Louise Brooks
“The Technique of the Love Affair makes, I am bitterly afraid, considerable sense. If only it had been placed in my hands years ago, maybe I could have been successful instead of just successive.”
Dorothy Parker
In 1928 Doris Langley Moore wrote The Technique of the Love Affair at the age of 23. Langley Moore was a Byron scholar, a costume designer, a novelist, a friend of George Bernard Shaw’s and a a newlywed when she penned the tongue-in-cheek guide to making men fall in love with you. Modeled after Plato’s Symposium, it was an immediate sensation and scandal in England.
Long out of print, the book was rereleased ten years ago, and received a positive reception from critics. Reviewing it for the New York Times, Liesl Schillinger wrote:
If enough women read it, there may yet be time for the Irresistible Woman to avoid going the way of the dodo.
The book…is a virtual cocktail shaker on paper, written by a young woman who styles herself ”A Gentlewoman,” and it could very possibly undo the years of damage that earnest flocks of pastel volumes have worked on formerly swashbuckling female psyches.
Reading about the SMP of the 1920s, I was immediately struck by the similarities to our own era. From the book’s jacket:
Its readers were the so-called New Women who emerged during World War I. The subject of cartoons in The New Yorker and Punch, the typical modern woman lived in a bachelor flat in the city; she earned her own living and believed in “sexual freedom” (although she might not have known exactly what that meant). She smoked cigarettes, drank cocktails, and swore in public. She even looked different: Slim and uncorseted, she wore her skirts short and her hair bobbed. To all appearances, she was physically, legally, and emotionally emancipated. The generation gap between the woman of the 1920s and her Victorian mother was all but unbridgeable, and a girl could no longer look to her elders for advice.
Langley Moore understood the sexual economy of the time – a male shortage after WWI resulted in a sex ratio that increased female intrasexual competition. Her book was meant to give women an edge over their less prepared flapper sisters. Technique offers specific guidelines for the newfangled practice called “dating.”
In one generation the Byzantine rituals of Victorian courtship had undergone a revolution: single women no longer extended invitations to suitors to “call” or held “at homes.” Now even respectable women went unchaperoned to nightclubs, restaurants, and movies. The modern date was born, and the once neutral telephone became an instrument of both despair and bliss.
…It was a time when men and women had dalliances or affairs, not relationships…This was an age in which it was important not to be earnest; flippancy and cynicism were sane responses to an insane war.
Schilllinger:
Where the Rules girl seeks a clothesline of her own, the Technique woman wants frolic, Champagne, banter and devotion, although she knows that ”it is generally only in the course of a light affair that the serious one springs up.”
Sounds like hookup culture, no?
Still, she is a sensualist who courts experience to perfect her craft, as well as a realist who knows that ”it is useless to tell men we are independent, and then beg them to come and dance with us,” so one might as well admit the need to scheme all along.
This is the refreshingly honest dissimilarity – the acknowledgement of sex differences allows the open sharing of the secrets to tripping a man’s switches, which can not really have changed much in just 80 years. Keep in mind that this guide is about sexual attraction, not finding a husband. It assumes that men are in a position of strategic advantage – no assumption of apex fallacy here.
Here is a summary of Langley Moore’s strategy – all written by her or paraphrased.
Ten General Principles
1. We dare not give reign to our generosity, because men soon tire of what is soon obtained.
2. A woman has not made a conquest until she finds herself pursued. Her conquest and the pursuit are synonymous; there cannot be one without the other.
3. Your surest weapon and most powerful spell lie in his own hunger for possession of you. Until you fulfill your ambition, you must always remain unattainable.
4. A man does not often want what nobody else would have. He covets what others have already found desirable. The more proof he has that you are sought after, the more convinced he will be that you are worth seeking.
5. You must not let his love stagnate the moment he has obtained you, but subtly rouse him to fresh pursuit whenever he shows apathy.
6. The most certain way of losing prestige is to let a man see that he occupies a more important place in your mind than you in his, but a woman who is infatuated will find it difficult to conceal her feelings.
7. The knowledge that there is a soul desperate with devotion before them can only excite pity or amusement, not love. In her abjectness and anxiety she ceases even to be congenial company. Her unhappiness is tedious, and he begins to chafe under his responsibility.
8. Never remonstrate with a man whose desire is flagging. Cease to see him, cease to communicate with him, let him hear rumours of others’ interest in you. If he has any lingering residue of possessive passion for you, these measures will bring him back to your side, and if not, you are acquitted without indignity.
9. It is not just physical desire that he seeks. He also wants intimacy. When he cherishes and protects you, enjoy it. Draw him into slight intimacies that seem charming, he will want more.
10. Do not give a man an idea which may prove disadvantageous to you. E.g., that he finds a certain other woman more fascinating that yourself, that he will cheat on you, etc. If you show that you expect infidelity, you will get it.
The Fundamental Principle of Femininity
1. Contrast is the keynote. Be different from the man in female ways.
2. Avoid being nasty about other females or blabbing their secrets.
3. If a man is able, he enjoys the burden of providing for you, and enjoys the feeling that you are dependent, his dependent. Be dependent materially and independent spiritually.
4. To sustain admiration for an indefinite period, display good nature, a sense of honor and a capacity for friendship. But never show yourself to be completely unselfish in your devotion to him.
5. Refinement of taste is an important virtue. Avoid indelicate conversation and coarse language.
Men to Avoid
1. Men whose prestige is much greater than your own. You need to feel at ease, even a little superior, to enjoy yourself.
2. Men with whom you would always have to make the first move.
3. Men who must conceal you
4. Men who are dissolute
Tactics
1. Be interesting
- Have poise of manner (free from self-consciousness or arrogance)
- Don’t laugh with abandon, becoming ungainly
- Don’t become vehement in discussion
- Be lively without being obstreperous.
- Be spirited but never carried away.
2. Display accomplishments and allurements without calling attention to them.
- Be cheerful, free from hint of grief or dejection. Misery long sustained begets pity without sexual love.
3. Dress well.
- The less women’s clothing resembles their own, the more men like it.
“Whether is was the first cause or not, from the earliest times one impt. Function of clothing was to promote erotic activity: to attract men and women to one another, thus ensuring the survival of the species. One basic purpose of costume, therefore, is to distinguish men from women.
Alison Lurie, The Language of Clothes, 1981
- Dress like the women around you, only more sumptuously. Originality and distinction makes men uncomfortable.
- If a woman is not groomed to perfection from head to foot, she will lack the necessary self-confidence.
4. Display a talent for flattery.
- Seem attentive to his conversation; conceal signs of boredom, but don’t look too eagerly engrossed.
- Draw a man out to speak about himself, but never attempt to probe him for secrets. This will make him think of you as more of a friend.
- Don’t tell him secrets of yours until you are sure he likes you.
5. Be more generous with words than actions.
- Actions should seem more indifferent than infatuated. If you are always flattering a man, he will see that you want him badly, and stop pursuing.
- If you are always cold and casual, he will think you don’t want him at all, and a passion cannot flourish when rebuffed at every turn.
- Many women [are] rude in their speech but complacent in every act. Better to spare no kindness that the tongue can utter.
- Express gladness to see him, but show no desire for his company in any of your actions, i.e. pursuit.
- When he is with you, let him feel strong, courageous, generous.
- If you signal to him that you expect to be treated poorly, he will comply. Men will give you whatever you seem to ask of them, so ask much.
Methods of Approach
1. Don’t approach a man who is engrossed in another woman.
2. Any appearance of haste is unseemly and may defeat the purpose.
3. Don’t single a man out for special glances or flattery, unless you know you will have no opportunity later. Be encouraging at the second or third meeting, giving a hint of sexual interest.
4. Being good at flirting lets him know that you are used to the attentions of men.
5. Do not respond as much as he would like; make a little show of surrender. Always give a little less of yourself than is wanted, a little less than satisfies.
6. If he is indifferent, give it up immediately. An unattached man who is indifferent to your flattery is indifferent to you.
7. In a group of men, be delightful and personal with each of them. Don’t single any one man out for particular attention unless you can do it without being observed. Be so kind to the women that your attention to the men does not stand out. If there is a woman likely to resent you, be extremely amiable to her, and distinguish her by all the courtesy you can show.
Errors Common to Love Affairs
1. Allowing yourself to be won without adequate preparation, or taken unaware. The occasion of your surrender should be prearranged and have the ideal background. Do not let him think his victory an easy one. What he wins, or thinks he wins, easily, he will not esteem.
2. Attempting to arouse a fatigued or worried man to demonstrations of emotion. By taking the role of supplicant you make him feel that the right order of things has been upset, and give him a mortifying memory of yourself. Before a man has declared himself, make no concessions of any importance, but once he has done so, it is very unwise to demand repetitions and confirmations, for it will indicate over-anxiety.
“It is proverbial that after a woman tells a man she loves him, he assumes she’ll continue to do so until she says otherwise. In contrast, women seem to require periodic updates on a man’s emotional temperature. Fear and anxiety, and the behavior they engender, are lethal to love and well-being.”
3. Calling attention to one’s own defects. Conceal flaws if possible and do not apologize for them. In a love affair, you should display your assurance and conceal your humility.
Langley Moore’s only nod to marriage:
“Even those who would reform or abolish matrimony are prone to forsake their principles when they are seized with a passion for one who cannot be otherwise obtained.”
There is much wisdom here, and little I would disagree with. I have used many of these suggestions to great effect myself. Unfortunately, feminine and masculine roles have largely been lost since DLM wrote her book. Women are not practiced at communicating interest and attraction, and men are not practiced at reading those cues. Much of what DLM recommends will be most effective with men displaying a high degree of self-confidence. Then again, self-confidence is a strong female attractor, and she provides an excellent roadmap for engaging those men. It is interesting to note that Langley Moore speaks of the benefits of preselection, playful teasing, and a bit of push pull as important tools.
Finally, as noted above, Langley Moore has written a how-to for passionate love affairs. I see no reason why one’s approach to relationships should not be the same, as exciting a man’s sexual interest is crucial for both. The key is to follow her 1920′s guidelines for when to have sex, not contemporary ones.
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Susan…”if (another woman’s) weighted score is 85 and mine is 65 her liking him is not going to affect me in the least.”
One theory holds that it might not affect *you* directly, but if you mate with someone who is considered unattractive by most women, then (to the extent that the unattractiveness factors are genetic), any sons you have are also likely to be considered unattractive by most women (to the extent that the attractiveness/unattractiveness metric is also inherited)…hence, nonconformity of attractiveness factors is a big Darwinian FAIL.
@david foster
That makes sense, but wouldn’t that apply equally to men as well?
