..Tom

Over the next day or so I will write an article about the above line..

Keep a look out!

Original article  written by Tristan Miller

German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence

20 December 1999

Why don’t I have a girlfriend?

This is a question that practically every male has asked himself at one point or another in his life. Unfortunately, there is rarely a hard and fast answer to the query. Many men try to reason their way through the dilemma nonetheless, often reaching a series of ridiculous explanations, each more self-deprecating than the last: “Is it because I’m too shy, and not aggressive enough? Is it my opening lines? Am I a boring person? Am I too fat or too thin? Or am I simply ugly and completely unattractive to women?” When all other plausible explanations have been discounted, most fall back on the time-honoured conclusion that “there must be Something Wrong™ with me” before resigning themselves to lives of perpetual chastity.

Not the author, though. I, for one, refuse to spend my life brooding over my lack of luck with women. While I’ll be the first to admit that my chances of ever entering into a meaningful relationship with someone special are practically non-existent, I staunchly refuse to admit that it has anything to do with some inherent problem with me. Instead, I am convinced that the situation can be readily explained in purely scientific terms, using nothing more than demographics and some elementary statistical calculus.

Lest anyone suspect that my standards for women are too high, let me allay those fears by enumerating in advance my three criteria for the match. First, the potential girlfriend must be approximately my age—let’s say 21 plus or minus three or four years. Second, the girl must be beautiful (and I use that term all-encompassingly to refer to both inner and outer beauty). Third, she must also be reasonably intelligent—she doesn’t have to be Mensa material, but the ability to carry on a witty, insightful argument would be nice. So there they are—three simple demands, which I’m sure everyone will agree are anything but unreasonable.

That said, I now present my demonstration of why the probability of finding a suitable candidate fulfilling the three above-noted requirements is so small as to be practically impossible—in other words, why I will never have a girlfriend. I shall endeavour to make this proof as rigorous as the available data permits. And I should note, too, that there will be no statistical trickery involved here; I have cited all my sources and provided all relevant calculations in case anyone wishes to conduct their own independent review. Let’s now take a look at the figures.

Number of people on Earth (in 1998): 5 592 830 000

We start with the largest demographic in which I am interested—namely, the population of this planet. That is not to say I’m against the idea of interstellar romance, of course; I just don’t assess the prospect of finding myself a nice Altairian girl as statistically significant. Now anyway, the latest halfway-reliable figures we have for Earth’s population come from the United States Census Bureau’s 1999 World Population Profile (WP/98). Due presumably to the time involved in compiling and processing census statistics, said report’s data is valid only as of 1998, so later on we’ll be making some impromptu adjustments to bring the numbers up to date.

…who are female: 2 941 118 000

I’d've thought that, given the title of this essay, this criterion goes without saying. In case anyone missed it, though, I am looking for exclusively female companionship. Accordingly, roughly half of the Earth’s population must be discounted. Sorry, guys.

…in “developed” countries: 605 601 000

We now further restrict the geographical area of interest to so-called “first-world countries”. My reasons for doing so are not motivated out of contempt for those who are economically disadvantaged, but rather by simple probability. My chances of meeting a babe from Bhutan or a goddess from Ghana, either in person or on the Internet, are understandably low. In fact, I will most likely spend nearly my entire life living and working in North America, Europe, and Australia, so it is to these types of regions that the numbers have been narrowed.

…currently (in 2000) aged 18 to 25: 65 399 083

Being neither a pedophile nor a geriatrophile, I would like to restrict my search for love to those whose age is approximately equal to my own. This is where things get a bit tricky, for two reasons: first, the census data is nearly two years old, and second, the “population by age” tables in WP/98 are not separated into individual ages but are instead quantized into “15–19″ (of whom there are 39 560 000) and “20–44″ (population 215 073 000). Women aged 15 to 19 in 1998 will be aged 17 to 21 in 2000; in this group, I’m interested in dating those 18 or older, so, assuming the “15–19″ girls’ ages are uniformly distributed, we have

Similarly, of 1998’s “20–44″ category, there are now

females within my chosen age limit. The sum, 66 059 680, represents the total number of females aged 18 to 25 in developed countries in 2000. Unfortunately, roughly 1% of these girls will have died since the census was taken; thus, the true number of so-far eligible bachelorettes is 65 399 083.

…who are beautiful: 1 487 838

Personal attraction, both physically and personality-wise, is an important instigator of any relationship. Of course, beauty is a purely subjective trait whose interpretation may vary from person to person. Luckily it is not necessary for me to define beauty in this essay except to state that for any given beholder, it will probably be normally distributed amongst the population. Without going into the specifics of precisely which traits I admire, I will say that for a girl to be considered really beautiful to me, she should fall at least two standard deviations above the norm. From basic statistics theory, the area to the left of the normal curve at z = 2 is

and so it is this number with which we multiply our current population pool.

…and intelligent: 236 053

Again, intelligence can mean different things to different people, yet I am once more relieved of making any explanation by noting that it, like most other characteristics, has a notionally normal distribution across the population. Let’s assume that I will settle for someone a mere one standard deviation above the normal; in that case, a further

of the population must be discounted.

