This adult participant has always gone for men who smile at her. A twinkle in the eye and a smile is an expression of interest, and hell: that's sexy, right? (There is the added bonus, with a smiling guy, of being able to tell whether he has gum disease or not.) Has being attracted to guilt-ridden depressives only become common since Twilight, or am I missing something?

You're confusing science with social studies, Dan. Try again.

I wonder which kind beats women? Don't answer...I already know.

Whatever, guys who complain about this and always call themselves "nice guys" are usually assholes who feel that they have some God given right to female attention. Fuck “nice guys”

which kind is that, vince? in my experience, it's the moody and ashamed ones.

Perhaps women are attracted to competitive qualities? And perhaps being moody and irritable is a sign of ambition, the impetus to competition?

nice guys need to counter their niceness w/ a touch of aloofness or maybe i-don't-give-a-fuck-about-whether-or-not-you-want-to-fuck-meness describes it better. when you are both nice & eager, imo/experience, it turns the ladies off a bit. they know they can have it if they want it & they check out the rest of the menu. but if you are nice, but don't appear to care one way or the other whether the woman you are talking to is into you, it creates some of that mystery that the naturally aloof/proud/assholes give off wo/ trying.

the proud or moody guys might appear attractive until they open their mouths.

@4 is totally right. There's a difference between, well, nice guys -- actual decent men -- and Nice Guys, capital N capital G, who are the whiny assholes who (1) can't see women as individual people and (2) believe that their needs are the only ones that matter, and thus they are entitled! and it's not fair! that women deny them.

Fuck Nice Guys. Oh wait, don't. Never, ever do that.

They may not be crazy, but the people trying to say that has anything to do with evolution are.

Evolutionary psychology does not work that way. Good night.

Right. There are probably 9 billion studies by now showing that on first impression, women are turned on by confidence, social status, and "mysteriousness" in men. Not to mention wealth, height, broad shoulders, narrow wastes, muscles, and a sense of humor.

The research is less clear on what happens beyond first impressions.

And studies also show that as women get older, they place increasing value on kindness and generosity over these other traits. So, all is not lost for the truly nice fellow.

Too books every het male who is distressed about attracting women should read:
- Why Women Have Sex (read it for the vast and fascinating set of data they present, ignore the evo psych theorizing)
- The Game (insights developed by a bunch of losers who have meticulously studied and documented the behavior of winners. Totally demystifies modern courtship for guys that haven't intuitively figured this stuff out for themselves. I know everyone assumes the book is sexist nonsense, but it's full of practical and sound advice similar to the "firm handshake, look 'em in the eye" stuff you'd find in Dale Carnegie's "How to win friends and influence people". )

Why does a display of "pride" mean "asshole"? That's kind of a leap isn't it?

Yeah. I'm sure this is an "evolved" trait and not socially trained at all. Like women liking pink because of berries in the forest.

There's a difference between Nice Guys and guys who are actually nice. Self-identified Nice Guys are almost invariably whining about how (insert name of girl here) won't fuck them even though they're sooo nice and sooo sensitive and have Been There For You... the reality usually being that he's lurked around the edges of a girl's life, fixating creepily, never actually saying "hey, I like you, can we go for lunch sometime?", just building up a file of how "nice" he's been, which somehow equates to an obligation to fuck him. Which then, of course, quite rightly gives the girl the fear, and she avoids him, which makes him believe that she's the problem.

Somehow, too, the girl is required to see his Shining Inner Loveliness, regardless of whether the shell it comes in has done any exercise or washed in the past decade. Of course, it will never occur - it will indeed be an offensive idea - that women who are amazing and would blow his mind might come in packages that Hollywood wouldn't jump on.

I met one of those guys once. I'll explain that I have a boyfriend who looks like a "bad boy" (I hate that phrase), complete with the long hair, tattoos and Harley, but is one of those guys who is genuinely a really great person - intelligent, sweet, sensitive, thoughtful, and amazing in bed. The Nice Guy was someone I didn't even consider that I knew well, an acquaintance who often came out to the same bars as me with my wider social group but whom I didn't spend much time talking to. That was partly because he always acted weird around me, doing things like walking up to me out of the blue and offering to be there to talk to me if I ever needed someone. Very creepy. I guessed that maybe he had some kind of social difficulty and treated him coolly, but politely. I didn't really think it was a crush, because he never made any attempt to socialise with me on any other grounds - no talking to me about my life or his, no requests to get coffee or meet up sometime. Just these weird little moments when he would walk up and tell me that he was there for me.

