Decoding Love (10 page)
Authors: Andrew Trees
Okay, so we have these big brains, but are they hardwired to look for certain things? The romantic story line says no, claiming that we are all unique and that love itself is as varied as a snowflake. In this view, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Love is blind. Yadda yadda yadda. But the scientific answer to this question is a resounding yes. Although science cannot explain the idiosyncratic reasons why you may prefer a partner who likes piña coladas, it can do a better job with general explanations of why you are attracted to someone than you can yourself.
First of all, let’s ditch the idea that beauty is subjective. It’s not. Studies have shown that even babies prefer attractive faces, so these preferences seem to be virtually hardwired into us—so much so that when hooked up to electrodes, people looking at beautiful female faces generated an extra electrical charge. And surveys show that there is strong agreement about whom people find attractive. Interestingly, composite pictures melding numerous faces always outscore individual faces in attractiveness and become more attractive the more faces you include, for the simple reasons that a more symmetrical face is the result. As we’ve already seen with the female orgasm, we’re big fans—albeit unwittingly—of symmetricality. Understanding why reveals the excellent evolutionary reasons for the way our desires have been shaped. In this case, being symmetrical is an excellent proxy for our general health. And how symmetrical you are is an excellent sign not just of how healthy you are
now
but also how healthy you have always been, since asymmetries tend to occur because of disease or illness during our fetal and childhood development. Hair is another good indicator, which helps explain the vast array of products directed at creating better-looking hair. Long, lustrous hair signals an equally long and robust good health. Skin acts as a similar signpost of health.
now
but also how healthy you have always been, since asymmetries tend to occur because of disease or illness during our fetal and childhood development. Hair is another good indicator, which helps explain the vast array of products directed at creating better-looking hair. Long, lustrous hair signals an equally long and robust good health. Skin acts as a similar signpost of health.
According to one theory, evolution has even added a wrinkle so that people with excellent genes can show off their fitness by displaying what evolutionary biologist Amotz Zahavi dubbed a “high cost signal.” Think back to Darwin and his original formulation of the survival of the fittest. When it comes to the utilitarian selection of certain qualities essential for the survival of a species—a gazelle’s speed or a bear’s claws—efficiency rules. When it comes to sexual selection, though, signaling to the opposite sex can involve a good bit of waste. Take, for example, the male peacock’s tail. It’s enormous, using a tremendous amount of the bird’s resources and making him more vulnerable to predators. But what it also does is signal to the female that he is so healthy, he doesn’t need to worry about hoarding his resources. In this way, the male peacock is able to distinguish himself from his moderately healthy peers. The high-cost signal can take all sorts of forms—think of the man who buys an expensive sports car as a signal that he has resources to burn. But we humans, like other animals, already have all sorts of high-cost “signals” built into us—as well as an unconscious desire to look for them in the opposite sex.
Think of the typical ideal for a man’s face—a large, square, “manly” jaw and chin. This ideal is so dominant that it is almost a visual cliché in our culture, and you would be hard-pressed to find a Hollywood leading man who doesn’t have that look. It turns out that women’s preference for that particular face is not merely some arbitrary aesthetic whim. You need a lot of testosterone during puberty to produce a face like that. The problem is that testosterone also suppresses the immune system and makes a young man more vulnerable to disease, so the ability to have such a face serves as a high-cost signal of genetic fitness. Only extremely fit individuals can afford that face and remain disease free.
Women have their own bodily signals. For instance, there is a very good reason men prefer full lips and why someone like Angelina Jolie is almost freakishly genetically fit. Although not a high-cost signal, those full lips require a woman to be hyperfeminine—at least when it comes to sex hormones. During puberty, the woman must experience both a surge of estrogen and a low level of testosterone. This also will give her a shorter, lower face, which will further feminize her look. And it turns out that there may be perfectly good evolutionary reasons why gentlemen prefer blondes. Blond hair is one of those traits that changes dramatically with age. Men who prefer blondes are likely unconsciously choosing them because their hair signals health and fecundity. One theory for why blond hair evolved in northern Europe is that the cold weather kept people covered in clothes so that women had to develop a way to advertise their youth that could be seen. Hence, blond hair.
