Why do men like silly girls?

If you ask a straight guy, "What kind of girls do you like?" he probably won't say "dumb and silly." But a new study finds that traits like "dumb" and "silly" suggest a girl may be less alert, which is exactly what men look for when looking for a one-night stand partner.

The Sexual Utilization Hypothesis: Differences in Male and Female Reproductive Strategies

Experts proposed a "sexual utilization hypothesis", which is based on the differences in reproductive strategies between males and females during human evolution.

For our female ancestors, casual sex with a man with whom they had no emotional connection and no intention of staying to raise offspring was a costly genetic gamble. In contrast, men produce 85 million sperm per testicle every day, so using up a few sperm won't have much of an impact on them. The hypothesis is based on the premise that the brain evolved long before the advent of "family planning products" and that women have always been sensitive to casual sex that could lead to pregnancy and are less willing than men to indulge in it. Experts speculate that any woman who appears to be less guarded—that is, sexually “available”—can make men more likely to take action.

It's a provocative hypothesis, and the terminology sounds a bit harsh. In evolutionary psychology, "available" simply means that a woman agrees or will easily submit to having sex with a man, regardless of her own desires. According to this definition, whether a girl is proactive, a sex worker, or goes crazy when seeing a member of the opposite sex, having sex with her is "using" her (at least "using" her body).

Men: Guarding their own bowls and staring at other people's pots

So how do they test their sexual exploitation hypothesis? They call a group of undergraduate male students into a lab, ask them to look at pictures of women, and then rate the attractiveness of these girls. But first, they needed to find the right image.

In order to find out what kind of girls are most likely to accept advances from the opposite sex and what kind of girls are most likely to compromise with pressure and coercion from the opposite sex, the researchers surveyed a large number of young students (103 boys and 91 girls) and asked them to name some "specific actions, facial clues, body postures, attitudes and personality traits" that may indicate that women are more receptive and compromising.

These features can be grouped into three categories:

1. Stable psychological traits, such as low self-esteem, weak intelligence, recklessness, etc.

2. Situational temporary manifestations, such as fatigue, drunkenness, absence of relatives and friends, etc.;

3. Physical weaknesses, such as short stature, make such women easily controlled by violence.

In addition, researchers also define "sexual exploitation" behavior as a continuum, with rape at the most serious end and pick-up at the least serious end.

The experimenters invited a large number of students to describe the relevant characteristics in order to prevent the researchers' subjective ideas from affecting the research. After the investigation, the research team collected a total of 88 characteristics. In the eyes of undergraduates, girls who met these 88 characteristics were the easiest to succeed. These traits include: licking and biting lips, staring back, being lazy, being drunk, wearing tight clothes, being fat, being short, not smart, having a punk temperament, being pushy, and touching one's breasts.

So, experts They began searching the Internet for pictures of women that met these 88 characteristics. Once they found pictures of women licking their lips, attending parties, drawing circles on their areolas, etc., they gave them to the students being surveyed to confirm again to ensure that the pictures did indeed meet their descriptions. The paper doesn’t provide specific coding details, so we’re left to trust that these independent judges did their best to determine what “pushy” and “unintelligent” women looked like.

Then came the real test, when 76 male participants viewed the images in a random order and judged each woman's overall attractiveness, how easy it would be to "take advantage" of them in various ways (from seduction to violence), and whether they were suitable as short-term or long-term partners. The test results were mixed:

Participants rated women who were dumb or immature, looked dull, and were drunk as more likely to be taken advantage of. But more importantly, the participants also believed that such women were more beautiful and attractive than those who were rational and intelligent. However, when the researchers asked the participants to judge whether such women were suitable as long-term life partners, their physical attractiveness immediately disappeared and the men quickly switched to thinking with their heads.

In other words, these confused girls are indeed sexy and attractive, but men only want to have a casual relationship with them and are not willing to marry them. The evolutionary logic here is very clear: men don't want to be cuckolded themselves, and would rather help others to be cuckolded.

Men are not necessarily lustful

Subsequent research has filled in more details for this hypothesis. Not all men are good at finding women's weaknesses. What kind of men are most sensitive to the above-mentioned “exploitable” characteristics. His research team recruited 72 straight men and asked them to look at the same pictures and rate the women in the pictures in the same way. However, this time the researchers also measured key personality traits of the men, as well as their attitudes toward casual sex: "How many women have you had sex with who you are not in a committed relationship with?" and "How often do you become sexually aroused when you come into contact with a woman you are not in a committed relationship with?"

The study found that men who were sexually open and unsympathetic were most sensitive to "exploitable" characteristics in women. Men who do not have both of these conditions - being conservative in sexual attitudes but inconsiderate, or being open in sexual attitudes but sympathetic to women - will not take action even if they encounter a good opportunity to take advantage of women. The original "sexual exploitation hypothesis" assumed that all men's brains were the same, but this study found that men also have different types of reproductive strategies - in other words, not all men are lustful.

Many people would think that the "sexual exploitation hypothesis" discriminates against women. But I don't think Goetz is promoting male chauvinism. The researchers are simply trying to uncover the reasons behind a social phenomenon in order to better understand gender relations.

Research shortcomings

That said, current research is far from perfect. Our female ancestors could not have relaxed their already weak sense of chastity by drinking cocktails, and there would have been no selection pressure for conception after drinking. But learned evolutionary psychologists might counter that modern women’s drunken behavior is really just an exaggeration of an altered state of consciousness that humans have experienced for tens of thousands of years. But more powerful criticisms are directed at the research methods. For example, the images of women used in the study were all from the Internet, and these "exploitable" features are not all independent of each other but may influence each other. Do drunk women happen to be prettier?

Because women usually dress up carefully when attending parties, and girls who don't like to participate in carnivals are less likely to get drunk and appear to be more sober. There also seems to be a correlation between wearing tight clothes and having a frivolous demeanor. To rule out the influence of factors such as facial features, researchers should use the same models to represent these characteristics.

And while men may lower their standards when evaluating casual sex partners, even the most perverted, horny, and callous man has his aesthetic bottom line. Therefore, the physical disadvantages hypothesized in the first study—being too fat or having abnormal bone proportions—do not arouse men's desire. If we strictly follow the explanation of the "sexual exploitation hypothesis", women who have been in a coma or have dementia for a long time should be extremely sexy in the eyes of men. Of course, this is not the case.

From an evolutionary perspective, even women who are easy to get succumb to must have minimum genetic normality and fertility. Subconsciously, men's goal is to spread their seeds everywhere without being bound by the responsibility of raising children. Therefore, the sexual partners they choose must at least have the intelligence and ability to raise their offspring to adulthood.

Overall, these research findings are generally consistent with the so-called "sexual utilization hypothesis" and also deepen our understanding of the differences in reproductive strategies between the sexes. However, these studies have not escaped the inherent problem of evolutionary psychology: the interpretation of the data is just based on assumptions. expert The observed phenomena can also be explained without the perspective of evolution. Regardless, these results are self-evident - men will of course find drunk, empty-headed girls easiest to get.

However, we must be careful of our inherent biases. Do men really find girls who look silly more attractive? All other things being equal, does a man really think they are more attractive than those who are sober and smart? What do you think?