This went on for perhaps three months or so, until one day he just walked up to me while I was out shopping and went ballistic. He ranted about how by now I should have seen what a great guy he was and how much better off I would be with him than my boyfriend, who he'd never actually spoken to one-on-one but in his estimation was obviously a woman-hating asshole. I stood there with my mouth hanging open until he eventually ran out of steam and then I just walked away. He shouted after me that he could tell from that that I was being emotionally abused by my boyfriend, because I was too scared to break it off and go with someone better, and he'd loved me forever, and how could I not love him back after all he'd done for me. I wish I'd asked him why on earth he thought I would prefer a man who creeped about trying to get into my pants passive-aggressively and then ranted at me in the street, but you always think of the best responses after the event, don't you?

So... yeah. I guess I got a little off-topic there. But those guys can take a long walk off a short plank.

@8, you got it, Natalie. In my younger dating days, I had many a wow-that-guy-in-the-corner-looks-moody-and-cute experience, and then a minute after chatting I am walking away. After enough of that, when I met my nice-guy husband who smiled this warm, lovely smile and I wanted to fuck him silly right there. And by the way, study-givers, every human on the planet has seen the reality of x guy finding a moody girl and the ensuing drama is always a given. Enough to make your findings relatively equivocal, I'd say.

Meh. I used to run studies on attractiveness all the time in grad school. The effect sizes were almost always tiny. One picture will have an average rating of 7.5 and another will have an average of 7.6, but since your sample is a thousand people, the results come out significant, p < .05, and bingo, you can publish an article that says picture two is preferred significantly more than picture one.

Significant, but essentially meaningless.

Some cheap folk saying says "Every girl wants a bad boy who will be good just for her; every boy wants a good girl who will be bad just for him." It holds up about as well as most cheap folk sayings do.

@11: The Game?
::Headdesk::
Seriously seandr, The Game? If indeed, as you say, one can find all the same sound advice (firm hand shake etc) sans the phenomenally sexist bullshit contained within the pages of The Game by reading Dale Carnegie, why not, for the love of god, just read Dale Carnegie?

@10 I'm with ya -- the facile "evolutionary biology" argument drives me absolutely INSANE and isn't the only way to look at this kind of data. Not that you'd ever know, the way the media gleefully promotes any kind of narrative that strengthens this culture's particularly fucked up way of looking at relationships.

And ... yeah. Huge, huge, huge difference between Nice Guys(tm) who are those whiney assholes who complain that women never, ever like them no matter how NICE they are (because the underlying subtext, of course, is that they are ENTITLED to arm candy OF COURSE. And what is WRONG with these girls that they don't swoon at his feet IMMEDIATELY?).

Genuinely nice, caring guys do just fine. You just don't really hear from them because they have nothing to whine about.

Meh.

The rush to "explain" all this -- as if we, as a species, actually understood fuck-all about ourselves -- obscures the data itself, which needs to be repeated, across different population slices (how much you want to bet the "adult participants" are university students?), and different cultures to start answering some questions on whether this phenomenon is culture-specific or across all, is age specific or common to all, etc.

And there's STILL a difference between kind, thoughtful, considerate guys and Nice Guys (tm). Meh, again.

@4, correct. Having been one, I know they also tend to be moody and depressed, so if you ask me this study gives them LESS of an excuse, not more.

@10,13,19 and 20: I. con. cur.
Evo psych makes me stabby.

A "proud" stance indicates confidence, not assholism.

I'm more interested in the fact that men are least attracted to proud (confident?) women. Happy, but not confident?

Assholes.

Proud, Disdainful, and Aloof ... Yup, sounds like the IMF Chief who tried to rape someone.

I'm with everyone else who doesn't understand how proud/moody/ashamed = asshole and happy = nice guy. Most of the self-proclaimed nice guys that I've encountered are both moody and ashamed, thus indicating they should be attracting women in droves. Furthermore, they were not happy, so that shouldn't count against them.

Of course, they were not proud, and I don't know how that factors in.

@25 blah
Keep in mind that "men" is nowhere near all men. I find confident, powerful women almost irresistible. Be that woman and enthusiastically enjoy sex and you will have no trouble finding a man who will adore you.

Oh, and by self-proclaimed nice guys, I mean the guys who run around whining that no one will date them because they are "too nice." The truly nice guys that I know are generally happy and proud, which would be a strike for and against them. Hmmmm.

I think the most ridiculous part of this study (and, sadly, Dan's post) is that people are equating confidence with assholeishness and smiles with "niceness."

Assholes can smile. Nice guys can be confident.

Jesus fucking Christ, what warped interactions do you have to have with people to not grasp this?

I'm depressed by the fact that men didn't find "confident" women attractive. Fuck that! And count me in among the women who find smiling guys VERY attractive and wouldn't go near a guy who looked moody or whatever.

