However, a new methodology that measures people’s implicit, split-second responses gets around this problem. Research from Northwestern University and Texas A&M University measures whether people’s implicit preferences actually predict how much you like the hotties.

“People will readily tell you what they value in a romantic partner,” said Eli Finkel, associate professor of psychology at Northwestern and co-author of the study. “But study after study shows that those preferences don’t predict whom daters are actually attracted to when they meet flesh-and-blood partners. Now we can get under the hood with this quirky methodology to see what people actually prefer in live-interaction settings.”

Paul W. Eastwick, assistant professor of psychology at Texas A&M University and lead author of the study, says that the findings raise questions about the way we determine what people want in a partner.

“If a person tells me, for example, that she doesn’t care about how attractive a guy is, our research suggests that her claim isn’t worth all that much,” Eastwick said. “Instead, it would actually be more useful to measure her reaction times on this new task.”

Focused on physical attractiveness, the implicit measure in this study was based on reaction times to various words flashed in the middle of a computer screen. Participants’ task was to quickly sort synonyms of “physical attractiveness” with other words that they happen to like, such as tequila, or motorcycles, or romance novels. According to the researchers, the people who perform well on this task have a strong implicit preference for physical attractiveness.

Along with Eastwick and Finkel, other co-authors of the study include Alice H. Eagly, professor of psychology and faculty fellow in the Institute for Policy Research at Northwestern, and Sarah E. Johnson, a doctoral graduate of Northwestern.

“In many cases, people’s consciously stated attitudes and preferences predict their behavior quite well,” Eagly said. “But in the case of attraction, people’s implicit, unconscious preferences seem to do a better job.”

A number of psychology studies reveal a disconnect between stated preferences for partners and actual choices. Most of the studies use explicit measures in which people consciously report what appeals to them in a partner. In this new study, the implicit measure that the researchers developed predicted how much the participants liked physically attractive potential partners, both at a speed-dating event and in a face-to-face interaction in the laboratory.

“People’s reports of why they like certain partners might not be especially accurate,” Eastwick said. “But that doesn’t mean that romantic desire is random. The reasons might still be there, hovering just outside of conscious awareness.”

The study, “Implicit and Explicit Preferences for Physical Attractiveness in a Romantic Partner: A Double Dissociation in Predictive Validity,” appeared in the November issue of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

“There are tons of studies showing that men think women are interested when they’re not,” says Williams College psychologist Carin Perilloux, who conducted the research with Judith A. Easton and David M. Buss of University of Texas at Austin. “Ours is the first to systematically examine individual differences.” The findings will appear in an upcoming issue of Psychological Science, a journal published by the Association for Psychological Science.

The research involved 96 male 103 female undergraduates, who were put through a “speed-meeting” exercise—talking for three minutes to each of five potential opposite-sex mates. Before the conversations, the participants rated themselves on their own attractiveness and were assessed for the level of their desire for a short-term sexual encounter. After each “meeting,” they rated the partner on a number of measures, including physical attractiveness and sexual interest in the participant. The model had the advantage of testing the participants in multiple interactions.

The results: Men looking for a quick hookup were more likely to overestimate the women’s desire for them. Men who thought they were hot also thought the women were hot for them—but men who were actually attractive, by the women’s ratings, did not make this mistake. The more attractive the woman was to the man, the more likely he was to overestimate her interest. And women tended to underestimate men’s desire.

A hopeless mess? Evolutionarily speaking, maybe not, say the psychologists. Over millennia, these errors may in fact have enhanced men’s reproductive success.

“There are two ways you can make an error as a man,” says Perilloux. “Either you think, ‘Oh, wow, that woman’s really interested in me’—and it turns out she’s not.  There’s some cost to that,” such as embarrassment or a blow to your reputation.

The other error: “She’s interested, and he totally misses out.  He misses out on a mating opportunity.  That’s a huge cost in terms of reproductive success.” The researchers theorize that the kind of guy who went for it, even at the risk of being rebuffed, scored more often—and passed on his overperceiving tendency to his genetic heirs.

The casual sex seekers “face slightly different adaptive problems,” says Perilloux. “They are limited mainly by the number of consenting sex partners—so overestimation is even more important.” Only the actually attractive men probably had no need for misperception.

The research contains some messages for daters of both sexes, says Perilloux: Women should know the risks and “be as communicative and clear as possible.” Men: “Know that the more attracted you are, the more likely you are to be wrong about her interest.” Again, that may not be as bad as it sounds, she says—“if warning them will prevent heartache later on.”

