During the summer, much research about the nature of attraction
between opposite sexes has been published in various newspapers. I have tried
to make some sense of them. Here I hope to show you the conclusion I have reached
after wading through this stream of information. Since this is a blog on practical
ethics, and I confess that I do believe that we have some kind of moral obligation to be happy. So, I hope that
readers will find some useful tips for having a more successful and happy relationship.
One piece
of research showed that women with a bigger chin have a stronger tendency to
cheat because of the high amount of testosterone in their blood.
Testosterone is in a higher percentage in men’s bodies than in women so I presume
the tendency to cheat must be even stronger in men than in women.
Another study claimed that two women in five
cheat on their partners, and just two men in ten
If we conjoin these two findings, we might conclude that there are many women
with big chins, or otherwise cheating in women is not just a function of
testosterone levels.
which has shown that “most men find most women at least somewhat sexually
attractive, whereas most women do not find most men sexually attractive at all”
and another study discovered that
men lose part of their cognitive abilities after talking even just for seven
minutes to an attractive woman, but women do not.
have sex (or at least cheat) because of some instinctive hormonal cause, but
women are moved by some other mysterious motivation. Mysterious or less
hormones-based.
And here there is an interesting book to read
which helps us to add another piece to the puzzle of human attraction.
According to this study carried at the University of Texas on 1006 subjects, women
have sex for reasons much more different than pure physical attraction. For
example, 84% declared that they have sex
partners to carry out household chores” and a 10% who said they have sex
because the guy bought them a nice meal or had spent money on them, so
emotional blackmail and
gratefulness are two reasons.
They showed how women have sex also for some “humanitarian” reasons (“I
had sex because I was sorry for him”) or for the sake of general well being
(like release from migraine or a
clearer complexion).
which showed how women are attracted to smart men
attracted to women who make them lose their minds who then manipulate them in
order to get what they want and eventually reward them with sex. And since the things
that a woman needs are many and various, they tend to have much more affairs
than men do!
This phenomenon may have an increasing impact
on societies because women tend to become more beautiful generation after
generation while men do not.
Apparently, this is because beauty is an hereditary characteristic on the
maternal line and beautiful women have much more chances of finding a partner.
to smart men, or at least who are smart enough to realise that what women
really want is a rich housewife, or better, a rich house-husband.
make ourselves more successful and therefore happier? At the end of the day,
beautiful women and smart men are not a majority, so presumably there are many
people around who have a quite unhappy (and here I assume that being
unsuccessful with the opposite sex brings to unhappiness ) sexual and
relationship life.
novels and adding to that the vision of all the “Desperate Housewives” episodes:
this should help them understand what a perfect gentleman plus house-husband
should be like.
(and I would add that smarter women and more handsome men wouldn’t be bad too)
are hardly improving without using plastic surgeries and smart drugs. These enhancement
interventions seem to be appropriate for people already born, but hopefully in
the future we will be able to genetically enhance characteristics of our
children in order to make them smarter, more attractive and, why not, with
small chins!
preferences and tendencies, so that men could be attracted to less beautiful
women and, vice versa, in order to make women more concerned about beauty in
men than money and smartness. How we should change our natural tendencies is a
difficult question. And one that will require practical ethics. But what is
clear is that we face a lot of evolutionary and behavioural barriers rooted in
our nature as humans to happiness in human relationships.
The issues you raise are not just stereotypical. They are also constant problems for individuals who know they are attracted to people they shouldn’t be. But as it is not easy to change stereotypical attraction, also to change one’s personal attraction is extremely difficult. I did read some nice suggestions on Pandalous on how to change who you are attracted to: http://www.pandalous.com/topic/being_attracted_to_the
Some of them might also apply to the more general case.
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