A woman's assessment of the attractiveness of a man is influenced by how other women view him, according to researchers.
Credit: iStockphoto
PARIS: Just having a few women smile at a man in public is enough to make other women consider him much more desirable, according to researchers.
British psychologists, led by Benedict Jones of the University of Aberdeen in Scotland, have discovered that, when sizing up a man, a woman takes her cues from other women around him. The more females she sees smiling at a man, the likelier she is to consider the guy a good catch.
The 'copycat reflex' is the result of Darwinian pressures, according to experts on evolution. If a female faces lots of potential mates but has difficulties in choosing the best one, or if to do so would cost too much time or energy, she can help herself by taking a steer from how rival females behave.
The research team, which reports their results tomorrow in the British journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, recruited 28 female volunteers averaging about 24 years old. The volunteers looked at photographs of four young men wearing neutral expressions and looking directly at the camera. The men were shown in pairs, and the women were asked to choose the more attractive man, and assign him a score on an eight-point scale.
The same faces were then shown individually to the volunteers, each male face flanked by a female face shown in profile. The female either looked neutrally at the man or smiled at him. The volunteers then took another look at the paired faces, and were asked to give another attractiveness rating.
Where the female faces wore neutral expressions, many of the volunteers revised sharply downward their initial grading of the man, by more than 10 per cent on average. But they sharply revised upwards their grading - finding the man more attractive by an average of at least 15 per cent - if the woman looking at him had a smile on her face.
The reverse was true for men: 28 young male volunteers took part in the same experiment, and their rating of the likeability of the male faces plummeted if the man in the picture was being smiled at by a woman. But if the woman had a neutral look, the likeability rating improved.
The findings tell us a lot about how sexual competition affects our views, the study said. 'Desired' men are more attractive to women but pose more of a threat to other males.
Among females in other species, "mate choice copying" has already been spotted among guppies, Japanese quail and zebra finches, but this is the first time the phenomenon has been confirmed among humans.
Finally - truth in the wilderness
Wow - someone actually gets it. Too bad you're one man among many who don't and can't be cloned! Relationships don't last be cause they're not real - people cheat because no one really knows how to love or commit any more.
They're having too much fun with the gymnastics.
Whoever you are I hope you keep that mindset and pass it on to your children one day.
This is exactly right. Women
This is exactly right.
Women are in competition with each other over what they consider the most valuable 'mates'.
For centuries these urges were controlled by authority, religion, etc.. for many different, and very good reasons. Polygamy being one. The fate of ones offspring being another.
With the sexual revolution and their obvious economic gains in the workplace women today are free of many of the economic, societal and biological repercussions of engaging in such indiscriminate sexual behavior/mate poaching.
Of course it's convenient to blame men for the problem. That's called 'plausable deniability' as a part of her ASD or anti-slut defense. Specifically that a woman will never place herself in a position to be 'responsible' for the act of sex taking place. That's why they so often say 'it just happened'.
Well of course it didn't just happen. And it's supposed to involve two consenting adults. But then if the woman consented, then that would render her desire to backwards rationalize that it wasn't really what she wanted, problematic. And only by backward rationalizing the fact that 'it wasn't what she really wanted' can she possibly relieve her guilt of feeling like a slut.
So perhaps she was violated.
This of course has broader, and often troubling legal implications.
Uncontrolled factors?
Presumably a man is less likely to suffer negative consequences of approaching women who hadn’t been warmly received by a smile, than the reverse.
Men that are smiled at by women are more likely to be fun and safe to engage with, regardless of mating aspirations. I suspect if a 5 yo girl was admitted to that study, she’d make similar decisions on likeability as the sexually-active women. It’s hard to control for that factor when drawing conclusions on female-female competition from this study. The study would also be more informative if results were collected for all combinations. Would likeability improve if the subjects, smilers and viewers were all the same sex? Or if women viewed women were smiled at by men? Potential friend, mate, or competitor?
Interesting.
Such interesting comments, varied ideas. The suppositions made of the opposite sex (especially the cynical ones!) tell me more about the originator of the comment than the comment itself. Perhaps these scenarios are true in come cases, but human behaviour is so broad it’s best not to generalise – for example, none of them are true to my personal experience, except having nice-guy friends back off when a love-interest was found. I found the comment that women don’t take responsibility for sex interesting, I can see it happening. But a lot of men use the “it just happened”, too – and are generally less likely to suffer the consequences of sex. Use of “slut” as a slur is still largely confined to women. It benefits each gender to try to control the sexuality of the other.