…and not already committed: 118 027

I could find no hard statistics on the number of above-noted girls who are already married, engaged, or otherwise committed to a significant other, but informal observation and anecdotal evidence leads me to believe that the proportion is somewhere around 50%. (Fellow unattached males will no doubt have also noticed a preponderance of girls legitimately offering, “Sorry, I already have a boyfriend” as an excuse not to go on a date.) For reasons of morality (and perhaps too self-preservation), I’m not about to start hitting on girls who have husbands and boyfriends. Accordingly, that portion of the female population must also be considered off-limits.

…and also might like me: 18 726

Naturally, finding a suitable girl who I really like is no guarantee that she’ll like me back. Assuming, as previously mentioned, that personal attractiveness is normally distributed, there is a mere 50% chance that any given female will consider me even marginally attractive. In practice, however, people are unlikely to consider pursuing a relationship with someone whose looks and personality just barely suffice. Let’s make the rather conservative assumption, then, that a girl would go out with someone if and only if they were at least one standard deviation above her idea of average. In that case, referring to our previous calculation, only 15.8655% of females would consider someone with my physical characteristics and personality acceptable as a potential romantic partner.

Conclusion

It is here, at a pool of 18 726 acceptable females, that we end our statistical analysis. At first glance, a datable population of 18 726 may not seem like such a low number, but consider this: assuming I were to go on a blind date with a new girl about my age every week, I would have to date for 3493 weeks before I found one of the 18 726. That’s very nearly 67 years. As a North American male born in the late 1970s, my life expectancy is probably little more than 70 years, so we can safely say that I will be quite dead before I find the proverbial girl of my dreams. Come to think of it, she’ll probably be dead too.

My dream:

I was standing in my kitchen when I saw my girlfriend Martha in front of me. She was holding a knife and fork in her hand and for some reason gesticulating at the table for me to sit down. I sat down and started eating the food that was in front of me. It was pasta and pesto (my favorite food).

The dream suddenly changed, and I was standing in Brimham Rocks with Martha who was actually stark naked. But with my grandfather there as well, holding onto Martha whiles pointing out to me the better features of his new digital camera

From there on out, the dream is a blur to me. But let’s start out there.

So as a start off point, I am going to describe a little bit about Freud’s 5 dream theories what they are what they mean, and what possible connection they could have with my dream.

1. Displacement: This occurs when the desire for one thing or person is symbolized by something or someone else.

Ok, so to extract a part of my dream as an example, you could theorize that my Grandfather holding on to the DSLR camera & holding onto Martha, is one thing I want to do. So my Grandfather in my mind, took the place of me.

2. Projection: This happens when the dreamer propels their own desires and wants onto another person.

Again I will use the example of my Grandfather as it’s the most simple, and say that I am projecting my own want to have that closeness with Martha, through my Grandfather.

3. Symbolization: This is characterized when your repressed urges or suppressed desired or acted out metaphorically.

My repressed urges are sadly nothing more than a baser drive for sex in this dream. Martha being naked in both sections of my dream, and holding cutlery in Freud’s view is a perfect view on his theory on sex in dreams.

Granted there could be allot said about the kitchen with my favorite food, and Martha being there. A mothering desire perhaps, being symbolized in the view that she has made my food for me.

This could be a repressed desire for people to care for me, to “clean up after me” as such.

4. Condensation: This is the process in which the dreamer hides their feelings or urges by contracting it or underplaying it into a brief dream image or event. The meaning of this dream imagery may not be apparent or obvious.

Again you could view on the kitchen part of my dream here, by saying that my symbolization of the kitchen/mothering aspect could be viewed as a condensation.

5. Rationalization: This is seen as the final stage of dream work where the dreaming mind organizes an incoherent dream into one that is more comprehensible and logical. Also known as secondary revision.

Sadly there is no example of this in my dream, as I have no portrayal of this in my dream. This is sadly something that would have to be examined “on the chair” as I do not have any memories of the events in my dream.

Dreams are distant from my usual psychological past time, I general use Freudian psycho-analasys in my day to day psych-ing. So please do forgive me if you disagree with any of the comments I have made here. I have left a few out, as I didn’t want to into immense detail about my dream in this case, as I would have to reveal some of the more personal information about my own psyche, and being the introvert shy person that I am, I belive that people should not know too much about me. I like to keep the air of mystery surrounding my own mind, so as others cannot pass judgement.

Anyway!

This is a bit of a DIY article. I have given you a few hints and a few obvious tips about my dream, now I want you to go forth, spread your wings and fly to a greater understanding of your dreams & by doing that, hopefully a greater understanding of yourself’s.

Here are Freud’s main points:

1. Displacement:This occurs when the desire for one thing or person is symbolized by something or someone else.
2. Projection:This happens when the dreamer propels their own desires and wants onto another person.
3. Symbolization:This is characterized when your repressed urges or suppressed desired or acted out metaphorically.
4. Condensation:This is the process in which the dreamer hides their feelings or urges by contracting it or underplaying it into a brief dream image or event. The meaning of this dream imagery may not be apparent or obvious.
5. Rationalization:This is seen as the final stage of dreamwork where the dreaming mind organizes an incoherent dream into one that is more comprehensible and logical. Also known as secondary revision.

Freud was particularly preoccupied with sexual content in dreams (who said psychologists can’t be dirty bastards). Sex was found to be the root cause of what was happening in our dreams. He believed that every long slender or elongated objects (i.e.. knives, cigars) represent the penis, while any cavity or receptacle (bowls, caves, tunnels) denotes the female genitalia.

