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
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)
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