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.
{ 652 comments… read them below or add one }
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@Just1Z
But that’s my point – preselection should work to display who the “dads” are. Unless perhaps it serves to “reassure” women that they are in fact dealing with a cad instead of a dad!
It really doesn’t make sense to me.
They never did all the choosing, women have always been the ones to select. Not only that, but it’s thought that a lot of cuckolding occurred with the beta males who stayed behind during hunts to guard the women and children.
Of course they can own their views! I have no problem with INTJ or Han saying they are not the least bit affected by what other men think. However, I’m not willing to concede that they are representative of the gender as a whole without some source of objective information. What’s the problem?
BTW, I don’t know what is going on with your avatar but it’s really creeping me out in light of recent events. Please change it.
it was a comedy character – Papa Lazarou from TLOG
but whatever, back to Basil Brush
@Susan
Thank you!
And good, I like exploring questions.
I think that the man would give the not-hot-in-his-eyes-but-10-in-other-eyes a second look. If he were the type of man not so concerned with looks (a minority but they do exist) or she were not very far below or he saw some status or career advantage by going for her then he might. But, I think such men are the minority and most men still wouldn’t go for her. They’d be thanking their lucky stars that the other men had such poor taste and were wasting their time on her. Finally, it depends on what you mean by not hot. If that means ugly in his eyes then it would be a no go.
I think the example is a little unrealistic though since I doubt any woman that was considered an honest 10 by a group of several men would be considered any less than an 8 in looks by more than 1% of other men (not the bullshit 10 that PUA’s talk about when they go off the scale and start talking about 12′s–talk about babe inflation!).
@ HanSolo
Perhaps. However, the “she’s not my type” thing does happen quite often for me, though it probably has more to do with how a woman dresses, wears makeup, carries herself, etc., than with what her natural looks are like.
@Susan
As Just1Z said, there are many cues that cause women to feel attraction beyond just his looks. I simply think that some/many women are wired to find some men much more attractive when other women are with him (especially beautiful ones but also even average ones) and showing interest. I think this effect is stronger than simply hearing other women talk favorably about him though that will help too.
I think that some women are more susceptible to this than others. And with certain girls (a minority IMO) there’s a point where too much preselection triggers manwhore alarm bells (Anacaona fits this category I think).
But overall, I think it’s a very real effect on a certain large portion of females.
Interesting Anecdote: I had a long-distance gf back in my Mormon days. I came back from a visit and was at church and showed this girl (an 8 in looks who I had asked out months before and she didn’t accept and wasn’t interested but we stayed mild friends) pics of my gf and she freaked out, “That’s Jane Doe that was my neighbor in college. She’s so cute and went on so many dates!” All of what she associated with Jane Doe and the guys she dated got transferred to me and I was now above her threshold of overall attraction (not referring to looks necessarily).
So, fastforward a few months and things were going downhill with gf and we were allowed to see other people now. Church girl invites me over for dinner and makes me Mexican food because she knew I had lived in Mexico for 2 years. She knew that Jane Doe was still my gf but we could now date others and so she was flirting with me. She even said she was going to go lie down and take a nap. I was too dense to realize she wanted me to go lie down with her and cuddle and too wedded to extreme chastity back then to have done anything about it anyways.
She kept showing interest for a while but I was so in love with going-downhill gf that I unfortunately didn’t act on it, something I now regret.
Anyway, point is that preselection does work at times and I truly believe it’s a much stronger effect in women liking preselected men than vice versa. I’m sure there is a rich spectrum of conditions where it works and doesn’t and on whom but to first order it definitely is a plus.
@INTJ
Congratulations on being part of the 1%! lol
But you would be a good example of men not being influenced by what the majority of men think. I think there is pretty good correlation on rating women’s attractiveness but certainly there are outliers.
I think that some women are more susceptible to this than others. And with certain girls (a minority IMO) there’s a point where too much preselection triggers manwhore alarm bells (Anacaona fits this category I think).
I will say that yes, but my manwhore bells are more than that. Even if he doesn’t has any woman around if he acts too confident when approaching, or has the I-Own-The-Room walk or posture I very likely assume he is a manwhore. I mentioned that I prefer the loner, shy type and that has been truth all my life even when the other girls have their “hot or not” list I never got interested on a guy because of it. I did lied a lot though because there was really no point on defying the queen bee but, I never trusted the herd tastes always used my own eyes, I’m weird like that. Even now if I like some celebrity is because I would like him anyway nothing to do with other girls.
@ Susan
Btw, I think your old post on playing hard to get was spot on! http://www.hookingupsmart.com/2011/09/15/relationshipstrategies/why-playing-hard-to-get-is-a-losing-strategy/
@ HanSolo
Hehe yup. Also, I can objectively agree that for example Megan Fox is hot. I just would have very little interest in pursuing her.
@INTJ
Ok, that’s interesting to hear then that your objective rating of a woman’s looks highly correlates with other men’s but your preferences for a relationship are more geared towards, I’m assuming, more restricted looking women.
@Susan
It seems like you still are not willing to accept that men’s rating of a woman’s attractiveness or looks is not affected much or at all by other men’s opinions. You conceded the point but then appear to going back to not believing it by saying that you are not willing to accept that INTJ or I (who are not affected much or at all in our opinion of women’s looks by other men’s opinions) are representative of the general male population.
I just showed that the study you provided only bumps up the women’s attractiveness rating by 0.2 on a 1-9 scale when other men show interest.
I think you should run a poll on here to ask by how much, if at all, other men’s opinions of a woman’s looks affects their opinion. I think you will find it to be very small or negligible.
I’m going to turn the tables and put the onus on you to provide any prove at all that men’s ratings of women’s looks are affected by other men’s opinion. Even a 0.5 bump is still pretty small. If you could show a 1 or 2 point bump then I would give credence to the idea.
However, all the evidence that I have confirms that men aren’t affected much in their ratings of women’s looks: my personal experience, other guys I know, the few guys who have opined on here, plus the study you provided that I analyzed.
And why are you so resistant to the idea that most men like what they like and aren’t influenced much in what they find attractive?
@HanSolo
You misunderstand my comment to Just1Z. He was asking why it had even been necessary to look at studies – why couldn’t I just take your word for it? My reply was intended to say that I was not ready to concede the point on the basis on two testimonials alone, and that the study had been useful as a confirmation of your claim, or hypothesis.
As I suggested in my reply about having more questions, I am convinced that men are not materially moved in their assessments of attractiveness by other men.
It would appear that women aren’t much moved either, based on the study. That surprises me. I do believe that women are influenced by other women – though I don’t know whether the influence is in the perception of attractiveness, the awareness of intrasexual competition, or some other aspect.
