Attraction

The link between pronouns and dating success.

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From Shots (NPR's Health Blog):

To Predict Dating Success, The Secret's In The Pronouns

On a recent Friday night, 30 men and 30 women gathered at a hotel restaurant in Washington, D.C. Their goal was love, or maybe sex, or maybe some combination of the two. They were there for speed dating.

The women sat at separate numbered tables while the men moved down the line, and for two solid hours they did a rotation, making small talk with people they did not know, one after another, in three-minute increments.

I had gone to record the night, which was put on by a company called Professionals in the City, and what struck me was the noise in the room. The sound of words, of people talking over people talking over people talking. It was a roar.

What were these people saying?

And what can we learn from what they are saying?

That is why I called James Pennebaker, a psychologist interested in the secret life of pronouns.

About 20 years ago Pennebaker, who's at the University of Texas at Austin, got interested in looking more closely at the words that we use. Or rather, he got interested in looking more closely at a certain subset of the words that we use: Pennebaker was interested in function words.

For those of you like me — the grammatically challenged — function words are the smallish words that tie our sentences together.

The. This. Though. I. And. An. There. That.

"Function words are essentially the filler words," Pennebaker says. "These are the words that we don't pay attention to, and they're the ones that are so interesting."

[...]

Which brings us back to speed dating.

See, one of the things that Pennebaker did was record and transcribe conversations that took place between people on speed dates. He fed these conversations into his program along with information about how the people themselves were perceiving the dates. What he found surprised him.

"We can predict by analyzing their language, who will go on a date — who will match — at rates better than the people themselves," he says.

Specifically, what Pennabaker found was that when the language style of two people matched, when they used pronouns, prepositions, articles and so forth in similar ways at similar rates, they were much more likely to end up on a date.

"The more similar [they were] across all of these function words, the higher the probability that [they] would go on a date in a speed dating context," Pennebaker says. "And this is even cooler: We can even look at ... a young dating couple... [and] the more similar [they] are ... using this language style matching metric, the more likely [they] will still be dating three months from now."

Read the rest of the article for the full scoop here.

Beauty Pays.

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From Q on CBC, and as mentioned in class:

We've all heard the expression that a beautiful girl can get away with murder, and we all know this is hyperbole (or perhaps a rumour started by an ugly person). But according to a new book, there is statistical evidence that the best-looking people receive all kinds of perks not bestowed upon plain Janes and average Joes.

In Beauty Pays, economist Daniel Hamermesh cites research that suggests beautiful people tend to do better than their aesthetically-challenged counterparts. They get bigger paycheques, better terms on mortgages, more glamorous or wealthy spouses and much more.

This beauty bias is even present in professions where physical attractiveness isn't thought to be a factor in someone's job. For example, Hamermesh looked at NFL quarterbacks and found that players considered to be the best-looking made more money through endorsements and salary than less attractive players of the same position, even though one would think that an athlete's compensation should be dictated purely by performance on the field.

Hamermesh said this effect is also evident in his own line of work: teaching economics at the University of Texas. "The better-looking professors get better evaluations from their students, which is not good for me," he said in a recent interview with Q.

But isn't beauty in the eye of the beholder? How do we, as a society, decide who is attractive? Hamermesh says scientists still don't exactly know what makes someone beautiful (facial symmetry is just a part of it), but noted that although beauty may be subjective, people tend to agree on what a good-looking face is.

"It doesn't matter that it's subjective if we all tend to look at it quite similarly. If I give you a scale, you rank people on a five-to-one scale, and you rate somebody a five, I'd be happy to bet, and I've seen this in studies I and others have done, that if you rate somebody a five, probably nine out of 10 other people will rate that person a four or a five...We tend to agree, we have standards of beauty even though we can't define it."

So what can be done to level the playing field for people who didn't luck out in the genetic lottery? Plastic surgery or head-to-toe makeovers are options, but Hamermesh says studies have shown that those changes make little difference to one's overall beauty. Instead, the professor has offered a radical suggestion: anti-discrimination laws to protect society's ugliest.

