Shouldn't Researchers be doing something useful...?

[Rukia]

like curing cancer?...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Science is confirming what most women know: When given the choice for a mate, men go for good looks.
art.dating.study.gi.jpg

In the dating game, men know what they want.

And guys won't be surprised to learn that women are much choosier about partners than they are.

"Just because people say they're looking for a particular set of characteristics in a mate, someone like themselves, doesn't mean that is what they'll end up choosing," Peter M. Todd, of the cognitive science program at Indiana University, Bloomington, said in a telephone interview.

Researchers led by Todd report that in Tuesday's edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that their study found humans were similar to most other mammals, "following Darwin's principle of choosy females and competitive males, even if humans say something different."

Their study involved 26 men and 20 women in Munich, Germany.

Participants ranged in age from 26 to their early 40s and took part in "speed dating," short meetings of three to seven minutes in which people chat, then move on to meet another dater. Afterward, participants check off the people they'd like to meet again, and dates can be arranged between pairs who select one another.

Speed dating let researchers look at a lot of mate choices in a short time, Todd said.

In the study, participants were asked before the session to fill out a questionnaire about what they were looking for in a mate, listing such categories as wealth and status, family commitment, physical appearance, healthiness and attractiveness.

After the session, the researchers compared what the participants said they were looking for with the people they actually chose to ask for another date.

Men's choices did not reflect their stated preferences, the researchers concluded. Instead, men appeared to base their decisions mostly on the women's physical attractiveness.

The men also appeared to be much less choosy. Men tended to select nearly every woman above a certain minimum attractiveness threshold, Todd said.

Women's actual choices, like men's, did not reflect their stated preferences, but they made more discriminating choices, the researchers found.

The scientists said women were aware of the importance of their own attractiveness to men, and adjusted their expectations to select the more desirable guys.

"Women made offers to 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."

But, he added, "they didn't go lower. They knew what they could get and aimed for that level."

So, it turns out, the women's attractiveness influenced the choices of the men and the women.

[Ra]

This research is about as useful to society as the Pentagon's research into psionic teleportation. Jesus, these damn researchers will waste money to prove that water is wet!

[Batman]

Less, actually. At least research on psionic teleportation had the off chance of coming up with something useful while we KNOW studies on human behaviour need a bloody large sample selection to even get within hailing distance of reliable.
Less than 50 people? No comment.

[Comrade Tortoise]

Actually, research into human sexual selection is important.
Especially when there is a discrepancy between what people tell you, and what is actually true

[Kreshna Aryaguna Nurzaman]

"because part of the goal for women is to choose men who would stay with them."

So if a woman chooses me, then there's a pretty damn good chance that she doesn't actually love me --that she just sees me as a nice guy who makes a really nice support pole. There's also a good chance that she's actually still in love with another guy despite her decision to choose me --as it already happened twice in my life.

Alright then.

[Mayabird]

This is more philosophy of science than anything else, but...

People say "This is 'well duh' science and a waste of time." Yes, a lot of it is, but there are two different factors to consider:

1) A lot of "common sense knowledge" is contradictory. You might believe two totally contradictory things about, for example, dating, so if someone confirms one or the other, you think, "Well yeah" even though you'd say the same thing if it confirmed the other side.
Example: "Birds of a feather flock together" and "opposites attract." People will believe both of these even though they contradict each other, so when one is confirmed, they think, "Well that was a waste of time. I already knew that." But one of them is generally right and one is generally wrong. (Opposites don't attract. Sometimes, rarely, it happens, but people don't date to complement each other. It's usually that people have common interests and that's what draws them together. So

2) Sometimes you're just plain wrong.
Example: You remember all those nature documentary about African animals, and they'd always mention the oxpeckers? The birds that were supposedly symbionts, living on animals' backs and picking off their ticks. They got a meal, and the animals got parasites removed. Everything thought it was so obvious that no one tested it until a few years ago. You know what they found out? Oxpeckers are PARASITES. They drink blood. That's why they pick at big animals' backs. Sometimes they do eat ticks, ticks that are already engorged with blood and so have already done their damage to the animals. If you chase the oxpeckers off, animals' wounds stay smaller and heal faster. The parasite load is exactly the same no matter if the oxpeckers are there or not.

This has been your Philosophy of Science lesson for the day.
[/lecture]

"because part of the goal for women is to choose men who would stay with them."

So if a woman chooses me, then there's a pretty damn good chance that she doesn't actually love me --that she just sees me as a nice guy who makes a really nice support pole. There's also a good chance that she's actually still in love with another guy despite her decision to choose me --as it already happened twice in my life.

Alright then.

KAN, QUIT IT. Seriously. If you keep moping over it, you can't move on. You just have to STOP and DO SOMETHING ELSE. There are three point something BILLION other women in the world. Hell, I'm one of them.

Seriously. People like to pretend that there's only The One for them. And somehow, coincidentally, they're able to find The One amidst the six point five-ish billion people on Earth. The majority of the time, The One just so happens to live nearby or be otherwise easily accessible. How coincidental! Or planned, or something!

As for me, not being a religious or mystical type to believe in magical coincidences or ridiculous plans to set me up with someone, I see it totally differently. There are just a lot of potentially compatible people in the world. If you can find one, there's probably another. We have very little genetic variation in our species, which would limit the number of potential baseline innate personalities (of course, cultural compatibility is a totally different thing, but we can fuss about this later).

So quit your moping. She's just one of six point five billion.

[Comrade Tortoise]

So if a woman chooses me, then there's a pretty damn good chance that she doesn't actually love me --that she just sees me as a nice guy who makes a really nice support pole. There's also a good chance that she's actually still in love with another guy despite her decision to choose me --as it already happened twice in my life.

Alright then.

No. Your angst is clouding the issue. A female "falls in love with you" because you are are a nice guy who fills a good support roll for her and potential offspring. Love is not some mystical force that makes you feel butterflies in your stomach for no reason. It is an evolved emotional response to a good mate or potential mate that keeps you together long enough to mate and raise offspring.

She may very well have feelings for another guy. Nature of the evolutionary beast. Hell, she may even find some other guy to be more attractive than you when she is ovulating. The sooner you understand and accept that, the happier you will be

[SirNitram]

I will not be having this emo-angst shit in my little corner of Libram. Grow the fuck up and move on. Thank you. Move along.