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  1. Do opposites really attract? Most men and women prefer their own race, but intraracially, do darker women prefer lighter featured men? Where does the opposites attract thing even come from?

  2. What's the explanation for sexless marriages? Did these women lure their spouses in with sex in order to get resources and now that they have the marriage they just don't put up the facade anymore? Or is there some segment of the population that loses attraction to people after a certain amount of time? I can't imagine that if you were attracted to someone you wouldn't want to have sex with them anymore.

  3. Is an attractive face just a proxy for positive genetic traits, or is there just something inherent to our brains that makes us find certain ratios on faces attractive? Are all these facial ratios we find attractive only attractive because they're signals of things like IQ, health, high social ability? Broad shoulders and height and muscles are proxies for physical strength and ability to defend against violence, and to some extent some facial features signal health (like having a forward grown jaw shows you won't have sleep apnea or something) but what about things like the proper chin:philtrum ratio or other ones that don't have obvious purposes?

  4. Are there actually sex drive differences between men and women on average? We know men have lower standards, but is the drive for sex the same?

  5. Most couple I see tend to be looksmatched, that is a 2 with a 2, an 8 with an 8. It’s my understanding that everyone kind of finds the same things attractive, so everyone finds 9s to be attractive, but when 2s get together, are they actually attracted to each other physically? Do ugly people have lower standards? If ugly women are showing obvious signs of interest towards a male, is this because they believe he’s in their league, or because everyone finds that man attractive?

  6. My understanding is looks open doors, they don’t necessarily keep you in the room (although looks also give you more opportunities to fuck up once you’re in the room), but to what extent do some personality traits open doors? Does boisterousness open doors? What about humor, that one is talked about incessantly, do women have senses of humor similar to men’s or is laughing at jokes more of a way of attracting men? Is being funny a real thing or is it looks dependent?


[–]SophisticatedBean17 points18 points  (3 children) | Copy Link

  1. "Opposites attract" is not really supported by the literature, e.g. see page 32 in Potârcă (2012) and /u/eduardkoopman's comment. Being white seems overall advantageous. Data from OkCupid revealed that females have stronger homophily (preference for their own race) and attraction to Whites. Black women, Asian and Black men were the most disadvantaged groups. It seems the only case in which "opposites attract" is slightly true is between Asian women and White men.
  2. There are likely various things that cause sexless marriages, but this is my favorite explanation: The idea that males need to be soft and vulnerable likely destroys their alpha cues and makes them unappealing to women (women's interest in having sex often does not decline like this in marriages in which the partners do not become overfamiliar with one another; Klusmann (2002), Klusmann (2006)). Women having income, status and education likely also impedes that same dimension of attraction, e.g. males with much lower income than their wives are 2.27 times as likely not to have sex (Kim 2017), aversion to having the wife earn more than the husband explains 29 percent of the decline in marriage rates over the last thirty years (Bertrand 2015), women like Tinder profiles of males with lower educational status than their own only half as often (Neyt 2018).
  3. An attractive face is not a proxy for positive genetic traits (except that it is a trait in itself that promises high reproductive success of the offspring as others select it). For more information see this compilation of studies.
  4. Men have a ~4 times higher sex drive (see this compilation). What has not been studied in the literature (AFAIK) is to which extent this results from women's greater choosiness. Women may have a higher sex drive when copulating with alpha males (Edit: There is actually evidence in the study above, in that males with much lower income than their wives, which probably correlates with relatively low status, only have a bit less than half as much sex). Established fact is, though, that men's cumulative demand for sex is insatiable. It is costly/risky to give birth to the human head and humans also have the most dependent offspring in the entire animal kingdom, so human females have a high parental investment. This results in males with relatively high sex drive being selected as they can get away with more offspring by copulating with many females. This, in turn, selects cautious females who choose the best quality from the many males who approach them (because choosiness is the easy and obvious way of improving reproductive success when you are given the choice between many potential mates).
  5. When 2s get together, are they actually attracted to each other physically?

    I think so and the mere exposure effect may explain how they overcome their unattractiveness. There is also more to relationships than just looks (e.g. sex, warm partner contact, emotional support, lineage of power and wealth, access to resources etc.). Looks only dominate initial romantic interest (and personality only plays a very small role).

    Do ugly people have lower standards?

    Yes, see this graph from Bruch & Newman (2018), also the chapter "Pair Formation, Courtship, Sexual Love" in Foundations of human behavior: Human ethology (Eibl-Eibesfeldt 2017). People do not aim overly high in order to save face. Women's preference for looks seems slightly stronger than men's, but women aim up regarding socioeconomic status in addition to that (which men don't), so in effect women are much choosier.

    If ugly women are showing obvious signs of interest towards a male, is this because they believe he’s in their league, or because everyone finds that man attractive?