A post coming up within the next few days putting these above theories into practice and seeing what happens.

Below are some dream tips, with some possible explanations. You never know.. You might learn something!

1. The average person has at least 5 dreams each night.

2. Most dreams are 5 to 20 minutes in duration.

3. Over a lifetime, you’ll spend approximately 6 years dreaming.

4. There are 5 stages of sleep and it’s only during the final stage (called ‘REM sleep’) that you dream.

5. Dreams are an expression of your real life thoughts, feelings, concerns and experiences.

6. Everybody dreams; even those people who can’t remember having any.

7. The images and storylines that make up your dreams should generally not be taken literally; they typically contain hidden meanings.

8. Men are more likely to dream about other men than they are to dream about women; whereas women dream of women and men equally.

9. A particular dream that recurs and persists over a period of time is a strong indication that an important issue in your life needs to be resolved.

10. To end a recurring dream you must interpret its true meaning and resolve the issue in your life that it refers to.

11. Whilst dreaming, some people realise that they’re dreaming and are able to control what happens in it; this is called ‘lucid dreaming’.

12. A process called ‘dream incubation’ allows you to increase your chances of dreaming about a particular topic, person or place.

13. Before trying to sleep, spend a few minutes thinking about the good and bad points of your day; doing so clears your mind and improves the quality of your dreams.

14. Alcohol and medications reduce your ability to remember your dreams; eating near to your bedtime has a similar effect.

15. Watching television or reading a book immediately before going to bed increases the likelihood of you dreaming about what you watched / read; such dreams tend not to have hidden meanings.

16. 5 minutes after waking up, people forget 50% of the content of their dreams; 10 minutes after waking up, 90% has been forgotten.

17. To increase your chances of remembering your dreams you should have a regular sleep pattern; going to bed and waking up at the same times each day.

18. If you want to remember more of your dreams, tell yourself before going to sleep that you want to do so; repeating it over and over in your mind as you lay in bed.

19. On waking up, lay still and visually try to piece together any people, places, events, images, items and symbols that come into your mind.

20. Questions you should try to answer about your dreams: who was in it?; where did it occur?; was it day or night?; what did you do?; did any images, items or symbols stand out from the others?; how did you feel?

21. Keep a notebook and pen, or a small tape recorder, next to your bed so that you can make a record of your dreams when you first awake and your dreams are fresh in your mind.

22. Write, draw or record everything that you remember from your dreams; even if they don’t have a connection or seem relevant.

23. Dreams about your teeth are the most common type of dream.

24. Types of teeth dreams include: teeth falling out; rotting teeth; swallowing teeth; spitting teeth.

25. Dreams that involve something bad happening to your teeth typically represent a recent verbal error you’ve made.

26. Teeth dreams may arise as a result of: saying something you regret; hurting someone with your words; gossiping about others.

27. The morning after a dream in which something bad has happened to your teeth, look back at things you have said to people lately and think whether your words were inappropriate or malicious.

28. A more direct interpretation of teeth dreams is that you’re concerned about some aspect of your physical appearance (not necessarily your teeth).

29. If you’re looking in the mirror at the time something happens to your teeth then it’s more likely a self-esteem issue than something you’ve said.

30. Dreams involving teeth are often recurring; the way to stop them being to make amends for the verbal mistakes you’ve made or to be more accepting of your physical appearance.

31. Dreams in which people find themselves naked in public (normally work, school or a social event) are familiar to many people.

32. The general interpretation of dreams that involve being naked in public is that you’ve been hiding something in your life from other people.

33. Wearing no clothes in a dream can also represent you not being prepared (or being prepared but not feeling so) for an upcoming situation such as an exam, presentation, date etc.

34. If you dream that you’re naked, but no-one in the dream realises that you are, it means that whatever you’re hiding or are worried about is not an issue for other people.

35. If you dream that you’re naked, but you don’t care who sees you, it means that you’re feeling comfortable and relaxed about whatever happens to you in your life.

36. A dream in which you’re wearing just underwear gives a similar interpretation to a dream in which you’re naked; the underwear representing that you’re quite anxious about something but not wholly so.

37. Seeing someone you know naked or wearing their underwear in a dream (in a non sexual way), indicates that in real life you’re conscious that that person is hiding, or is unprepared for, something.

38. An dream experienced by lots of people is that of flying.

39. Dreaming that you’re flying usually means that you feel in control of your life; that you’re ‘on top’ of things.

40. The stronger willed and confident you are, the more likely you are to experience flying as part of your dreams.

41. Flying dreams can also occur if you’ve just gained a new perspective on someone or something.

42. If you’re flying in a dream but feel scared whilst doing so, you may have confidence issues and not feel that you’re up to the challenges that you’re facing in your life.

43. If you have difficulty maintaining flight in your dream, someone or something in real life may be preventing you from having the level of control that you want to have.

44. By identifying what it is in your dream that stops your flight progressing, you can identify what it is in your life that stops you progressing.

45. Many people have reported having dreams in which they’re falling and can’t stop themselves from doing so.

46. Falling dreams are an indication of anxieties and insecurities in your daily life.

47. Some say that dreams involving falling come at times of loneliness; having no-one to hold on to being represented by having nothing to hold on to.