In an article just published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, the researchers write that it would be absurd to think people’s mental capacities fundamentally change when they remove clothing. “In six studies, however, we show that taking off a sweater—or otherwise revealing flesh—can significantly change the way a mind is perceived.”

Past research, feminist theory and parental admonishments all have long suggested that when men see a woman wearing little or nothing, they focus on her body and think less of her mind. The new findings by Gray, et al. both expand and change our understanding of how paying attention to someone’s body can alter how both men and women view both women and men.

“An important thing about our study is that, unlike much previous research, ours applies to both sexes. It also calls into question the nature of objectification because people without clothes are not seen as mindless objects, but they are instead attributed a different kind of mind,” says UMD’s Gray.”

“We also show that this effect can happen even without the removal of clothes. Simply focusing on someone’s attractiveness, in essence concentrating on their body rather than their mind, makes you see her or him as less of an agent [someone who acts and plans] more of an experiencer.”

Objectification vs. Two Kinds of Mind

Traditional research and theories on objectification suggest that we see the mind of others on a continuum between the full mind of a normal human and the mindlessness of an inanimate object. The idea of objectification is that looking at someone in a sexual context—such as in pornography—leads people to focus on physical characteristics, turning them into an object without a mind or moral status.

However, recent findings indicate that rather than looking at others on a continuum from object to human, we see others as having two aspects of mind: agency and experience. Agency is the capacity to act, plan and exert self-control, whereas experience is the capacity to feel pain, pleasure and emotions. Various factors – including the amount of skin shown – can shift which type of mind we see in another person.

In multiple experiments, the researchers found further support for the two kinds of mind view. When men and women in the study focused on someone’s body, perceptions of agency (self-control and action) were reduced, and perceptions of experience (emotion and sensation) were increased. Gray and colleagues suggest that this effect occurs because people unconsciously think of minds and bodies as distinct, or even opposite, with the capacity to act and plan tied to the “mind” and the ability to experience or feel tied to the body.

According to Gray, their findings indicate that the change in perception that results from showing skin is not all bad. “A focus on the body, and the increased perception of sensitivity and emotion it elicits might be good for lovers in the bedroom,” he says.

Their study also found that a body focus can actually increase moral standing. Although those wearing little or no clothes –or otherwise represented as a body – were seen to be less morally responsible, they also were seen to be more sensitive to harm and hence deserving of more protection. “Others appear to be less inclined to harm people with bare skin and more inclined to protect them. In one experiment, for example, people viewing male subjects with their shirts off were less inclined to give those subjects uncomfortable electric shocks than when the men had their shirts on.,” Gray says.

However, Gray and his coauthors note that in work or academic contexts, where people are primarily evaluated on their capacity to plan and act, a body focus clearly has negative effects. Seeing someone as a body strips him or her of competence and leadership, potentially impacting job evaluations.

“Even more than robbing someone of agency, the increased experience that may accompany body perceptions may lead those who are characterized in terms of their bodies to be seen as more reactive and emotional, traits that may also serve to work against career advancement,” they write.

Even the positive aspects of a body focus, such as an increased desire to protect from harm, can be ultimately harmful, the authors say, pointing to the “benevolent sexism” common in the United States in the 1950s, in which men oppressed women under the guise of protecting them.

Such objectification should send young men running to gyms or fretting before mirrors, right? Not quite. A new study from Concordia University and the University of Manitoba, published in the journal Men and Masculinities, found most boys simply want an average physique.

“Not all boys aspire to have lean, muscular or idealized male bodies that are commonplace in popular culture,” says Moss E. Norman, who led the study as a post-doctoral fellow at Concordia’s Simone de Beauvoir Institute.

“In many cases, boys who took part in our study were staunchly critical of idealized male images,” he continues. “They found it problematic, feminine or vain to be overly concerned with appearances. Sculpted bodies were seen as unnatural, the product of steroids or zealous weight-lifting.”

A total of 32 Toronto-area boys, aged 13 to 15, were recruited from a community centre and private school to participate in this research. While the sample group was small, the study lasted nine months and included four in-depth interviews and 19 focus groups.

Discussions centered on male bodies, health, diet and physical activity. Participants were asked to comment on popular culture images, such as the animated character Homer Simpson, shirtless models featured in Bowflex home gym commercials and cut athletes from Ultimate Fighting Championships.

“One of the surprises from this study was how comfortable boys were in expressing, analyzing and comparing bodies — their own, their peers’ and those ideals depicted by media,” says Norman, who is now a professor at the University of Manitoba’s Faculty of Kinesiology and Recreation Management.

“Although they felt pressure to be fit, they displayed a distant, disinterested and cool relationship to their bodies,” he adds. “Some participants also admitted to desiring particular masculine ideals and working on their bodies to achieve such idealized forms.”