    Probably both, but it's mostly about the status of the male.

  6. To what extent do some personality traits open doors?

    No idea about short-term outcomes, but the long-term outcomes are summarized here:

    https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4499872/

    Is being funny a real thing or is it looks dependent?

    It's probably both. Good jokes are intrinsically funny, but who tells the joke also has a massive halo effect. More physically attractive people are perceived as more humorous than less attractive ones (N = 38, for males r = .77, p < .001, for females r = .52, p = .018).

    https://www.theguardian.com/science/brain-flapping/2016/may/19/are-funny-people-sexy-or-are-sexy-people-funny

    http://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2012.10.020 (Cowan 2013)

[–][deleted] 1 point2 points  (2 children) | Copy Link

Thanks for the answer, how are you so knowledgeable on this subject? Do you have any formal background or are you just self learned?

And I’m astonished by the answer to 3, what the hell is even being screened for in mating? Physical attractiveness seems to be incredibly important yet it doesn’t seem to be anything except something that makes our brain feel good. That’s insane to me, I would’ve guessed it absolutely had something to do with genetic health. An intact hairline is attractive just because?

[–]eduardkoopman6 points7 points  (9 children) | Copy Link

Most men and women prefer their own race, but intraracially, do darker women prefer lighter featured men?

https://imgur.com/a/xbZXqnO

Only 1 exception is found in the graph. A white man with an asian woman.

[–]DifficultReference2 1 points [recovered]  (3 children) | Copy Link

But if you look at the black female - white male one, does that one really make sense though? I might be completely wrong here, but I remember reading somewhere that black females respond to white males online even more than they respond to black males?

[–]eduardkoopman1 point2 points  (2 children) | Copy Link

That one suprised me also most in the list. And it seems OFF, to me as well.
Because white men are the most desired ethnicity of men.
And black women are the least desired ethnicity of women.
So it makes no sense to me, how a black woman would want a man to "compensate" with shitload of income (for him not being black). (and so for the latino man). Black women with white men might be rare for that reason. Maybe alot of black women ask to much from men, when going outside of black men.

[–]SophisticatedBean0 points1 point  (1 child) | Copy Link

This also surprised me. Black women actually had the second highest reply rate for White male senders here:

https://www.gwern.net/docs/psychology/okcupid/howyourraceaffectsthemessagesyouget.html

On the other hand, it does agree with the Let's Meet scores and the QuickMatch scores in this article:

https://www.gwern.net/docs/psychology/okcupid/raceandattraction20092014.html

http://www.padjo.org/files/lectures/2014-11-13/ok-cupid-race-table.png

There seems to be a difference between stated and executed preferences in women. E.g. they rate men overall more harshly, but execute about the same level of lookism (perhaps only slightly stronger). Maybe there is a similar effect at play here.

Black females might find White males too effeminate so they rate them relatively poorly, but then reply anyhow. White males typically have higher socioeconomic standing compared to Blacks, so hypergamy may explain it.

[–]eduardkoopman1 point2 points  (0 children) | Copy Link

Black females might find White males too effeminate so they rate them relatively poorly, but then reply anyhow. White males typically have higher socioeconomic standing compared to Blacks, so hypergamy may explain it.

I think usually the white man is casted for the beta-bucks/provider role, by black women. Rarely do they go to/for white man for short term things. At least that is my observation.
It makes me think about this part from Chris Rock, LOL. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uOnyJYR9kWU

[–]imguralbumbot1 point2 points  (0 children) | Copy Link

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[–]sebool1121 point2 points  (0 children) | Copy Link

cause anime tiddies irl

[–]SophisticatedBean 1 points [recovered]  (2 children) | Copy Link

Only 1 exception

Doesn't the graph suggest that darker skinned women do not necessarily prefer lighter colored men? White men would need a $220,000 higher income to be as desirable to a Black woman as to a White woman. That also agrees with the OkCupid data, but not with Potârcă, if I'm reading it correctly.

[–]eduardkoopman0 points1 point  (1 child) | Copy Link

Doesn't the graph suggest that darker skinned women do not necessarily prefer lighter colored men?

Yes, that also what I meant. That women generally prefer their own race first. Thus a dark skinned woman woul prefer a man in equal skin color. Except Asian women, they prefer white men over their own race. At least, that is what the graph says.
After their own race; Women probably most likely prefer white men most.

I dunno about Potârcă.

[–]SophisticatedBean0 points1 point  (0 children) | Copy Link

Gotcha. I misread your comment as being affirmative of the question you quoted.

[–]ugluk12 points3 points  (0 children) | Copy Link

I think this attractiveness thing has gone out of control. A woman needs to produce offspring while young and (possibly) secure commitment from a father of her child. She won't stay a 9 or whatever else she may think she is forever. All old grannies are 0s.

You can kill a man, but you can't kill an idea.

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