@Susan
Okay, thanks for clarifying. I did misunderstand. I had thought you weren’t counting the cited study as objective-enough information.
I also wouldn’t generalize based off of two testimonies.
If it came to 100 agreeing testimonies then I still wouldn’t necessarily generalize to the whole population unless I could determine they represented the overall population. However, I would take it as fairly representative of whatever population they were drawn from.
As to the women part of the study, it doesn’t surprise me that the women only raised the attractiveness of the men by 0.3 when men showed interest.
Also, the study showed only a small rise in desire to relationship the men but that doesn’t surprise me either since I think that women need more personal and lengthy exposure to a man to decide they want to LTR him.
I think the dramatic-enough preselection effects claimed to happen in some/many women really does require that in-person and more realistic feeling for a woman to really experience it. So a study on females would require this to really answer the question.
I will share an anecdote about myself that relates to the desire to take action. There was a cute girl at church. I was thinking of asking her out but I wasn’t sure if she was interested so I waited. Then she started dating someone else so I felt like I had missed out. Once she was single again, like 12 months later, I asked her out right away because I didn’t want to repeat the experience of missing the chance and her committing to someone else. I don’t think that her dating the guy made me think of her looks as being much better. I think it could have by maybe 0.25 or so, due to the fact that I was regretting missing out on her and so that made me focus on the good features of her looks. But I thought she was pretty before, during and after dating the guy.
So, I think that seeing that a woman spends a small amount of time single could motivate men to take action quickly when the opportunity arises.
For better clarity I should have said sub-population instead of population:
However, I would take it as fairly representative of whatever sub-population they were drawn from.
@HanSolo
That makes sense. In short, we have a lot of correlations here but no causation – the man knows very quickly if he is attracted or not?
How about instances where attraction grows? When I was single I had several suitors who stepped up after knowing me for a while – and I’m not at all sure the interest was there all along. It was the dynamic of our interaction that spurred interest. I guess I happened to tap into the small part of male attraction that is not visual? FML
@Susan
I think men know quickly if they are or are not physically attracted when the woman is say 0.5-1.0 pts above or below his looks threshold (be that the lower casual or higher LTR looks threshold). I think it could be in cases near the threshold where he needs more time to decide if he’s attracted enough, especially for LTR. If she’s right at that threshold then that is especially where the non-looks factors can really tip her into the LTR category.
I also think that falling in love with a woman makes the man view the woman differently. I think he can still objectively rate her a 6 or whatever but she takes on a certain kind of personalized beauty to him that makes him feel likes she’s more beautiful. (I think this effect is even stronger in many woman. I know a lot of girls who thought the guy was average looking or even ugly and then became good looking to her as she fell in love. I don’t think this is so true of the really demanding-of-good-looks women.)
I don’t know what your looks were like when single but I get the impression from your statements that you were on the cute side of average, or somewhat pretty (maybe a 7? I have no idea really, just guessing since you said you weren’t the pretty valley girl type–if you want to put up a picture or email me one of when you were younger I could give my opinion but I digress), and for a lot of guys that really is good enough or even more than good enough. Combine that with a personality they like and some sensuality and sassiness (but not outright bitchiness) and that is a great combo that most guys would fall in love with.
I think that for marriage a typical man is probably basing his attraction and love 1/2 on looks and 1/2 on personality/compatibility whereas for casual/ONS it’s much more weighted to looks (with a lower threshold, just needs to pass the boner test instead of the faithful-to-her* boner test
), willingness to have sex, and sexiness (partially an aspect of personality).
The one caveat on the LTR formula is that most men are average and are happy enough with an average-looking woman and so that puts maybe 70% of the women at or above his threshold and so in practice he may not consciously have looks as such a deal-breaker. Of course he would like prettier, all else being equal. Men with higher looks thresholds will be pickier and it would seem like the looks would go into his equation more.
There are also some men who just aren’t so concerned with looks. I know some where I thought they could have clearly done better but they were happy (enough) and are still married to this day.
*giving up potentially bonering other women
Are media and marketing executives who target children as consumers unwittingly injecting fuck-positive feminist hopes on the little ones?
http://www.theatlantic.com/sexes/archive/2012/12/when-your-daughter-asks-for-a-victorias-secret-gift-card/266174/
.
@ Abbot
No. They are doing it purposely, not unwittingly.
(Pssst… Han Solo! Just wanted to let you know that I haven’t forgotten, I’ve just been super-busy as I told you! Reading the Skylar Place study in my spare moments. Hopefully will be able to get back to you soon!)
Skyler*
@SayWhaat
I don’t think you need to read it anymore though you are of course welcome to. You can see my summary of the effect back a page or two. The men upped their rating of the women’s attractiveness by 0.2 pts (1-9 scale) when other men showed interest.
Seems pretty consistent with my experience of my rating of a woman’s looks not being affected much or at all by other men showing interest in women. For me, the more men focus on the women I am not attracted the better! Leaves the path open to me.
Though not a direct experiment, I also stand by my point that the opinion of what other men find beautiful has very little or not effect on what I do, in terms of facial and bodily beauty.
As to the passage of time, I still find the younger Cindy Crawford I lusted after as a lad as lustworthy now as then:
http://www.jurgita.com/models-id10363.html
Feel free to let me know what you think about whether men are affected or not by other men’s opinion of what’s beautiful.
Hi Han Solo! Apologies for the delayed response – I was hoping to get back to you on Sunday, but ended up getting called to work. I’ve been crazy busy, reading these links during my lunch breaks, but I am finally back with a response for you!
Now, you and Susan have covered some ground since this discussion was last timely, so I’ve been catching up and reading the links posted since. To save you the trouble of scrolling back, I’ve saved some of your responses here:
The Gauntlet is Thrown
I’ll be honest – I felt like a real tool when I did all this legwork, only to go back to your original question and realize that you had moved the goalposts. How silly.
I don’t recall debating the *extent* to which male preselection occurs, only the matter of whether it occurred *at all*. I think that the Skyler Place studies demonstrated that male mate copying is a real and observable phenomenon (i.e. IT HAPPENS), so I feel comfortable saying that male interest can increase with regards to a female of similar SMV, given that another male of similar SMV to the observing male is demonstrating said interest.
Now, for your other claim, that there is there a minor effect on the perceived attractiveness of a woman for a relationship (short and long) due to men’s interest in her.
I followed your discussion with Susan on this, and I confess that I had difficulty following your math, so please correct me if I am mistaken.
I’m a Barbie and math is hard.
Okay, going forward, please don’t assume any intended snark in my statements (unless it’s self-deprecating – there’s gonna be loads of that, haha) , because I really am trying to understand the results of these experiments and how you arrived at your conclusions.
