Conventional wisdom says men, as members of the sex that can have unlimited numbers of children, have a built-in tendency to two-time and cheat. Women, on the other hand, because they can have only one child every nine months, should want to form faithful partnerships with men who will help raise those children.
Reality is more complicated. Women cheat, too. And researchers have found that females of "monogamous" bird species seem to have affairs in order to land the best genes for their kids.
Evolutionary scientists have long speculated that what applies to sparrows and roosters applies to human beings, too. Now a scientist from the Czech Republic has come up with evidence that seems to support a "mixed mating strategy" in humans.
Using the body odor of men and the noses of women, Jan Havlicek of Charles University in Prague found that ovulating women who already have partners preferred the smell of dominant men, while single women and non- ovulating women with partners showed no such preference.
In a paper in the newest issue of Biology Letters, an academic journal, Havlicek argues that his findings support the theory that single women want nurturing men who will help raise a family. But once the home is secured, they will have the urge to sneak around with men who have the best genes.
"Since women can always get a man for a one-night stand, they gain an advantage if they find partners for child-rearing," Havlicek says. "Single women can be expected to be interested in men that make good fathers."
"Once they have them, though, they can be expected to have extra-pair copulations with men who have good genes."
Scientists believe dominance and traits like facial symmetry are proxies for good genes. These features also happen to be attractive to women, more so when they are ovulating. Meanwhile, studies of birds have shown that attractive males make less attentive fathers.
Havlicek's research adds to a large body of work in the past decade on how sexual preferences change during the course of a women's menstrual cycle. A study co-authored by Havlicek last year found men preferred pictures of fertile women to pictures of the same women at different times of the month. One study showed that ovulating women, when shown videotapes of men in groups, preferred those who "didn't back down."
"What's new in Havlicek's study is that single women and women in relationships responded differently," said Nick Neave, a doctor of Evolutionary Biology at Northumbria University in England.
Havlicek's study also breaks new ground by finding a link between dominance and scent. Other studies have shown women prefer the scent of men with symmetrical features, and that body odor changes according to a person's emotional state, but none had directly linked odor with dominance.
In the study, 48 male students fill out surveys with questions such as "Do you try to outdo others?" They then wore cotton pads under their arms for 24 hours.
Without meeting the men, female students smelled the pads and rated them for sex appeal.
"The higher self-confidence in dominant males may have an impact ... on their body odor," Havlicek writes in Biology Letters.
Studies of mating patterns in species of birds that seemed to pair off for life found that up to 30 percent of the baby birds were illegitimate, sired by males other than the ones taking care of them and living with their mothers.
"This was quite an unexpected finding," says Steve Gangestad, a psychology professor at the University of New Mexico. "A variety of theories were put forward. One is that females seek better genes than those available from her mate from extra-pair males. Human researchers soon entertained whether any of these phenomena also operated in humans."
One study found that unfaithful women have sex with their lovers most often during their fertile phase of the month, and that they are more likely to have the kinds of orgasms that increase the chance of pregnancy -- those close to when the male ejaculates -- with lovers than with partners.
Studies have found that an average of about 5 percent of humans are not the children of the men who raised them, according to Gangestad. That's not counting cases in which the mother simply remarries.
The mixed mating theory, Gangestad said, "has generated some interesting predictions that have been confirmed," but while considered viable, it remains unproven "or even close to proven."
Scientists say studies like Havlicek's have to be duplicated, and other studies in the same vein carried out.
As for the theory's bearing on morality, Havlicek, 30, who has a 26-year- old girlfriend, says a biological tendency shouldn't be mistaken for inevitability, and that what is natural is not always right.
"My study doesn't mean women are programmed to cheat," he said. "They may simply fantasize more during the fertile time of month."
My buddy and I were talking about this earlier today. I mentioned to him that a girl I know was out with one of his old fukk buddies on New Years. I joked with him and said that I told my friend to relay the message back to this girl that he was asking about her. He said, "That's fine, if she wants to come over I'll take care of her."Originally posted by Deep Dish
When a woman’s emotions start going one way; whether it be anger, sadness, lust; there is no stopping it. Try using logic and reasoning with an angry woman, and try finding an ounce of higher thought when a woman is all revved up and horny.
