Men love women who look happy. Women love men who look…. take a guess.
Women find happy guys significantly less sexually attractive than swaggering or brooding men, according to a new University of British Columbia study that helps to explain the enduring allure of “bad boys” and other iconic gender types.
Of course, if you were to ASK the typical woman in a public setting surrounded by her family and peers which kind of man she would rather date, she’ll say the smiling happy man. Women are loath to publicly admit romantic preferences that would expose the disturbing nature of their sexuality. But any man who’s lived a day in his life knows the special appeal that swaggering douchebags or mysterious brooding artists have to women.
In a series of studies, more than 1,000 adult
Nice N.
participants rated the sexual attractiveness of hundreds of images of the opposite sex engaged in universal displays of happiness (broad smiles), pride (raised heads, puffed-up chests) and shame (lowered heads, averted eyes).
The study found that women were least attracted to smiling, happy men, preferring those who looked proud and powerful or moody and ashamed. In contrast, male participants were most sexually attracted to women who looked happy, and least attracted to women who appeared proud and confident.
Careerist, manjawed feminists extolling the lean-in philosophy wept. Men prefer deferential, submissive, vulnerable women. I.e., feminine women.
“It is important to remember that this study explored first-impressions of sexual attraction to images of the opposite sex,” says Alec Beall, a UBC psychology graduate student and study co-author. “We were not asking participants if they thought these targets would make a good boyfriend or wife — we wanted their gut reactions on carnal, sexual attraction.”
The sexual market is the prime market because (among other reasons) it operates on the level of the human subconscious, where instinct and “gut” forge behavior before the frontal lobe pitches in to rationalize that based behavior as freely chosen and socially appropriate.
Overall, the researchers found that men ranked women more attractive than women ranked men.
Fashy coda! Affirms the “sperm is cheap, eggs are expensive” maxim. For those cucklets who insist that women only value men’s looks, remember that women are predisposed to valuing VERY LITTLE of men, even decent-looking men, BEFORE those men have approached and displayed their masculine boldness.
It’s been covered here at the Chateau many times…women are the more discriminating sex, and that extends to women’s perceptions of men’s looks. Which is implicitly good news for less Hollywoodian men, because if women only consciously value the top 5% in male looks then the reality that far more than 5% of men are dating cute girls proves that women must subconsciously value other traits in men. This study indirectly highlights a selection of those other attractive male traits: confidence, cockiness, inscrutability, danger, and dominance.
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Nikolai adds an insightful comment about women’s seemingly weird attraction to shame-faced men.
This is the second study I’ve seen where ‘ashamed’ or ‘guilty’ was the second most popular look for men. I think I know why this is.
When I first started seeing multiple women, dates would ask me about it and I would look shamefaced. This would prove what I was up to and I was surprised to find that they reacted positively, like those female teachers who can’t help adoring the naughty boy.
Of course, haughty and nonchalant would have been even better. That’s why ashamed only comes in second.
Anything that communicates “I’ve been a bad bad boy” will fire up a woman’s libido.
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