In this particular instance, what I don’t understand here is why you are comparing the results of two different experiments. Experiment 1 measured individual-based mate-choice copying for faces associated directly with mating success/lack of mating success by controlling for facial characteristics, whereas Experiment 2 demonstrated individual-based copying by controlling for styling (i.e. culturally acquired) similarities. Shouldn’t we be comparing the change in woman’s attractiveness to the control in each experiment?
___________________Perceived Interest by Males Actual Interest
____________________Negative____Positive Neg___Posit
Exp1Attractiveness of females(Target)__0.29_____0.54 0.34___0.54
Exp1Attractiveness of females(Control)__-0.21___-0.20 -0.23__-0.17
So in Experiment 1, there was a net change of 0.5 in negative perceived interest, and a net change of 0.74 in positive perceived interest. There was a net change of 0.57 in negative actual interest, and a net change of 0.71 in positive actual interest.
That may still not seem like much, but that is because you are saying that these numbers are reflected on a scale of 1-9. I can see how you may think that (and I thought so as well, which is why I was surprised that the numbers were so low), but on second review I am not so sure that we were using the correct scale.
Bear with me here: if every guy rated attractiveness on a 9-pt scale, I don’t know if we can assume that they could give ratings in whole numbers (i.e. rating a girl as a 6, then a 7) or decimal values (i.e. rating a girl as a 6.342, then a 7.162). Let’s say each girl received an increase of 1 point and can only receive changes in increments of whole numbers. Averaging that out over a sample size of N = 40, the mean should still be 1.0 – so why are these numbers so low?
Reading the study, I found that Skyler Place used two Likert scales. I looked it up: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Likert_scale
An important distinction must be made between a Likert scale and a Likert item. The Likert scale is the sum of responses on several Likert items. Because Likert items are often accompanied by a visual analog scale (e.g., a horizontal line, on which a subject indicates his or her response by circling or checking tick-marks), the items are sometimes called scales themselves. This is the source of much confusion; it is better, therefore, to reserve the term Likert scale to apply to the summed scale, and Likert item to refer to an individual item.
Say Whaaaat?
In other words, The subjects in this experiment weren’t assigning numerical values at all! They were rating the targets on a scale of something like “very unattracted” to “very attracted”, which then corresponded to values on two 9-point scales, which Skyler Place then interpreted!
I found this nice article on how to calculate the mean on a Likert scale: http://www.ehow.com/how_6538076_calculate-mean-likert-scale.html
This is my understanding: Skyler Place used two Likert scales to rate attractiveness of the targets, so he was using the SUM of responses on both scales, then averaging those responses over N = 40, then subtracting the average initial response rating from the average ultimate response rating in order to arrive at the means for negative and positive perceived/actual interest.
In other words, we cannot assess the mean values obtained relative to the 1-9 scales that the study used. The scales are irrelevant in the context of the mean.
Now, I’m not going to do the math to show you how these mean values are statistically significant, because I’m lazy and more importantly, Skyler did the work already for me. (:P) For Experiment 1, the change in perceived interest following positive interactions is significant (P<0.05) and super-significant for Experiment 2 (P<0.01). (These are denoted by * and ** respectively in Table 1.)
From my understanding, this demonstrates that men *are* in fact affected by other men’s opinion, so long as/especially if that opinion comes from men of similar or higher SMV. That is the meaning of the statistically significant findings – the incidence of swaying men’s opinions did not occur by chance! Now, we’re not talking massive changes of approval here – fugly Bertha is still going to be fugly Bertha to all the guys, even if Studly Sam takes a shine to her after his traumatic head injury last football season. But an incremental change may be enough to bump Plain Julie to Pretty Julie! I do not think this is inconsistent with your personal experience.
I *do* think that these studies could also be improved by taking socio-sexual orientation into account (i.e., a restricted man may not be swayed by the opinion of an unrestricted man, but would his opinion be affected by the opinions of similarly restricted males?) I think that answering that question requires a different study. Maybe one specifically designed to measure arousal? Hmm…
I’d be interested in your response, though I may not be alive to read it as I am sure VD will find something in my analysis to justify my murder on account of stupidity.
Thanks in advance!
Oh and Susan, feel free to opine as well.
@SayWhaat
I haven’t moved any goalposts that I’m aware of. Feel free to clarify.
My response to you was generated by INTJ addressing you and your response:
INTJ 303:
SayWhaat 304:
So INTJ was saying that “on the individual level, preselection isn’t going to have that big an effect.” And that seems to be what the study shows, that cases where the speed-dating men showed interest caused the attraction to rise by about 0.225 more than where the speed-dating men didn’t show interest. So, I felt that you were unfairly unloading on INTJ when what he was saying was consistent with the original and follow-up studies Susan mentioned.
I will look at the Likert-like scale to see if that changes things and will fully admit if they do.
The key point is we compare the values where interest to shown to the values where no interest was shown to isolate the effect of interest on how them men rated the women’s attractivess. That’s why I subtracted 0.54-0.29=0.25 in Exp 1, perceived interest, and similarly for the other 3 cases.
These numbers are from the follow-up study that actually rates the attractiveness,
http://www.skylerplace.com/pdfs/bowers.be.2012.pdf ,
Now, we could subtract the difference between interest and no-interest, adjusted by the change in the control but that won’t have a big effect since the control doesn’t change much but here goes:
Exp 1 PerceivedInt____________Exp 1 ActInt
[0.54-(-0.20)]-[0.29-(-0.21)] =0.24 [0.54-(-0.17)] – [0.34-(-0.23)] =0.14
Exp 2 PerceivedInt____________Exp 2 ActInt
[0.59-0.04] – [0.27-0.07] = 0.35 __ [0.53-0.00] – [0.40-0.10] =0.23
So, this gives 0.24, 0.14, 0.35 and 0.23 (and an average of 0.24), quite close to the 0.25, 0.20, 0.32 and 0.13 (avg of 0.225) when not subtracting the control so it doesn’t really matter which you do.
I wasn’t comparing experiment 1 and 2. I was saying they give relevant info and can be combined because they both involve rating the women’s photo before, then watching the video and then rating her photo again, after. The only difference was seeing a photo of another person (that was also rated) with the same face but different clothes and hair in exp 1 and same clothes/hair but diff face in exp 2, to see if the effects of preselection could apply to similarly looking or dressed individuals.
