a study in which you deprive people of every other factor but attractiveness than sure it's going to make it look like attractiveness is the most important factor.
The question has never been "is attractiveness a factor" but "how big of a factor is it". So a study that artificially boosts the importance of one factor is useless is answering that question
Also, why aren't supermodels relevant? I think they're the most relevant in that their physical beauty makes their choices almost limitless so when they choose an unattractive man it shows how little that aspect means to them.
It is unlikely that your anecdotal stories are better evidence than years&years of studies.
Supermodels aren't relevant because they lie so far outside the norm, and can't be used to predict the behavior of a typical woman (even a very attractive woman).
You missed his point. He's saying your study doesn't speak to the question. While his anecdotal evidence might not be accurate but it at least addresses the question at hand.
It's not my study, and it's not a single study, but years of research. The only question I'm addressing here is whether people are attracted to others of the same level of attractiveness, since he requested evidence.
Are women more flexible about their partner's attractiveness based on other factors? Maybe, but without any kind of research, it's all conjecture and confirmation bias.
Women are interested in men who give them the cold shoulder because it's a challenge. In her head she is thinking "He must be surrounded by so many pretty women so he is immune" or "Whats wrong with me?"
The 'challenge' theory also applies to guys who are married or who have girlfriends --- it is a challenge
More generally:
If you're laser-focused on having sex with someone, you can only be judged based on sexual desirability (modified by degree of apparent desperation).
If you can hold an actual conversation, then you can also be judged on personality, intelligence, humor, etc.
So if you want to 'fight outside your weight class', keep your tongue inside your mouth.
I confess that altruistic and cynically selfish talk seem to me about equally unreal. With all humility, I think 'whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might,' infinitely more important than the vain attempt to love one's neighbour as one's self. If you want to hit a bird on the wing you must have all your will in focus, you must not be thinking about yourself, and equally, you must not be thinking about your neighbour; you must be living with your eye on that bird. Every achievement is a bird on the wing. - Oliver Wendell Holmes http://www.famousquotesandauthors.com/topics/ability_and_ach...
OTOH, A simpler hypothesis is that the blood supply available to their brains was reduced by the interaction.
I could tell you that without a "research study". And any of my grandparents were also aware of it.
These kind of studies leave me a bad taste. It's as if they ran out of funds and want to produce something entertaining that sells stories and that looks like real research.
It also promotes sexism. I mean, what would be the natural conclusion coming out of such a study? Stay away from beautiful women? Don't hire them because you'll go nuts?
> Unless they fake the data, researchers do not have control over the results.
Yes they have.
In any statistic, you can introduce bias (many times without even knowing), the most common one being selection bias.
For example, I'd bet that the results for this research done on men coming from fields that are male-dominated (like engineering, finance), are totally different from the results of men coming from female-dominated fields.
In my experience women are far more self-conscious meeting the opposite sex, displaying a complete range of behaviour from being nasty to people they like through to completely avoiding them because they can't cope. It seems this is one of those articles destined for women's magazines.
There is something in women which evolved for millions of years. Like many products of natural selection, it is highly complex. It works on many levels, some of which are banal, some of which are fascinating on the deepest intellectual and aesthetic levels.
It drives me crazy how many women hold themselves in low esteem. (I think it's worse in the US.) Even the plainest, most homely woman can light up given the right circumstance.
Hmm, I wonder if this happens if men are trying to impress women with their intelligence. There was an article on HN a little while ago about how women are attracted to intelligence.
However, its only about birds... I'd forgotten that.
Oh well, I still wonder if it happens to guys who are trying to show off their intelligence (probably a decent strategy in some limited circumstances).
The general impression I've gotten is they go for pure animal magnetism when looking for a good fuck, and sensitivity, intelligence etc. when looking for some chump to help raise their kids.
Awesome. This totally precipitated the requisite defensive responses from the younger crowd.
Put this in your pipe and smoke it: press release interpretations (especially of gender studies) are playground arguments, in this case over whether guys or girls are better. If you didn't get it out of your system then, you're probably still in it.
That is, the only people who care about the outcome are those sad, insecure souls who think every generalized test of some self-confirming experiment likely crafted in a Ritalined-up haze by a disingenuous grad student MUST apply to them.
Need proof? What is this experiment testing? Would you put college kids in a computer lab for an hour to test general rules about gender and attraction in society? No. No you wouldn't.
No, HN, this study is not very good, and neither is the silly reporting about it. But if you want, you can have social awkwardness as a door prize.
We do. Just because something that was found to be true sounds completely plausible a posteriori doesn't mean everything that sounds plausible a priori is true.
I remember Al Gore quoting Mark Twain in an Inconvenient Truth: "It's not the things we don't know that gets us into trouble, it's the things we know for sure that just aint so."
I guess this is the scientific term for horny.