Plus: the best way to feel better after a breakup.
This hormone linked to dissatisfaction with current partner and more flirting with others.
When is the turning point where a relationship becomes serious?
The type of car that is more attractive to women.
The type of car that is more attractive to women.
Men with flashy cars are seen by others as being more interested in short-term sexual relationships, new research finds.
Indeed, women interested in a short-term relationship also found men with flashy cars more attractive.
However, people did not think a man with a flashy car would make a good life partner.
Instead, those looking long-term preferred someone with more sensible taste — presumably so he’s got money left over for the family.
Dr Daniel Kruger, study co-author, said:
“Participants demonstrated an intuitive understanding that men investing in the display of goods featuring exaggerated sensory properties have reproductive strategies with higher mating effort and greater interest in short-term sexual relationships, as well as lower paternal investment and interest in long-term committed romantic relationships than men investing in practical considerations.”
For the study, both men and women read descriptions of two men purchasing a new car.
The authors explain:
“One man purchased a new car for the sake of reliability (frugal investment); the other purchased a used car and allocated the remaining funds to conspicuous display features (new paint, larger wheels, louder sound system).”
And the results:
“Participants rated the man who invested in flashy display higher on mating effort, lower on parental investment, higher on interest in brief sexual affairs, lower on interest in long-term committed romantic relationships, higher in attractiveness to women for brief sexual affairs, and lower in attractiveness to women for long-term committed romantic relationships, compared to the man with a frugal investment strategy.”
Generally, men prefer to show off their money more than women.
However, showing off your spending power is not always the best policy.
Sometimes it is better to show off your prudence — depending on the signal you want to send.
The study was published in the journal Evolutionary Psychological Science (Kruger & Kruger, 2018).
It makes it easier to build intimacy and get greater fulfillment.
Even someone who has many positive qualities can strike out because of one or two negative qualities.
How to spot people who are more likely to get married.
How tight is your grip on marriage?
How tight is your grip on marriage?
Men with a stronger grip are more likely to be married than men with a weaker grip, new research finds.
The reason is probably that grip strength is a signal of cardiovascular health and even brain health.
Grip strength, though, was not linked to whether or not women were married.
Professor Vegard Skirbekk, the study’s first author, said:
“Our results hint that women may be favoring partners who signal strength and vigor when they marry.
If longer-lived women marry healthier men, then both may avoid or defer the role of caregiver, while less healthy men remain unmarried and must look elsewhere for assistance.”
The researchers analysed data from 5,009 adults in the Norwegian city of Tromsø.
They analysed two groups of people born in the periods 1923-35 and 1936-48.
The results showed there were more unmarried men with weaker grip strength in the younger group of men.
This reflects the lessening importance of marriage, especially in a socially progressive Scandinavian country like Norway.
Professor Skirbekk said:
“In recent decades, women are less dependent on men economically.
At the same time, men have a growing ‘health dependence’ on women.
The fact that many men are alone with a weak grip — a double burden for these men who lack both strength and a lack of support that comes from being married — suggests that more attention needs to be given to this group, particularly given their relatively poor health.”
Professor Skirbekk continued:
“New technologies may potentially offset some of the limitations that low grip strength may imply.
Social policies could also increasingly target this group by providing financial support for those who suffer the double-burden of low strength and lack of spousal support.”
The study was published in the journal SSM-Population Health (Skirbekk et al., 2018).
People with this trait had had twice as many sexual partners.
People with this trait had had twice as many sexual partners.
Creative people have twice as many sexual partners as the less creative, research finds.
The more creative a person is, the more sexual partners they have had.
Dr Daniel Nettle, the study’s first author, said:
“Creative people are often considered to be very attractive and get lots of attention as a result.
They tend to be charismatic and produce art and poetry that grabs people’s interest.
It could also be that very creative types lead a bohemian lifestyle and tend to act on more sexual impulses and opportunities, often purely for experience’s sake, than the average person would.
Moreover, it’s common to find that this sexual behaviour is tolerated in creative people. Partners, even long-term ones, are less likely to expect loyalty and fidelity from them.”
The study of 425 people compared professional artists and poets with people in non-creative fields.
They were asked about their creative activity, number of sexual partners and symptoms of schizophrenia.
The results showed that creative people had had an average of 4-10 sexual partners, while the average for others was three.
Certain aspects of personality linked to schizophrenia were also higher in creative people.
Dr Nettle thinks this hints at the purported connection between creativity and madness:
“These personality traits can manifest themselves in negative ways, in that a person with them is likely to be prone to the shadows of full-blown mental illness such as depression and suicidal thoughts.
This research shows there are positive reasons, such as their role in mate attraction and species survival, for why these characteristics are still around.”
In other words, madness, creativity and being sexy are all linked together so that these traits survive generation after generation, despite the harmful consequences of mental illness.
The study was published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B (Nettle & Clegg, 2006).
The cellphone behaviour that irritates everyone.
The cellphone behaviour that irritates everyone.
Ignoring someone in a social situation to look at a phone threatens people’s fundamental need to belong, new research finds.
It is a form of social exclusion, making others feel invisible and eroding their self-esteem.
‘Phubbing’, short for phone snubbing, was linked to poorer communication and lower relationship satisfaction, the study found.
Examples of phubbing include:
The conclusions come from a series of experiments that tested the effect of different levels of phubbing; from no pubbing, through partial phubbing to extensive phubbing.
The higher the level of phubbing, the results showed, the more people felt their fundamental needs were threatened.
For the study, 153 people were shown a series of animations depicting incidents of phubbing.
Phubbing also seems to breed a vicious circle of retribution.
When you are pubbed by someone, you want to phub them back.
And so we all get used to phubbing each other.
As the researchers write:
“…phubbing behavior itself predicts the extent to which people are phubbed, so that being a phubber can result in a vicious, self-reinforcing cycle of phubbing that makes
the behavior become normative.Research on the effects of phubbing suggests that it may create negative, resentful reactions such that people perceive their interaction to be of poorer quality, are less satisfied with their interactions, trust their interaction partner less, feel less close to their interaction partner when a phone is present, and experience jealousy.”
The study was published in the Journal of Applied Social Psychology (Chotpitayasunondh & Douglas, 2018).
Phones and relationships image from Shutterstock
Join the free PsyBlog mailing list. No spam, ever.
