DoubleReed comments on Rational Romantic Relationships, Part 1: Relationship Styles and Attraction Basics - Less Wrong

48 Post author: lukeprog 05 November 2011 11:06AM

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Comment author: Zeb 03 November 2011 02:45:51PM *  29 points [-]

Unfortunately I can't provide sources at the moment (Luke probably can), but I have seen research both sociological and anthropological showing that women and female higher primates in general have a tendency to try to mate with multiple dominate highly masculine males, sometimes secretly, while they tend to have long term pairings with less dominate, less masculine males. The theory is that the genes of the more masculine men lead to more fecund offspring, while the parenting of the less masculine men leads to higher offspring survival. In society this works out to women dating more masculine men (and testosterone is of course linked to the aggressiveness and risk taking we associate with "bad boys") prior to marriage, and then marrying less masculine men (nice guys). And if they cheat, they tend to cheat with "bad boys" and have their "nice guys" raise those kids.

EDIT: For pure anecdote, I am a nice guy (I think) who always complained about the "bad boy" thing, and now I am raising a step-daughter from my wife's youthful short term relationship with a guy everyone would still call a "bad boy." My wife is winning at natural selection! As is that jerk :(

Comment author: DoubleReed 07 November 2011 08:59:02PM 7 points [-]

That reminds me of that game that girls sometimes play "Given three choices of guys, which would you sleep with, date, or marry?"

Comment author: Insert_Idionym_Here 07 November 2011 09:11:43PM 7 points [-]

Guys play it too.

Comment author: pedanterrific 07 November 2011 09:15:56PM 4 points [-]

The criteria are a little different, though.

Comment author: FiftyTwo 14 November 2011 06:04:22PM 2 points [-]

I've played it in mixed groups, its generally about perceived personality features rather than subjective attractiveness.

Comment author: pedanterrific 14 November 2011 06:27:32PM 8 points [-]

mixed groups

I wouldn't expect this to be a recipe for honesty.

Comment author: JoshuaZ 14 November 2011 07:17:01PM *  2 points [-]

I would expect this sort of game to have difficult honesty issues even when it is a single gender. For example, if some individual has a fetish that is in some way connected to one of the individuals (say for example a celebrity that frequently wears some sort of clothing, or only one of the three falls into a racial group they have a fetish for) how likely is it that someone is going to be honest about that motivation.

That said, I agree that mixed groups will likely have more severe honesty issues.

Comment author: FiftyTwo 16 November 2011 07:20:05PM 1 point [-]

I've never treated the game as a data collection exercise. IT is more suited to social bonding and conversation stimulation.

For more statistically useful data okcupid has done studies, as have hotornot and its various imitators.