Some body concerns

This study builds on previous research that found boys can face the same anxieties, fears and body image disorders experienced by girls and women. Common body concerns among boys who took part in this particular study included height, muscularity, obesity, skin complexion and style.

“Being overweight was seen as undesirable and associated with a sedentary, immoral lifestyle,” says Norman. ”

The majority of participants viewed sports as a fun and masculine way to build muscle, while managing calories and body fat. “They felt sports could naturally produce a healthier, fitter and more attractive man,” says Norman. “Sports are used to deflect, obscure and erase their bodily anxieties and desires.”

Most teenaged boys, Norman concludes, simply want an average physique that doesn’t stand out: “Any bodies that fell outside that norm were labeled unnatural, unhealthy or just too much. Boys want a body that’s neither too fat nor too skinny; too tall nor too short; too muscular nor too weak.”

Previous studies in this area have typically relied on the comparison of voices recorded in just two phases in the cycle: high conception risk vs. low conception risk. This new work, on the other hand, looked at variation in the voice throughout the entire menstrual cycle – a crucial step to evaluate the potential information contained in any observed voice changes.

Their results showed that the overall variation in women’s vocal quality throughout the whole cycle precludes unequivocal identification of the period with the highest conception risk. Specifically, while they found that the women studied spoke with the highest tone (suggested by previous studies to be associated with attractiveness) just prior to ovulation, the tone rose again to levels indistinguishable from pre-ovulation shortly after ovulation, making it a very poor mating clue. Furthermore, they found that the men studied showed only a very slight preference for pre-ovulation voices relative to voices recorded during ovulation.

The authors conclude that women’s voices do not provide reliable information about the timing of ovulation, confirming the view that information about reproductive state is ‘leaked’ rather than broadcast. In an interesting further finding, the study found that women’s voice were harsher and more irregular during menstruation, providing scientific data to explain why female opera singers may be granted ‘grace days’ during menstruation.

The research is published online in Springer’s journal, Memory & Cognition.

In a series of two experiments, Smith and colleagues show that memory in women is sensitive to male voice pitch, a cue important for mate choice because it can indicate genetic quality as well as signal behavioral traits undesirable in a long-term partner. These could include antisocial traits and lack of emotional warmth for example. In order to evaluate potential partners, women appear to rely on their memories to rapidly provide information about the attributes and past behavior of potential partners.

In the first experiment, 45 women were initially shown an image of a single object while listening to the name of the object spoken either by a high or low pitch male or female manipulated voice. They were then shown two similar but not identical versions of the object and asked to identify the one they had seen earlier. The women were also asked which voice they preferred.In the second experiment, as well as manipulated voices, the researchers used real male and female voices to test how 46 new women rated the voices and how they scored on object memory.

In both cases, the authors found that women had a strong preference for the low pitch male voice and remembered objects more accurately when they have been introduced by the deep male voice.

Smith concludes: “Our findings demonstrate that women’s memory is enhanced with lower pitch male voices, compared with the less attractive raised pitch male voices. Our two experiments indicate for the first time that signals from the opposite-sex that are important for mate choice also affect the accuracy of women’s memory.”

Dr. Kevin Allan, who supervised the research, said, “We think this is evidence that evolution has shaped women’s ability to remember information associated with desirable men. Good memory for specific encounters with desirable men allows women to compare and evaluate men according to how they might behave in different relationship contexts, for example a long-term committed relationship versus a short-term uncommitted relationship. This would help women to pick a suitable partner, and that’s a particularly important ability to have because the costs of poor mate-choice decisions can be severe.”

Men take note: If you want women to remember, speak to them in a low pitch voice. Then, depending on what they remember about you, they may or may not rate you as a potential mate. That’s according to a new study by David Smith and colleagues from the University of Aberdeen in the UK.

Hall and Canterberry set out to understand the characteristics of men who use aggressive court-ship strategies, based on speed seduction techniques described in the US bestseller “The Game” by Neil Strauss and the popular cable TV program “The Pickup Artist”. They also studied the characteristics of women who find such strategies appealing.

The researchers conducted two surveys. The first pilot study surveyed a sample of 363 college students from a large Midwestern university in the US. The second, larger national study recruited 850 adult volunteers via the internet. The authors asked both male and female participants about their sexist attitudes toward women and whether they were willing to take part in uncommitted or short-term sex. They also asked about the extent to which men used assertive strategies to initiate relationships and the extent to which women found these approaches desirable.

