Konkvistador comments on Open Thread, May 16-31, 2012 - Less Wrong

4 Post author: OpenThreadGuy 16 May 2012 07:36AM

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Comment author: [deleted] 20 May 2012 10:01:50AM *  9 points [-]

Ovulation Leads Women to Perceive Sexy Cads as Good Dads (HT: Heartiste)

Why do some women pursue relationships with men who are attractive, dominant, and charming but who do not want to be in relationships—the prototypical sexy cad? Previous research shows that women have an increased desire for such men when they are ovulating, but it is unclear why ovulating women would think it is wise to pursue men who may be unfaithful and could desert them. Using both college-age and community-based samples, in 3 studies we show that ovulating women perceive charismatic and physically attractive men, but not reliable and nice men, as more committed partners and more devoted future fathers. Ovulating women perceive that sexy cads would be good fathers to their own children but not to the children of other women. This ovulatory-induced perceptual shift is driven by women who experienced early onset of puberty. Taken together, the current research identifies a novel proximate reason why ovulating women pursue relationships with sexy cads, complementing existing research that identifies the ultimate, evolutionary reasons for this behaviour.

I think it is isn't much disputed that ovulating women seem to find dark tirade and some other personality traits more sexy when ovulating, so to me the above sounded like a clear example of the halo effect. Sexy men will seems smarter and kinder than they are, because any positive trait seems to beef up our perceptions of people in other areas as well. But even as my mind slowly noted that this should effect how they see the odds of a man caring for other women's children and that I don't have any info to suggest that women are more prone to halo effect for male sexiness in general during ovulation, I saw the authors had considered this:

Finally, there were no main effects of fertility or fertility by target male interactions for any of the other positive attributes: attractiveness, financial status, and social status (all ps  .33). Ovulation also had no effect on the perception of men’s attractiveness (Mlow fertility dad  5.06, Mhigh fertility dad  4.73; Mlow fertility cad  5.79, Mhigh fertility cad  5.65), financial status (M low fertility dad  4.76, Mhigh fertility dad  4.77; Mlow fertility cad  5.64, Mhigh fertility cad  5.64), or social status (Mlow fertility dad  4.82, M high fertility dad4.74;Mlow fertility cad6.21,Mhigh fertility cad6.07). The ovulatory-induced perception of paternal investment, therefore, is not produced by a halo effect when women evaluate sexy cads at high fertility.

Study 2 also tested whether the ovulatory-induced overperception of paternal investment was a product of a broader ovulatory-induced halo effect that occurs when women evaluate attractive and charismatic men. The results showed that there was no ovulatory effect on women’s perceptions of the sexy cad’s attractiveness, financial status, or social status. Thus, ovulation appears to shift women’s perceptions of a man’s willingness to invest in her offspring specifically, but not his other positive traits.

I guess heterosexual women should be conscious of this bias, especially those desiring family formation or perhaps when judging in other contexts about which adult men they want their children to interact with. While obviously they probably aren't wrong about how sexy they find someone, they are biased when it comes to the other traits they, judging from their stated preferences, seek to maximize in such men.