Also, I can see having second thoughts if everyone says the guy I like is gross, but preselection generally refers to women liking men only because he is liked by other women. Which would really be the inverse of what you said, right? That you might like a guy more based on others’ perception that he can give you sexy sons?
@ Iggles,
You ok, love? You seem a little bit paranoid. You might want to check that out. Remember, guys, if you say something that is not pleasant you might just some previous poster that is more in the scene of what is happening in the college world, than the accuser, but beware!
Still funny.
”Also, I can see having second thoughts if everyone says the guy I like is gross, but preselection generally refers to women liking men only because he is liked by other women. Which would really be the inverse of what you said, right? That you might like a guy more based on others’ perception that he can give you sexy sons?”
For a woman to have sex with a man he has to be pre-selected. He’s pre-selected based on his looks. After the age of 25 most women don’t really care much about pre-selection because they’re working on a tight schedule and they can’t be fussy with the guy who is open to marriage and children.
Its the women below the age of 25 who I see discussing wether a guy is hot or not. They literally have this sort of all-girls council where they discuss who is good enough to date, who is good enough to have a FWB etc.
Susan…the evolutionary argument would apply to men to a lesser degree because they have higher reproductive capacity (in the sense of # of children fathered or mothered) than women, so hence the stakes in any one sexual encounter are lower. Also, IF infertility is more common among women than men (don’t know that that’s true…just hypothesizing), then it would make sense to rely more on direct visual impressions of probable fertility.
C S Lewis apparently believed that male views of female attractiveness are indeed culturally-influenced: in The Screwtape Letters, he has his devil applauding the cultural preference for very thin women, arguing that this kind of attractiveness has the diabolical benefit of being very transient and hence promoting human unhappiness.
@Susan
Great story. Women should include extended eye contact, smiling and even approaching guys in their repertoire.
Yeah, way too late: GOT Margaery Tyrell. Holy hot.
I just spent some time researching preselection, social proof and herd behavior. Once you weed out the PUA hits, there isn’t much left. Preselection is strictly a PUA term.
Social proof was a concept coined by Cialdini, in the context of marketing and advertising consumer goods. It is demonstrated by things like testimonials, and is an important element of persuasion.
Herd behavior, aka group think has been widely studied, but I could not find any references indicating that women are more prone than men to it. It refers generally to circumstances that arise suddenly requiring a decision. Studies show that people are most likely to follow what others appear to be doing with conviction. For example, in a fire or emergency, nearly everyone runs in a pack in the same direction.
The idea of preselection, then, means that if a guy is physically surrounded by beautiful women in a nightspot, other women will accept the judgment of those women as valuing this male highly. They make a quick first impression that tells them he must have more going on than meets the eye, for example. This is possible because women value more than looks, so a guy surrounded by women who is not good looking may assumed to be famous or rich. Perhaps he is hosting an awesome party up the road.
In a situation where a woman does have time to evaluate a man and determine an independent assessment of his attractiveness, there is no indication that the previous sighting of him with other women will take precedence over her own perceptions.
Preselection is strictly a “first impression” gambit. It should not work in social circles or situations where parties may be acquainted or see one another more than once.
Sue: “I don’t think it works super well for women to ask men out – opinions vary on that. But I do think it works very well for women to make clear that the risk of asking them out is zero.”
I can’t agree with this enough.
What women often think of disinterest is usually just a risk calculation, deemed to be too high. Metaphorically club men over the head with nuclear IOIs.
@ OTC
Oh yeah she was rather hot. Creepy, but hot.
@Susan
It’s about being confident in yourself in the absence of all of it.
“I thought the problem was inflated self-esteem. If this is your definition of Inner Game, don’t we have a surfeit among women?”
No, because a great many aren’t confident without reassurance that they are attractive, or without validation in the form of friends and family cheering on their choices (no matter how good or bad those might be), or in the face of hard questions about their choices, or in the face of potential rejection. These are all things that are externally delivered. Take all the validation away and see what happens. As Mireille aluded to, the tendency to feel torn in two by feminist narratives (and hookup culture) and traditionalist ones, isn’t an issue if you have made your peace. How confident can you really be, if you feel like you should try to “have it all” because you can’t decide who to believe? It should be plainly obvious that a lot of the problems we’ve talked about at this blog are due in no small part to women accepting the status quo at face value- if you aren’t confident enough in your own self worth regardless of what the result of your choice, you will feel you have no other option but to accept what you’re told is the “right” way.
@Susan
“I know, I was actually making a joke. Not a very good one, I admit. ”
Don’t feel bad, this can happen to just about anyone.
I mean, it never happened to me, obviously, but to many other’s…yeah, all the time (so I hear)
good night
@ Susan
Here’s a study by Buss with which shows just how brutal female preselection (or rather the lack thereof) is, and the fact that men prefer not to have competition.
http://homepage.psy.utexas.edu/homepage/group/busslab/pdffiles/mere%20presence.pdf
I’m going through Skyler Place’s studies (which referenced the Buss study) though, and will see why they came up with the opposite conclusions. The fact that they used videos instead of images suggest that they might be better designed than the Buss study.
@INTJ
Bless your heart! I really appreciate that! I have to run out, but will view the Buss study later. I look forward to seeing if you come up with anything interesting.
@ Susan
Read through the first Skyler Place study. I think it provides strong evidence that being sociable is very important. But I don’t think it’s necessarily directly measuring pre-selection. It used speed dating videos from Germany, where the couples were either mutually interested in each other or mutually disinterested in each other. When the same person was in an interaction of mutual interest, the viewer would rate that person higher than when that person was in an interaction of mutual disinterest. The thing here of course is that mutual disinterest can change the person’s body language and make the person seem less sociable.
https://www.psychologie.hu-berlin.de/prof/per/pdf/2010/PlaceEHB2010.pdf
The Buss study INTJ linked to actually also tells us about the benefit of being accompanied by same-sex friends as well. See the histogram in Figure 1. For women, being out with male friends is bad but there’s no significant difference between a lone female and a female in a gaggle of women.
In comparison, a lone guy is shit-city but even male friends provides a significant advantage in desirability. There’s a good lesson here for men: male friends are your wingmen. It makes sense, a man has the most pre-selection if he’s with attractive women, but attractive female friends or male friends still provides a filter for assholes and jerks.
One thing I noted from the Buss study is the “there are no good men” effect. The average rating of men and women by men was about the same. But whereas women rated other women as 6s, they rated men as 4s. No wonder I’ve noticed such a big entitlement mentality in UT Austin women.
HanSolo
Lol, the way this registered in my head was just too funny not to mention:
“If women wish to meet men, they should include talking to men in the range of their skills”
I gave a guy my phone number yesterday, so I’m all about women being more proactive in showing interest in men. I practically melted when he smiled at me, so I knew I had to make a move on him.
@A Definite Beta Guy
That is so obvious it is funny.
@Sassy
You do like to share!
Good job.
@J
“My then 2 yo son once said to me as he peered over the rim of the bassinet at his sleeping brother, “I hate him because he’s boring. Everyone said he’d play with me, but he’s stupid and stuck-up. It was better before he came. Let’s take him back.”
WIN
@HanSolo
Thanks, I’m glad you ‘tried to listen.’ It WAS online – I can’t believe I didn’t think to look there earlier. DERP
(But at this stage, you want me to experiment the way you want a North Korean boom-stick in one if your eye cavities. My
guinea pigdad and I agree I should have gone for more flour instead of being cheap and using the wrong sort last time, so I’m building my confidence/skill back up before anybody else has to choke down more “lime biscuits.”)“This is crazy talk.
Unless you live in some 3rd world ghetto maybe.”
… *looks for a related post from Ted D*
*found it!*
My mother the English teacher has stories of kids fighting over stupid stuff -and parents supporting the nonsense.
@Ted D
“I actually keep a piece of lead pipe under the driver seat of my car. Anyone trying to pull me out of the car over road rage or whatever is going to get a pipe to the head if I get a chance.”
+1
My (great?)grandmother had a huge stick. I used to not know why it was there.
@Susan Walsh
“She told my daughter, “I’m going to stare at him until he comes over here.” She literally looked at him hard for ten minutes.”
OK, I can get that much right.
LOL! I asked my mom if we could throw my brother in the garbage and get a new one.
I also stood on him, with all of my three-year-old weight, when he was a week old. My mom doesn’t even believe in spanking, but you can bet I got spanked for that. She said she didn’t even think, it was just a knee-jerk reaction.
@INTJ and Susan
Looking at the Skyler Place article, it’s interesting that the do rate their desire to meet the person in the video on a 1-9 scale for both a ONS/STR and exclusive-LTR and the men increased their rating of the women where mutual interest/attraction was perceived by about 0.4 points relative to the ones where not mutual int/attraction was perceived.
Going back to the original question about how much preselection or other mens’ opinions of a woman’s beauty can affect another man’s rating of her, it is hard to say since they don’t explicitly ask for the participants to rank beauty, only desirability of STR and LTR. Looks are certainly a big factor in desiring an STR but so is the perceived willingness and sensualness of the woman in question. So, by the men upping their desire for an STR (and LTR) by about 0.4 when interest/attraction is present it is hard to say whether it is due to his perceiving her beauty as higher due to interest from other men or whether seeing her have mutual interest/attraction with men is a signal that she would be enjoyable and willing company.
I think that the fact that it only increases by about 0.4 (on a 1-9 scale) and a good portion of that could be due to perceiving her as willing and fun company is in agreement with my assertion that men have at most only a very minimal increase at most in the perception of her looks due to what other men think.
This is all speculation and inference though because this study did not explicitly ask for the speed dating women to be rated for their looks by the study participants.
It is interesting that they found that the men were more likely to change their rating of wanting an S/LTR with the woman when males and females more attractive than themselves were involved in the interaction.
@ HanSolo
I think that’s why the Buss study is much more relevant to preselection. And it shows female preselection occurring, but not male preselection.
Hey guys, want to increase your SMV without effort?
Grab some meggings…new leggings for men. Let the world know that you, uh….
I’m not exactly sure what these things are supposed to do for you. The leisure suits of whatever decade we’re in?
http://living.msn.com/style-beauty/simply-chic-blog-post/?post=da8b0fd9-6f1b-43c9-aefd-d548ed717b0d
Well, ‘Cockneys vs Zombies’ gets around a 7 out of 10, I think.
I will rent this based on your knowledge.:D
I’m still trying to find a good movie to recommend you, that you might like to compensate you for Big Man Japan, although I still can’t tell if the movie was good or bad it just was for me at least
@Sai
Well, glad my Martian* tendencies came in useful and helped you find the recipe. I’m sure you will perfect it soon.
*Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus
@OTC and INTJ
Too many Tyr and Tir names in Game of Thrones. I still have to look up the dad’s name. lol
@Susan
By the way she poses she actually has the “air” of Nefertiti. Some women just have this trait I think is called Glamour because it feels like an spell they cast on men (0r women) even if objectively speaking they are not beauties…
LOL, yeah. I terrorized my sister when she was a baby. Having a younger sibling is tough for kids, their throne is ripped out from underneath them and they’re expected to serve the new overlord.
Hey guys, want to increase your SMV without effort?
Grab some meggings…new leggings for men. Let the world know that you, uh….
I’m not exactly sure what these things are supposed to do for you. The leisure suits of whatever decade we’re in?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RtmbZnXSQ7k
I’m the only older sibling that adored his siblings? :/
I liked them as babies because they were cute to stare at, I could do that for hours, their cries sounded cute to me and I loved helping to soothe them , even my colic little brother who used to spent hours crying for no reason at all, in fact I used to resent my mother when she wouldn’t let me help her more when they were too tiny for my toddlers hands. I used to think that every two years I will get a new brother and sister and consider them “my presents” and when mom had the last one and two years passed (I was 9) “where is my new baby” she told me, “You will have them”
@ HanSolo
I think the author got “tired” of coming up with unique names.
My daughter wants a baby…I’m not sure that I can handle a baby…My wife may or may not want a baby…my son does not want a baby.
I think I would take Kaley’s statement at face value. In my view, it would place the ball in her court if she was interested in studying with me at some point. Flirting is easy. Lots of women do it. It’s not a sign of ‘I like you’. It’s a sign of ‘I want your attention’.
My daughter wants a baby…I’m not sure that I can handle a baby…My wife may or may not want a baby…my son does not want a baby.
I recently read that most people regret the kids they didn’t had, than the other way around, think about it.
Yes, but there is a different dynamic when you have three kids…one is left out.
So, you really want to shoot for four if you are going to have three.
So, you really want to shoot for four if you are going to have three.
Heh that is what I told my husband “2 or 4 I don’t want uneven numbers in my family” his answer is that his best friend has 2 siblings and there was a lot of manipulation,backstabbing and last minutes bribes and it was very fun for all involved…so there is upsides to every situation I guess.
@SayWhaat
I’m not INTJ but he did provide the actual paper in 465 that Susan referenced about social proof making women more attractive for STR and LTR. I provided an analysis of it 473. Of course, you are free to analyze it too. Upping the woman’s attractiveness for an S/LTR (not looks) by 0.4 on a 1-9 scale isn’t much and it doesn’t even address the original topic that was thrown out that men aren’t affected much or at all by what other men think of a woman’s looks. Plus, there is the other factor of her seeming interested and thus more enjoyable and willing to enter into an S/LTR (as opposed to the interest of the men being shown) that also may be contributing to that increase in attractiveness.
Since you are into “stating it as it is” will you now acknowledge that this study at most says that there is a very minor effect on the perceived attractiveness of a woman for a relationship (short and long) due to men’s interest in her?
Thanks in advance.
@Susan
Please see my comment 473 and respond. I think that my analysis of it showed that the following statement is not an accurate interpretation of the study, that only gave 0.4 extra points of desirability for S/LTR (not looks btw) on 1-9 scale and much of that may be attributable in part to other reasons I mentioned besides the interest of the men:
“Clearly, men take their cues from dominant men. They determine who’s hot according to what the most socially dominant males find attractive.”
It will be interesting to see INTJ’s or anyone else’s analysis of the Buss paper.
@Susan
“Preselection is strictly a “first impression” gambit. It should not work in social circles or situations where parties may be acquainted or see one another more than once.”
This would fit well with the observation that most guys are unnoticeable upon entering a room yet have the ability to get laid given enough time to charm.
I’ve heard quite a few women express “i didn’t notice my SO until after he started talking to me”.
Here’s another paper on preselection. The sample size is too small to conclusively rule out male preselection, but it shows clear cut female preselection.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022103109001048
@ SayWhaat
Just noticed this statement I had overlooked earlier. Most gamma males are natural nexters. MGTOW is the default state for many gamma males.
You can’t “next” a girl if you’re not in the game. MGTOW is just nexting the game.
@Susan
Sex Ed 101, 1920s style, courtesy of the Surgeon General of the U.S. Public Health Service, and the Library of Congress:
http://www.missabigail.com/advice/petting-sex-advice/2011/09/personal-hygiene-for-young-women-and-men-1920s/
For the boys:
Men who indulge in loose sexual conduct, not only dissipate their splendid energies, but expose themselves to disease and suffering. (6:46)
Carelessness and promiscuousness in sex habits disseminate gonorrhea and so cause many serious operations and endless misery among innocent women. (7:14)
Have you the right to demand honor and purity of the girl you ask in marriage unless YOU are willing to offer HER a clean life? (9:22)
For the girls:
Promiscuous sexual relations often result in the spread of two diseases, gonorrhea and syphilis. (7:06)
Before you marry, be sure that both you and your mate are clean and healthy in body and mind. (8:14)
The happiest homes result from wise mating, healthy thinking and healthy living. (8:38)
Interesting stuff, from a pre-feminist era to boot! Single standard, anyone? The emphasis for boys was strength and manhood, but very different from what’s promoted today. The girls seemed to get all of the technical aspects of reproduction (and rightly so), as well as the importance of motherhood and childrearing.
I’ve heard the 1920s described as the 1st Sexual Revolution, but promiscuity back then was nothing like it was in the 1970s or 1990s. These kinds of newsreels would’ve been aimed at urban young people. I think the U.S. was still ~50% rural back in those days.
Also:
http://school.discoveryeducation.com/schooladventures/womenofthecentury/decadebydecade/1920s.html
I don’t know if Dorothy Parker attended college, but apparently women were earning 39% of college degrees even back in 1928! Not sure if they could do much with them in the working world, though…
Han Solo, right now it is 11:10 PM and I am sitting in a company car, heading home from work and typing this on my phone. To be frank, the onus is not on me to pick apart the study, but I’ll look it over and your response as well. I can’t promise I’ll get back to you tomorrow either but I’ll see if I can by this weekend.
I’m a busy girl, so no promises! But I will try.
@Mr. Solo #489
Agreed, and very diplomatic of you. A study should be evaluated on the merits and quality of the research that went into it. Provided the data was gathered properly, reasonable people can disagree on the interpretation of the results.
That being said, the right honorable Mr. INTJ does not extend that same courtesy to Susan or anyone else around here, nor does he have a consistent or logical approach whatsoever to statistical data. Confirmation bias, par excellence IMO.
Ms. SayWhaat was wrong about one thing, though. He never has discredited any research presented at HUS by Susan, period. That requires reading and asking questions!
Susan I think you should check this out as he makes a great point that I haven’t seen brought up around here before. And since we already treat the SMP like it’s own economy anyways it all makes great sense.
http://captaincapitalism.blogspot.ca/2012/12/how-women-deny-women-market-price.html
This has happened to me more than once or twice and because of it I probably passed on numerous interested women that I thought were attractive but got exhausted trying to decipher real IOI’s and BS. I think this also explains the beta guys want the slutty girls meme. The sluts reassure the beta guys every step of the way….
@Sai
He was a very funny kid; still is.
@Olive
OMG, I’ll bet that was a reflexive action! I don’t believe in spanking either, but when my younger son squirmed out of my grip in a parking lot and almost got hit by a car, I swept him up into my arms and immediately cracked his ass for him. Sometimes, it just happens.
Also, IF infertility is more common among women than men ….
It’s not. It’s a female issue about 40% of the time, male another 40% of the time and a shared issue 20% of the time.
@ INTJ, mgtw’s aren’t all gammas. I’ve met hardcore US marines living as mgtw’s. Most of the other mgtw’s i’ve met so far are good-looking betas. Also met former PUA’s.
@Ana
Cockneys vs Zombies is definitely worth watching when in a good mood for some really good laughs. I believe that I have provided all the vocabulary that you will need. There’s a fair amount of effin’ ‘n’ blindin’ but it’s a Cockney* film, if you’ve watched Lock-Stock or Snatch, it’s in that ball-park / on that cricket-pitch.
*a Cockney geezer is a man from the east end of London, born within the sound of Bow Bells. Hence the name of the retirement home for coffin dodgers. Strong loyalty to the community, but little to the law. Kind of like Scousers, the Liverpudlian version (from Liverpool).
Speaking of Bow Bells
Have you heard the nursery rhyme ‘Oranges and Lemons’? It puts words to the rhytms of the peals of old London churches. Your son might like it as it is usually performed with a play chop to the neck at the end – cue squeals of laughter:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oranges_and_Lemons
in all it’s nuclear sweetness (not for da menz) but lacking ‘the chop’ at the end
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=azAZoF0rxe4
@JP
“Grab some meggings…new leggings for men. Let the world know that you, uh….
I’m not exactly sure what these things are supposed to do for you. The leisure suits of whatever decade we’re in?”
…
I don’t like any fashions nowadays anyway, but… I just what.
@HanSolo, @INTJ
I’m available this morning to take a look at the preselection stuff. Sorry for the delay, busy time of year and all that.
You can’t “next” a girl if you’re not in the game. MGTOW is just nexting the game.
Haha, yeah, that’s really just like saying, “Next!” and then returning to your video game. Or if you’re a woman, your knitting and cats (which doesn’t sound so bad…)
Actually, I think the principle of feeling like, “Being alone is MUCH preferable to being with someone who I don’t find attractive/doesn’t treat me well” is a good one for both men and women.
May I suggest that not all men are like that?
I believe these tactics would work well on a man who has high self confidence with women. It would show that she is worthy of his high status.
For those less confident, I believe this will cause intimidation. The principle of least interest is the main factor I consider.
I would relate this to alpha vs. beta. with these tactics working well on alpha. Of course everyone will be somewhere along the spectrum.
@Han Solo, @INTJ
Skyler Place expanded and repeated his study this year:
http://www.skylerplace.com/pdfs/bowers.be.2012.pdf
The subjects rated physical attractiveness (rather than STR attractiveness) and LTR attractiveness. From the study:
What is the value of mate copying?
What is the risk of mate copying?
Why are people who are taken perceived as more attractive?
Conclusion:
Interesting tidbit:
In 1882, the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche was wandering around Italy alone. In Genoa he received a letter from his friend Paul Rée, a Prussian philosopher whom he admired, recounting his discussions with a remarkable young Russian woman, Lou von Salomé, in Rome. Salomé was there on holiday with her mother; Rée had managed to accompany her on long walks through the city, unchaperoned, and they had had many conversations. Her ideas on God and Christianity were quite similar to Nietzsche’s, and when Rée had told her that the famous philosopher was a friend of his, she had insisted that he invite Nietzsche to join them. In subsequent letters Rée described how mysteriously captivating Salomé was, and how anxious she was to meet Nietzsche. The philosopher soon went to Rome.