@SayWhaat
I can see the difficulty in only having 9 discrete things to choose from so in cases where your rating goes up by 0.4 the person might stick with their original number but on the flips side if it goes up by 0.6 then they would choose the original number plus one. A ranking scale that allowed 0.5 increments would help alleviate this problem. But I would argue that since the shows-interest values went up by about 0.5 that there were probably about half that were in the +0.5 to +1.49 range and added one to their original score while the other half were in the -0.49 to +0.49 and thus didn’t change their original score and so I think it balances out. For the no-interest categories that only changed by about 0.3 there would be about 30% that went up by 1 and 70% that changed. If the 0.5 increment was allowed then presumably some of the no-change votes would have been closer to 0.5 than 0 and have chosen +0.5. This may have given a higher no-interest change in rating.
@SayWhaat
I never said they weren’t statistically significantly changed by the opinion of other men. Rather, I said they weren’t changed much or at all. Most of the changes in comparing interest vs no-interest were statistically significant but they weren’t very large.
I have always held that men could have their opinion of a woman’s looks changed by a small amount, somewhere in the 0 to 0.5 amount. So my original assertion was consistent with what the study found.
Statistically significant does NOT mean large. It only means that is very unlikely to have been from chance.
@SayWhaat
Re changing goal posts:
Perhaps you mean that in the first thing I said to you was related to the man’s interest in a ONS/STR (the question asked in the original study Susan mentioned). And then later, Susan gave a follow-up Skyler Place study that asked a different question, having the men rate the speed-dating women.
I analyzed both studies and showed the magnitude of the effect was small in both cases. And this is consistent with what I said, that men aren’t affected very much or at all. On average (in the studies, they appear to be affected by a small amount, though there are other things that could have caused them to up their rating like seeing her body language and her showing interest as well that would make her seem more approachable and potentially likely to show interest in the viewer).
So, no changing goal posts as far as I can tell (clarify if you feel I have).
@SayWhaat
I read the Likert scale Wikipedia link and the other one on how to calculate the mean.
Let’s assume that people either change their rating up 1 or not at all, to keep things simple. So, if the change is 0.5 then that means half kept the same and half upped it by 1. More granularity would DEFINITELY improve this experiment because the mean of the responses is much less than the granularity of the choices.
The question asked was not “do you find this person attractive?” Rather it was ‘‘How attractive do you find this person?’’ (See p. 115, 2nd column) Because of this I think that the 1-9 scale is still highly applicable. After all, what do we mean when we say a woman is a 10 in looks (or 9 in the study being the highest possible)? We mean, extremely awesomely attractive. So just because there were 9 gradations of attractivness likely used in the question, probably ranging from extremely unattractive to average to extremely attractive does not mean that the 0.225 mean result doesn’t correspond to how we think of things.
The second question was ‘‘How interested would you be in this person for a committed, long-term relationship?” The two questions were the two “scales” you are referring to and he did most definitely not combine them. That would make no sense since they’re completely different questions.
@SayWhaat
I agree but you’re arguing against something I never said. I never said 100% no effect, just that most men are not affected much or at all. So I always allowed for a small effect.
Feel free to respond to my many comments responding to you.
Actually, the study showed that attraction rose when the speed-dating men showed interest, and *fell* when the speed-dating men didn’t show interest. So there was an effect in both directions.
Regarding INTJ’s initial comment:
And I think we have a misunderstanding here. I don’t mean to argue that pre-selection is going to cause you to find someone unattractive when previously you found that person attractive. INTJ has it backwards. What I am saying is that the social proofing effect is going to give a “halo” effect. Let’s say you have two solid 8s, A and B. Steve is more interested in B for whatever reason (they’re in the same class), but all the guys are ga-ga over A. Steve isn’t going to think, “well I was wrong, I guess B is unattractive now”, he is going to think, “what’s special about A? Am I missing something?” and then Steve is going to go with the crowd and think A is special too and fantasize about threesomes with A and B. The tendency for Steve to give extra consideration to A is a phenomenon known as groupthink, and I am highly skeptical of the claim that any single person is above it.
Wrong. You need to compare the values where interest is shown to the values where there was a baseline of interest. In other words, you compare the values where interest is shown to the control in each experiment.
I think you are correct here, and this is actually the math that I should have performed.
We can’t say that it “doesn’t matter” when it comes to figuring out what is statistically significant.
Rounding error, haha! Though with all due respect, Han Solo, I believe you are in a very small minority of guys who actually “rate” women down to the tenths or hundredths of a decimal point.
I don’t think this distinction would really matter much in terms of experimental results, though it would definitely allow for more accuracy.
Hmm, okay. Thank you for clarifying your comments — I think that we are saying the same thing. I am saying that it is statistically significant in the sense that social proof can and does work on men, and you are saying yes, it does, but not by much. I think I can agree with that – I don’t believe it is much different from female behavior.
Re: the Likert scale.
Ah, I see – I had thought that the Likert scale for attractiveness was factored in with the Likert scale for self-assessment for each trial, but I realize now that was a separate distinction made within each experiment. I’m still not convinced we can use the 1-9 scale to analyze the mean results, however. The 1-9 scale measures discrete variables, and the mean results are those variables chopped up and spit out to depict a net change. Maybe you or someone else can explain to me why the 1-9 scale is applicable in that context.
I do think that we have been talking past each other, for the most part. Like I said before, the studies demonstrate that social proofing can and does work on men. I think I misunderstood your position for saying that it doesn’t work – thank you for clarifying on that point. Likewise, I think you misunderstood my position for saying that it will cause people to lose interest when previously there was interest – I am not saying that at all, only that social proof will extend more interest for those who are the recipients of that social proof, or will confirm negative interest for those who were already deemed uninteresting/unattractive. I hope I have sufficiently explained my point.
And again, I am still puzzled as to why we should use the 1-9 scale to assess the means, so if you (or anyone else) could clarify that, I would really appreciate it.
Thanks, Han Solo!
@SayWhaat
No, it didn’t show decreased attractivess rating for the women when the speed-dating men didn’t show interest. It actually increased. I am referring to Table 1 in http://www.skylerplace.com/pdfs/bowers.be.2012.pdf
Look at the parts under male subjects, Target, attractiveness, negative (meaning no interest). The changed by 0.29, 0.34, 0.27, and 0.40.
So, what are you basing your statement on? (Even the attractiveness for LTR rose in 3/4 cases and was zero in the other so you couldn’t be referring to that either.)
I agree but I actually said something along these lines, that all else being equal the guy might go for the one that will also give him more validation as long as it’s not too hard to get her. However, if she is a pain in the ass then he would rather go for the easier-to-get-8. However, in your example, if he really likes B better (say due to personality or whatever) then he will be glad the others are focused on A.
