"During the course of several months, the 21-year-old had been carefully instructed in not flirt with anyone who entered the laboratory. She kept to a minimum eye contact and conversation. Never wore perfume or makeup, her hair was so simple back in a queue and always wore jeans and a flannel current.
Each boy thought she was just another fellow student at the University of Florida who participated in the experiment, which in all was that only it and the subject put together a puzzle Lego blocks. But the real experiment came later, when each of these men had to rate the attractiveness of the girl. Previous studies have shown a woman in her fertile phase of their menstrual cycle looks more attractive, and the same effect was observed here - but only when the woman was qualified by a man who is not already involved with someone else.
Those young people who had relationships, described the girl as significantly less attractive when she was at the peak of their fertility, presumably because at some level they found the girl at that time constituted the greatest risk for their relationships. To avoid the temptation to go off the rails, apparently told themselves that the girl did not seem so sexy.
This experiment was part of a new trend in psychology, which studies the "maintenance of the relationship." Previous studies emphasized how evolution conditioned us to know and have sex: How men and women choose their mates for signs such as facial symmetry, body shape, social status and resources.
But the evolutionary game of copulation was not reduced to find a symmetrical face in the field of what today would be a singles bar. Natural selection favored those who stay together long enough to breed children: the kind of men and women who could sustain a relationship by making their partners happy. They have benefited from virtue to remain faithful, or at least pretend to be faithful while discreetly cheating on their partners.
Some of these men in Florida were trying to become well, underestimating the appeal of the girl, in the same way a man instantly dismisses a woman on which his wife would call attention . (Is that Victoria's Secret model?! Ugh! A skeleton with silicone). But Jon Maner, co-author of the study, says this is unlikely, because the men filled out the form with your responses in private and skills believed the girl would only be seen by the researchers.
"It seems that men were really trying to avoid any temptation to feel about the girl in the process of ovulation," said Dr. Maner, who conducted the study with Saul Miller, a state psychologist colleague Florida. "They tried to convince the girl was not desirable. I suspect that some of these men actually came to believe what they said. Others may have felt the power of their forbidden desires, but I bet you just say out loud that they felt no attraction suppressing it helped them. "
may be difficult to believe that men warned that a woman is at the peak of their fertility by simply sitting next to her for a few minutes. Scientists had long assumed that ovulation in humans went unnoticed for both sexes.
But recent studies have found large changes in signals and behavior of women in their peak fertility. Tips exotic dancers get much higher (unless you are taking birth control pills that suppress ovulation, in which case your tips remain low). The timbre of the voice of women is raised. Men rated their body odor as more attractive and respond with higher levels of testosterone.
"What's fascinating is currently being flown under the radar of consciousness," said Martie Haselton, a psychologist at UCLA: "Women and men are affected by ovulation, but we have no idea that this is what is behind major changes in our behavior. Shows that we are much more similar to mammals than we thought. "
In the peak of fertility, women are more interested in going out to parties and discos, and wear more attractive (rated by both men and women). The attitude of some women in front of their partners also change, according to the research of Dr. Haselton along with his UCLA colleague, Christina Larson, and Steven Gangestad of the University of New Mexico.
"Women who are in relationships with men who are not sexually attractive - those who lack the human equivalent of the peacock's tail - suddenly start to look at other men and flirt" said Dr. Haselton. "They also become more critical with their regular partner and feel less" attached "to them in the few days preceding ovulation." But that does not mean they are thinking of leaving.
"These women do not show any change in your feelings about commitment," said Dr. Haselton. "They do not want to leave their intimate partners. They just want to look at other men around them and consider them as alternative sexual partners. "
This is consistent with the evolutionary explanation of adultery on " good genes ": A short affair with a handsome man can produce a child with better genes, which thus have a better chance of passing the maternal genes. But this kind of cheating is risky if he were to know the couple very attractive women and let her raising her son alone. So it makes sense to limit their risks, being true only in the moments when you are fertile.
But by the same evolutionary logic, it makes sense that the woman's partner to worry much more when she is fertile, and that's just what happened in the relationship studied by Dr Haselton and Dr . Gangestad. Unattractive men became especially zealous and behaviors adopted "family protection" during this state of high fertility - perhaps because they could perceive the subtle physical signs, or perhaps because they could see the open flirtation.
One sure, both men and women, to stay in a relationship is not even look tempting alternatives, and seems to be a subtle mental mechanism to avoid the eyes to go behind someone, as found Dr. Mann and his colleagues at Florida State in an experiment that measured the "fixation of care" on people.
men and women who took part in the experiment, were conditioned with quick flashes of words like "lust" and "kiss" and then taught a series of photographs and other images. Singles, both men and women who participated in the study could not stop looking at pictures of attractive people of the opposite sex, his eye was hanging from these handsome prospects even though they were supposed to be watching the next picture appeared screen.
But people already in stable relationships reacted differently. These people faster away view of the attractive faces. The conditioning subliminal sex-related words were apparently triggered some unconscious mechanism of protection: Do not tempt me! I see nothing! I see nothing!
This is good news for fans of fidelity, but there comes a warning that a subsequent study with C. Dr. Maner Nathan DeWall of the University of Kentucky and others. This time, researchers were subtly made it difficult to pay attention to attractive faces. Both men and women reacted by trying to see the forbidden fruit harder. Subsequently, These subjects expressed less satisfaction with their partners and greater interest in infidelity.
The lesson here seems to be that too much "protection of the couple" may interfere with "the maintenance of the relationship."
"Nobody wants their partner is checking other people, because that's bad for the relationship," says Dr. Maner. "At the same time, prevent you look around does not help, and can be reversed against him." Free to act according to their own resources, whether conscious or unconscious, perhaps your partner to achieve just contain itself. "
By JOHN TIERNEY, published in the online edition of the New York Times, February 21, 2001.
Translation: The blogger.
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