The results showed that men who were keen on ‘one-night stands’ were more likely to use aggressive strategies when flirting with women, and women who were also open to casual sex were more likely to respond to this type of aggressive courtship. In addition, men with negative, sexist attitudes towards women, justifying male privilege, were more likely to use assertive strategies, which may serve to ‘put women in their place’ in a submissive or yielding role during courtship. Women with sexist attitudes towards members of their own gender were more likely to be responsive to men’s assertive strategies.

This suggests that they find men who treat them in a dominant way during courtship more desirable, because it is consistent with their sexist ideology.

Hall and Canterberry conclude: “Our results suggest that assertive courtship strategies are a form of mutual identification of similarly sexist attitudes shared between courtship partners. Women who adopt sexist attitudes are more likely to prefer men who adopt similar attitudes. Not only do sexist men and women prefer partners who are like them, they prefer courtship strategies where men are the aggressors and women are the gatekeepers.”

The studies, funded in part by the National Science Foundation, were undertaken to determine why women, who have made tremendous progress in education and the workplace over the past few decades, continue to be underrepresented at the highest levels of STEM.

The research is described in the article, “Effects of Everyday Romantic Goal Pursuit on Women’s Attitudes toward Math and Science,” to be published in the September issue of Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin.

Lead author Lora E. Park, PhD, UB associate professor of psychology and her co-authors, found converging support for the idea that when romantic goals are activated, either by environmental cues or personal choice, women — but not men — show less interest in STEM and more interest in feminine fields, such as the arts, languages and English.

Park’s co-authors are UB doctoral students Ariana F. Young and Jordan D. Troisi, and Rebecca T. Pinkus, PhD, of the University of Western Sydney, Australia.

Park says, “When the goal to be romantically desirable is activated, even by subtle situational cues, women report less interest in math and science. One reason why this might be is that pursuing intelligence goals in masculine fields, such as STEM, conflicts with pursuing romantic goals associated with traditional romantic scripts and gender norms.”

Park notes that women, in particular, are socialized from a young age to be romantically desirable, and that traditional romantic scripts in Western cultures are highly gendered, prescribing how men and women ought to think, feel and behave in romantic settings.

“Gender scripts discourage women from appearing intelligent in masculine domains, like STEM,” Park says, “and in fact, studies show that women who deviate from traditional gender norms, such as succeeding in male-typed jobs, experience backlash for violating societal expectations. On the other hand, men in gender-incongruent occupations don’t experience the same degree of backlash as women do.”

In Park’s studies of more than 350 participants, men and women were exposed to images (Study 1) or overheard conversations (Study 2a, 2b) that cued them to romantic goals or to other types of goals.

In Study 1, participants viewed images related to romantic goals (e.g., images of romantic restaurants, beach sunsets, candles) or intelligence goals (e.g., images of libraries, books, eyeglasses). Participants in Study 2a overheard a conversation about a recent date that someone had gone on (romantic goal condition) or a test that someone had taken (intelligence goal condition). In Study 2b, they overheard a conversation about a romantic date (romantic goal) or about a recent visit from a friend from out of town (friendship goal). After exposure to the romantic, intelligence or friendship goal cues, participants completed questionnaires assessing their interest in STEM vs. other fields and their preference for various academic majors.

Results showed that women (but not men) exposed to cues related to romantic goals reported less positive attitudes toward STEM and less preference for majoring in math or science fields compared to other disciplines. This did not occur when they were exposed to cues associated with intelligence goals or friendship goals.

The final study, Study 3, used a more explicit method of assessing goal pursuit by recruiting women who were interested in pursuing a degree or a career in STEM and asking them to answer questions on a PDA (personal digital assistant) device every night for 21 nights. Specifically, women reported on their daily romantic goal strivings (e.g., “Today, I was trying to be romantically desirable”), intelligence goal strivings (e.g., Today I was trying to be academically competent/intelligent”), romantic activities (e.g., “Today, I called/emailed/texted someone I was romantically interested in”), math course activities (e.g., “Today I did my math homework”), and daily feelings of attractiveness, likability and desirability.

Results showed that on days when women pursued romantic goals, they engaged in more romantic activities and felt more desirable, but they engaged in fewer math activities. Furthermore, romantic goal strivings on one day predicted feeling more desirable, but being less invested in math on the following day.

Overall, the findings from these studies show that women’s romantic goal strivings, which can be triggered by environmental cues or by personal choice, have important implications for the gender gap in attitudes and interest in math and science.

Park’s research investigates questions pertaining to the self, self-esteem, motivation, and interpersonal processes. In particular, she examines how aspects of the person and the situation interact to influence goal pursuit, performance, psychological well-being and interpersonal functioning. Her research has appeared in many professional journals and is funded by the National Science Foundation.