FWIW, I think INTJ’s example of saying that the guy liked big boobs because society says he should is way off. Guys don’t like big boobs because anyone tells them to, they like (or don’t like) them because it’s mostly hardwired into them. As to being affected by porn, I think it does have an effect but no matter how many volleyball-esque fake porn boobs I see I don’t like them and it’s gotten to a point where it’s actually a turn off. I do like large natural breasts but no amount of seeing porn (apparently a large number of guys do like them) has changed my opinion.
Sorry, SayWhaat, you are wrong. The control was a photo of a completely different person, and rated before and after to show any underlying change in the rating metric of the person doing the rating. This makes two big errors you are making in reading the paper. The 1st was the one above where you said that the rating went down when no interest was shown. It is becoming frustrating to have to point out these things. But I will carry on because I believe you are acting in good faith. Remember the big picture question for measuring the change in attractiveness when interest is and isn’t shown–it’s to compare the two cases.
I don’t think it matters much and arguments could be made as to whether or not the control photo rating really should be subtracted but since it’s a small effect (as you see in the calculations I did) it doesn’t matter.
Here you go off on this again but I have never been focused on that. I have always said the results were fairly stat. significant. (The women subjects’ results were much more stat significant, though I digress). Rather, I’m focused on the size of the jump.
I don’t rate to the hundredths or usually the tenths. Usually it’s to the nearest 0.5 though sometimes it could be more precise if I am trying to compare btw two virtually equal women, say two 8′s (since the whole rating scale is a difficult thing to really define in a rigorous way–but it is still useful–to me personally it basically has to do with the relative attractiveness of women and how I feel towards them).
Finally!
Yes, we do agree. I also agree that women probably don’t change their views of men’s looks very much either–this study showed it at about 0.295 (vs 0.225 for men) after averaging the 4 things. The women’s statistics were more stat. significant, fwiw. Moving beyond this article, as I said to Susan, I think that preselection working on (many though not all) women comes into play more in real life where there is more the real potential for a fling (if they’re looking) or a relationship to happen.
Will continue about the Likert scale….
Now, to the Likert scale:
I appreciate that you are sincerely trying to understand and are open to changing your understanding based on facts or reasonable arguments. I too read over many parts of the paper yesterday to see if I had misunderstood anything.
How the 1-9 thing works (as I understand it). They provide 9 qualitative answers to the question “How attractive do you find this person?” along the lines of what we talked about yesterday, something like:
extremely unattractive; very unattractive; unattractive; just under average; average; just above average; attractive, very attractive; extremely attractive
Then, the authors convert these into numerical values: 1 for extremely unattractive, 2 for very unattractive…and 9 for extremely attractive.
Now, I will argue that this is really what we mean when we talk about the looks rating of women (though we usually talk on a 1-10 scale, so the 9 in the study would be the 10 IRL). Using the 1-9 scale, if we give someone a 5 we mean a woman of average looks. I think we agree there, right? And so doing it in the reverse direction and saying average and then assigning that a 5 is legitimate. Are we in agreement? I think we would also be in agreement with assigning the highest value (9) to the qualitative judgement of extremely attractive.
Now, I will fully grant that we need to know exactly what nine options were given (and I actually wrote the author to ask that and a couple other questions–I’ll let you know if he replies). Also, the 1-9 (or 1-10 IRL) looks scale is somewhat hard to define and varies somewhat from man to man but in principle it wouldn’t be hard (though it would be very time intensive) to have every man rate every woman on earth
in terms of looks and then define the female looks scale based on something like every +1 (or -1) in the scale from the average corresponds to, say, another half standard deviation or something. I digress.
So, in spite of these limitations, I still think that the qualitative options correspond quite well with the 1-9 scale (assuming they’re somewhat like I listed above).
In terms of finding the mean, then you simply take the rating before and after and associate their numerical equivalents (the changes will be 0 or some positive or negative integer) and average them out. That is what was done to create table 1. Due to only having 9 options it’s not very granular but I understand it since having a 19-point Likert scale would be rather unwieldy.
So, with better granularity, more at the 0.5 level we could have a better answer but the answers provided by this study are still interesting.
I don’t think I misunderstood you but maybe I did.
Let me know if you now understand why the 1-9 scale was used to calculate the means, as I explained above, or if you have further questions.
A question for you…if the 1-9 scale was not used then where did the means come from? However, after reading about Likert scales and assigning numbers to them I am confident that that is what was done.
A final caveat is that this study only had 40 men (and 40 women) participating and so that is a rather small sample. Also, they were psych students at Indiana University. The speed daters were in Germany.
More ideally, this experiment would have 1000′s of participants from all over the world and view speed daters from all over the world.
That said, the experiment is definitely interesting and tells us something about human nature. However, with such a small sample size we should be careful in generalizing to the whole of humanity off of it.
Please let me know your further thoughts. As of now, I believe we are in agreement on everything except, possibly, how the means were calculated, though hopefully with my explanation that is now clear too, and if I am missing something about the calculation please let me know.
Cheers!
Put another way:
The incremental change *along* a scale may not seem like much at face value, but the *effect* may be large. I know you don’t believe in global warming (btw, in your debate with Olive, I noticed you conveniently ignored my link re: evidence that temperatures forecasted from the 90s occurred almost exactly as modeled), but a small difference in degrees may very well mean the difference between freezing point and a melting ice cap!
Likewise, an incremental change may not mean much for an 8, but would be *huge* for a 5! That is why I disagree with your assertion that the “small” change may not mean much. The small change could very well be huge for an otherwise plain girl. Therefore it’s not a bad strategy for girls to attempt to cultivate social proof.
Argh, I see you responded to my other post but I don’t have time right now. Will get back to you later. >__<
Likewise, an incremental change may not mean much for an 8, but would be *huge* for a 5! That is why I disagree with your assertion that the “small” change may not mean much. The small change could very well be huge for an otherwise plain girl. Therefore it’s not a bad strategy for girls to attempt to cultivate social proof.
It may not be a bad strategy if she doesn’t reallocate to much time and effort to cultivating social proof instead of working on her appearance. The best payoff for a “plain girl” is going to be making herself not plain. Just about every girl can boost her looks 2 points with the right combination of working out, right hairstyle, and right makeup. Going from a 5 to a 7 in looks is going to be 100x more impactful on men than any increase from social proof.
Han, I’ll admit I rapidly skimmed much of the detailed quantitative analysis as I don’t have the time to analyze it. Suffice it to say, I have no doubt social proof and preselection works for men. The year I spent bouncing confirmed that. Honestly, I was literally astounded just how important it is for a guy to be seen and surrounded by the “right people” including other attractive women. Now sure, a woman may alter her initial judgement once she interacts with the guy, but that initial impression is huge. Heck, there are guys who know this instinctually. They walked in with entourages, made sure on their entrance to demonstrate their social network, etc. I saw guys who did better than I would expect based solely on their physical looks because of preselection and social status.