Appearing moody doesn't wipe the smell of virgin off of a nice guys breath though.

For every self-help book and pseudo-scientific study on attracting mates of the opposite sex, somewhere a kitten dies.

@32: NOT being a virgin is more likely to leave your breath smelling of something instantly identifiable...

@34 What are you talking about?

Are you saying that self-proclaimed nice guys (the guys who run around telling me how no one will date them because they are too nice) are actually painfully shy and withdrawn? Because I've never met a painfully withdrawn and shy person who started ranting to me about how no one would date them because they were so "nice." Never ever ever.

Or do you mean that the truly nice men I know are painfully shy and withdrawn? Because I must once again object: the truly painfully shy and withdrawn guys either 1) don't know me because they are not interacting with me 2) are not nice to me because they aren't interacting with me one way or the other. The truly nice guys that I know are happy and proud. If there is some other subset of truly nice guys who I don't know because they don't interact with me (based on their shyness) then I hope they stop being so painfully shy and withdrawn. I like nice guys, but I'm never going to meet them if they are too shy and withdrawn for us to interact.

@36 Seems to me that @34 might well be talking about a chipped shoulder.

@18: It's the same type of advice, not the same advice (though there is overlap). Here are some examples from The Game:

1) When a approaching a group of people you don't know, open with something like "I can only stay a minute, but...." That will make them more receptive to talking with you and less worried that some wierdo has glommed onto them for the evening.

2) To signal social dominance over other men, put your hand on their shoulder or pat their back, use underhanded compliments like "Hey, you're smart, you should come work for me." I saw guys doing this kind of shit to each other all the time when I worked at a large corporation.

Explain to me how this advice is "phenomenally sexist?"

I'm with Seandr and #7 here. Women generally like confidence and strength. Those qualities often are read, by women, into borderline-assholish behavior from otherwise charming men - i.e. here's a person who has so many sexual and social options he doesn't seem to be worrying about impressing me or making me feel good. He's just having fun, even at my expense.

That's a "challenge" and a big turn-on for a lot of women. Not all, I know that. But I've seen it too much to think of it as some sexist myth.

@25/31 - I guess these insecure responders figure that a self-confident woman might be harder to satisfy in the long-term and may cheat on them or leave them.

@28, keep in mind that this is not very reassuring: "you will have no trouble finding a man who will adore you." Most women don't really want to be adored. I think it's reasonable for sexually adventurous women in their 20s to worry about scaring off conventional men. I hope marriage-minded men will come around soon and see that there is nothing wrong with sexually adventurous women -- but we're not there yet.

btw, I can only speak of straight scenarios here. For all I know, some version of this dynamic plays out among gay men and lesbians. I've known many gay people, but I haven't observed their dating habits from a close enough perspective to be able to speak with any authority about something like this (I can barely muster any expertise about het romance!)

"Nice guys finish last and women only want assholes" is just the boy version of "any girl who has more sex than I do is a slut."

Are there some women who are attracted to assholes? Sure. But to make a generalization that all or most women are attracted to assholes would mean you are saying that the majority of men in straight relationships are assholes.

So Mister Rogers was an asshole. Jim Henson was an asshole. Jimmy "I have committed adultery in my heart" Carter is a raging asshole. Steve Buscemi is suuuuuch an asshole.

Yes, indeedy. If you're getting some pussy, you must be a real jerk. Or maybe somebody's definition of "nice" needs to be modified.

You're emphasizing the guy angle of this, Dan, but I thought it was at least as interesting -- and at least as depressing -- that straight men were LEAST ATTRACTED TO WOMEN WHO LOOKED PROUD AND CONFIDENT.

So when our mamas told us girls to pretend to be less than we really are in order to find a man to love us, she actually knew something? Depressing, Dan. Really, really depressing.

I married the nicest man I know, and he is constantly helping me build up my pride and confidence ... so there are exceptions to every rule, thank goodness.

@39,

It's not just that men like that are a challenge; their attitude of take it or leave it also makes it seem like they have options. Having options is associated with having value. I don't know many confident people who want to be with someone with low value.

Also, speaking from my own experience, dating a man who has few options is a risky proposition in itself because he's highly likely not to take rejection well, and there's a good chance he's settling for any particular woman he tries to glom onto. I dated a lot of men like that in my 20s, and, to a man, those guys ultimately treated me like shit. Why should they have to show me affection or love if they can barely stand the sight of me?

nice guys need to counter their niceness w/ a touch of aloofness or maybe i-don't-give-a-fuck-about-whether-or-not-you-want-to-fuck-meness describes it better.

