Social Engineering Blogs

psychmechanicsblog January 3, 2017

Mate choice copying and why all the good guys are taken

In humans, females are the high investing sex meaning that they invest more in their offspring than the males.

Nine months of gestation followed by years of feeding, nurturing and caring means paying a huge price in terms of time, energy, and resources.

Due to this, there is a pressure on women to select the right mates that are not only genetically sound but are also willing and able to help her invest in their offspring, especially in the context of long-term mating strategy.

Making the right mate choice is important for a woman because it’s likely to ensure her own reproductive success. Any error or misjudgment on her part, however, could mean that her huge efforts go to waste or that her reproductive success stands threatened.

One of the psychological mechanisms that women have evolved to increase the probability of making the right mate choice is called mate choice copying.

Mate choice copying

Say you move to a new city that’s very alien to you. You have no idea how things work there. What do you do to survive and adjust?

You simply copy those around you.

As soon as you arrive at the airport, you do what your fellow passengers do to reach the exit. On the subway station, you see a bunch of people lined up and assume it to be the place where tickets are sold.

In short, you make many calculations and predictions based on what other people do and they mostly turn out right.

In psychology, this is called the social proof theory and states that when we’re uncertain we follow the crowd.

Mate choice copying is very similar to the social proof theory in the way it works.

When selecting a mate, women have a tendency to evaluate what mates other women have selected in order to give themselves a better idea about which mate is worth selecting and which is not.

If a man is attractive to a lot of attractive females, a woman concludes that he must have a high mate value i.e. he must be a good mate.

Otherwise, why would so many attractive women fall for him in the first place?

Studies have shown that women rate men as attractive when they see other women smiling or positively interacting with them. Interestingly, when a women look at an attractive male, they’re more likely to spontaneously smile, thereby reinforcing mate choice copying for other women.

It’s easy to see the potential benefits that mate choice copying can offer to a woman. Evaluation of the male traits usually takes a lot of time and mate choice copying can provide women with useful shortcuts that they can use to aid their mate selection.

Mate choice copying is also the reason why women find committed men attractive. If a man has been deemed worthy enough to commit to by a woman, then surely he must be a good catch.

Women often complain that ‘all the good guys are taken’. The truth is the other way round. They perceive all the taken guys as good.

Mate choice copying in the bedroom

One of the common sources of conflict between couples in the bedroom is regarding foreplay. Women usually complain that men pay little attention to foreplay. They deem men who can stimulate them to orgasm as competent.

When asked why they like men who can stimulate them to orgasm, women naturally respond in terms of the pleasure that they gain from orgasm.

But, according to animal communication expert Robin Baker, the advantages a woman gains from selecting the more competent men are biological as well as sensual.

Basically, a woman uses a man’s approach to foreplay and intercourse to gain information about him.

A man who’s able to arouse a woman and stimulate her to orgasm signals that he has past experience with other females. This, in turn, tells her that other women have also found him attractive enough to allow intercourse.

The more effectively he stimulates her, the more experienced he should be- and hence greater the number of women who’ve so far found him to be attractive.

Mixing her genes with him, therefore, may produce sons or grandsons who’re also attractive to women, thereby increasing her own reproductive success.

References:

Yorzinski, J. L., & Platt, M. L. (2010). Same-sex gaze attraction influences mate-choice copying in humans. PLoS One, 5(2), e9115.

Jones, B. C., DeBruine, L. M., Little, A. C., Burriss, R. P., & Feinberg, D. R. (2007). Social transmission of face preferences among humans. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B: Biological Sciences, 274(1611), 899-903.

Eva, K. W., & Wood, T. J. (2006). Are all the taken men good? An indirect examination of mate-choice copying in humans. Canadian Medical Association Journal, 175(12), 1573-1574.

The Humintell Blog December 28, 2016

Resolving for a New Year

new-years-eve-1905142_1280 Are you already stressed about your New Year’s resolution?

As we prepare for the New Year, it is important to remember that attempts at self-improvement are deeply rooted in psychological principles. It may be hard to stick with our resolutions, but an understanding of how to motivate ourselves can help you make lasting and powerful resolutions.

Of the millions of Americans who make them, only eight percent manage to stick with their goals throughout the year. In fact, less than half make it through the first six months, and only 64 percent last through January!

This rate of failure certainly does not signify weakness or lack of commitment, instead it is deeply rooted in how we make and change habits. We need to understand why New Year’s resolutions so often fail, and then we can look at some ways to make them stick.

Harvard social psychologist Dr. Amy Cuddy helps shed light on this question. Dr. Cuddy contends that resolutions suffer by focusing on outcomes far off into the future. If we aim to lose 30 pounds or quit smoking, it is incredibly difficult to realize those goals or to see any concrete progress. This leads to short-term failures completely derailing the whole process.

The author Charles Duhigg agrees. Mr. Duhigg, who has spent a reporting career analyzing the power of habits, argues that many resolutions fail by coming into conflict with deeply ingrained habits.

Mr. Duhigg encourages us to focus on developing new habits, creating goals that can be attained a little bit every day. This could involve beginning to go to the gym, rather than losing weight, or developing a substitute habit for smoking, instead of quitting outright.

Building off of this advice, the American Psychological Association (APA) compiled a series of tips on how to maximize the potential of our New Year’s resolutions.

They build on Dr. Cuddy and Mr. Duhigg’s advice in encouraging the development of new habits. Specifically, these habits should “start small,” making modest commitments and targeting only one behavior at a time. We cannot totally reinvent ourselves in the New Year.

Similarly, remember that you are not in this alone. It is easier to change habits if we talk to friends, family, or even join a support group. By talking to other people, we can open up about our challenges and be reassured that we are on the right track.

Finally, the APA stresses that we must be patient and kind to ourselves. If we fail in that diet or just really need to have that smoke, it is not a reason to abandon the whole endeavor. This often involves patience as different people form habits at different speeds. As behavioral psychologist Dr. Paul Marciano points out, “making lasting change takes time.”

For more holiday-related blogs, see our past content here and here.