@SayWhaat
The incremental change will open more options, yes. The question is, how much? So, we see that the change when interest is shown is about 0.225 (1-9 scale) greater than when no interest is shown (or 0.24 if you subtract off the control changes). So, to the nearest 1/4 point, you get 0.25 added onto your looks ranking when men show interest.
If a woman has a 6 looks rating to a man and his threshold is 7 then her rating going to a 6.25 will not make him want to be with her.
However, if his minimum acceptable level were a 6.25 then she would suddenly go from getting some of his attention but him always feeling like she was just not quite pretty enough to suddenly (barely) being pretty enough and he would likely proceed. Also, if his threshold were 6 then by upping to a 6.25 she would be safely over his threshold.
So, with that slice of men that have their threshold for acceptable minimal looks right near where her looks are then, yes, that 0.25 bump can have a huge effect. However, in cases where she is either 0.5+ above or 0.5+ below his threshold then that extra 0.25 won’t make much difference: either she was already pretty/hot enough that then character and personality and so on will be bigger factors for an LTR (or how DTF and kinky and sensual she is for casual) or she was not nearly pretty/hot enough so she has no hope.
For an 8 going to an 8.25 is less of a relative jump than a 5 going to a 5.25 but still neither are that big, except in terms of the men that have minimum thresholds near her looks. Also, since there are likely more men with min. thresholds near the center of the bell curve then the woman going from 5 to 5.25 will open up to herself more men than the woman going from 8 to 8.25.
Also, in terms of actionable advice (what SHE can do), going about getting other men to show interest by flirting with them or being slutty may get you that 0.25 bump but it may also trigger the reactions of men that she is too flirty and has too many guys and so he may decide it’s better to look elsewhere. Definitely a catch-22 there.
@SayWhaat
Not sure why you brought this in, except to highlight that small changes can have big effects. I didn’t ignore your link but I “love” how you ascribe to me things that you have no basis for saying. I looked at it. I just didn’t reply to your comment. Also, I actually DO believe in global warming due to CO2. However, I am unconvinced that the positive feedback from water vapor actually exists that would create the larger warming. The global warmists have no proof that it actually does exist and simply assume it. That is not science. That is faith-based. So, I believe that temperatures will rise 1C based on a doubling of CO2 and am unsure as to what else will happen. Because of the lack of proof that the water vapor feedback acts as they assume I am skeptical of it though willing to be convinced. So I believe in global warming to the 1C level and am skeptical of it at the more catastrophic 3-4C level.
Also, global warming models predict that the lower troposphere of the atmosphere should warm but this warming has not been found. If direct physical predictions of your model are not observed then something about them must be wrong or not understood.
As to how the warming predictions have done, here is a graph just released in the IPCC (International Panel on Climate Change, the group awarded the Noble Peace prize in 2007) draft version of their report they will release next year. It shows the various IPCC predictions released in 1990, 1995, 2001, and 2007 and the actual observed temperatures being lower than what was observed.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/12/14/the-real-ipcc-ar5-draft-bombshell-plus-a-poll/
Notice how the more recent projections are always lower than the original ones but they are still higher than the predicted temperatures (meaning after the predictions were released…the later models are fit to the prior years’ data…you can see the tick marks on the x-axis as to when each model/prediction was released).
So, this is one example of why I think the global warming models are not that accurate and why I think there is more to the story (such as natural ocean cycles that may have released lots of heat in the late nineties that caused the temperature to rise, possibility of no or little positive feedback from increased water vapor due to more cloud cover, and others).
If there case was as solid as they think then they should be able to more accurately predict future temperatures–note, none of them predicted the current 14 years of no rise in temperature. They should be able to explain their models and methodology without hiding them from the public and attacking skeptics ad hominem by calling them “deniers,” trying to make people with reasonable questions in the face of data that doesn’t match the models seem like holocaust deniers and haters of the earth. They should be able to explain why their models predict a heating of the troposphere but none is found in the measurements.
As I said to Olive, I will be happy to debate this via email but don’t want to derail here too much.
Anyway, not sure why you brought it up since it has nothing to do with the study or topic we’re debating.
@Mike C
I totally agree with you. I wonder what % of women are susceptible to this. I would think that the more hypergamous ones are. Then we have women like Anacaona that finds it a negative. I went on a date with a girl that was like that and she didn’t want to date me more because I had a photo with me and a hot girl up on facebook. I would guess that about 10% are like Anacaona (negative preselection effect), probably 20% aren’t affected either way, probably 20% are mildly positively affected, 30-40% are positively affected and 10-20% (the most hypergamous) really eat that stuff up.
@SayWhaat
Should read:
Notice how the more recent projections are always lower than the PREVIOUS ones but they are still higher than the OBSERVED temperatures (meaning after the predictions were released…the later models are fit to the prior years’ data…you can see the tick marks on the x-axis as to when each model/prediction was released).
I wonder what % of women are susceptible to this. I would think that the more hypergamous ones are.
I agree. I’m sure there is a high correlation between level of hypergamy and how much a woman is impacted by preselection/social status. I think different women have a different desire to “win the prize” so to speak, and their tolerance of competing with other women to “win a particular man”.
I went on a date with a girl that was like that and she didn’t want to date me more because I had a photo with me and a hot girl up on facebook.
Just curious, how would you rate this particular girl’s physical attractiveness, both absolute, and relative to your own, and the other hot girl?
I would guess that about 10% are like Anacaona (negative preselection effect), probably 20% aren’t affected either way, probably 20% are mildly positively affected, 30-40% are positively affected and 10-20% (the most hypergamous) really eat that stuff up.
FWIW, I think your percentage distribution is probably spot on. As a side point, I’d bet my last dollar that how a girl is impacted by preselection and social status is highly correlated with how much priority she places on things like designer clothing, the right shoes, being seen at the right places, etc. To cherrypick two examples, I believe both Hope and Anacoana have mentioned a number of times shopping for clothes at the thrift store, and also kind of walking off the beaten path in terms of movies, media, and TV shows, etc. And to my recollection, both selected men who had little to no preselection at all. So I think you can tell a lot about how much status and preselection matters to a woman from her other lifestyle choices.
I would rate both of the women as 8′s. But the one that didn’t want to date me anymore was very restricted (N=2) (though she still liked me a lot). The other one, in the picture with me, was a low-level model who actually did a semi-nude shoot in a nationally-distributed magazine in Brazil (at every little newstand basically). I find that I tend to rate women about 0.5 lower than most other guys I talk with so maybe they were both 8.5′s. Anyway, they were both solidly pretty but not gorgeous 9′s or 10′s. I kissed both girls, the restricted one for about 2 hours straight and the model for not very long. After a few months the restricted one came around and wanted to see me again.
