Duh.
Someone paid good money to fund this study?
Peter M. Todd, Ph.D. and his research team from the cognitive science program at Indiana University, Bloomington, reported this earth-shattering finding in a recent edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
They’ve come to this monumental conclusion with fewer than four dozen subjects. Their study involved 26 men and 20 women. I guess since we could have told them this information without a study, it doesn’t really matter how many subjects there were.
And they were German. The study was done in Munich. And the subjects were reasonably young. Participants ranged in age from 26 to early 40’s. Not that if they included older daters the results would have changed appreciably.
Here’s how this experiment was conducted. All 46 subjects took part in speed dating — short interactions of three to seven minutes in which people chat. When the allotted time was up, they moved on to meet another dater. Afterward, participants noted from a list the people they’d like to meet again. Dr. Todd said, “Men tended to select nearly every woman above a certain minimum attractiveness threshold.” You need a Ph.D. to discover this?
Now, here’s the more interesting part: The researchers said women were aware of the importance of their own attractiveness to men, and adjusted their expectations to select the more desirable guys. However, look at how women defined “desirable.”
“Women [selected] men who had overall qualities that were on a par with the women’s self-rated attractiveness. They didn’t greatly overshoot their attractiveness,” Todd said, “because part of the goal for women is to choose men who would stay with them.”
Interesting, isn’t it, that women innately knew that if a guy was much more attractive than she, he’s liable to leave her, no doubt for a woman whose attractiveness more closely matches his. At least this is her assumption.
But, Dr. Todd added, “[The women] didn’t go lower. They knew what they could get and aimed for that level.”
Women have a sense of their attractiveness level and don’t stoop lower. “But,” you ask, “how does this explain those homely men with the beautiful women?” It could be he has a lot of money, or he treats her in a way she likes and doesn’t get from other men. He could spoil her and shower her with gifts and attention, or he could ignore her and treat her like dirt. It’s his behavior in the long run that affects her attraction to him, not his looks.
But in this experiment she wouldn’t know how he’d treat her since they met for such a brief period. She mostly had to go by appearance, and women chose men around their same level of attractiveness.
So while we know that men make their choices (at least initially) based on their physical draw to the woman, it is interesting, and perhaps ironic, that the truth is the women’s attractiveness influenced the choices for both of them.
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mmmmhhmm……to add to the blog, one of the mens magazines, I believe, did a similar study, and they concluded, that, men with an athletice physique(body builders) got more sex,(temporary, short, lived romances) than men that were not into weight lifting and exercise……
And I’ve always wondered how some homely women end up with great-looking guys.
Well, I would like to know the details of their study parameters-
Plenty of women over the age of 25 are seriously NOT into that type, and in fact have determined that many of them are…shall we say impaired?…due to steroids/etc and very into themselves in an unattractive way.
A-HAH!
Found a decent synopsis of this study, which is under peer review now:
UCLA, small groupings over 4 years, all less than 200 participants, some MUCH smaller, all students with nothing over undergraduate- so the age groupings are indeed the young women I suspected and similarly young men, with small groups tested as well, in an area of the country known to be rather obsessed with body image, at at a school not known for drawing large numbers of out-of-area students.
While useful to a point, a similarly controlled study of the general population, or of different age groupings, with much higher numbers of participants, and from a variety of socio-economic backgrounds would be much more educational and worthy of publication.
Why is the press so quick to publish these ‘results’ without including most of the data?
Really irritating, as then the general populance takes up them as some global fact to tout…
And why are they always doing these mini-studies on subjects that most of the world already knows the common-sense and obvious answers to?
I guess it’s easier to earn your chops and a shot at the tenured position this way, but what a waste of time and grant money!
Well that title was enough to make me spit my coffee on my monitor! Thanks for the laugh. I know it was a real study, but I’m hoping that you posted all that tongue in cheek (no pun intended) because all I can think to say is…
DUH!!
Being as shallow as anyman,
I am only interested in good looking younger guys myself..
but then again I am not looking for some one to support me,
which is why so many good looking women settle for some
discusting looking old men..LOL
to bookyone/mady
I have heard women say there are some really cute, young, beach bums, who are more than willing to service you. Mature woman, young man relationships are supposedly very common in Europe. One therapist said, “they can screw like minks.”….how funny!…….
Thank you, DG! I thought the exact same thing when I read all that nonsense – DUH! I didnt’ even need to read further, about the size of the sample population and its parameters, to make that conclusion. It must have been a slow news day yesterday and the day before to make this a headliner on just about every news site I visited. It’ll be on the cover of Newsweek next week…
Yes, I’ve been to Italy and it’s true, Italian men love to pinch bottoms. It’s a horrible experience, designed to belittle women and assert their superiority and masculinity. It isn’t a compliment any more than a leer is a compliment.
to lulu,
ahhhh, I am sorry….