Study: Dominance, Not Looks, Predicts Men’s Mating Success

http://heartiste.wordpress.com/2013/07/22/study-dominance-not-looks-predicts-mens-mating-success/

Although recent research has increasingly focused on human sexual selection, fundamental questions remain concerning the relative influence of individual traits on success in competition for mates and the mechanisms, form, and direction of these sexual selective pressures. Here, we explore sexual selection on men’s traits by ascertaining men’s dominance and attractiveness from male and female acquaintances. On a large American university campus, 63 men from two social fraternities provided anthropometric measurements, facial photographs, voice recordings, and reported mating success (number of sexual partners). These men also assessed each other’s dominance, and 72 women from two socially affiliated sororities assessed the men’s attractiveness. We measured facial masculinity from inter-landmark distances and vocal masculinity from acoustic parameters. We additionally obtained facial and vocal attractiveness and dominance ratings from unfamiliar observers. Results indicate that dominance and the traits associated with it predict men’s mating success, but attractiveness and the traits associated with it do not. These findings point to the salience of contest competition on men’s mating success in this population.

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I tend to agree actually, while the cute guy gets attention from girls and a hugh amount of sex, its the top guy in terms of status and sicoal position in the group to bang and keep the hot chicks.

You probably all remember since high school how the leader of the sport team despite not being the most goodlooking was getting the hottest girls, while guys which were decent looking compared to him but with lower status were getting nothing.

Still not sure however in a club setting if its better to be a random good looking guy or a normal looking guy with a dominant aura which makes the right moves on a girl.

College is such a different animal than the dating world after college. People start valuing different things in their dating and relationship choices, and the social environment is totally different.

Yes, the same general qualities that make a man attractive will still hold true, but I'm wary of extrapolating much going forward based on college stats or trends. As was said...so many mismatches in college it's not even funny. Not to mention virtually unlimited supply of drugs, alcohol, and newfound freedom coupled with a social circle that probably expanded ten-fold for most people as opposed to high school...the dating game in college might as well exist in a vacuum.

It all comes down to where a woman is in life. Still riding the c0ck carousel or looking for someone to reproduce with.

If she is still riding the c0ck carousel, she will go with raw attraction over all other things. When its time to make babies she will go for status, power and resources above all things because these will offer her kids the best chance of survival and status.

People always like to say the guy who gets to "KEEP the hot chick" is the one who really "wins the game"--> As if women are prizes and rewards for a man. That perspective keeps women elevated above men as "better". Not a good mindset.
Why is a man not a reward for a woman? hmmmmm...

Consider the following:

1. Every hot chick eventually gets old and ugly

2. Marriage laws rape men

3. One must be a beta faggot to commit to ONE woman for LIFE

4. One must pedestalize a woman in order to desire keeping her (oneitis)

If a man bothers looking for a commitment.. he should REALLY be looking for the best possible mother for his kids.. NOT some Disney movie princess to worship and pedestalize.

PairPlusRoyalFlush said:

In College, social status absolutely dominates. You see soooo many mismatches in college looks-wise.

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Never saw this at my college. Good looking girls were always matched up with good looking guys. Nerdy guys with nerdy girls.

Post college is a completely different animal. Girls go after money and security...looks matter less. Some of the hottest girls I went to college with ended up with some pretty sloppy dudes who had good careers.

PlayHer Man said:

People always like to say the guy who gets to "KEEP the hot chick" is the one who really "wins the game"--> As if women are prizes and rewards for a man. That perspective keeps women elevated above men as "better". Not a good mindset.
Why is a man not a reward for a woman? hmmmmm...

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I think of it more like this:
When you are really the prize, the woman should want to keep you.

Hah dammit I knew I should've made a topic on this when I first read it. Anyways the fact that the study uses college members changes nothing. If the most dominant men instead of the best looking men are having the most success in college then why would that change in the real world when dominance would be even more important? The men who make the most money and has the most status will be dominant men. Lets accept this study for what it is, a hole in the theory that looks matter more than anything else and a validation of the effectiveness of game.

Just because you have money and status doesn't mean you have any game. Especially in college, since any money or status you have probably has nothing to do with anything you've done personally. And you really don't need much game when there's free-flowing everclear punch and 19 year-old girls.

jeffreylebowski said:

College is such a different animal than the dating world after college. People start valuing different things in their dating and relationship choices, and the social environment is totally different.