When Nietzsche finally met Salomé, he was overwhelmed. She had the most beautiful eyes he had ever seen, and during their first long talk those eyes lit up so intensely that he could not help feeling there was something erotic about her excitement. Yet he was also confused : Salomé kept her distance, and did not respond to his compliments. What a devilish young woman. A few days later she read him a poem of hers, and he cried : her ideas about life were so like his own. Deciding to seize the moment, Nietzsche proposed marriage. (He did not know that Rée had done so as well.) Salomé declined. She was interested in philosophy, life, adventure, not marriage. Undaunted, Nietzsche continued to court her.
(later)
Yet when he again proposed marriage, she scolded him as conventional: it was Nietzsche, after all, who had who had developed a philosophical defense of the superman, the man above everyday morality, yet Salomé was was by nature far less conventional than she was. Her firm, uncompromising manner only deepened the spell she cast over him, as did her hint of cruelty. When she finally left him, making it clear that she had no intention of marrying him, Nietzsche was devastated. As an antidote to his pain, he wrote ‘Thus Spoke Zarathustra’, a book full of subliminal eroticism and deeply inspired by his talks with her. From then on, Salomé was known throughout Europe as the woman who had broken Nietzsche’s heart.
(later)
One man wrote of Salomé, “There was something terrifying about her embrace. Looking at you with her radiant blue eyes, she would say, ‘The reception of semen is for me the height of ecstasy’. And she had an insatiable appetite for it. She was completely amoral … a vampire.” The Swedish psychotherapist Paul Bjerre, one of her later conquests, wrote, “I think Nietzsche was right when he said that Lou was a thoroughly evil woman. Evil however in the Goethean sense: evil that produces good …. She may have destroyed lives and marriages, but her presence was exciting.”
The two emotions that almost every male felt in the presence of Lou Andreas-Salomé were confusion and excitement. People were intoxicated by her strange mix of the masculine and the feminine; she was beautiful, with a radiant smile and a graceful, flirtatious manner, but her independence and her intensely analytical nature made her seem oddly male. This ambiguity was expressed in her eyes, which were both coquettish and probing. It was confusion that kept men curious and interested: no other woman was like this. They wanted to know more. The excitement stemmed from her ability to stir up repressed desires. She was a complete nonconformist, and to be involved with her was to break all kinds of taboos. Her masculinity made the relationship seem vaguely homosexual; her slightly cruel, slightly domineering streak could stir up masochistic yearnings, as it did in Nietzsche. Salomé radiated forbidden sexuality. Her powerful effect on men – the lifelong infatuations, the suicides (there were several), the periods of intense creativity, the descriptions of her as a vampire or a devil – attest to the obscure depths of the psyche that she was able to reach and disturb.
The Masculine Dandy succeeds by reversing the normal pattern of male superiority in matters of love and seduction. A man’s apparent independence, his capacity for detachment, often seems to give him the upper hand in the dynamic between men and women. A purely feminine woman will arouse desire, but is always vulnerable to the man’s capricious loss of interest; a purely masculine woman, on the other hand, will not arouse that interest at all. Follow the path of the Masculine Dandy, however, and you neutralize all a man’s powers. Never give completely of yourself; while you are passionate and sexual, always retain an air of independence and self-possession. You might move on to the next man, or so he will think. You have other, more important matters to concern yourself with, such as your work. Men do not how to fight women who use their own weapons against them; they are intrigued, aroused, and disarmed. Few men can resist the taboo pleasures offered up to them by the Masculine Dandy.
- The Art of Seduction by Robert Greene
So how can one summarize all of this for a woman?
Tone down the solipsism.
What?! Oh?! … my darling … shhhhhhhhhh … in that sentence that you were about to write, there’s a bad word … yes, it’s a very very bad word … yes, it’s even worse than what your kindergarten teacher said, when you copied the number 69 from her blackboard, and livened it up with your crayons … yes, I know … so where did you get the idea for that drawing anyway? Oh? …. And you told her this ?! …. shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh … your kindergarten teacher might be reading this!
Now my darling, “I” is a very bad word to use, when men think you’re solipsistic … yes … I know … there are indeed many other people that make use of the word “I” on HUS … but Ted D lives in Pittsburgh … and now you demand special consideration since you flew over Pittsburgh a few times ?!
And yet quite a few Pittsburghers mentioned a witch on her broomstick terrorising their night skies … Care to comment? … but off course they were drunk … wouldn’t you be?!
I’m gonna report you to the NSA you little witch.
So we’re agreed then my darling … “I” is a very bad word to use when men think you’re solipsistic. Same thing with the word “my”, my darling.
*Sigh*
Now my darling, you’ve gotta learn a bit about talking like a man … no you’re not … what’s that word you’re not supposed to say? … Good girl … you’re doing fine …
Merellus – I have no idea what you are implying, but if I were to speak in a real ‘Burgh dialect it would be something like:
Yunz ladies gotta stop all dat crap wit da word “I” n’at! It makes yunz all sahnd like yur stupid er suhem. Try thinkin baht other people and wursh yur mind of dat “I” stuff or I’m gonna take ya dahntahn and drop ya in the Hill to get ruffed up and have yur pants n’at stolen.
@LJ
“Actually, I think the principle of feeling like, “Being alone is MUCH preferable to being with someone who I don’t find attractive/doesn’t treat me well” is a good one for both men and women.”
Speaking as a man, I find this to be the case.
It makes more sense to me to adopt a high-risk strategy to focus on myself entirely in my youth and continue to build wealth/accomplishments/status at the risk of aging out of the demographic of the women I find the most attractive. In my youngest days, I was in a relationship with a woman that I didn’t find attractive. I felt completely imprisoned. I can only imagine what my friends felt when they married young to women they weren’t attracted to. “It’s not satisfying now, and this is the best it’s going to get.”
Far better to be alone and free than with someone you’re not into.
I should add that I also agree with the premise of the original post – my feeling is that “girl game” adds a point or two, max, but since I believe the scale of attraction is exponential (e.g. a 5 is the threshold of legitimate attraction, a 6 is ten times as attractive as a 5, a 7 is ten times as attractive as a 6, etc.).. adding those one or two points becomes incredibly important for the health of a relationship.
It won’t do much if anything for the 1-4s, but IME women are 1-4s almost entirely through sheer physical neglect and not anything they’re born with so they’d be better served to shore up those areas first.
@Ted D
Hahahahaha !!! This reminds me of Terry Pratchett !
@INTJ, Han Solo
I’ve just reviewed the Buss paper on the presence of opposite-sex others in mate selection.
This is an interesting study, because it does not speak to the question of whether dominant male opinions affect other males’, but only about how men feel when they observe a woman surrounded by males in a social setting.
It’s a very different design than the speed dating study, and it seems to me would create significant disincentives in that moment for the man to approach or feel the desire to approach.
I had wondered how Buss could write what I included in an earlier comment, and also confirm that men are not affected by preselection in a study. But I don’t see this study as being in conflict with his writings in The Evolution of Desire.
The other study is about mate poaching – and why “taken” people are attractive. Place addressed that in his study – I believe that the shortcut of knowing the person has been found worthy by a high value mate applied to both sexes there. This study provides only an abstract, so it’s hard to know much.
“In my youngest days, I was in a relationship with a woman that I didn’t find attractive. I felt completely imprisoned. I can only imagine what my friends felt when they married young to women they weren’t attracted to.”
Yes, and terrible for the women in those situations as well.
Terrible for the women, yes, but since divorce has such perverse incentives, the men are in an even worse position. They cannot leave.
INTJ: “Oh yeah she was rather hot. Creepy, but hot.”
I think you’ve found the male equivalent to “sexy ugly”.
“Yunz ladies gotta stop all dat crap wit da word “I” n’at! It makes yunz all sahnd like yur stupid er suhem. Try thinkin baht other people and wursh yur mind of dat “I” stuff or I’m gonna take ya dahntahn and drop ya in the Hill to get ruffed up and have yur pants n’at stolen.”
bleedin’ ‘ell guv, wot the ruddy ‘ell are you garhn on abaht? stap me thasz gobbledy gook that is
Makes Cockneys vs Zombies look normal(!)
Have you seen Lock, Stock’s bar scene? (subtitled)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eu7aj1SCE8k
top line from Rory Breaker
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5QRVbEQogDk
Or Snatch (starring Brad Pitt as a pikey). This clip is about Brick Top played by the guy who does lovable Granddad in C vs Z
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GuCT45SnO1E
“Terrible for the women, yes, but since divorce has such perverse incentives, the men are in an even worse position. They cannot leave.”
I don’t understand this. Why can’t they leave? And sorry, but I can’t feel sympathy for someone “trapped” in a marriage or relationship with someone they feel no attraction toward. THEY are the ones who got themselves into that situation, while deceiving their partner and wasting her time.
In my case, it was because I was young, sheltered, stupid, and bought in completely to the “true beauty is on the inside” brainwashing from my other female friends. I know better now, of course.
“THEY are the ones who got themselves into that situation, while deceiving their partner and wasting his time.”
this as well, yeah LJ?
being a feminist, I believe in equality and all that good stuff.
Yes, his or her time. I never said it was OK when women do it, Bully was just talking about instances where it was the man.
@Marellus
This woman expected somebody to invoke Salomé, and this woman knows exactly what book that story is from. (This woman was curious.) Glad to hear that tactic can still be put to work today.
@INTJ, Han, Susan
I have a buddy whose theory with women was essentially this,
Every time your with one your value is raised.
Therefore if you start low and trade up in incremental stages you can land a hottie.
He tried it. It worked.
@Lokland
That’s more or less my strategy, though I don’t really care to get serious with women at this time for that reason. I hate the idea of using women as stepping stones.
@Sai
Ahhhh, those hints of crockeries ben-a-throwin, in those feints and mockeries of a woman … kudos.
>> “I have a buddy whose theory with women was essentially this,
Every time your with one your value is raised.
Therefore if you start low and trade up in incremental stages you can land a hottie.”
Sounds a lot like hypergamy…
@Susan (and Ion, SayWhaat and INTJ)
Thanks for providing the Skyler Place paper where attractiveness was rated via the question, “How attractive do you find this person?”