48. Feeling inferior to other people in your life can also result in falling dreams.

49. Sometimes when people have falling dreams, their bodies twitch and shake to the extent that they wake themselves up.

50. It’s been said that you can die in your sleep if you don’t wake up from a falling dream before you hit the ground; however, there’s never been any evidence to support this.

51. Dreams involving drowning are very similar to dreams involving falling and are interpreted the same way.

52. It’s common to have a feeling of being chased in your dreams.

53. The typical chase dream scenario involves being pursued by someone or something that wants to hurt you, whilst you run away or hide.

54. Chase dreams represent the way you’ve been dealing with an issue in your life; running away from and avoiding something rather than confronting it.

55. After waking from a dream in which you’ve been chased, ask yourself who or what was chasing you; establishing that will let you know what issue in your life you’ve been running away from.

56. If you don’t recognise the person pursuing you in a dream, it may be part of yourself (your own feelings of anger, fear, jealousy, stress) that you’re running away from.

57. A more direct interpretation of chase dreams is a literal fear of being physically attacked; this may be based on something that’s actually happened to you in the past.

58. Chase dreams will often recur over a period of time; to stop them you should mentally tell yourself as you try to sleep that you’ll turn around and face your pursuer.

59. A dream experienced by many people is that of taking an exam or being late for an exam.

60. As part of dreams involving exams, people encounter problems such as: not knowing any answers; questions being in a foreign language; pens not working; not being able to find the place of the exam.

61. Exam related dreams can result from a feeling in your life that you’re being scrutinised / tested by someone.

62. Some say that if you dream of taking or missing an exam then you’re anxious about an upcoming challenge in your life that you don’t think you’re up to.

63. An alternative interpretation of dreams involving exams is that you’ve forgotten to do something important.

64. Pressure and anxiety is thought to bring on dreams of exams because those feelings subconsciously remind us of the stress endured as a child at school when taking exams.

65. Some people dream of either the death of themselves or the death of someone they know.

66. Dreams involving death may occur when you feel emotionally hurt or have a fear that someone or something is about to hurt you emotionally.

67. Death can arise in a dream to signify the end of a phase in your life and the beginning of new one.

68. If it’s you dieing in your dream, there’s likely something within you (typically a strong feeling you have) that you need to let go of so that you can move on with your life.

69. The death of yourself in a dream could also indicate a deep regret of something you’ve done.

70. If it’s someone else dieing in your dream, it may mean that your relationship with that person is suffering and needs attention.

71. The death of someone else in a dream could also signify either a fear of losing them or a desire for them to leave your life.

72. Being confronted with natural or man-made disasters in a dream isn’t uncommon.

73. Disaster dreams come in many variations: droughts; earthquakes; floods; nuclear bombs; tidal waves; tornadoes; volcanic eruptions; war.

74. A disaster scenario in a dream tends to occur when a crisis is taking place in your life or you feel that one is approaching.

75. Dreams involving disasters can represent a loss of hope or a time of change in your life.

76. If you experience a disaster in your dreams and find that you’re dealing with it alone, it can indicate that you’re feeling lonely in your real life.

77. Coping well with a disaster in a dream is a sign that you’re strong and have the mentality to handle whatever problems arise in your life.

Some lies create little internal conflict and negligible stress. For example, when we tell “white lies” (“Boss, I really love that psychedelic necktie.”), the lie creates no internal conflict. But when the CEO of a major company, who sees his or her future riding on the outcome of an audit, is forced to lie about a financial statement fraud, he or she is likely to feel a great deal of stress. An experienced interviewer begins by asking easy, nonthreatening questions (“Where did you go to college?”) while discreetly observing the person’s behavior. Then, when the questions get tough (“Is there any reason someone would say you have been cooking the books?”), the interviewer will look for telltale behavioral changes. This process is known as “calibration” and is a vital part of detecting deception.

VERBAL CLUES

When under stress the dishonest person normally displays a range of verbal and nonverbal clues. Most of the verbal clues will be exhibited when the individual is asked a particularly distressing question. For example, consider the case of Delbert, an employee of a Fortune 500 company.
At the time, I was consulting with the company on fraud detection and deterrence policy. Because of labor problems, the CEO started receiving a series of threatening handwritten letters from a company worker. With each letter, the threats escalated. Clues had led the security director to narrow the search for the errant employee to one department with about a dozen workers. We decided to retain a handwriting expert to examine their signatures on file in the personnel department and compare them with the threatening notes.

Because we had just signatures, the handwriting expert was only able to narrow the list to four possible suspects. For no particular reason, we began by interviewing Delbert. After a half hour of softball questions, Delbert betrayed himself with these telltale behaviors:

BODY ENGLISH

The nonverbal clues of deception are rooted in our physiology. When threatened, humans react with a “fight or flight” mentality. So when placed under emotional stress, the body has trouble remaining still; movement acts as a catharsis. That’s why when you’re stressed out, vigorous physical activity is one of the best antidotes. Because of the “fight or flight” reaction, some people, when asked difficult questions, subconsciously assume a fleeing position. It happened with Delbert. While his head was facing me, his feet were pointed in the direction of the door as if he were ready to dart from the room.

Another way to relieve stress through movement is to change positions. When I was chitchatting with Delbert, he had remained relatively motionless. But when I asked him a difficult question, he visibly shifted his position in the chair, moving his whole body in the process.
A similar reaction to stress involves crossing motions. When people feel threatened, they can subconsciously use their arms for protection. I noticed that in response to some questions, Delbert crossed his arms as if to protect himself from assault. As childish as it seems, some liars cover their mouths when uttering a falsehood. That’s because in times of stress, many people instinctively revert to their childhood emotions. In the case of Delbert, he frequently concealed his mouth with his hand as if his lie would escape, quietly, like a slow leak in a tire.