The problem is that a lot of men who don't know how to relate to women swing way too far in the other direction, acting like they wouldn't piss on a given woman if she were on fire. If the guy doesn't look like a model, best case scenario is that women will find his act funny.

Not obsessing over a particular person is definitely important, as is the attitude of having fun getting to know people rather than being desperate to find The One. Obsession and desperation will turn off anyone and for good reason. It makes sense that so many people have trouble with this; it's a fine line between attracting and repelling.

The "moody and ashamed" part fits Seattle to a tee. Females will swoon over the sullen, artsy-fartsy, sardonic Bud Cort-ish dude, especially if his parents have a lot of money.

As far as being "nice", yeah it doesn't work.

I mean, even in Thelma and Louise, I thought basically Thelma's "terrible" car salesman husband just seemed like a regular guy who liked watching sports on tv...but somehow that's just not enough.

Goodness gracious, Dan. You must have saved yourself the exasperation of reading through all the comments for that unbearably long SLLOTD on Monday. The comments were all over the nice guy vs. bad boy theme. Upshot: Nice Guys (tm) aren't nice at all.

The key here is that it's "nice guys" who lose, not actually nice guys.

Besides, this is one area in which good statistics are interesting but not actually directly helpful. Do you really want to increase your chances of attracting someone who is literally average? Do you want to attract a guy who's turned off by confidence? Bah.

A story, if I may:

I knew a self-described "Nice Guy" in graduate school once. Super sensitive, soft tempered voice, loved to be friends with women, loved to talk to them about their feelings, their past relationships and even their sex toys. Oh the *speeches* about how important a woman's pleasure was to him!!!

I remember him "sharing" with me one night his disdain for his three male buddies who spotted and then preyed upon a particularly needy and damaged woman in our grad program, each taking turns with her. He went on and on about what leches they were, how much they had hurt said girl and her reputation, how utterly awful these cads were... ya know, compared to him, the "Nice Guy."

Somehow, though, he let slip that he too had slept with her. When I pressed him, he insisted that unlike his three best pals (who he was still very much friends with) he was genuinely interested in being with her, despite the fact that they never dated before or since and were no longer friends.

So, sorry, but "Nice Guys" are not happy guys, so they shouldn't be juxtaposed against photos of seemingly self-assured or moody-looking men. The term refers to behaviors, not still photos of a person's face. The term refers to a subset of guys who are delusional about their "niceness" because that delusion allows them to deny their misogyny or sense of entitlement.

It's partly a defense mechanism, and I think it's common among men who feel "bad" about who they want to fuck, the internalized and unquestioned virgin/whore shit in which he has to "win" the "good girl" because his intentions are "pure." I think it's a self-delusion, a sign of damage, and that it's patently dishonest.

"Nice Guys" do not reveal who they really are until they are rejected, and have just chosen a really pathetic route to try to get themselves the trophy they feel entitled too. The "niceness" is a pick up routine, and the guys in question don't get that they fail because this pick up routine is misleading and cowardly, not to mention that it doesn't treat women like individual people but a category of people to be worked over.

Think about it. If I guy comes on to you in a way making it really clear that he wants to fuck you, his intentions are clear, leaving you a clear choice to either fuck him or reject him. The "Nice Guy" ingratiates himself with you as a sensitive ear and then reserves the right to be angry with you when you can't see him as anything more than a friend. What he doesn't get is that his pursuit of you was false from the beginning.

This study does not--because it cannot--test for this phenomenon.

I've had my heart broken many a time, but most often by kind-hearted decent men in which it just didn't work out. The difference with the "Nice Guy" is that the feelings of loss are tangled up with anger, anger about the ruse, about the presumptuousness and entitlement. The last "Nice Guy" i dated--and he went on and on about past girlfriends being "pscyhos" who rejected him because he's a "Nice Guy" (holy red flag, I know)-- up and disappeared on me with no explanation whatsoever. I mean cut off all contact. We are both in our thirties so I was astounded that an adult man could still do that shit--wouldn't answer my phone calls, IM requests, emails, nothing. I asked right out--"I get that that you're not interested, I just want to know what happened." Nothing. We have friends in common, and he hasn't acknowledged my existence in now well over a year.

It was only months later that one of those mutual friends confided that I had expressed interest in a fantasy that meant that I wasn't "the right kind of girl" and that his buddies were now referring to me as a "whore."

So, yeah, I know I'm nursing some sour grapes here, but, please, a smile on a photo does not a Nice Guy make.

Reading these comments makes me want to write to Katy Perry or Lady GaGa and ask them to write a song called "Nice Guys" with a chorus along the lines of "I don't owe you anything"

Now that would be a #1 hit!