It is interesting to look at Table 1 and see that the attractiveness (1-9 scale) of the females in question were higher when the males were perceived as showing or did show interest by the following amounts in the experiments:
____________Perceived Interest_____Actual Interest
Experiment 1_______+0.25____________+0.20
Experiment 2_______+0.32____________+0.13
This averages out to +0.225 based on males showing interest in the women vs not.
Translating to a 1-10 scale this would be roughly a bump in female attractiveness by 0.25 points.
I think this is consistent with my assertion that most men’s judgements of a woman’s looks isn’t (very) dependent on what other men think if only about 0.25 points is added by seeing men intersted in a girl. Now, if it was shown that the women’s looks went up by 1 or 2 points then that would be a different matter.
Now to one of your conclusions from your post on this from 2010, I believe:
“Clearly, men take their cues from dominant men. They determine who’s hot according to what the most socially dominant males find attractive.”
This updated study didn’t seem to address this and the original Skyler Place article didn’t point out the numerical change in desire for a STR when more attractive men and women than the subject were perceived as showing interest. Rather, it just said that there was a greater effect when there was interest shown between more attractive men and women.
I don’t see that as being consistent with your statement that dominant men determine who is considered hot and attractive. In my own experience (and nearly every other man I know), the perception of other men about her hotness/beauty at most affects my perception of her beauty by maybe 0.5 at most and usually not even that–I think I could agree that having other men think a woman is hot would cause me to maybe focus more on her positive qualities to the extent of raising her 0.25 but often as not just not change my opinion at all. Hardly enough to say that men are looking to other men to determine who is hot.
For men, when it comes to beauty, no one needs to tell us, we just know.
I would be interested in your specific thoughts on this and the small magnitude of increase in the woman’s attractiveness (about 0.25).
Thanks.
@Bully
I don’t agree with it but it did work.
@Emily
Hypergamy is attraction to a higher quality mate.
This was actually a conscious thought out plan. He’s a 6 say with no game.
Date a 5, SMV 6 women get interested, choose one date her, SMV 7 women get interested etc. until you reach a max out point.
@Emily
Key difference.
Hypergamy prevents you from starting lower than yourself.
He intentionally started lower with the intent of working up.
@Lokland
I went salsa dancing with a female friend, about a 6. We were going to dance but also dance with others, so it wasn’t a date.
There were a lot of extra girls and many of them were actually friendly–what a change from clubs and to a lesser extent bars.
We talked with some of the women. My friend and I danced and had a great time for a few songs. Then we split up for a while and I danced with some other girls while she danced with the male instructor who seemed pretty hot.
I danced with this one girl who was an 8.5 in looks and she was really into me and the dancing and we even hugged while dancing. I think that she would have responded favorably if I’d kissed her even but I didn’t. I told her about my travels and she mentioned she’d lived in Milan and I asked why. She had been a model before she was married and had a kid! Ohhh! Damn!
I think that even though my friend was only a 6 in looks that my being seen with a girl and having fun helped make this other woman, sitting on the side, see me in a higher light. Now, I think it was probably more that I was having fun and dancing reasonably well that was a significant part of it and not just being with a girl, though that helped too and definitely allowed me to more easily be seen having fun.
I went alone another time and things didn’t seem to go as well, though I think a big part of that was that I was seen as a hungry lone wolf on the outside wanting to rob a sheep from the flock. lol
@Lokland
I’ll add, I don’t think it went as well when I went alone because I tend to feel much more relaxed and happy and give off a better and less needy vibe when I’m with someone I enjoy being with (friend or otherwise).
For me the moral of the story is that my inner game is still too dependent on outside factors. If I went alone and acted with the same ease, confidence and happiness that I did when with my female friend then I don’t think I’d have much problem.
And the social proof of being with a girl (the more attractive the better) is real too. I suppose the point of your friend’s and my stories is that guys should just start dating, even if it’s not quite at the attractiveness level you’d really like, and gain confidence. As long as you’re not leading someone on or making false promises then I don’t see this as manipulative or unfair.
@Emily and Lokland
The key point about hypergamy is the lowest level you will accept to be with, not that you would love the best possible in an ideal world. If that lower limit is higher than what you can attract then you’re screwed (or not!
), for both STR or LTR.
I see the too-high lower acceptable limit more in women (but maybe only in 25% is it really strong and 25% somewhat there) but it does exist in men too.
@Ted D @Just1Z
Howziiiit mah chinas. I’m smarking that lingo sommer lots. Now don’t go all marabbastad on me for saying this. You’re definitely not two mamparrahs. Now mah brahs, lets roll a zol, drink a Zama Lake and go patla-patla !!!
Every time your with one your value is raised.
Therefore if you start low and trade up in incremental stages you can land a hottie.
Well Eva Peron ended up first lady of Argentina doing exactly that. Not sure how she could pull as a woman but maybe she read this book and took the best out of it?
And the social proof of being with a girl (the more attractive the better) is real too. I suppose the point of your friend’s and my stories is that guys should just start dating, even if it’s not quite at the attractiveness level you’d really like, and gain confidence. As long as you’re not leading someone on or making false promises then I don’t see this as manipulative or unfair.
Males in my country never go out in public without a female in their side, that is why is sort of safe to cultivate friendships with the opposite gender he might find you totally unattractive but he knows that the social proof is important also only gay men are alone or always with another male, I know retrograde but culture is culture.
@Han
I’ve had similar experiences.
Its kind of chicken and egg though,
am I more attractive because of the woman or because I’m with the woman and more outcome independent?
Btw, you never want to become completely outcome independent (as you mentioned inner game) trying to get them closer together is good but the only way to truly not care is total outcome independence which is not healthy.
“I suppose the point of your friend’s and my stories is that guys should just start dating, even if it’s not quite at the attractiveness level you’d really like, and gain confidence.”
+1
I disagree with my friends strategy, too manipulative/using, even for me.
But it does work, in a more mild dose its probably quite healthy.
@Lokland
Well, I would encourage your friend’s strategy, with the clarification that a guy should just tell the girl upfront he’s not looking for anything serious but wants to enjoy time with her. Then she can decide if she’s up for that or not and it may do her some good to be going out too and feel better about herself and have fun and learn more about men and what she likes.
>> “Well Eva Peron ended up first lady of Argentina doing exactly that. Not sure how she could pull as a woman but maybe she read this book and took the best out of it?
”
I love that show!!! (I’m not going to lie, everything I know about Eva Peron, I learned from the musical.)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DIQIQAAieGE
@Anacaona
Many people have done this type of thing, though not that successfully, haha. I think you’d call them “social climbers”.
@Lokland and HanSolo
I don’t see anything wrong with this at all, and I don’t think so much talk about it is really necessary. Just because someone likes you enough to date you, doesn’t mean that they want to marry you and have kids. Susan even recommends shopping around. Now, I’m not sure how I feel about dating with the express intention of moving up, but then doesn’t everyone enter most relationships knowing that “this probably won’t be the one”, and just enjoys it while it lasts? What Lokland described usually happens anyway- people date, and then one or both of them leaves the relationship when they aren’t feeling it anymore.
I get curious whenever someone describes someone as a “SMV 7″ man or whatever. I think rating women on a 1-10 scale is a bit easier since there’s really not much leeway and all men are interested in the same thing, besides the -/+ 1 for girl game.
What makes a man a 5 as opposed to a 7? Is it something that can be even articulated, since male SMV is a sum of so many different factors?
@BroHamlet
I agree that explicitly saying you’re not interested in an LTR is not necessary for casual dating but it may not be a bad idea either. Where I think it could be more called for is if you start to sense her interest is getting a lot higher than yours. I don’t like to hurt girls and so I usually let them know sooner or later if I’m not feeling it.
One interesting case was on a first date and I described the two ladders theory–attractive enough to consider for LTR, attractive enough for casual but not LTR, not attractive enough for either so not on a ladder. I was escalating very mildly physically, slight cuddling and flirting at a café. She said she didn’t like to get too physical too soon and so I stopped cuddling and touching her and said that was fine. She asked if I saw her as a potential gf–LTR ladder–and I told her that I didn’t. She asked if I saw her as attractive enough to be on the casual ladder and I said yes. She went from not wanting any cuddling to asking me to go over to her apartment and spend the night.
Interesting how when she was hoping for being on the LTR ladder that she was being quite demure but then totally invited me over for sex when she discovered that the LTR ladder was not a possibility.
@Bully
In terms of providing an SMV rating, it is quite difficult to assign to men.
I think that one way to approach it is to basically see what is the 95th* percentile of looks/hotness in girls that he can get for casual, allowing for the occasional outlier to not skew his SMV upwards too much. A similar thing would be to take the 95th percentile wife looks he can get and then subtract a point.
This approach is pretty consistent with my own experience. The girls that I got for casual I feel like were usually less than my looks and about a 3rd of the time equal, whereas the looks of the girls in my LTRs or trying to get an LTR (I don’t want to date anyone lower than a certain looks level, TBH) were about equal or higher than me.
This is based on the idea that men can pretty readily assign a looks value to women and there will be high correlation, and that looks is the dominate factor in a woman’s SMV. Since women have more varied sexual attraction triggers that vary in greater degree than men do (looks, status, charisma, game, dominance, humor, etc.) then it would be harder to come up with a formula to calculate the man’s SMV from first principles.
This makes the other approach of seeing what kind of women the man can get (or hypothetically could if he doesn’t interact with women) as a better metric for his SMV.
Thoughts?
*You can replace 95 with some other number that seems more reasonable
@Bully
On further thought, I’ll downgrade the number of casual partners (casual for one or both of us though one of us might have had relationship hopes) of equal or slightly better looks to about 20%. And with some of these prettier ones, I was hoping for more and they weren’t.
Anacaona, I keep visiting your site and keep being disappointed that there are no photos of William!
Re: Salome, she is what would be called a “femme fatale.” I would rather not emulate a woman who drove men to suicide.
@HanSolo
“Interesting how when she was hoping for being on the LTR ladder that she was being quite demure but then totally invited me over for sex when she discovered that the LTR ladder was not a possibility.”
Apparently you should be careful saying that around here. You have no idea how many times I have said this is true, and it’s been waved away with the “she was unrestricted” theory. I have been saying since minute one that the line between “good girl” and “bad girl” is a really thin one, so to get into who’s restricted and who’s unrestricted is kind of missing the point- the reality is more complex, and not as comforting as many here would like to think.
@Bully
The reason I picked the 95th percentile instead of 50th is because it is usually easier for a man to get casual with women of lower SMV than himself.
@HanSolo
I tend to agree, except for the fact that women’s attraction is clustered around the top tier of men, whereas men’s attraction for women is far more expansive, which would skew the scale.