So science is telling us that women want to have their cake and eat it too. Who knew?Originally posted by DJDamage
Using the body odor of men and the noses of women, Jan Havlicek of Charles University in Prague found that ovulating women who already have partners preferred the smell of dominant men, while single women and non- ovulating women with partners showed no such preference.
In a paper in the newest issue of Biology Letters, an academic journal, Havlicek argues that his findings support the theory that single women want nurturing men who will help raise a family. But once the home is secured, they will have the urge to sneak around with men who have the best genes.
True dat. However I'm finding that even the homlier girls are lousy housekeepers, don't like to cook and would probably be bad mothers.In a related study, guys want a wife that can cook & clean, who will take care of him and raise the kids, but urges to bang super-hot chicks on the side. [/B]
I don't think that being moral or ethical can be attributed to cheating. Before or after when someone cheats they may debate the consequences of their actions but their logic is sometimes overpowered by their animal primitive instincts.Originally posted by Maverick001
If a person is amoral and unethical then they will be SEEKING outlets for this. Opportunity is just an excuse, notwithstanding any scientific or intellectual treatise on the subject.
DjDamage,Originally posted by DJDamage
I don't think that being moral or ethical can be attributed to cheating. Before or after when someone cheats they may debate the consequences of their actions but their logic is sometimes overpowered by their animal primitive instincts.
When a person cheats most don't do it on purpose to hurt the other person but do it for themselves. Nature influence over millions of years of evloution has created this paradigm where humans of both sexes can cheat for different reasons. One cheats to spread his seeds, the other cheats to assure a stronger offspring. Morals and Ethics do come into play but if you have extreme cases I doubt those will hold much value even for the strongest and logical mind (such as one partner all of the sudden becomes a handicapped and the wife or husband are very tempted each passing day to cheat because their needs are not met)
If a woman cheats on you, I don't believe you should be angry or upset on her but rather the situation. You can be mad that the signs were on the wall and that you picked a bad woman to begin with and didn't pay attention to red flags or look at yourself and analyze whether or not you gotten lazy and expected things to be the same. Things always change, nothing stays the same. Of coarse at this point if a woman cheats and you find out, its best to end things and move on to another woman. Its a double edge sword accepting a woman back after cheating. You know she is no longer on your side and if you let this one time slide, she will think you have no backbone and certainley cheat again.
Maybe its the cough medicine talking since I can't sleep but cheating should not be looked upon like its a horror or the end of the world but rather an acceptance of human beings as being one that does not act logically but rather acts more on its natural given instincts. Monogomy is not a natural thing in nature.
I will probably laugh at my post when I will wake up tomorow.......
DjDamage
Advances in technology didn`t change our conditions and environments. It freed us from them.Originally posted by Rollo Tomassi
MAVERICK: Advances in immediate technology certainly change our conditions and our environments, but have little effect on innate, psycho-biological schemas evolved for millennia.
Whether one follows a set of religious edicts, the social morays of the day or defines ethical/moral behaviour for themselves - they ultimately decide. Choice made by free will.Originally posted by Rollo Tomassi
Obviously social dynamics have come into being as latent functions to regulate these natural impulses. All one need do is look at the 10 Commandments (or like golden rules) to see how these tenets function in, at least modestly, a regulatory way to curb natural impulse. This in no way denies that men and women aren't or shouldn't be subject to them. Moral absolutism will ALWAYS be trumped by simple biology and the circumstance availabe to act upon it.
Both. It`s good in some ways and bad in others. It depends on the application and for whom. Farmers in the 3rd world still use animal dung to fertilize their fields and so it`s beneficial for them. If synthetic compounds weren`t or couldn`t be manufactured to replace those organic components in dung then farmers the world over would be using livestock sh!t to fertilize their fields.Originally posted by Rollo Tomassi
Rolling around in a dung heap is revolting to human beings, but to a pig or a fly it's paradise found. Does that make a pile of sh!t good or bad?