It seems that if someone (male or female) is whining about not finding a date, then that smacks of desperation. And that's the turn-off for either sex. And my experience has been that happy and confident are major turn-ons for either sex. Wouldn't being happy and confident send a message that is the exact opposite of desperation?

@50: You're asking them to alienate their entire fanbases. I have no problem with this.

@38: seandr. You have real problem with putting words in the mouths of others.
"Making eye contact" and "a firm handshake" are both good advice and not sexist, as it is possible are other tidbits of wisdom (such as your first example) included in The Game. This does not negate the overall sexist douche baggery that is the premise of that book. Which returns us to my question:
When presented with two self help books teaching similar techniques with which to achieve social success, why choose the one, which in addition, reinforces sexist, creepy and douchey behavior? Hmmmm?

The phenomenal sexism (and creepiness and douche bagginess) in your second example can be found in the phrase "to signal social dominance over other men".
And you know that. You indicate it yourself by the way you dismissively describe this behavior as observed during your time working at a large corporation.

@42: Zuulabelle, thank you for pointing out what should be the glaringly obvious flaw in this "Girls Only Like Assholes" hypothesis.

@52 = "NiceGuys"(tm) are the least likely sociological cohort of the Katy Perry or Lady Gaga fanbases(women, gay men, secure straight men). NG(tm)s don't want anybody mistaking them for gay by accidentally nodding along to Poker Face.

@52 - you really think 14-30 year old women and other-demographic-dance-anthem-fanatics would really have a problem with a flagrantly feminist "screw you" to the weepy, whiny NiceGuys(tm)??

NiceGuys(tm) really push my buttons, mostly because I take everything so seriously I actually feel bad for them at first until my tardy wits catch up and I realize what's actually going on...

This study is not valid. It's based on photos which is fantasy. Photos have nothing to do with whether a guy is nice or not. Sorry if I'm the 40th person to say this in comments.

Eh, it's just the testosterone.

Women are, in general, biologically predisposed to find men with higher testosterone levels more attractive than guys with lower T levels.

There was a study done a couple of years ago.. that I haven't been able to Google up yet, but I did find this:

http://www.ehow.com/about_5436739_sympto…

Scroll down to 'Physical Features' and find this enlightening sentence: "...men with high testosterone levels tend to smile infrequently and talk less, suggesting they prefer action-oriented pursuits over those requiring verbalization."

Action-oriented pursuits!! Yeah, baby!!!

@53: Dale Carnegie's book was written about 100 years ago, so much of the specific advice is outdated. Also, his focus isn't on charming women, but charming friends and business associates (although there is some overlap). Again, it's the same type of book, but the specific advice and scenarios covered by The Game are quite different, and much more relevant to a man who wants to make a good first impression with women. One book isn't a substitute for the other.

As for men organizing themselves into hierarchies, I don't think this is sexist at all. In fact, I'd say it's absolutely necessary for a large organization/community to function. Every other social species on the planet does this - dogs, chimps, gorillas, bees - because it makes the group stronger. No surprise that humans do as well.

Watching the turf battles and politics at the big corporation, it seemed to me that groups of men act a lot like packs of dogs. Just an observation, no judgment.

I always knew I was weird. I was explaining to my husband just last night that the male lead in the movie we were watching wasn't traditionally attractive but that he just had the look of a sweet guy and that's so appealing. I will admit to being a sucker for puppy dog eyes which I suppose could be construed as "moody" but I see it more as someone who has an ability to internalize things and be thoughtful and kind. I find overly cocky men tiresome.

So can I complain about guys finding my insecurities a turn off? Because I mean, Nice Guys complain that girls go for the "bad boys"... which according to this study, apparently means the guys with confidence... So obviously they themselves, the Nice Guys, wouldn't mind a whiny, insecure, and/or ugly girl so long as she was "nice" right?

No? Hark, I think I hear the cricket-like sound of Hypocriticus catus...

If nice guys are so nice, shouldn't they be hooking up with the ignored confident-and-proud gals? Nice guys who don't whine and complain are typically surrounded with women.

Some thoughts:

I grew up with a lot of sisters who constantly told me to be polite, kind, supportive, helpful, and nice. I tried this with women, I got 0 responses, 0 dates, 0 relationships. Not insecure or needy--just helpful and polite behavior. Then I read a few of the free "the game" imitators, and bam! After faking various sneers, silences, disagreements, and askance looks, instantly I got results with women. There is data for this on OKCupid as well - men with pictures that are looking away from the camera get more clicks.

2- To those women who are offended that "nice guys just EXPECT women to line up for them!" -- I will tell you -- women do indeed line up for "bad boys", I have seen it many times.

3 - @58: Action-oriented pursuits. Yeah, because verbal pursuits are for faggots!