The way I see it, a graph plotted by men for their attraction of women would look like a bell curve (most are average, with fewer amounts of extremely attractive or extremely ugly women), while a graph plotted by women would probably look more asymptotic (80% of all men are below the attraction threshold and those at the very top are ridiculously, unbelievably attractive)
As long as it’s understood there’s not going to be a 1:1 relationship between populations of the same SMV, with there being many more men than women at the lower SMV ranks and many more women than men at the higher ranks, I think I could get behind that.
@Bully
I agree that once men are above a certain SMV that the floodgates open.
Another possible model would just take all the men and rank them on their ability to get women to be sexually attracted to them (a combination of who they have dated, who they could or do get for casual, etc.) and then do a percentile cutoff with discrete binning into 10, 9, 8, 7, etc. Ten’s might be deemed 99.7th percentile and higher, 9′s as 97th to 99.7th percentile, 8′s as 90th to 97th, etc. (I’m just making these numbers up.)
@Bully
But I think that I like my first model more of what value of woman you could get a certain percentage of the time or with a certain amount of effort because that is more tied into the tangible looks (and maybe give her a sexiness/sensuality component as part of her SMV too) of the woman.
Tying it to the women he DOES get is hard because it doesn’t really differentiate between what kind of girls the man is targeting. If he’s a beer-goggles guy who sings a variation of Garth Brooks song, “I’ve got skanks in lowly places where the whisky drowns and the beer chases my standards away” then he might have a higher SMV than the women he’s pulling. On the other hand you could have a guy that holds out and gets lucky once in a blue moon with only girls who are 9′s.
In the end we would need an accurate model that could find what women he could attract sexually under reasonable assumptions.
I do like pegging his SMV towards the higher range of who he could get in a reasonable time frame if he were to try.
Haha! All Game is gender neutral!
Hypergamy does not prevent anything. It is a desire to mate with someone of higher status than yourself. No more no less. PUAs are hypergamous.
@Emily
Evita is my favorite Broadway show of all time. Mandy Patinkin was awesome in the original, and it’s wild to see him as Saul in Homeland!
Re: pre-selection. Some of my most cynical associates work in a field called “neuromarketing”. One of them was commissioned by a music industry entity; the researcher found highly developed lemming behavior among young girls.
At the risk of oversimplifying things, the story goes something like this: if you take a relatively average-looking boy and have him croon on stage, you can create herding effects by goosing the female audience with a few strategically-placed, paid screamers. The screams of the stooges will apparently trigger an emotive cascade among other girls, and soon you have a wild mob screaming for the boy.
+1
@Susan
“Hypergamy does not prevent anything. It is a desire to mate with someone of higher status than yourself. No more no less. PUAs are hypergamous.”
No its not. Hypergamy is the desire to mate with someone of higher status AND the refusal to mate with someone of lower status (equal is up for grabs).
Thats why men seek variety, we will dip down the latter for a fling. Women will not.
@Susan
“Haha! All Game is gender neutral!”
No more like the exploitation of preselection and hypergamy.
He started off LOWER than himself in terms of SMV. That is not hypergamy.
Also, when I’m the only person who finds a tactic morally wrong I feel greatly concerned for our civilization.
This makes the other approach of seeing what kind of women the man can get (or hypothetically could if he doesn’t interact with women) as a better metric for his SMV.
Thoughts?
Han,
Totally agree. Because there are so many factors driving what makes a man attractive, the only way to really judge his sexual attractiveness is by the SMV level of the women he can actually pull. As an aside point, I’ve found in discussions here that many of the women tend to be contradictory about male looks in that they will heavily emphasize it when it serves the purpose to reduce male SMV to physical looks, but emphasize all the other factors such as status, social dominance, prestige when it serves the purpose of the discussion. Many times someone has implied a man doing “better” than his rank when simply looking at physical appearance and not considering the other things he is bringing that raise his total SMV.
But she was clearly unrestricted, and just pretending to be relationship material. A slut in good girl clothing?
She said she didn’t like to get too physical too soon and so I stopped cuddling and touching her and said that was fine. She asked if I saw her as a potential gf–LTR ladder–and I told her that I didn’t. She asked if I saw her as attractive enough to be on the casual ladder and I said yes. She went from not wanting any cuddling to asking me to go over to her apartment and spend the night.
Interesting how when she was hoping for being on the LTR ladder that she was being quite demure but then totally invited me over for sex when she discovered that the LTR ladder was not a possibility.
Han,
I’m surprised you could be that blunt about it, and still get her to take that second option although like Jimmy and Bro, I’m not surprised by the change in behavior on her part.
@ Susan
There’s the thing though. I don’t doubt that preselection has a net positive effect on men’s perceptions of female attractiveness. Nobody is going to think someone is ugly simply because he finds out other men find her attractive. But – and here’s the catch – any change in attractiveness is clearly outweighed by the male aversion to taken women. Thus, demonstrating preselection is a net negative strategy for women.
@BB
That doesn’t surprise me – adolescent girls in hypergamic mode. Fame is a powerful aphrodisiac. Check out this video about a hoax designed to demonstrate the power of celebrity:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C9Ko6Xfa84w
Hypergamy does not prevent anything. It is a desire to mate with someone of higher status than yourself. No more no less. PUAs are hypergamous.
Ha! Brilliant!
This is a valid point. I find myself struggling to figure out male SMV vs. MMV or RMV. I knew something was way off when someone said that male SMV peaks in the early 40s. Um, no.
I propose that male SMV is pure fuckability, who would you do. Peaks in the late 20s. Generally a combo of looks and status.
RMV or MMV takes into account those female attraction cues that are relevant for LTRs. This tends to peak a bit later, obviously. I’d say in the 25-35 range.
@INTJ
Taken /= preselected.
@Susan
“But she was clearly unrestricted, and just pretending to be relationship material. A slut in good girl clothing?”
No. This is where you are being way too black and white. Her behavior in large part depended on the guy and the situation. Han demonstrated that he knew the deal, and that he could take or leave it. Girls need to get laid too, and regardless of how “good” they might be, they realize a relationship is not always worth the time and effort just to scratch an itch. I have personally seen and had this happen to me multiple times, and there are mountains of anecdotal evidence from other guys out there to back it up- this is what starts to happen to you when you get momentum; it’s yours to fuck it up, or not. Your theory about restricted and unrestricted misses some of the most important nuances of these situations, and to be frank, it just seems like another line to be drawn in the sand. And, I get it. There’s no “good” without “bad”, but the world is rarely so simple that everyone fits into one of two boxes all (or even most) of the time.
“Hypergamy does not prevent anything. It is a desire to mate with someone of higher status than yourself. No more no less. PUAs are hypergamous.”
Lol. So clever. If you knew how many average to below girls these dudes were swinging at (and nailing) on their way to the “top”, you wouldn’t be saying this at all. Plus the fact that what many guys who have their shit together see as “hot” is actually at their level in terms of their objective value given a situation where the girl can see them for what they are, like social circles. How do you think you see regular-looking guys with cute girls? They were in the right place at the right time, i.e. not trying to drunkenly “holler” at a girl in a loud club with a bunch of rich douches spoon feeding her validation. Different venue, the girl didn’t feel like Nicole Richie in the VIP, and they got an honest look.
“regardless of how “good” they might be, they realize a relationship is not always worth the time and effort just to scratch an itch.”
+1
“Your theory about restricted and unrestricted misses some of the most important nuances of these situations, and to be frank, it just seems like another line to be drawn in the sand. And, I get it. There’s no “good” without “bad”, but the world is rarely so simple that everyone fits into one of two boxes all (or even most) of the time.”
Yes, very true. And I guess this is an age gap as well as an “agenda” gap here.
@Rollo: “1. Men whose prestige is much greater than your own”
Rollo’s answer: “Alphas you can’t control”
“2. Men with whom you would always have to make the first move.”
“Answer: Betas…”……….
I missed that quote earlier on. Yet another of those “fantastic” categorizing observations about the male/female dance.
What kind of female have you been dating as of today, Mr Rollo, and in which society, and, maybe most importantly, where do you hang out?
I actually don’t think this is true. I know that I have a very high sex drive, and I have never once in my life felt the “need” to get laid.
Susan – “I actually don’t think this is true. I know that I have a very high sex drive, and I have never once in my life felt the “need” to get laid.”
I’ve heard of this “need to get laid” from multiple women over the course of my entire life starting at around 16 or 17 years old. Not from every woman by any leap of the imagination, but enough. I used to chalk it up to them being in the “slut” pile, but time has proven that is NOT entirely true.
I’m sure Sassy can tell you of this “need”, and she is hardly a slut.
I haven’t read the rest of the comments since I’m in finals and I really cannot keep up with the whole thread, but just by reading the first 50 comments or so made me angry already.
I think this advice is not necessarily playing “hard-to-get”, it goes along the lines of “keep a femenine aura and some mystery”. Seriously, this is completely lost from the American culture, falling in love with someone involves a dance, involves a little bit of give and take. It involves only laying little pieces of your interest. Courtship is that and I feel that most people here don’t understand it.
The only thing I can think while reading this comments is, what the hell do you guys want. A restricted girl will show you her interest in a reserved way anyhow.
Maybe it’s because I’m a foreigner and I really appreciate the concept of courtship rather than: “Hey, you’re cute, let’s bang”. Apparently, expressing your interest in a delicate way is being a cock tease. Female coyness and flirting allows you to express your interest but taking things slow enough so that emotional intimacy can precede or go hand in hand with physical intimacy. Is not that you WANT to be a tease… It is simply that you’re not gonna go all in immediately, it’s part of the dance.
Again, I don’t know what the hell you guys want.
Also, where is this cock carrousel and endless supply of hot guys that I can fuck with the snap of my fingers? Not all girls spend their weekend drinking to death and hopping on whatever swinging penis is closer, not all girls engage on casual sex in college so for the love of all that is holy could you all just stop the butthurt and accept that the lotsa cocka feminist slut is a minority?
It seems like every opportunity that a girl has to try to prove herself as restricted, femenine, flirty, coy, etc. will be dismissed by “oh but she’s still an inner slut that will cheat on me on any time”.
You guys speak of female solipism, is there a term for males in the manosphere relating EVERY relationship advice to an absolute desire to declare it invaluable because ALL women are sluts?
/endrant.
Guavaberry – “falling in love with someone involves a dance, involves a little bit of give and take. ”
I agree. The problem is, most people aren’t too keen on the “giving” part, but are plenty fine with “taking”.
“Again, I don’t know what the hell you guys want.”
See Hope’s post earlier. Most of us don’t expect to get everything on her list, but we shoot for as much as we can get.
@Guavaberry
“It seems like every opportunity that a girl has to try to prove herself as restricted, femenine, flirty, coy, etc. will be dismissed by “oh but she’s still an inner slut that will cheat on me on any time”.”