As to how they compare with my attractiveness, not sure, but you can see my photo. If any women want to give me a rating from 1-10 go for it.
Oops, you’re right! I was looking at Figure 3 on page 118, but mixed up the upper panel for females with the lower panel for males. (The similar-to-target bars for females confused me though, because they do go in opposite directions. Perhaps I am not interpreting that Figure correctly.) Although, the ratings for the controls did decrease, despite no social information. More on that later.
Okay this is neither here nor there, but I just had to mention that not too long ago on Reddit, there was a plaintive post from a guy about how he seriously did not want to view any more gaping assholes in porn. Somehow, anal became a status quo and he hated to keep getting confronted with that view. Okay sorry that was really off-topic and gross but your comment reminded me of it and I thought it was hilarious. XD
First off I appreciate your continuing to explain this to me because I really am trying to debate in good faith.
I did warn you about this in advance!
I did know that the control was a photo of a completely different person. The reason I think it is important to include in the assessments is because the controls also experienced a change in ratings, which is important to factor in.
Re-reading the results (page 118), Skyler says the following:
…the ratings for the control faces, which appear in no videos, tend to decrease (equally after both positive and negative interactions), despite no negative (nor positive) social information. The increase in the target ratings appears to be due to exposure to the behaving person in the video; negative change may occur for stimuli that appear only in a single, repeated photograph. The appropriate comparison when assessing mate-choice copying, thus, is between positive and negative interactions of a given stimulus type, not how either of these relate to the zero line, which cannot be interpreted as no effect. The control faces, therefore, are an important inclusion, putting into perspective the changes of ratings of the similar-to-target faces, which also do not appear in the videos.
Okay, now please tell me if I am wrong again in my interpretation (because it is definitely possible!), but my understanding of this paragraph is that the ratings for the controls decreased. Since there was a definite change of rating for the controls, that change needed to be factored in for the ratings of the other faces. However, the only valid comparison is with the similar-to-target faces, since they did not appear in the videos (and hence the subjects would not be able to gather any other cues in order to make their assessments). So I think that I was mistaken before with regards to the actual targets, but for the similar-to-target pictures (which were photo manipulations), it is necessary to include the changes from the controls.
Sorry to pick on you about this further, but I’m just finding it very difficult to grok how one can “rate” someone as an 8.5 and another as an 8.0. I thought the boner test was very simple (hard or not), so I’m getting very confused about this intricate splicing of ratings…
Now on to the Likert Scale:
Yes, we are in agreement.
@SayWhaat
I just heard back from the author and he said that “Only the extremes were labelled (1 = very unattractive; 9 = very attractive). People answered by entering a number from 1 to 9.”
I will respond to your comment in a bit. I’m going to eat right now.
@SayWhaat
Responding point-by-point but too lazy to quote you:
The similar-to-target is the photo of the same face but different hair/clothes in exp 1 and different face but same hair/clothes in exp 2.
I agree with that guy about porn–I’m not into that stuff–but I guess some guys really like it–probably they intrinsically like it to some extent and to a lesser extent have become conditioned to “softer” things and need that extra oomph to get aroused.
Well, we’re both coming at this in good faith and we basically agree on everything, I think.
The controls didn’t change much though but that’s fine if you want to include them and I agree that the article says you should incluce them. But look at how they change roughly the same amount, giving differences in changes of nearly zero:
exp1-perceived__-0.21 and -0.20 diff=0.01
exp2 perceived__0.07 and 0.04 diff=-0.03
exp1-actual_____-0.23 and -0.17 diff=0.06
exp2 actual_____0.10 and 0.00 diff=-0.10
Rating the similar-to-targets face (i.e. same face diff clothing/hair and vice versa) is not something I have been focusing on and has nothing directly to do with with rating the specific woman receiving the attention. Rather, it was to see how much the attraction increase could transfer to other somewhat similar “people”.
I personally can very definitely rate a 8.0 vs an 8.5. For me, an 8 is a woman who is solidly pretty but has some features that could be better whereas an 8.5 has a bit more beauty or less flaws than the 8. I can also tell between an 8.5 and a 9. Note, these are my personal ratings. For simplicity let’s say there are 3 women: A, B, C. I give A a 7, B a 7.5 and C an 8. If another man gave them an 8, 8.5 and 9 then that would mean we had a systematic offset of 1. OTOH if he gave them a 7.5, 7 and 8, respectively, then we wouldn’t have a systematic offset but a difference of relative beauty on A and B but agree on C.
The boner test is just that. Do you get hard? But within the realm of the hard there are various gradations of how much you want to have sex and how much you want to marry them (and of course for both casual and, to a greater extent, LTR you take into account various and different personality traits). In terms of the casual ladder and marriage ladder, and assuming a guy that is open to both under the right circumstances, getting a boner puts her on the casual ladder. But usually she will need to be prettier to get on the marriage ladder, assuming he plans to be faithful and is thus giving up other women. So, for an average guy, on just looks alone, his casual minimum might be a 4 and his marriage minimum a 5. Now the 5 looks girl would have to have a great personality for him to prefer her over a 6 looks girl with average personality.
See my comments in 636 that I do agree that a bump of 0.25 to a 5 is a bigger deal than a 0.25 bump in looks to an 8:
So, a small bump in looks is important to that woman and to any man where she is near his minimum threshold. But in terms of practical advice, as Mike C said just above, the typical woman probably has a few pounds that she can easily part with and perhaps improve her clothes or hair or something and go up even more (like 0.5 or 1 pts–I think his 1-2 points potential is not so accurate for the typical woman but rather for more overweight or frumpy women who are really underachieving). So, in terms of practical advice, I think women can up their SMV most by improving their looks and sensuality and ability to flirt. But having a social life and having some high-quality men can also provide a smaller boost (about 0.25 as we saw in the study) but they shouldn’t overdo it and get seen as sluts or too much hassle to pursue. Also, making themselves seem approachable or actually doing a bit of approaching won’t up their MMV per se (maybe a little on the SMV because they seem DTF) but basically it will just result in more of the guys who are interested interacting with her.
You might have felt slighted that I didn’t respond to the link about global warming but my length of response in these comments now have definitely dwarfed any left over “resentment” from that and I am sure you have the hugest platonic blog “crush” ever known to sometimes snarky women!!!!