More hard evidence that the average woman prefers narcissistic, callous, aggressive men for hookups: http://abcnews.go.com/Health/story?id=51…

@13 You know, someone pulled that berry comment out at me on another forum. They still haven't been able to tell my what berries are pink when ripe rather than blue, black, purple, or red. If I saw a berry that was pink my thought would be "I need to wait a few days before I pick that so it can ripen".

Mr Sean @59 - Well, maybe there should be a bit of judgment; some things call for it.

I almost wish somebody would try to do that sort of thing to me to signal "social dominance over other men" - I'd probably return my instinctive reply to unwanted touch, an instinctive knee right in the centre of the bull's-eye. I might have trouble punching my way out of a paper bag, but I give better knee than Mrs White in Clue.

Then again, and as always I speak as no expertise on relations between mixed genders, it might be helpful in the long run, as those women who are actually attracted by those who exhibit such appalling behaviour remove themselves from the pool of availability of less ghastly people. Perhaps, then, it's all good.

the little blurb only interprets why women might be attracted to a proud-looking guy. not a moody or ashamed dude. i would like to know their explanation for why the heck someone would like a moody or ashamed person over a happy person. where is the evolutionary benefit of being attracted to an ashamed person?
i'm a little skeptical of the interpretation if they can't explain that one.

also, this study tested physical attractiveness. women don't always go for the guy simply based on his looks. lotsof us get to know a guy, and THEN decide to be into him or not. it's then that the nice guy reigns supreme. so maybe proud guy gets the one-nighter after drinks at the bar. but nice guy gets to put a ring on it.

65
ok so whoever used that berry analogy used the wrong color. you do get it that the sensory exploitation hypothesis posits that an individual could be sexually attracted to a trait - say the color red - because they are already predisposed to be attracted to the red of ripe berries? For a frugivorous animal, berries could be a really strong selective force because they are an important FOOD and food is just about as important for passing on genes as SEX.
This sounds fantastic when applied to humans, but think about a bird or something. If red is an important color, their eyes might be really good at seeing red, and their brains might be really turned on by red. So, if you are interested in getting a female frugivorous bird to hump you, why not use red feathers?
Of course, there are other ways to get a female frugivorous bird's attention. Like being nice.

I can say from experience that genuine nice guys get the girls. Try competing for dates in the same social pool as someone who is a saint and you will quickly discover that the whole bad boy thing is a total myth.

@68 Actually I don't think you understand the berry people are saying. They aren't making any analogy about sensory exploitation. They are making a flat out statement that girls like pink not for cultural reasons, because people are being raised to think of pink as a "girls color", but because pink is the color of ripe berries. The fact that they got the color wrong means that they are wrong about the reason girls like pink.

@70 Exactly. And women know a lot about red berries because we were all gatherers while then men were hunters. etc etc etc.

@14 RidingtheLightening: "He ranted about how by now I should have seen what a great guy he was and how much better off I would be with him than my boyfriend."

This has happened to me several times! One guy, a friend of a friend, with whom I had had ONE short boring conversation, got it into his head that we were meant for each other (without informing ME about that decision, natch). Next time I saw him, at a party, it was maybe three months later, and when I shook his hand and said "I'm afraid I forgot your name" he smiled crazily and said, "that's it?!! THAT'S what you have to say to me?!" Apparently, he had other ideas. Lots and lots of ideas. Ideas he had not informed me of. Special kind of crazy, those "nice" guys. Real nice guys, of course, communicate what they're thinking about and ask lots of questions.

My personal favorite test for this has always been to get a woman in a comfy-friendly zone, and get her started talking about her exes. There's really no better way to find out what a woman dates/fucks than getting her going about the guys she's actually dated/fucked.

Berry people: 300 years ago or so, red was considered a masculine color and blue was considered a feminine color.

@74 if we're including pink (and it's pink not red that the Evo Psych people keep going on about) it's closer to 84 years. At least in America.

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-cultu…

@72 Sandiai - "special kind of crazy" is exactly it. And they never realise it.

The last I heard of that particular guy was from a mutual friend, who said that he'd sworn "eternal revenge against [my] boyfriend for mistreating [me]". That was about six months ago and I haven't heard from him since. Definitely a special kind of crazy, and absolutely convinced that he was the nice guy in that situation rather than the creepy lecher.