Yes, the same general qualities that make a man attractive will still hold true, but I'm wary of extrapolating much going forward based on college stats or trends. As was said...so many mismatches in college it's not even funny. Not to mention virtually unlimited supply of drugs, alcohol, and newfound freedom coupled with a social circle that probably expanded ten-fold for most people as opposed to high school...the dating game in college might as well exist in a vacuum.

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I agree 100%..very well said.

But even if you accept this studies results that dominance predicted mating success over attractiveness (which I don't because of the way it was conducted) it was still all about looks and appearance. The masculinity and dominance of the male's face, masculine body, and masculine sounding voice were the metrics of dominance. This IS looks and appearance! It's always about looks and appearance.

When one says it's about looks and appearance they don't necessarily mean you have to be a model looking pretty boy although that will also attract females. What it means is you can't be average/unattractive and non-dominate looking and just act dominate and cause attraction. That's the leap and fallacy PUA make.

The study authors even admitted psychological traits of dominance were not measured.

"we did not assess all
possible traits. Among those that we might have included are
psychological traits, such as aggression (Archer, 2009) and humor
(Miller, 2000)." So it was really about looks and appearance than psychological traits

And,

"Second, the population that we sampled may differ in
important ways from those in which men's sexually selected traits
were shaped over human evolution." You think? 19-year old fraternity and sorority members who know each other

"Fourth, our data on mating success were based on self-report,
which may be unreliable." This is a big one because rule number one is you can't believe what women say only what they do. So unless the women actually fvcked the guys they said they'd be most likely to, it doesn't mean a lot.



"Finally,
we measured men's mating success by their number of sex partners,
but additional variables are clearly relevant to mating success, such
as the quality of men's mates, the number of copulations with each,
and mates' fecundability at the time. Nevertheless, the number of
women with whom a man has copulated likely strongly reflects his
ability to obtain mating opportunities"
-This is another biggie. Did the more dominate looking guys dumpster-dive and have more ONS with fuglies? That could hardly be considered more successful than another guy who has a few 8s and 9's coming back for more.

Stagger Lee said:

But even if you accept this studies results that dominance predicted mating success over attractiveness (which I don't because of the way it was conducted) it was still all about looks and appearance. The masculinity and dominance of the male's face, masculine body, and masculine sounding voice were the metrics of dominance. This IS looks and appearance! It's always about looks and appearance.

When one says it's about looks and appearance they don't necessarily mean you have to be a model looking pretty boy although that will also attract females. What it means is you can't be average/unattractive and non-dominate looking and just act dominate and cause attraction. That's the leap and fallacy PUA make.

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No the metrics of dominance was this, "These men also assessed each other’s dominance" "We additionally obtained facial and vocal attractiveness and dominance ratings from unfamiliar observers". So it looks like their peers evaluated their dominance. The masculinity of their face and voice was referring to looks not dominance. If you read the rest of the article there's even more evidence that it was dominance that was the cause of success.

PairPlusRoyalFlush said:

In College, social status absolutely dominates. You see soooo many mismatches in college looks-wise.

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Such a true post, no wonder so many kids want to rush fraternities.

Looks do play a role though!

JoeMarron said:

No the metrics of dominance was this, "These men also assessed each other’s dominance" "We additionally obtained facial and vocal attractiveness and dominance ratings from unfamiliar observers". So it looks like their peers evaluated their dominance. The masculinity of their face and voice was referring to looks not dominance. If you read the rest of the article there's even more evidence that it was dominance that was the cause of success.

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You're missing the point that the men's peers still were rating each other's dominance based on their face, body and how their voice sounded. The women were rating the men's sexual attractiveness on the same parameters. You are assuming dominance was dependent on psychological traits and not from how one looks (face and body), how one sounds (voice) and appearing (combination of all three face, body, voice sound) dominate, but the author's expressly said psychological traits were not evaluated.

Stagger Lee said:

You're missing the point that the men's peers still were rating each other's dominance based on their face, body and how their voice sounded. The women were rating the men's sexual attractiveness on the same parameters. You are assuming dominance was dependent on psychological traits and not from looking (face and body), sounding (voice) and appearing (combination of all three) dominate, but the author's expressly said psychological traits were not evaluated.

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There wasn't any specific psychological traits that the study used but its clear that the dominance ratings came from the fellow frat members. Nowhere does it state that dominance was based on their face or voice. The frat members were probably simply asked how dominate do they perceive their fellow frat members to be.