REACTION TO EVIDENCE

The time finally came when I showed the threatening letters to Delbert. He was both attracted to and repulsed by the evidence. While trying to feign disinterest, Delbert carefully examined each piece of paper. When he had finished, he placed his finger on the pile and shoved them back across the table to me as if he was afraid to touch the documents. This reaction is common among those trying to be deceptive; they don’t want you to know they’re interested in the evidence that implicates them.

IT’S THE PATTERN THAT COUNTS

Experienced interviewers know they cannot count on any one indicator to deception; the pattern is the key. Since Delbert had exhibited so many classic signs of deception, I decided it was time to find out if we had our man. “Delbert,” I said, “the one way to clear up any suspicion is for you to take a pad and give me some handwriting samples. We’ll submit them to an expert.” Delbert held his pen above the pad for a long time. Then his shoulders slumped, he dropped the pen and looked like a deer caught in the headlights.

“You got me,” he said quietly. “How did you find me out of 20,000 employees?” I didn’t answer. Management decided Delbert had to go, but they declined to notify the authorities, feeling it would just add controversy to their labor problems. There are two valuable lessons from this story. First, if you observe and listen carefully, you can improve your ability to detect lies whether they involve fraud or not. And the second lesson will also answer Delbert’s question: On the fraud beat, sometimes you just get lucky.

This article is about detecting others lying. It can be used to find out if a loved one or spose is lying. This Psychological text is a god guide to find the liars!

Original article taken from http://www.aicpa.org/pubs/jofa/nov2001/wells.htm all copyrights are to their respective owners.

I think that videos and animations like this can really inspire people to great heights. Full credits for this are given to it’s original author Kevin Cox.

Anyway enough nattering. “The Piano -Amelie Theme Animation” Enjoy!

Amelie Theme Animation

Psychology Today Magazine, Jul/Aug 2007
Last Reviewed 20 Sep 2007
Article ID: 4359

All copyright is held by them.

Human nature is one of those things that everybody talks about but no one can define precisely. Every time we fall in love, fight with our spouse, get upset about the influx of immigrants into our country, or go to church, we are, in part, behaving as a human animal with our own unique evolved nature—human nature.

This means two things. First, our thoughts, feelings, and behavior are produced not only by our individual experiences and environment in our own lifetime but also by what happened to our ancestors millions of years ago. Second, our thoughts, feelings, and behavior are shared, to a large extent, by all men or women, despite seemingly large cultural differences.

Human behavior is a product both of our innate human nature and of our individual experience and environment. In this article, however, we emphasize biological influences on human behavior, because most social scientists explain human behavior as if evolution stops at the neck and as if our behavior is a product almost entirely of environment and socialization. In contrast, evolutionary psychologists see human nature as a collection of psychological adaptations that often operate beneath conscious thinking to solve problems of survival and reproduction by predisposing us to think or feel in certain ways. Our preference for sweets and fats is an evolved psychological mechanism. We do not consciously choose to like sweets and fats; they just taste good to us.

The implications of some of the ideas in this article may seem immoral, contrary to our ideals, or offensive. We state them because they are true, supported by documented scientific evidence. Like it or not, human nature is simply not politically correct. Adapted from Why Beautiful People Have More Daughters, by Alan S. Miller and Satoshi Kanazawa, to be published by Perigee in September 2007.

1.) Men like blond bombshells (and women want to look like them)Long before TV—in 15th- and 16th- century Italy, and possibly two millennia ago—women were dying their hair blond. A recent study shows that in Iran, where exposure to Western media and culture is limited, women are actually more concerned with their body image, and want to lose more weight, than their American counterparts. It is difficult to ascribe the preferences and desires of women in 15th-century Italy and 21st-century Iran to socialization by media.Women’s desire to look like Barbie—young with small waist, large breasts, long blond hair, and blue eyes—is a direct, realistic, and sensible response to the desire of men to mate with women who look like her. There is evolutionary logic behind each of these features.Men prefer young women in part because they tend to be healthier than older women. One accurate indicator of health is physical attractiveness; another is hair. Healthy women have lustrous, shiny hair, whereas the hair of sickly people loses its luster. Because hair grows slowly, shoulder-length hair reveals several years of a woman’s health status.

Men also have a universal preference for women with a low waist-to-hip ratio. They are healthier and more fertile than other women; they have an easier time conceiving a child and do so at earlier ages because they have larger amounts of essential reproductive hormones. Thus men are unconsciously seeking healthier and more fertile women when they seek women with small waists.

Until very recently, it was a mystery to evolutionary psychology why men prefer women with large breasts, since the size of a woman’s breasts has no relationship to her ability to lactate. But Harvard anthropologist Frank Marlowe contends that larger, and hence heavier, breasts sag more conspicuously with age than do smaller breasts. Thus they make it easier for men to judge a woman’s age (and her reproductive value) by sight—suggesting why men find women with large breasts more attractive.

Alternatively, men may prefer women with large breasts for the same reason they prefer women with small waists. A new study of Polish women shows that women with large breasts and tight waists have the greatest fecundity, indicated by their levels of two reproductive hormones (estradiol and progesterone).

