The "wedding ring effect"

We, as women, may have a soft spot for kind men, but that doesn't mean every trait we find attractive is as admirable. The Department of Psychology at Oklahoma State University published some interesting findings after performing a study about "mate poaching." According to Independent, a whopping 90 percent of single women who participated in the study displayed interest in a man when they were under the impression that he was in a relationship. Contrast that to the mere 59 percent of single women who found the same man attractive when informed he was single and, wow, that's a big deal. This phenomenon is often called the "wedding ring effect."

Another study has contested these findings, but a report published in 2018 showed that women do indeed appear to copy other women's preferences for male attractiveness. Why? Science doesn't seem to have the answer to that nailed down just yet, but Independent reported that it could be because a married man is "perceived to be more kind, faithful and a better father." And you know how we feel about kindness.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Having a positive personality

Image
What is more important to men than looks? Contrary to what you may think, personality traits do matter. As part of a study by the Department of Psychology at the University of Westminster in the United Kingdom, 2,000 male college students were assigned to one of ten groups at random and asked to rate the attractiveness of women of different ages and sizes. In their respective groups, they either received positive information about the personalities of the women they were asked to rate, negative personality information, or received no information whatsoever. The result? "Participants provided with positive personality information perceived a wider range of body sizes as physically attractive compared with the control group," the abstract highlighted, "whereas participants provided with negative personality information perceived a narrower range of body sizes as attractive." Sure enough, this study proved that by possessing positive personality traits, you can directl...
Read more

The art of storytelling

Image
We all know someone who just drones on and on while telling a story and never quite gets to the point. Now imagine, if you will, being in a committed relationship and living with that person? Yikes. You've probably never thought of the art of storytelling as an attractive quality, but you've definitely noticed how unpleasant bad storytelling can be. A three-part study conducted in 2016 examined how a person's storytelling ability influences attractiveness. The participants in the first study were told about their potential partner's storytelling ability while the participants in the second study read either a poorly- or well-told story under the guise that it was written by their potential partner. As a result, "women's attractiveness assessments of men as a long-term date increased for good storytellers."  The reason for these results might be found in the third study. That one highlighted that the art of storytelling seems to reflect a higher social stat...
Read more

Earning potential

Image
Size matters. Well, as far as it relates to a man's nest egg. Before you get to thinking that that's some sort of lewd euphemism, we'll explain. When polled by Men's Health, one in five women cited a man's career successes as one of the top practical skills a partner could possess. There's no doubt about it: a man's earning potential is something many women find attractive.  Weighing a man's ability to be a good provider so heavily may seem a bit stereotypical and even archaic, but in most households in the United States, men are still the higher-earners and, whether it's cause or effect, Americans — both men and women — continue to place a higher value on a man's earning potential. A survey by Pew Research Center found nearly seven in 10 adults claim "it is very important for a man to be able to support a family financially to be a good husband or partner."
Read more