Oh please, Dan. You need to leap off the evo-psych bandwagon ASAP, because the self-described "nice guys" who keep writing you are anything but nice. And normally, you'd be the first one to tear them a new asshole. Come on.

i can see bad boys/non confident women appearing more attractive in a one night stand situation but who wants a long term relationship with them or to have kids with them ? a woman or a guy worth a damn would not settle for a loser

on a purely sexual level the study may be a bit accurate but things like personality go a long way with women

I would just like to add one more thing, when alleged "nice boys" feel all bent out of shape because women are attracted to alleged "assholes." I think we all get a little blinded by what happens in hookups versus what happens in long term lasting relationships.

Women get just as butt-hurt about what sort of women get fawned over at all times as men get all butt-hurt over who women will hop in the sack with, but I'll tell you what I've seen. I've seen really sweet great guys going after a few select women who have shown no interest and have a history of going after these "asshole" types. I've seen these same men ignore and reject women who don't meet insane physical ideals, all while crying in his cheerios over not getting laid.

Whatever studies might tells you about what people are most attracted to in a raw physical sense, is not really indicative of what happens when people start settling down into long term relationship. Statistically speaking, 50% of us are below average in looks yet far more than 50% of the adult population manages to have relationships of varying success, in their life. That suggests that while people closer to the "ideal" may have an easier time, most of the people getting bent out of shape about what a particular gender likes, can kindly STFU.

I know little to nothing about evopsych itself. What I do note, though, is that a lot of people's opinions of it are tied to whether or not it is telling them what they want to hear: if it is (traditional males, etc.) then they love it; if it isn't (feminist or progressives) then they hate it.

In the end, ain't evopsych moot? Even if we are programmed one way surely free will and social conditioning can take us in other directions. We're programmed to shit in the open and kill the neighbours to take their stuff, too, and most of us manage to avoid that impulse.

@59:I'm afraid seandr, that the only impression a man makes when following the precepts of "The Game" is that he is a douche bag. Because the goal of "The Game" is not to make a good impression, it is to trick a woman into bed. And I emphasize the word trick. That kind of gender dynamic is vile.
As to the male social dominance example you gave, I did not say I found it surprising, I said that it was sexist, creepy and douche baggy behavior, and I suggest that vennominon @66 is correct that judgment is called for. Frankly I expect more from men than that they behave like a pack of dogs, and find it sad that you are comfortable setting the bar so low for your gender.

@81 A fine comment.

@83 As for evo psych. Myself, I have serious intellectual problems with it, not hatred of it. Take, for example, this study itself. You show women photos of men's faces and ask them to rate their initial attractiveness based on that single photograph. From there, you go leaps and bounds analytically to characterize all of human mating behavior based on a woman's snap assessment of a single picture. No sane or stable woman has ever selected a "mate" (again, as @81 points out, part of the problem here is not distinguishing between hooking up, dating, relationships, parenting, etc.) based on a man's facial expression in a single photograph. Initial impressions include appearance, demeanor, scent, carriage, how a person's dressed, their voice, their laughter, sense of humor, etc.--we all act on those initial impressions, yes, but to conclude that women are biology "programmed" to "select" for only a narrow set of superficial traits is to ignore the complexity of human interaction, not to mention how attractions also can shift over time.

In my experience, the staunchest proponents of evolutionary psychology are more invested in "scientifically" justifying their sexist and rigid ideas than actually studying the complexity of mate selection within ever-shifting and highly-variable cultural and social contexts.

As for this "Nice Guy" argument, if you notice, the message posters herein who are saying "I stopped being caring and it worked" are describing "scoring," not genuinely connecting with the opposite sex in any honest way. Some of those hookups can lead to something more serious, sure, but most don't. My issue with the dreaded "Nice Guy" is that he feels entitled to "collecting" women in this way, but doesn't get that in "befriending" women with a hidden mode of really just wanting to fuck them is a cowardly manipulation. His resentment of "assholes who scores" outs him as equally shallow and limitated.

Hey, if you want to just lay as many chicks as possible, have the fuck at it. But, please, don't wrap it up in this pseudo scientific bullshit, in the case of evo psych folks, or, in the case of the "Nice Guy" ingratiate yourself as a friend as a "safe" route to approach a woman. If you're genuinely interested in fucking a woman, say so. If you want to fuck as many as possible, have at it. But stop trying to claim that you have the corner on the nature of the universe as some grand justification of your short-term interests.

Remember a couple of years ago when Dan shared the study about women finding different men attractive at different points in their cycles? Guys who are nice and having trouble attracting ladies should find a confident woman and hang out with her for a month.

This study doesn't really work for me, because for me who I'm sexually attracted to is not necessarily who I want to be with.

Sure, sexual attraction is IMPORTANT. But a lot of jerks would rank high on my "how sexually attractive is this guy?" list while being at the bottom of my "will you date him?" list.