Blond hair is unique in that it changes dramatically with age. Typically, young girls with light blond hair become women with brown hair. Thus, men who prefer to mate with blond women are unconsciously attempting to mate with younger (and hence, on average, healthier and more fecund) women. It is no coincidence that blond hair evolved in Scandinavia and northern Europe, probably as an alternative means for women to advertise their youth, as their bodies were concealed under heavy clothing.

Women with blue eyes should not be any different from those with green or brown eyes. Yet preference for blue eyes seems both universal and undeniable—in males as well as females. One explanation is that the human pupil dilates when an individual is exposed to something that she likes. For instance, the pupils of women and infants (but not men) spontaneously dilate when they see babies. Pupil dilation is an honest indicator of interest and attraction. And the size of the pupil is easiest to determine in blue eyes. Blue-eyed people are considered attractive as potential mates because it is easiest to determine whether they are interested in us or not.

The irony is that none of the above is true any longer. Through face-lifts, wigs, liposuction, surgical breast augmentation, hair dye, and color contact lenses, any woman, regardless of age, can have many of the key features that define ideal female beauty. And men fall for them. Men can cognitively understand that many blond women with firm, large breasts are not actually 15 years old, but they still find them attractive because their evolved psychological mechanisms are fooled by modern inventions that did not exist in the ancestral environment.

 



2.) Humans are naturally polygamous

The history of western civilization aside, humans are naturally polygamous. Polyandry (a marriage of one woman to many men) is very rare, but polygyny (the marriage of one man to many women) is widely practiced in human societies, even though Judeo-Christian traditions hold that monogamy is the only natural form of marriage. We know that humans have been polygynous throughout most of history because men are taller than women.Among primate and nonprimate species, the degree of polygyny highly correlates with the degree to which males of a species are larger than females. The more polygynous the species, the greater the size disparity between the sexes. Typically, human males are 10 percent taller and 20 percent heavier than females. This suggests that, throughout history, humans have been mildly polygynous.Relative to monogamy, polygyny creates greater fitness variance (the distance between the “winners” and the “losers” in the reproductive game) among males than among females because it allows a few males to monopolize all the females in the group. The greater fitness variance among males creates greater pressure for men to compete with each other for mates. Only big and tall males can win mating opportunities. Among pair-bonding species like humans, in which males and females stay together to raise their children, females also prefer to mate with big and tall males because they can provide better physical protection against predators and other males.

In societies where rich men are much richer than poor men, women (and their children) are better off sharing the few wealthy men; one-half, one-quarter, or even one-tenth of a wealthy man is still better than an entire poor man. As George Bernard Shaw puts it, “The maternal instinct leads a woman to prefer a tenth share in a first-rate man to the exclusive possession of a third-rate one.” Despite the fact that humans are naturally polygynous, most industrial societies are monogamous because men tend to be more or less equal in their resources compared with their ancestors in medieval times. (Inequality tends to increase as society advances in complexity from hunter-gatherer to advanced agrarian societies. Industrialization tends to decrease the level of inequality.)

1.) Most women benefit from polygyny, while most men benefit from monogamyWhen there is resource inequality among men—the case in every human society—most women benefit from polygyny: women can share a wealthy man. Under monogamy, they are stuck with marrying a poorer man.The only exceptions are extremely desirable women. Under monogamy, they can monopolize the wealthiest men; under polygyny, they must share the men with other, less desirable women. However, the situation is exactly opposite for men. Monogamy guarantees that every man can find a wife. True, less desirable men can marry only less desirable women, but that’s much better than not marrying anyone at all.Men in monogamous societies imagine they would be better off under polygyny. What they don’t realize is that, for most men who are not extremely desirable, polygyny means no wife at all, or, if they are lucky, a wife who is much less desirable than one they could get under monogamy.

 



1.) Most suicide bombers are Muslim

 

According to the Oxford University sociologist Diego Gambetta, editor of Making Sense of Suicide Missions, a comprehensive history of this troubling yet topical phenomenon, while suicide missions are not always religiously motivated, when religion is involved, it is always Muslim. Why is this? Why is Islam the only religion that motivates its followers to commit suicide missions?The surprising answer from the evolutionary psychological perspective is that Muslim suicide bombing may have nothing to do with Islam or the Koran (except for two lines in it). It may have nothing to do with the religion, politics, the culture, the race, the ethnicity, the language, or the region. As with everything else from this perspective, it may have a lot to do with sex, or, in this case, the absence of sex.What distinguishes Islam from other major religions is that it tolerates polygyny. By allowing some men to monopolize all women and altogether excluding many men from reproductive opportunities, polygyny creates shortages of available women. If 50 percent of men have two wives each, then the other 50 percent don’t get any wives at all.

So polygyny increases competitive pressure on men, especially young men of low status. It therefore increases the likelihood that young men resort to violent means to gain access to mates. By doing so, they have little to lose and much to gain compared with men who already have wives. Across all societies, polygyny makes men violent, increasing crimes such as murder and rape, even after controlling for such obvious factors as economic development, economic inequality, population density, the level of democracy, and political factors in the region.

However, polygyny itself is not a sufficient cause of suicide bombing. Societies in sub-Saharan Africa and the Caribbean are much more polygynous than the Muslim nations in the Middle East and North Africa. And they do have very high levels of violence. Sub-Saharan Africa suffers from a long history of continuous civil wars—but not suicide bombings.