“The study shows that both the emotional and utility aspect of cosmetic brands have a significant impact on consumer satisfaction, but that the emotional component has a greater effect”, Vanessa Apaolaza, a researcher from the UPV and lead author of the study, which has been published in the African Journal of Business Management, tells SINC.

Some of the main positive emotions aroused by beauty products include “the sensation of wellbeing gained from eliminating or reducing feelings of worry and guilt, which is the factor with the greatest impact”, the author explains.

The scientists carried out personal surveys on 355 women aged between 18 and 50, who were selected in a random sample. They were asked to evaluate various aspects of their perceptions of the functional and emotional factors of the cosmetics they used, as well as their degree of satisfaction with them.

The results showed that “consumer satisfaction is greatest when the cosmetics brand helps to strengthen positive emotions through the perception of ‘caring for oneself’ and removing feelings of worry and guilt about not taking care of one’s appearance”, says Apaolaza.

Paradoxically, in order for the brand to provide this positive emotional experience, it must first cause consumers to have negative feelings about themselves, such as concern about and dissatisfaction with their appearance.

“One way of achieving this is by subtly telling them they are ugly – something that many cosmetics adverts achieve implicitly and very effectively by showing images of unusually beautiful women”, the study points out.

“The theory of social comparison has been used in various research studies to explain how using very attractive models in advertising can affect consumers”, says Apaolaza.

“The basic premise of these studies is that consumers compare their own level of physical attractiveness with that of the models used in adverts, and that these comparisons give rise to negative effects in the way they perceive their own physical attractiveness and on their self-esteem. These effects are most heightened among people with the greatest awareness of their public image”, she adds.

The study points to the need to eliminate these negative emotions and to soothe women’s worries about looking good as one of their main psychological motivations for buying cosmetics.

Emotional need to attract the opposite sex

“Our emotions often dictate our decisions. In our buying behaviour, we make emotional decisions and justify them rationally. These emotions are in part learned and in part instinctive”, points out Apaolaza.

For example, one thing that could explain the importance assigned to the unconscious emotional desire “to be attractive to the opposite sex, to be sexually attractive”, and which encourages people to buy cosmetics, can be found in one of the most basic programmes of the human being, explained in the Darwinist approach to attraction – beautiful faces and well-formed bodies are important biological indicators of a person’s value as a sexual partner.

Of the emotional brand-related components studied, “the positive feeling gained from experiencing greater success in social interactions” has the greatest impact on pleasure, the author says.

From a utility perspective, the researchers found that the design of the bottles or containers (attractive, making the product or brand seem technically superior, exceptional and unique) also has an impact on purchasing decisions.

“These results serve as a recommendation to the market to use persuasive strategies focused more on emotional aspects than functional ones”, the researcher concludes.

The series of studies, “Peacocks, Porsches and Thorstein Veblen: Conspicuous Consumption as a Sexual Signaling System,” was conducted with nearly 1,000 test subjects and published recently in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

“This research suggests that conspicuous products, such as Porsches, can serve the same function for some men that large and brilliant feathers serve for peacocks,” said Jill Sundie, assistant professor of marketing at UTSA and lead author of the paper.

Just as peacocks flaunt their tails before potential mates, men may flaunt flashy products to charm potential dates. Notably, not all men favored this strategy – just those men who were interested in short-term sexual relationships with women.

“The studies show that some men are like peacocks. They’re the ones driving the bright colored sports car,” said co-author Vladas Griskevicius, assistant professor of marketing at the University of Minnesota.

According to the researchers, women found a man who chose to purchase a flashy luxury product (such as a Porsche) more desirable than the same man who purchased a non-luxury item (such as a Honda Civic). However, there was a catch: Although women found the flashy guys more desirable for a date, the man with the Porsche was not preferred as a marriage partner. Women inferred from a man’s flashy spending that he was interested in uncommitted sex.

“When women considered him for a long-term relationship, owning the sports car held no advantage relative to owning an economy car,” said co-author Daniel Beal, assistant professor of psychology at Rice. “People may feel that owning flashy things makes them more attractive as a relationship partner, but in truth, many men might be sending women the wrong message.”

Though often associated with Western culture, extreme forms of conspicuous displays have been found in cultures across the globe and throughout history.

While finding that men may use conspicuous consumption as a short-term mating signal, the researchers discovered that women don’t behave in the same manner and don’t conspicuously spend to attract men.

“Obviously, women also spend plenty of money on expensive things,” Sundie said. “But the anticipation of romance doesn’t trigger flashy spending as it does with some men.”