One of the best indicators of female genetic fitness is a rather bizarre ratio that most people have never heard of, let alone consciously considered. Waist-to-hip ratio. That’s right—not breast size or any of the other more obvious markers of beauty, but waist-to-hip ratio, which has an enormous influence on whether or not men find a woman attractive (the comparable male ratio is waist-to-shoulder). It turns out that the ideal ratio is 0.7 or, in layman’s terms, an hourglass figure. In one ingenious study, a researcher examined centerfolds from
Playboy
and beauty contest winners from the past several decades. While the women did get thinner on average during that period, their waist-to-hip ratio held steady at 0.7. Women may worry about being fat, but it turns out that it’s not how fat you are but how that fat is distributed. For example, one study found that heavy women with a low waist-to-hip ratio were preferred to thin women with a high ratio. Again, there is a very good reason for men’s preference. That waist-to-hip ratio is an excellent indicator not just of good health (many diseases have been linked to the ratios in which fat is distributed) but also of high fertility. A study of Polish women revealed that women with low waist-to-hip ratios also had high fecundity as measured by their reproductive hormones. And scientists have recently discovered yet another advantage. Fat in a woman’s hips and thighs is particularly good fat because there is a higher concentration of omega-3 fatty acids (which are important for brain development). A recent study has shown that children of these curvy mothers have better cognitive abilities than children of the less curvy, and the bigger the difference between the waist and the hips, the better the children did.
Playboy
and beauty contest winners from the past several decades. While the women did get thinner on average during that period, their waist-to-hip ratio held steady at 0.7. Women may worry about being fat, but it turns out that it’s not how fat you are but how that fat is distributed. For example, one study found that heavy women with a low waist-to-hip ratio were preferred to thin women with a high ratio. Again, there is a very good reason for men’s preference. That waist-to-hip ratio is an excellent indicator not just of good health (many diseases have been linked to the ratios in which fat is distributed) but also of high fertility. A study of Polish women revealed that women with low waist-to-hip ratios also had high fecundity as measured by their reproductive hormones. And scientists have recently discovered yet another advantage. Fat in a woman’s hips and thighs is particularly good fat because there is a higher concentration of omega-3 fatty acids (which are important for brain development). A recent study has shown that children of these curvy mothers have better cognitive abilities than children of the less curvy, and the bigger the difference between the waist and the hips, the better the children did.
Because of our built-in preference for attractive people, those who are genetically blessed enjoy all sorts of additional societal advantages beyond simply finding a mate. For instance, one study revealed the power of attractiveness to create personal space. Researchers placed a beautiful woman on a busy street corner and found that people will give her more room than an unattractive woman. And growing up with good looks imbues the person with an inherent self-confidence. In one study, people were made to wait while a psychiatrist conducted a phone conversation. The real purpose of the study was to see how long people would wait before they interrupted. Attractive people waited on average three minutes and twenty seconds. Unattractive people waited nine minutes. And here’s the kicker: when both groups were asked to rate their assertiveness, they gave themselves equal marks! That shows how ingrained these tendencies become and how they are hidden not just from the individuals but from society in general. It turns out that a great deal of what we assume about someone’s personality might largely be the result of something like attractiveness. Female attractiveness even appears to make men behave stupidly. Well, okay, maybe that’s a little harsh, but one study did find that if you show men pictures of beautiful women, the men are more likely to stop thinking about the long-term consequences of their actions. And if they are turned on, watch out. According to another study, men in a state of arousal are more likely to respond positively to almost any suggestion from the merely kinky (do you find women’s shoes erotic?) to the downright disturbing (would you slip a woman a drug to increase the chance that she would have sex with you?).
Your attractiveness also has an effect on the sex of your children. Attractive parents have an increased chance of having a daughter (56 percent, rather than 48 percent). Evolutionary psychologists have speculated that the increase is an evolutionary attempt to maximize the advantages of looks, since those qualities are far more valued in women than men, although they have no idea what the biological mechanism is that causes attractive parents to have more female babies.