You’re being as black and white as Susan is. She is the one pushing the idea that there is some clear cut line separating good girls and bad girls. I am saying that this dichotomy, within reason, is too hard and fast for the way people act in the real world, and it’s a bit too judgmental for my taste, because life is not simple. I am not here to pass judgement on anyone’s choices, male or female. I have been saying all along, that it’s fine to do the dance, but that dance is best coming from a place of actually being how you appear. If that is how you are approaching it, I don’t see a problem. But not everybody does that, and that’s why these lists always get called out. Keep in mind, I only have a problem with the “10 General Principles”. The rest is A-OK in my book.
“Is not that you WANT to be a tease… It is simply that you’re not gonna go all in immediately, it’s part of the dance.”
Definitely, but like I said above, you have to own it- and faking it isn’t going to work. My last few posts have been about why it’s important for this to come from the inside and not be faked. The list of 10 reads just like an old school pickup artist manual. It’s just as lame as it’s always been, and encourages people to look at every romantic interaction as a game. It should be plainly obvious where the arms race of gamesmanship has landed us in the USA, and encouraging more games is actually much worse FOR WOMEN, because men will figure out ways to counteract those games that will not be in female best interests long term. More games are not the answer, but developing actual confidence in your value, and thus the ability to handle these situations with mostly transparent intention, is.
“You guys speak of female solipism, is there a term for males in the manosphere relating EVERY relationship advice to an absolute desire to declare it invaluable because ALL women are sluts?”
Speaking as a non-manospherian, I think you need to stop and ask yourself why their opinions would even be important to you, and why you are personalizing this so much. They are obviously in left field on a lot of things concerning individual women.
In short, I am telling you, that lists about what a girl should “do” are not nearly as important as what a girl should be, and exactly the same goes for men. Games are a slippery slope.
@Susan
“I actually don’t think this is true. I know that I have a very high sex drive, and I have never once in my life felt the “need” to get laid.”
So, your experience invalidates what is going on in the real world? Didn’t you also participate in hooking up in your youth? When I say “need to get laid”, I don’t just mean dragging any lonesome schlub up to your room for a quickie, he’s going to be someone who meets a threshold of attractiveness and talks the right talk. Plus, women have sex for a variety of reasons- sometimes it’s not the physical part, it’s about status, or about exploring new terrain. The list goes on, and is far more nuanced than why most men want sex, but the end result is still there. Han brought it up due to an actual encounter, and he’s far from the first to notice this over the last decade.
@Dawin
“What’s funny is that the women don’t even register the existence of the guy. She can be hot, he can look like quasimodo, but if she needs to have sex and if there is no better guy around, she will sleep with him. For all the garbage the PUA’s eschew, most of them have yet to realize that a man only needs to hang out with women long enough for them to be sufficiently horny to bang these average/below average guys.”
No dude. SMH. You are oversimplifying and your tone is what the women here (like Guavaberry) are reacting to. Girls will almost never dip down below their level. Most are not super indiscriminate like you describe. What you are missing, is that girls who date the so-called “average” guys in their circle, are operating on a more honest assessment of their own value relative to his. Because even most “hot” girls don’t have all of their shit together and they are aware of that when they’re not in a situation with tons of guys trying to get their attention. If a guy is boring and not attractive, he will still not get the most attractive girls in his circle interested. He still has to be at the top of the heap, it’s just much easier to do that naturally in a social circle versus with randoms at a club or bar.
@Gauvaberry
*cheers rant*
@HanSolo 530/540, Sassy 469
I like the sharing!!
@ Brohamlet,
You’re saying the hot woman will date the guy who isn’t hot because there are no other guys interested in her, or the few who are interested in her only want to jump her bones?
I don’t quite understand what you mean by hot women being honest with their value in relation to the guy: doesn’t her good-looks already put her in higher ground?
@Ted D
What are the negative consequences to the female who does not get as much sex as she needs? If women truly need sex from the age of 16, no man should harbor resentment that they get those needs met.
@guavaberry
Well said, I’m so glad you spoke up. We need a female quorum! Good luck in finals.
Even more common is the need for male validation to boost self-esteem. So yes, there is a need, but sex is not the need. It is important that men understand that women do not need sex in any physical way, barring addiction, if it exists.
I don’t doubt Han’s report for a moment, I’m just suggesting he was dealing with a woman accustomed to promiscuous behavior, and when Plan A Girlfriend pile was not an option, she went for Plan B He Still Thinks I’m Hot pile. Something I suspect she has done many times before.
Ha, don’t make Dawin the fall guy, the women don’t read him anyway. Guavaberry can clarify if she returns, but my impression was that she was speaking to the men in general, not an outlier.
@ guavaberry
You can hold off on sexual escalation and still escalate emotionally. If that’s what you’re suggesting, I’m on board. Instead, Dorothy Parker advocates withholding emotional investment. That may have been good advice then, but it certainly isn’t good advice now. Today’s young females already have enough trouble escalating emotionally.
@Bastiat Blogger
“At the risk of oversimplifying things, the story goes something like this: if you take a relatively average-looking boy and have him croon on stage, you can create herding effects by goosing the female audience with a few strategically-placed, paid screamers. The screams of the stooges will apparently trigger an emotive cascade among other girls, and soon you have a wild mob screaming for the boy.”
I SO want to say something…
baby baby baby OH
@Sai
you can sing? yay!
According to Tom Jones (‘it’s not unusual’ etc etc) it’s not a pleasant experience to get ladies’ knickers thrown at you in such situations. While screaming their heads off women tend to leak urine, so the panties aren’t as fresh as one receiving them might prefer…
girrrlzzz prepare to scream…
‘it’s not unusual’
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QrwO8b9iq34
@Feelist
“You’re saying the hot woman will date the guy who isn’t hot because there are no other guys interested in her, or the few who are interested in her only want to jump her bones?”
No. Let’s step back. I put “average” in quotes because average is a relative term. People tend to run in circles of people that are of the same educational/financial/interests background, such that most everyone in a given circle is about at the same level status wise. So if you look at that hot girl in the club, there is a guy she hangs out with in a group every day that may have the qualifications to get her interest, based on familiarity and the fact that she can see the whole package he brings- he may look average to guys, but people who know him probably know otherwise. She can see due to close up experience that he’s on her level. But, if you took that same guy, and put him outside of her circle so he’s a random, take him to the club, and make him compete against a bunch of six-packed, sparkling-smiled guys that she thinks she can get and keep because they’re putting the moves on her, she won’t give that guy a second look. It’s a matter of perception.
“I don’t quite understand what you mean by hot women being honest with their value in relation to the guy: doesn’t her good-looks already put her in higher ground?”
What I am saying, is that from a day to day perspective there are guys in her circle, that although they aren’t as pretty as her, will still pique her interest, because she can see more clearly what they have to offer, and she doesn’t have external factors inflating her own perceived value, and because male attractiveness is not based definitively on looks from a female perspective.
@Susan
“…no man should harbor resentment that they get those needs met.”
Totally agree, and I’ve said this much many times here. Some men eat sour grapes, and some do something about it.
@Susan
“It is important that men understand that women do not need sex in any physical way, barring addiction, if it exists.”
We’ll agree to disagree, then. However these situations happen, whether it’s about validation, or being horny, or exploring a man of high status, the end result is mostly the same, so we’re just splitting hairs. In my experience (and I’m sure many guys here will back me up) women don’t need sex from what they view as average (most) men, which is really how your statement plays out in practice. Hang with a bunch of guys who are clearly above average (or become one yourself), and you will not find this to be true.
Susan – “What are the negative consequences to the female who does not get as much sex as she needs?”
I haven’t the slightest idea! I’m just reporting my experience on the matter. I’ve heard women say things like “I was so horny last night I was looking for ANYTHING to back into!” That is a direct quote (it was so shocking I can’t forget it. LOL)
“If women truly need sex from the age of 16, no man should harbor resentment that they get those needs met”
I could say the same thing for women: If men truly need sex from the age of 16 (although I started “rolling my own” at about 13), no woman should harbor resentment that they got those needs met. But guess what? Women here at HUS have said that high N men are not where they look for a future husband.
I think the word “need” here is the issue. I’m a man, and I have sexual needs that must be met. However, I don’t necessarily NEED to have sex with lots of women to meet that “need”. Personally, I met the need by getting into LTRs and having sex. I would suggest others do the same. But, other people feel its perfectly fine to meet that need with casual sex, that may or may not mean lots of different partners.
I’m not sure where I’m going with this so I’ll quit before it gets longer…
@Susan
Any thoughts on the Skyler Place study showing that men rate women’s attractiveness about 0.225* higher on a 1-9 scale (or 0.25 on a 1-10 scale) when other men show interest?
*see my comment at 527 for analysis
@HanSolo
I confess I didn’t understand it. If you don’t mind showing me how you got to that number, I’d be happy to take another look. It has been a very long time since I took statistics…
I think what is most relevant is a comparison between the sexes. Though Place finds results for both sexes to be statistically significant, it may be that women are more vulnerable to mate copying. Certainly, older research appears to have assumed as much, and Place questions that. Since his recent study was just this year, I don’t imagine there is much research available yet.
Looking at the study, it seemed that women’s opinions jumped more, and from a lower place. Men’s opinions jumped less, but were higher to begin with. Ultimately, they seemed to be around the same after mate copying. Not sure I understood that correctly, but if so that is pretty interesting.
@Han Solo
I’m not sure if you knew the basis for that statement. It was this, from Buss’ The Evolution of Desire.
“Beauty is not just important for reproductive value. It also affects a man’s social status. An attractive woman is a signal of status to same-sex competitors and to other potential mates.”
This assumes a large degree of consensus among males regarding who is attractive. While there may be some individual variation, the female standards of beauty are common across all cultures. Buss:
“Standards of Physical Beauty:
Full lips
Clear, smooth skin
Clear eyes
Lustrous hair
Good muscle tone
Behavior: bouncy, youthful gait; animated facial expression, high energy level.
These are the physical cues to youth and health, and comprise the ingredients of male standards for female beauty.”
If men did not share perceptions of female beauty, it would not be possible to even remotely rate women, yet we do see that certain women attract much more male attention than others.
There’s a chicken and egg quality to this – are men mostly attracted to the same women because they reached that conclusion independently? Or does an awareness of a woman’s SMV among males confirm her status? The more attractive the woman, the more attractive her successful suitors, presumably. So a woman who used to date BMOC may have appeal over and above pure looks when she comes back on the market – she may also represent increased social status.