"I don't see it as being logically any different from things we now worry about protecting," he said, saying that employment laws protect people with disabilities from being passed over for jobs or promotions unfairly.

"One could argue for the same thing, that employers cannot exhibit patterns of only hiring the good looking or only promoting the good looking."

Listen to the interview with Dr. Hamermesh here.

More wisdom from Jenna Marbles.

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The queen of satire, with more of her signature genius. NSFW language! 

Doggy Toys that you can adopt: http://jennamarblesblog.com/shop Please subscribe to my channel and my vlog channel! I make new videos here every Wednesday and make vlogs during my majestical daily life.

Toy versions of Kermit and Marbles: http://jennamarblesblog.com/shop Please subscribe to my channel and my vlog channel! I make new videos here every Wednesday and make vlogs during my majestical daily life.

Women rank rock climbing sexiest sport.

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From Matador Sports:

A study by a University of Hertfordshire professor suggests that women are especially attracted to men who rock climb.

Working with fitness expert Sam Murphy, Prof. Richard Wiseman polled over 6,000 people to find out which of 15 sports they thought would make a member of the opposite sex more attractive. Climbing topped the list for women with 57%, edging out extreme sports, soccer, and hiking.

I can’t say I’m surprised. Climbing is just a sexy sport in and of itself. It’s adventurous, acrobatic, and takes place in some of the most beautiful spots in nature. Climbers themselves tend to be trim, muscular, extremely flexible people with a penchant for taking their shirts off. Who wouldn’t want that?

Men, apparently. Among the survey’s male participants, climbing didn’t even make it to the top five. Men overwhelmingly picked aerobics (70%) as the sexiest activity, followed by yoga/pilates, going to the gym, and running.

On his site, Wiseman offer a possible explanation for the gender gap:

Women’s choices appear to reflect the type of psychological qualities that they find attractive – such as bravery and a willingness to take on challenges – whilst men are more shallow, looking for a woman who is physically fit but not challenging their ego by being overly strong.

Read the rest here.

Any other nominees?

Tubecrush: man ogling.

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From The New York Times:

One More Thing Goes to the Web: Subway Ogling By Austin Considine

As a personal trainer, Ed Norman knows he has good biceps. But he didn’t realize they had their own secret admirers until he rode the London Underground earlier this year.

Thanks to a Web-trawling friend, Mr. Norman, 27, learned that his photo had been taken surreptitiously on the Underground and posted on a new Web site, TubeCrush.net, under the title “Popeye Guns!” There he was (“Popeye”) in a black T-shirt with bulging arm muscles, reading a newspaper.

Mr. Norman, who lives and works in London, was checking e-mail in bed with his girlfriend when he got the flattering news. “I think she was a little more freaked out about it than I was,” he said.

Equal parts photo blog, personal ad and online stalking tool, TubeCrush was started in London last spring as a place for Underground riders to upload and share photos of men on the train who caught their eye. (Yes, only men.)

Stephen Motion, 30, a sales manager, said he and his roommates started the site for fun. Within a few months, the press had seized on it, and the site was receiving thousands of unique visits daily.

The natural next step was New York. In July, they announced that they had created an M.T.A. version, SubwayCrush.net. Mr. Motion said it has 4,000 to 28,000 unique visits a day. Next year, the founders plan to add photos of women and a means for crushes to independently connect with admirers.

In some ways, the TubeCrush concept is the 21st-century incarnation of a lost variety of printed personal ad, in which people wrote seeking connection with that attractive regular at the bus stop or cafe. In 2000, Craigslist introduced its own free version, called Missed Connections, and it was only a matter of time before photos entered the mix, the perfection of the camera phone having made stealth photography especially easy. To unsuspecting subjects, an admiring photographer is as likely to be checking e-mail as snapping a shutter.Read the rest of the article here.

And a sample:

tubecrush
tubecrush

Date: 16th January 2012

Line: Northern

Submitted by: MotioS

This crush’ee certainly is one for those tall, dark and handsome admirers. He looks a little startled as he realises his picture is being taken! Either that or he is chuckling at a comedy podcast of Michael McIntyre. Which do you think it is? Hmmm

Trends in men's body hair removal.