The other key ingredient is the promise of 72 virgins waiting in heaven for any martyr in Islam. The prospect of exclusive access to virgins may not be so appealing to anyone who has even one mate on earth, which strict monogamy virtually guarantees. However, the prospect is quite appealing to anyone who faces the bleak reality on earth of being a complete reproductive loser.

It is the combination of polygyny and the promise of a large harem of virgins in heaven that motivates many young Muslim men to commit suicide bombings. Consistent with this explanation, all studies of suicide bombers indicate that they are significantly younger than not only the Muslim population in general but other (nonsuicidal) members of their own extreme political organizations like Hamas and Hezbollah. And nearly all suicide bombers are single.

 



1.) Having sons reduces the likelihood of divorce

 

Sociologists and demographers have discovered that couples who have at least one son face significantly less risk of divorce than couples who have only daughters. Why is this?Since a man’s mate value is largely determined by his wealth, status, and power—whereas a woman’s is largely determined by her youth and physical attractiveness—the father has to make sure that his son will inherit his wealth, status, and power, regardless of how much or how little of these resources he has. In contrast, there is relatively little that a father (or mother) can do to keep a daughter youthful or make her more physically attractive.The continued presence of (and investment by) the father is therefore important for the son, but not as crucial for the daughter. The presence of sons thus deters divorce and departure of the father from the family more than the presence of daughters, and this effect tends to be stronger among wealthy families.



1.) Beautiful people have more daughters

It is commonly believed that whether parents conceive a boy or a girl is up to random chance. Close, but not quite; it is largely up to chance. The normal sex ratio at birth is 105 boys for every 100 girls. But the sex ratio varies slightly in different circumstances and for different families. There are factors that subtly influence the sex of an offspring.One of the most celebrated principles in evolutionary biology, the Trivers-Willard hypothesis, states that wealthy parents of high status have more sons, while poor parents of low status have more daughters. This is because children generally inherit the wealth and social status of their parents. Throughout history, sons from wealthy families who would themselves become wealthy could expect to have a large number of wives, mistresses and concubines, and produce dozens or hundreds of children, whereas their equally wealthy sisters can have only so many children. So natural selection designs parents to have biased sex ratio at birth depending upon their economic circumstances—more boys if they are wealthy, more girls if they are poor. (The biological mechanism by which this occurs is not yet understood.)This hypothesis has been documented around the globe. American presidents, vice presidents, and cabinet secretaries have more sons than daughters. Poor Mukogodo herders in East Africa have more daughters than sons. Church parish records from the 17th and 18th centuries show that wealthy landowners in Leezen, Germany, had more sons than daughters, while farm laborers and tradesmen without property had more daughters than sons. In a survey of respondents from 46 nations, wealthy individuals are more likely to indicate a preference for sons if they could only have one child, whereas less wealthy individuals are more likely to indicate a preference for daughters.

The generalized Trivers-Willard hypothesis goes beyond a family’s wealth and status: If parents have any traits that they can pass on to their children and that are better for sons than for daughters, then they will have more boys. Conversely, if parents have any traits that they can pass on to their children and that are better for daughters, they will have more girls.

Physical attractiveness, while a universally positive quality, contributes even more to women’s reproductive success than to men’s. The generalized hypothesis would therefore predict that physically attractive parents should have more daughters than sons. Once again, this is the case. Americans who are rated “very attractive” have a 56 percent chance of having a daughter for their first child, compared with 48 percent for everyone else.

 



1.) What Bill Gates and Paul McCartney have in common with criminals

 

For nearly a quarter of a century, criminologists have known about the “age-crime curve.” In every society at all historical times, the tendency to commit crimes and other risk-taking behavior rapidly increases in early adolescence, peaks in late adolescence and early adulthood, rapidly decreases throughout the 20s and 30s, and levels off in middle age.This curve is not limited to crime. The same age profile characterizes every quantifiable human behavior that is public (i.e., perceived by many potential mates) and costly (i.e., not affordable by all sexual competitors). The relationship between age and productivity among male jazz musicians, male painters, male writers, and male scientists—which might be called the “age-genius curve”—is essentially the same as the age-crime curve. Their productivity—the expressions of their genius—quickly peaks in early adulthood, and then equally quickly declines throughout adulthood. The age-genius curve among their female counterparts is much less pronounced; it does not peak or vary as much as a function of age.Paul McCartney has not written a hit song in years, and now spends much of his time painting. Bill Gates is now a respectable businessman and philanthropist, and is no longer a computer whiz kid. J.D. Salinger now lives as a total recluse and has not published anything in more than three decades. Orson Welles was a mere 26 when he wrote, produced, directed, and starred in Citizen Kane.

A single theory can explain the productivity of both creative geniuses and criminals over the life course: Both crime and genius are expressions of young men’s competitive desires, whose ultimate function in the ancestral environment would have been to increase reproductive success.

In the physical competition for mates, those who are competitive may act violently toward their male rivals. Men who are less inclined toward crime and violence may express their competitiveness through their creative activities.