Up to this point, we have not discussed human personality traits, but there is a great deal of evidence that evolution has shaped these as well. Humor, kindness, empathy—all of them help attract a mate, and all have likely developed at least in part due to sexual selection. The No. 1 task that we have evolved to perform (besides simply staying alive) is to attract a mate and reproduce. Because of this, no aspect of our humanity can be separated from the process of sexual selection. So, it’s not just our intelligence that is a product of evolution. Virtually every aspect of our personality is. The question is, what personal qualities
do
men and women look for in one another? We’ll explore this topic more closely in chapter 5, but there is an incredibly simple answer to the question.
do
men and women look for in one another? We’ll explore this topic more closely in chapter 5, but there is an incredibly simple answer to the question.
If you want to boil all this down to its most essential level, men look for youth and beauty in their partners, and women want wealth and status. In one study of personal ads, women mentioned financial success in their ads eleven times more than men did, and men mentioned attractiveness three times more often than women did. To illustrate how strikingly obvious this is, I want you to call to mind one of the many times you have seen a young, attractive woman with a very old but very successful man. For instance, consider 1993 Playmate of the Year Anna Nicole Smith, who was twenty-six when she married eighty-nine-year-old oil billionaire J. Howard Marshall. Not very hard to think of older men-younger women couplings, is it? Now, try to remember the last time you saw the opposite: a young, attractive man with a very old and very successful woman. It’s not so easy to think of examples of that.
In a completely unsurprising confirmation of this observation, studies show that beautiful women end up with rich men far more often than beautiful men end up with rich women. Seeing an older man with a younger woman is commonplace and merely takes to a logical extreme a man’s desire for a young partner and a woman’s desire for a financially successful man, but an older woman with a younger man violates those norms. There is no cultural reason why this should be the case. Our shock can be traced directly to how evolution has shaped us.
Looks are so important to men that, according to one study, the physical attractiveness of a wife is a better indicator of a man’s occupational status than any of her other qualities: better than her intelligence, her socioeconomic status, or her education. Another study has shown that the more attractive an adolescent girl is, the more likely she will marry up (the more sexually active an adolescent girl is, the less likely she will marry up). All of this is not an indication of American shallowness. David Buss has researched thirty-seven cultures around the globe and has found that these preferences show up in every single one of them. In fact, non-Western cultures tend to place an even greater value on female attractiveness because it is a valuable indication of physical health in an environment rife with parasites and other health problems.
Before women judge men too harshly, though, they should recognize that men’s obsession with youthfulness is likely the result of monogamy. Because men are choosing a lifelong partner, there is added pressure to choose someone young who will be fertile for many years. In more promiscuous species, biologists have found that the males exhibit no bias for younger partners. In addition, women have their own set of preferences, which they cling to just as tenaciously. For example, height. Women are nuts about it. Although that seems shallow, especially when the guy can just buy lifts, height is an excellent evolutionary indicator of health. In fact, demographers use height as one measure to judge national health and prosperity. Unfortunately, the national news on this front is not good. The United States once had the tallest and healthiest citizens in the world but now ranks near the bottom of industrialized nations. While other nations have been tacking nearly an inch per decade onto their average (due to things like better access to health care and a more equitable division of wealth), Americans haven’t done so since the 1970s so that northern Europeans now tower an average of three inches over us.
None of this means that men and women don’t value many of the same things. Both sexes, for example, place importance on dependability and stability. But in far more cases than the casual observer may suppose, the sexes are driven by fundamentally different urges.
All of this contains one important lesson for men and women. Hearing women complain about how men prefer younger women or men complain about how women only care about money is probably as old as civilization. Evolution has planted those desires so deeply into us that it’s a waste of energy to fight them. The simple truth is that you are not going to change such fundamental drives, and any change that does occur will happen slowly over many generations. You may wish for men and women to be different, but if you want to succeed in the Darwinian world of dating, you must deal with them as they are.
Consider the Question
of Monogamy
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