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From a 2008 study:

Abstract Although hairlessness is rapidly becoming a component of the ideal male body, little research has examined men’s concerns about their body hair or their hair removal practices. Samples of gay and heterosexual men completed questionnaires that assessed whether they had ever removed their back, buttock or pubic hair, the frequency with which they did so, the methods used and their self-reported reasons for removing this hair, as well as their level of appearance investment. Results indicated that many gay and heterosexual men remove their back, buttock and pubic hair regularly and that their primary reason for doing so is to maintain or improve their appearance. The frequency of hair removal was also associated with the motivational salience component of appearance investment. The findings offer further support to the premise that gay and heterosexual men exhibit similar body image concerns.

Download the entire paper here.

Out of your league.

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From Jezebel (and source of the quote used in class this week):

The Fallacy Of Your Romantic League

The concept of one's "league" — that is, a fixed category of people one is attractive enough to date — is firmly entrenched in pop culture and in many of our psyches. Here's why it's bullshit.

First, some background. Nerve.com illustrates the concept of the league this week with five stories of men and women sexing unprecedentedly hot partners. An instructive example, by Dane Samson:

She was bordering on the edge of short, with long blonde hair, piercing blue eyes, an amazing body, sexy Aussie accent, and an attitude of completely not giving a fuck. In other words, she was the definition of "out of my league."

Samson determined his league based on women he'd been with before: "I usually ended up with average-looking girls, and in relationships that seemed to be sexually average at best." Others use different metrics, such as their own perceived mediocrity — writes Brandon Stevens, "I [...] have a five head, and my abs are hidden behind incurable baby fat." Whatever the case, all five stories go something like this: I fucked someone who totally shouldn't have wanted to fuck me.

Coming at the league issue from a slightly different angle is a recent writer to The Hairpin's Ask A Lady column, who laments,

I'm ugly. That's right, on the classic 1-10 scale, I'm probably a 3. This isn't a self-esteem thing. I'm a fairly confident person. I have an easy time approaching women and striking up a conversation and asking if I can take them out sometime. I don't spend hours crying about my looks, or avoid walking by mirrors or anything like that. I'm fine with who I am. It just so happens that who I am is a balding 30-year-old with a gut that won't go away, and several other features that make me empirically unattractive, many of which I couldn't change without resorting to surgery. But that's not the problem. Despite being aesthetically challenged, I get plenty of dates. The problem is — and this is the part where I hope you don't write me off as a shallow jerk — the dates I get are with women who are also 3's.

Basically, this guy thinks he's dating within his league, and he's not happy about it. A Lady suggests that "maybe — MAYBE — your opinion of your looks has become a 'self-esteem thing,' making you hold back with women you think are out of your league or whatever." Or "maybe you are just a shallow jerk." What she doesn't really address, however, is that this guy is going about assessing hotness — his own and other people's –- in all the wrong ways.

Read the rest here.

Sexy Girls Have It Easy.

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A short documentary by Brighthand Pictures:

Filmed, Produced & Directed By Tristan Anderson I am available for hire in London and the UK as an editor, camera person & director Contact film@tristananderson.co.uk **Winner: Best Format** - Current TV Awards 2008 ***Over 3 million views online*** **Broadcast on Current TV in the UK (Sky 183 & Virgin 155)**

The results of her experiment aren't at all surprising: changing one's appearance to be more sexually inviting clearly has an effect on the way one is treated by others, particularly for women. We all know it - this isn't rocket science.

However, the woman in the documentary (intentionally, or more likely unintentionally) exhibited a subtle change in her interpersonal style when dressed differently that may also have influenced the way she was treated (although I'm sure the change in her physical appearance accounted for the majority of the effect).

When she dressed up more sexy, she became more outgoing/gregarious. This phenomenon - i.e., dressing sexy to feel sexy - appears to be largely universal. When people dress up, and make an effort to make themselves appear attractive (or what they believe makes them appear attractive), they generally report feeling a boost in self-esteem and confidence, and are more outgoing. This, in turn, increases their attractiveness, as perceived by others. Physical attractiveness becomes interpersonal attractiveness.