In the same way, when men talk among themselves and all agree that Girl E is the hottest girl in the school, it is understood that whoever wins Girl E is going to have won the mating competition among those males.
@Susan
Happy to explain.
Executive summary: The woman’s attractiveness was rated before and after interest was either shown or not. You subtract the change in rating of the woman’s attractiveness where no interest was shown from the change in rating where interest was shown to see the effect of men showing interest in women. Averaged out, this gives a 0.20 rise on a 1-9 scale or 0.225 on a 1-10 scale or 0.25 on a 0-10 scale. I think this agrees with my observations and assertions that men’s opinions of female beauty is not affected very much by the opinion of other men. Thoughts? Below are the details of how I arrived at this.
In table 1, you can look at experiment 1 and 2 for males subjects (the men watching videos and pictures) and look at the rows that say attractiveness for the Target (the target for the males would be the females in the speed dating videos that are having their attractiveness rated). The section to focus on is the Target section which reports the change in the rating of the woman’s attractiveness (after minus before). Maybe a 6 rating before and 6, 5 or 7 after viewing the video, depending on whether the man found her more, less or equally attractive. Averaged out and divided into the categories of whether the males were showing interest or not (and two categories of showing interest were tabulated–”Perceived” was if the man viewing thought the speed dating male was interested and “Actual” was based on the desire of the speed dating man to get the woman’s contact info and meet up.
So for Experiment 1 and 2 on the male subjects we have the change in attractiveness of the speed-dating female after watching the video where there was no/negative interest shown by the speed-dating male and where there was positive interest shown:
___________________Perceived Interest by Males__Actual Interest
____________________Negative____Positive______Neg___Posit
Exp1Attractiveness of females__0.29_____0.54_______0.34___0.54
Exp2Attractiveness of females__0.27_____0.59_______0.40___0.53
We see, that on average, even when the speed-dating males showed no interest (actual or perceived, negative columns) that by watching the video the woman’s attractiveness rose by 0.29, 0.27, 0.34 and 0.40 points on the 1-9 scale.
The attractiveness rose even further when the speed-dating males showed interest: 0.54, 0.59, 0.54, 0.53.
To get how much the showing interest affected the rating of the females’ looks then you subtract the not-interested from the interested values to get (e.g. 0.54 – 0.29 = 0.25 bump in attractiveness when the speed-dating male is perceived as showing interest in Exp 1):
___________________Perceived Interest by Males__Actual Interest
____________________Effect of interest______Effect of Interest
Exp1Attractiveness of females____0.25_______________0.20
Exp2Attractiveness of females____0.22_______________0.13
Averaging these out gives 0.20 on the 1-9 scale and that would be about 0.22 on a 1-10 scale. (I messed up adding them in my head to average before when I got 0.225)
So the conclusion is that the attractiveness of the females rose by about 0.2 points when the males showed interest.
Further details:
Experiment 1 and 2 only differed in what kind of Similar-to-target photo was rated: exp. 1 had a similar face and different hair and clothes while exp. 2 had the same clothes and hair but different face.
The Similar-to-target and Control portions can be ignored for our purposes. Similar-to-target was a rating of someone that looked similar to the target and they wanted to see if the interactions could spill over to similar-looking people (females in the parts I’m focuing on). Also, the control can be ignored since that was just rating the same photo of someone totally different to use as a control to see that the rating of a random person (same before and after) changed.
@Susan
Very last phrase of that long post should have read “to use as a control to see that the rating of a random person (same person before and after) didn’t change.
@Susan
I agree that the status that a man might acquire by dating/marrying a woman can factor into his decision. I don’t think it affects his perception of her attractiveness very much. I think Lamar Odom is an example of marrying Khloe Kardashian for reasons other than her looks. Her being part of an (in)famous family and leading to them having a reality show together gave her added value.
I suppose we could do an experiment similar to the Skyler Place one and rate women who have dated high-status males. Show a picture of her alone, then pictures or videos of her with high-status males (showing interest, though it’s implied if he’s with her in real life) and rate her photo again afterwards to see.
I think that most men will not change their ratings of the women very much, maybe 0.5 at most.
I think another place to look would be in how small boys rate the attractiveness of small girls (though a lot changes by adulthood obviously). With some exceptions, most of the pretty girls I grew up with turned out quite pretty. I think the boys just find certain girls prettier than others and have had less time to be influenced by culture. Wasn’t there even a study where babies look at attractive faces more?
@Susan
FWIW, doing the same analysis on the change in male attractiveness due to perceived and actual interest, we get 0.38 and 0.32 for perceived, and 0.23 and 0.25 for actual, averaging out to 0.295 on the 1-9 scale. This effect is about 50% higher than the 0.20 for how much the females’ attractiveness went up when interest was shown.
I suspect that a more life-like experiment of actually sending men in with and without women and measuring the responses of women would show a more dramatic pre-selection effect on how women perceive men.
@Han Solo
Thanks very much for taking the time to lay it out for me in terms I could understand.
I’m not surprised to see that the effect on women is indeed larger, but I’m a bit surprised both numbers are relatively low. This definitely calls into question prevailing ideas about the degree to which preselection helps men attract women, though as noted earlier, the research is just one study, and a very recent one at that.
@Susan
I am not surprised that it’s low on men because I sincerely know that I am not affected much if at all on my opinion of a woman’s looks and believe that most men aren’t either. Maybe you should ask every man you know by how much their opinion of women’s looks is swayed by the opinion of other men.
Now, in terms of wanting a relationship with her then I could see there that their opinions would matter more but that’s a different scenario. If everyone hates her or thinks she’s a slut or some thing I think it would make many guys think twice to see if they really knew here. I think a lot of men are independent enough to reanalyze the situation and still marry her if they conclude the other opinions are wrong while some would fall to the peer pressure.
In terms of women, I think a more real-life experiment on having the man in her vicinity so that there would be the actual possibility that they could talk–basically being more real–is where the preselection would really make a woman amp up her attraction.
Time might be another factor. Look at romance novels where it takes a good amount of time for the woman to fall for the man (and for the reader to read enough for her to perhaps get more emotionally hooked into the story to the point that she starts imagining it happening to her) as opposed to porn for men where the man knows if he finds her attractive sexually within about a second or three.
Susan, by how much, I mean on a 1-10 scale. I would expect that the most likely answer you would get is in the range of 0 to 0.5.
@Han Solo
Earlier I hypothesized that preselection is a “first impression” factor – it’s a shortcut for a quick assessment before a woman has had an opportunity to evaluate a male on the various attraction cues. Not sure if that’s what you’re saying – or the opposite – but I do think that the effect of preselection, whatever it may be, will decrease steadily and fairly quickly as women are able to make their independent assessments.
Susan,
I agree that preselection works to fill in for a lack of information. Since women seem to care more about other information than just looks it would make sense that they are more susceptible to it since men can readily tell if he likes the woman’s looks.
Regarding time, I am thinking more like on the order of a few minutes or even an hour of seeing him receiving the attention of beautiful women to make sure they really are into him and how much. I think seeing him simply walk in for 5 s with a beautiful woman is helpful but if she sees him interacting positively with her (or multiple women) for several minutes or an hour that it will both show that they really are into him and also give her enough time to process the info and get more attracted and possibly even aroused.
@Susan
So, this whole discussion got started by my observation that I, and most men I know, are not very affected by how attractive other men find a woman to be.
You replied by posting the Skyler Place study (and then INTJ made the actual article available and you provided the follow-up study that gives a ranking on the women’s attractiveness) to suggest that men are *statistically significantly affected by other men’s opinion.
I analyzed the two articles and found a minor bump in attractiveness in the 2nd article (0.2 on the 1-9 scale) that seems to be more in agreement with my personal and anecdotal experience.
So, I am curious, if you will now agree that men’s opinion of a woman’s looks are not affected very much by other men’s opinion of said woman’s looks?
I really do want you to say yes!
And in spite of how I know I act and nearly all men I know and have spoken with about this, I am still open minded to the possibility that some men are affected by it and so I encourage more men to say if they’re affected or not, and for you to ask the men you interact with too.
*statistically significant doesn’t mean large, only that it is very unlikely to be due to chance
@HanSolo
Haha, yes I do concede that point! However, for me the discussion has only produced more questions!
What is the effect if men are not influenced by other men’s perceptions of beauty, but they are influenced by the potential bump in social status of partnering with a woman that other men find extremely attractive? In a case where a man did not find a woman “hot” but was aware that all the other men considered her a “10,” how receptive would he be if she singled him out?
Why is the effect on females so small? Even if your hypothesis that “in person” preselection is more powerful is correct, and we have no idea whether it is, the fact that female attraction went up only .3 is very surprising given the strength of the concept in Game/the manosphere.
If mate copying is indeed a way of filling in information on female attraction traits, then they must be the ones not easily observable in a short time:
Emotional intelligence
Intelligence
Ambition and industriousness
Occupational status
Reliability, dependability
etc.
IOW, the dad traits. The traits re looks: strength, symmetry, size, are all apparent. This suggests that preselection would be most useful in helping women understand a man’s dad traits. However, it is deployed in Game in precisely the opposite way, which makes me wonder – Why would preselection be useful in suggesting a man is “hot” when the woman can see with her own eyes whether he is or not?
“Why would preselection be useful in suggesting a man is “hot” when the woman can see with her own eyes whether he is or not?”
It’s you that keeps talking of the myriad of subtle attraction cues women see in men*, so perhaps women are herd influenced because they trust that the herd has picked up more clues than they have themselves…because he was pre-selected?
another option is that if we look back to when the alpha male of the flange / whoop / troop did all the choosing (back on the plains / forests / jungles), the women had to adapt and accept what they were going to get as ‘partner’ whether they liked it or not. which might explain the elasticity of attraction in females, maybe meaning that they are still more open to persuasion by others in the modern era?
whereas men are more content to know what they like when they see it? whether they can get may well be another issue.
I mean, these sound plausible, but I can’t point at a paper. Being an intuitive type (INTj) I can live with that. Now I know that you are very well aware of the MBTI types, but Steve Sailer made a few comments of interest and suggested a competitor ‘OCEAN’
http://isteve.blogspot.co.uk/2012/12/personality-testing-myers-briggs-v-big-5.html
http://isteve.blogspot.co.uk/2012/12/myers-briggs-sensing-v-intuition.html
Congrats to Han for putting numbers to mere ancdotes from da boiz. it does add to the debate, but don’t really see why men aren’t allowed to own their views?
*sounds better than hamsterbating that “he’s hawt!” and rationalising ‘reasons’ that he is hot post hoc
@ Susan
Like with the other Skyler Place study, it wasn’t directly measuring social proofing. It was measuring whether sociable people were more attractive or not.
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