The cost of competition, however, rises dramatically when a man has children, when his energies and resources are put to better use protecting and investing in them. The birth of the first child usually occurs several years after puberty because men need some time to accumulate sufficient resources and attain sufficient status to attract their first mate. There is therefore a gap of several years between the rapid rise in the benefits of competition and similarly rapid rise in its costs. Productivity rapidly declines in late adulthood as the costs of competition rise and cancel its benefits.

These calculations have been performed by natural and sexual selection, so to speak, which then equips male brains with a psychological mechanism to incline them to be increasingly competitive immediately after puberty and make them less competitive right after the birth of their first child. Men simply do not feel like acting violently, stealing, or conducting additional scientific experiments, or they just want to settle down after the birth of their child but they do not know exactly why.

The similarity between Bill Gates, Paul McCartney, and criminals—in fact, among all men throughout evolutionary history—points to an important concept in evolutionary biology: female choice.

Women often say no to men. Men have had to conquer foreign lands, win battles and wars, compose symphonies, author books, write sonnets, paint cathedral ceilings, make scientific discoveries, play in rock bands, and write new computer software in order to impress women so that they will agree to have sex with them. Men have built (and destroyed) civilization in order to impress women, so that they might say yes.

 

 



1.) The midlife crisis is a myth—sort of

 

Many believe that men go through a midlife crisis when they are in middle age. Not quite. Many middle-aged men do go through midlife crises, but it’s not because they are middle-aged. It’s because their wives are. From the evolutionary psychological perspective, a man’s midlife crisis is precipitated by his wife’s imminent menopause and end of her reproductive career, and thus his renewed need to attract younger women. Accordingly, a 50-year-old man married to a 25-year-old woman would not go through a midlife crisis, while a 25-year-old man married to a 50-year-old woman would, just like a more typical 50-year-old man married to a 50-year-old woman. It’s not his midlife that matters; it’s hers. When he buys a shiny-red sports car, he’s not trying to regain his youth; he’s trying to attract young women to replace his menopausal wife by trumpeting his flash and cash.

 



1.) It’s natural for politicians to risk everything for an affair (but only if they’re male)

 

On the morning of January 21, 1998, as Americans woke up to the stunning allegation that President Bill Clinton had had an affair with a 24-year-old White House intern, Darwinian historian Laura L. Betzig thought, “I told you so.” Betzig points out that while powerful men throughout Western history have married monogamously (only one legal wife at a time), they have always mated polygynously (they had lovers, concubines, and female slaves). With their wives, they produced legitimate heirs; with the others, they produced bastards. Genes make no distinction between the two categories of children.As a result, powerful men of high status throughout human history attained very high reproductive success, leaving a large number of offspring (legitimate and otherwise), while countless poor men died mateless and childless. Moulay Ismail the Bloodthirsty, the last Sharifian emperor of Morocco, stands out quantitatively, having left more offspring—1,042—than anyone else on record, but he was by no means qualitatively different from other powerful men, like Bill Clinton.The question many asked in 1998—”Why on earth would the most powerful man in the world jeopardize his job for an affair with a young woman?”—is, from a Darwinian perspective, a silly one. Betzig’s answer would be: “Why not?” Men strive to attain political power, consciously or unconsciously, in order to have reproductive access to a larger number of women. Reproductive access to women is the goal, political office but one means. To ask why the President of the United States would have a sexual encounter with a young woman is like asking why someone who worked very hard to earn a large sum of money would then spend it.

What distinguishes Bill Clinton is not that he had extramarital affairs while in office—others have, more will; it would be a Darwinian puzzle if they did not—what distinguishes him is the fact that he got caught.

 



1.) Men sexually harass women because they are not sexist

 

An unfortunate consequence of the ever-growing number of women joining the labor force and working side by side with men is the increasing number of sexual harassment cases. Why must sexual harassment be a necessary consequence of the sexual integration of the workplace?Psychologist Kingsley R. Browne identifies two types of sexual harassment cases: the quid pro quo (”You must sleep with me if you want to keep your job or be promoted”) and the “hostile environment” (the workplace is deemed too sexualized for workers to feel safe and comfortable). While feminists and social scientists tend to explain sexual harassment in terms of “patriarchy” and other ideologies, Browne locates the ultimate cause of both types of sexual harassment in sex differences in mating strategies.Studies demonstrate unequivocally that men are far more interested in short-term casual sex than women. In one now-classic study, 75 percent of undergraduate men approached by an attractive female stranger agreed to have sex with her; none of the women approached by an attractive male stranger did. Many men who would not date the stranger nonetheless agreed to have sex with her.

The quid pro quo types of harassment are manifestations of men’s greater desire for short-term casual sex and their willingness to use any available means to achieve that goal. Feminists often claim that sexual harassment is “not about sex but about power;” Browne contends it is both—men using power to get sex. “To say that it is only about power makes no more sense than saying that bank robbery is only about guns, not about money.”

Sexual harassment cases of the hostile-environment variety result from sex differences in what men and women perceive as “overly sexual” or “hostile” behavior. Many women legitimately complain that they have been subjected to abusive, intimidating, and degrading treatment by their male coworkers. Browne points out that long before women entered the labor force, men subjected each other to such abusive, intimidating, and degrading treatment.

Abuse, intimidation, and degradation are all part of men’s repertoire of tactics employed in competitive situations. In other words, men are not treating women differently from men—the definition of discrimination, under which sexual harassment legally falls—but the opposite: Men harass women precisely because they are not discriminating between men and women.

Article on that subject coming up in the next couple of days.