Girls may think bad guys are hotter, but I'd still much rather be with a sweet guy than a bad boy. Looks/attraction may be the most important triggers for guys, but for a lot of girls personality/other characteristics rank above looks.

@84, why is flirting okay if people know what to do naturally, but lessons in flirting are evil tricks? Or would you say that all flirting is evil?

I'm just going to add something about my own experience.

I've known lots of nice guys in relationships from my personal life and lots of women who were in relationships with assholes from my professional life. You see, I worked in a domestic violence shelter as a victim advocate for something like 2 1/2 years. The nice men who I knew from my personal life were with women had engaged in sex with fewer men and had waited longer to put out. A lot of this had to do with the self-esteem of the women that these nice guys were with; the women had strong boundaries and weren't easy to push or guilt into being in a relationship. It wasn't like these women always waited until marriage to have sex (I don't think any of them did) or that they only had sex with one man (once again, I don't think that was the case) but any man would have a harder time getting with her because she asserted herself.

As for the women I knew who were with assholes from my job, they had extremely poor-self esteem and boundaries. If a guy pushed them into being in a relationship/having sex, it worked. If an asshole and a nice guy went after one of these women, the asshole would win out every time because he pushed and the woman was going to give in to that pushing. These women often had children by three or more guys, all of whom were assholes. These women wanted to be loved so badly that they were willing to put up with a guy beating her into the hospital, to say nothing of being an asshole. Furthermore, a lot of these women associated being pushed with being loved. A girl once asked my mother many years ago, "Does your husband beat you?" and when my mother answered, "No," the girl responded, "Doesn't he love you?"

So, whenever some guy talks about how it was so much easier to get a girl once he stopped being nice and started being an asshole, I always wonder what kind of girls he is going after.

Good god almighty EricaP I said nothing of the sort! Flirting is a fabulous thing but The Game is not about flirting. It is about being a Pick Up Artist. The goal of a Pick Up Artist is to get laid, which in itself, of course, is entirely unobjectionable. It is the mind set, and methods used, by the followers of Mystery which are vile. Their approach to women is entirely adversarial. They want pussy. We are deliberately keeping it from them. We are the enemy guarding the prize and, if we can, humiliate men in the process.

Here is an example of the sort of advice prevalent within the Seduction Community:

If a girl accuses you of using a line, especially right after your opener, she’s not going to fuck you. It simply won’t happen, no matter how much you think you can recover. It’d be like trying to sell an SUV to an environmentalist. Chances are she came out to make men feel small and get free drinks, so therefore you must go over the top and put that bitch in her place.

Sound like flirting to you?

@90: More relevant than what some random internet person's feelings about the PUA scene is a simple question. Does it work? If it does, it's worth asking why.

@89: Fair point, especially when you flip it around. Dollars to donuts says that most Nice Guys were kept strung along by queen bees. Unhealthy people seem to feed off of each other, and there's unfortunately no shortage of them.

@90 Thank you for posting that.

What is so sad about that is that guys who harbor that kind of anger don't realize how damaged they are and that, as a result, they are dooming themselves to sex with women they've already "dismissed" as being beneath them for agreeing to have sex with them in the first place. I cannot imagine love brewing from that kind of manipulation and contempt.

The question is do you want to be the kind of man that would use those techniques?

Completely irrelevant. If the argument is that women go for jerks, and "jerky" PUA tactics work, saying "yeah, but do you want to be a jerk?" is a nonsequitor.

@94: Really. Wow. Did ya read what maddy811 write @92? Let me ask you this: Do you: 1) Want love? Or 2) Do you want to be vile piece of shit that occasionally gets his dick wet through underhanded and often despicable means?

If you pick #2, then there's a little fellow round here named aardvark that I think you'd get along with famously.

Yes, yes, but what do the gay men go for? Lesbians?

@96 The gay men have given up on all the rest of us and go for drinks instead.

Drinks? I love that idea.

@90, 92, 93, I haven't read these books, but I'm surprised to hear you say that they're full of advice on how to punish uppity women. I used to watch the Mystery tv show, and it was all advice on how to get into a conversation with a woman, and get her phone number. The show did eventually move on to actually "closing the deal," but the contestants seemed more interested in just having a conversation with a woman and getting her phone number.

So, yes, to me, the pickup artist advice sounded like Flirting 101.

From the Game: "Most men ... believ[e] that an attractive woman who doesn't talk to or acknowledge him is a bitch. Most of the time, however, she's just as shy or insecure as the less attractive woman he's ignoring." (111)

"There are men in this world who hate women... who call them bitches and cunts. These are not PUAs [pickup artists]" (350)

What makes you say that men who buy book to improve their chances of getting an attractive woman's attention are so bitter and nasty? Where did you get that quote you used?