It seems that - at least in mice - all it requires is one relatively minor manipulation of a tiny bit of brain and you can turn female mice into aggressive “pelvic thrusting lotharios.” We’re not sure yet if the reverse is true too.
“All the thinking until now was that female brains can produce feminine behaviors while male brains can produce masculine behaviors, with little or no cross talk between them,” says Marc Breedlove, a neuroscientist at Michigan State University in East Lansing. “These results do suggest that, at least for mice, the brain retains circuitry to display both masculine and feminine behaviors into adulthood.”
Inside Every Girl Mouse Brain Is a Swaggering Boy Mouse [Video]: Scientific American
I’ve long noticed the “date the exciting guy when you’re younger, find the radically opposite stable nerdy guy when you’re ready to settle down and have kids” phenomenon amongst my friends. Books like Sperm Wars posit a Richard Dawkins-esque “sexy sons” evolutionary reason for this. Women are attracted to men who will produce attractive children, making the woman’s genes more likely to continue on to future generations. However, these sexy men aren’t necessarily the type to stick around and raise the kid well, so the female will find a more stable man to raise the kids, sometimes tricking him into believing that the child is his own.
I’m not sure I agree with this theory, but it’s fun to mention at parties. Still, it’s hard to deny that my female friends often do make a very sharp turn from rock star to school teacher about the time that they have, or decide that they want to have kids.
Women see masculine men as unsuitable long-term partners, new research suggests. Conversely, the psychologists from Durham and St Andrews Universities found that men with feminine facial features are seen as more committed and less likely to cheat on their partners.
Read: Women Prefer Less Macho Men For Long-Term Relationships
An analysis of literature from numerous cultures & across centuries shows that men are attracted to a woman’s waist-hip ratio, and modern science believes it knows why: women with hourglass figures have more estrogen.
The psychologists from the University of Texas today publish research showing that lovestruck men have only one thing on their minds: a woman’s WHR - waist-hip ratio, calculated by dividing waist circumference by that of the hips.
Jordan and Twiggy have something in common: both have waists that are noticeably narrower than their hips and Prof Singh has found evidence this “belle curve” is ingrained in the male brain in his studies of Playboy centrefolds, the ancient Egyptians and tests on men from Africa to the Azores.
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Because they used shadow figures and animations where at first glance the sex was not obvious, the 370 people who assessed the figures had to make assumptions about the person’s sex and masculinity or femininity. The researchers found that a person perceived as female was rated more attractive when moving in a feminine way, such as with a hip sway, or had feminine characteristics, such as a small waist-to-hip ratio.
Read: Men lust for hourglass curves, say researchers | Uk News | News | Telegraph
Read: Secret of attraction? It’s all due to the wiggle | Uk News | News | Telegraph
Helen Fielding’s “Bridget Jones’ Diary” and the Japanese Manga & hit TV show and Anime “Hana Yori Dango” are just two of the modern works I know based on the works of Jane Austen, and women eat this stuff up. And why not? the plot revolves around an ordinary woman who suddenly finds herself being swept off of her feet by two very eligible, and very rich bachelors, and she has to choose which one to go for, the very charming playboy, or the very charming nice guy.
So what is it about these men that have women falling all over themselves? I’m not really sure, but men across the world will have the chance to find out as their girlfriends drag them to one of the several dozen adaptations of Jane Austen’s works due out this year, and that’s not counting the derivative reworkings that may fly under this news article’s radar.
It might not have been faithful to the book, but when Colin Firth, as Fitzwilliam Darcy, strode out of a lake in a wet shirt and breeches, in the 1995 BBC adaptation of Pride and Prejudice, you could hear half the population applauding artistic licence.
After that now infamous scene, women across the land - single or not - said goodbye to waiting for their Prince Charming to come along and sweep them off their feet. They wanted a Mr Darcy.
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“They are easy to read and have a simplicity that is hard to get as a writer, which Austen worked hard to achieve,” says Professor Janet Todd, the general editor of the nine-volume Cambridge edition of the Works of Jane Austen.
“But it’s a surface simplicity, there is a lot more going on. It combines wish fulfilment with a sense of the unlikelihood of it happening. There is always a modification to the romantic ending which points us back to real life.”
Read: BBC NEWS | Magazine | Jane Austen - why the fuss?
Since I’m devilishly handsome and there’s nothing I can do about that, my usual pickup line of “Wanna see my yacht” may actually backfire long-term since it turns out that women don’t think men who are both handsome and rich are good husband material. Go figure.
We asked females to rate a number of different males in terms of attractiveness as a long-term partner. Females were presented with attractive, average and unattractive male faces paired with lonely-hearts advertisements implying high, medium or low socio-economic status. Highest ratings were consistently given to attractive males of medium status rather than high status. We suggest that females see physically attractive, high status males as being more likely to pursue a mating strategy rather than parenting strategy. Under particular circumstances, high socio-economic status in males can be subtly counter-productive in terms of attractiveness as a long-term partner.
read: Too good to be ‘true’? The handicap of high socio-economic status in attractive males (via BPS Research Digest)
(Perhaps someone needs to tell this short film maker. And these Lesbians.)
While those pheremone colognes you find all over the web are probably bunk, researchers at UC Berkeley have discovered a compound in male sweat that, when sniffed, causes women to become sexually aroused.
Compared to their response when sniffing a control odor (yeast), the women who sniffed androstadienone reported an improved mood and significantly higher sexual arousal, while their physiological response, including blood pressure, heart rate and breathing, also increased. This was consistent with previous studies.
read: Chemical In Male Sweat Increases Cortisol And Sexual Arousal In Heterosexual Women
The Gomlich Effect takes its name from an episode of South Park where Chef explains the massive success of boy bands.
The Gomlich Effect is [t]he law of physics that states, “If one girl screams for something, it will make other girls scream. And then, it grows exponentiously until all girls within a five-mile radius are screaming.”
Well it turns out, it really works. When shown photos of men, women rated them as being more attractive if there was a woman in the photo smiling at the man. Of course, men have known this for years - it’s easier to meet women if you’re already with women. It’s just that we’ve kept it a secret until now.
Source: Social transmission of face preferences among humans. via BPS Research Digest.
How do you know if it’s love, or if you’re just crazy? If you asked a neurological psychologist, they might not be able to answer that question. By studying brain scans of people while they’re in love & looking at either neutral images, or images of those they love (or were recently spurned by), scientists are discovering that there’s very little to distinguish love from mental illness.
“It’s not a good combination,” notes Dr. Fisher. “You’re feeling intense romantic love, you’re willing to take big risks, you’re in physical pain, obsessively thinking about a person and you’re struggling to control your rage. You’re not operating with your full range of cognitive abilities. It’s possible that part of the rational mind shuts down.”
The article also offers hints on how to rekindle the fire - do something new.
In one study, couples were assigned a weekly activity they both found new and exciting — such as sailing or taking an art class. Another group did pleasant but familiar activities, such as dinner with friends. Based on answers to relationship tests, the couples doing new things showed far more improvement in the quality of their marriage after 10 weeks than couples who did the same things every week.
source: Is It Love or Mental Illness? They’re Closer Than You Think (wsj.com)
