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Others Influence Our Choice Of Mates
Article Date: 08 Jun 2010 – 3:00 PDT
Many people like to think they have discriminating tastes when it comes to romantic interests. An Indiana University study, however, found that men and women are greatly influenced not only by what their friends think of their potential fling or relationship partner, but also by the opinions of complete strangers.
“Humans don’t exist in a vacuum. From an evolutionary standpoint, it makes sense that we have evolved mechanisms that let us take advantage of the additional social information in our environment,” said Skyler Place, a researcher in IU’s Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences and lead author of the study along with Peter M. Todd, professor in IU’s Cognitive Science Program.
“We might think that searching for mates is a process best done individually, that we can best gather the appropriate information by ourselves,” Place said. But humans, like many other animals, also pay attention to the preferences of others, to make for a more efficient search process. Who others like might also be a good choice for ourselves.”
Read in Full:Â http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/191167.php
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Concerned from Tunbridge Wells:
June 03, 2010
The Guardian has been running a fun evolutionary psychology agony aunt column that’s been tackling questions such as ‘why do I fancy blonde women?’, ‘why do nice girls fall for bad boys?’ and ‘what can I do to stop my best friend marrying this idiot?’.
Despite it’s potential, evolutionary psychology has a tendancy to be a bit over-enthusiastic at times but the column just discusses the published studies in relation to the readers’ questions and turns out to be a concise guide to some of the field’s thinking on the area.
Clearly it’s not meant to be taken too seriously as an advice column but any agony aunt that gives references for her evolutionary advice is alright by me.
Link to Guardian’s ‘Ask Carole’ column (via @researchdigest)
—Vaughan.
Source:Â http://www.mindhacks.com/blog/2010/06/concerned_from_tunbr.html
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Have a Happy Marriage: Marry a Woman Who’ll Put Up with Anything
Guys like women who put up with anything, like them.
Published on June 4, 2010
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Listening to commentators discuss the dissolution of the Gores’ marriage, I heard several men say things like, “Thank God my wife has put up with me all of these years.”
I always wonder what that is supposed to mean. In other words, the guy’s such a shmuck, no worthwhile woman would have him except for his wife? But that’s not the way life works. Much research shows that people marry mates at their own levels of attractiveness and social acceptability. So, either the men speaking (it is always men who make such statements) are more appealing than they let on to be, or else their wives are fairly desperate themselves.
At the extreme, of course, some women stick with abusive spouses. The psychological slant on this is that the women feel they deserve no better. But research here shows that women who are beaten by spouses tend to have fewer life options – overall they have less education, are less attractive, and so on. (I know – intelligent, beautiful women’s husbands sometimes beat them too – but such women tend to extricate themselves more quickly.)
So are the marital commentators who think it is a miracle their wives stay with them beating their wives, or do they feel they are just extremely unpleasant people to be around? (They can’t mean their wives put up with their sometimes forgetting where they left their glasses – that wouldn’t make the women so notably tolerant or saintly.)
Taking these men at their words about how unpleasant they are, how did they find women willing to put up with them? Did they marry ugly women? Did they marry women who needed to have an American husband to remain in the United States? Or are they just women who regard themselves so negatively that they put up with anything?
Read More …Â http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/addiction-in-society/201006/have-happy-marriage-marry-woman-who-ll-put-anything
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