And on that note, I think we basically agree on everything (except for some minor quibbles). I never said that the small effect wasn’t possible or real, just that it was small. However in opening up maybe another few percent of men to being interested in her by going from a 5 to a 5.25 or 5.5 then that may indeed be the difference between no acceptable men being interested and one or two acceptable men being interested…and you only need one.
Feel free to respond further but I really hope your only response will be that we are in sufficient agreement (and probably were all along) to stop arguing!!!
Peace
@SayWhaat
I failed to say that if the woman has already maxed out her looks by being a good weight and having a good hairstyle and clothes for her look then obviously she can’t up her looks anymore and should then work on a feminine and flirty personality and going out with guys. A girl should be careful because if she’s going out with guys +2 higher in S/MMV than herself in order to get that 0.25 bounce based on guys seeing her with other guys then she needs to be more proactive in showing interest, and that she’s not just being a slut with the hotter guys, to her more realistic LTR candidate males.
Oh, and the second article is first-authored by Robert Bowers. My mistake in calling it the Skyler Place article, though he was a co-author also.
But in terms of practical advice, as Mike C said just above, the typical woman probably has a few pounds that she can easily part with and perhaps improve her clothes or hair or something and go up even more (like 0.5 or 1 pts–I think his 1-2 points potential is not so accurate for the typical woman but rather for more overweight or frumpy women who are really underachieving).
Han,
I’m going to channel Ramble here, and basically say the typical woman is overweight. There are actually very few women (and men) who are not overweight. I work at large Fortune 500 company with thousands of employees, and let’s just say half are women. Just observing, I can maybe count on two hands the number I have seen who are not overweight, and by overweight I’d say 10-15 pounds over the weight where you are talking basically flat stomach and legs and ass where you can’t grab a handful of fatty tissue. Basically 15-18% bodyfat….maybe 20% tops. To me, the effects of that extra poundage are just huge. A girl who could be a 7 at say 18% bodyfat might look like a 2-3 if she is 50-75 pounds overweight. Even a girl who is 10-15 pounds overweight in my view gains one point simply for dropping that 10-15 pounds. It may not matter much clothed but naked in light that 10 pounds is a huge difference.
I’m curious how you would rate these 2 women, and I’ll admit I have a strong preference for fitness type looking women so it won’t surprise me if I am higher than you. First, Marzia Prince
https://www.google.com/search? q=marzia+prince&hl=en&tbo=d& source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ei= 9YvSUPGnFcekqAGD24HoAw&sqi=2& ved=0CAcQ_AUoAA&biw=1280&bih=673
Next, Jamie Eason
https://www.google.com/search? q=jamie+eason&hl=en&tbo=d& source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ei= kYzSULzEJ8fqqQGY74GQBQ&ved= 0CAcQ_AUoAA&biw=1280&bih=673
Incidentally, Jamie Eason in my opinion, is one of the few women who can really rock the short hair look. There is a very small minority of women where the short hair really does look better than long hair.
Now if you add 30-50 pounds to either of those two, you are subtracting major SMV points.
My fiancee is a professional make-up artist and she has worked a bunch of model shoots, so I’ve really had the opportunity to see before and after pictures when the pros get done working their magic on hair and makeup. Most guys either see the befores of women who don’t put any effort into those two items or the afters of the women who know what they are doing. Believe me, you would be astounded. The right lipstick with the lips done just right to make them look fuller, the right eye makeup, just the right shading on the cheekbones. A lot of times, flaws can be minimized with the right hairstyle. I’ll use myself as an example. I have a fairly big nose and more prominent features, so I look better if I let my hair grow out longer and thicker rather than a really short haircut (which sucks because I’d prefer to have my hair short). Women have even more options to play with haircuts to really suit their particular eyes, nose, and facial shape.
So…yeah…I think 1-2 points is quite achievable for really the typical woman who probably is 15 pounds overweight at least, and really doesn’t know how to do hair and makeup right.
@Mike
They really vary a lot depending on which photo of them I look at.
Marzia. I like her body except for her fake big tits and would probably rate her body a bit higher if she had a little more fat actually. I usually give about 1/3 to the body and 2/3 to the face. I would give her body about a 9.5 w/o the fake tits and a little more fat so a 9 with fakes and less fat. Her face varies from photo to photo but is about a 7 (though in some of them with the right angle and makeup it’s as high as an 8). So putting those into my formula gives her about a 7.67 in overall looks. Because she seems sensual and slutty in her pics I would give her a higher SMV than just her looks. Her SMV in my eyes would be about an 8.5.
Jamie Eason is getting into the muscular arms territory where I don’t like it so much. I would give her body an 8.5 (it would be a 9 or 9.5 if she lost the arm muscle) and her face a 7 (though I think there are some pics like this with “deceptive” angles and makeup where her face looks more like an 8.5 http://kdmag.files.wordpress.com/2012/11/jamie-eason-33.jpg; in this one I think her face is more of a 6.5 http://www.angrytrainerfitness.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/jamie-eason.jpg). That would give her a looks of 7.5.
I agree that the right clothes, hair and makeup and losing weight can help a lot. Also, smiling opens womens eyes more (it seems) and makes them look more radiant and beautiful. I think I don’t mind fat on women as much as you might so while I agree with you overall, I think that the looks for the typical woman (who I already assume does some amount of positive things with their hair, clothes, makeup, etc.) would be more able to go up about 0.5 points for that and 0.5 points by losing 15 lbs. Now, if the woman isn’t doing much of anything about makeup and hair and looks frumpy then I agree that she could go up 2 pts by rectifying that and losing 15 lbs.
By going up 2 points though I mean (in addition to losing 15 lbs for the median woman) have optimal makeup and hair and fashion, not just decent. I think the 15 lbs will up her looks by 0.5. And going from absolutely terrible, frumpy style and makeup and hair, she could go up by another 1.5 with optimal styling, 1 with good styling and 0.5 with decent but kind of half-ass effort.
Finally, I have to add I’m more into brunettes than blondes.
Haha, alright Han Solo, I’m going to respond to your laziness with my laziness and say that we’ve appeared to finally reach consensus.
Save for the blog “crush” quip — I should probably warn you that what you call “snarkiness” has stirred sufficient interest on the blogosphere before. May not pan out the way you hope it to, just sayin’.
Happy Holidays!
@SayWhaat
I’m glad you finally agree with me.
For the record, I haven’t changed my position at all and I really don’t know where you got the idea that I said there was absolutely NO effect on men from. So by reaching consensus we are agreeing that there is a small but real effect. I really don’t know why you doubted my analysis or comments to begin with.
And I’m not sure what the warning is about. I was saying you have a blog crush on me, not vice versa!
And I wasn’t hoping for anything. But I appreciate your spunkiness.
Merry Christmas!
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