That`s not all the motivation that`s at work here. I`m sure you`re familiar with Maslow`s hierarchy of human needs so no point in discussing the applicability here.Originally posted by Rollo Tomassi
Men are motivated by spreading the seed, women are motivated by securing the partner best suited to provide security and good genetic stock. Moral or not, each is motivated toward the best opportunity each is capable of making realistic (conscious or unconscious) comparissons for. A 'cheating' man or woman is (generally) acting in their own biological best interest - is this moral?
Ah, so it is still a decision after all.Originally posted by Rollo Tomassi
Societal conventions meant to regulate this behavior define it as not, but biologically the impulse makes it the right decision in the correct circumstance of opportunity.
That's ridiculous.Originally posted by Maximus_Decimus
Sexuality is an ingrained behavior... On the other hand, we instinctively know what is attractive and what isn't.
1. Alls fair in love and war.Originally posted by Deep Dish
Call me a late bloomer if you wish but over the past few years, while I have been slowly but steadily improving myself, I have been finding something very worrisome about women. I find it perilously disconcerting how they suffer from what seems to be a sheer lack of consciousness. Aside from the fact that if you observe any group of two or more women, no men, talking at leisure about whatever they want—in other words, girl talk—the only thing they ever talk about is people, either their life or the lives of people in their lives; aside from that; there is a vaccuum of amorality. The only thing worse than immorality is amorality; it is better to be bad but have an existing moral compass than to be nothing but different masks.
I have intellectually known about this nature of amorality for quite some time but it hasn’t been concrete, substantive, to me until fairly recently, about the past six months. I fvcked a girl who (as it turns out) had a boyfriend and I fvcked another girl who who was engaged. I made out with a woman for an hour and about three fourths the way through I felt a big ring on her left wedding finger. I was struck by how it didn’t seem to even occur to them they were committing indiscretions. No sense of guilt, no second thought. No... thoughts. No “I shouldn’t be doing this.” They were the entirety of the emotion they were in at the moment. Sex. Lust. I had a date with a woman who had slept with over forty men—quite some sex enthusiast. Over the years I have witnessed women be on the hunt for a new boyfriend—or boytoy—and it’s disconcerting how at one moment they may be overheard expressing how they will dump their boyfriend or be found to just not obstruct male advances—no sense of guilt—but then to see them show complete desire and loyality when they are with their man. I keep thinking to myself that if I were that boyfriend I would have no clue in knowing anything was wrong.
There is a married gothic chick that I kinda know, who is 19 and married right out of high school. (Yes, disaster in the making.) She is very friendly to me and flirts with me, has made suggestions on various occasions about partying together, but I have kept myself restrained out of respect of possible negative consequences. I think I recently saw her at a bar, with her husband. I didn’t say anything to them but I sensed the guy picked up on who I was and seemed to be profoundly sad, like maybe he was realizing he had married a slvt, giving credence to the wisdom that gothic chicks are perhaps too easy. Who knows what was going on but it is moments like those which I find disconcerting.
There is always the argument put forth by women, married men, religious men, skinny or fat white boys, that on the subject of women and their hollow nature: “Yes, but if you find a good woman...” Okay, maybe—maybe “not all” women cheat. If we are to believe research on infidelity that a good handful of women never cheat, based on the word of women, there is hope. But if the nature of women is amorality, complete emotion, and if the lady front continues to progressively get easier for me as I progressively become a more desirable man, how am I to trust any woman that she won’t sleep or fool around while putting on the masks of goodness? If it becomes so easy for me to lay women regardless of their masks, what’s to stop another man to do the same against me?
It seems as if, if women reject the advances of a man it is not out of any sense of morality, of wedding vows, of honor of word, but simply because the price wasn’t right. Women are attracted to men with character and you know what they say about attraction, you are attracted to traits you don’t have.
And this:Originally posted by Maximus_Decimus
First and foremost, one's culture and social environment can influence what you deem as attractive or not.
Are contradictions.Originally posted by Maximus_Decimus
Sexuality is an ingrained behavior... we instinctively know what is attractive and what isn't.
"Perfect" is a human value judgement, nature does not make human value judgements.Originally posted by Maximus_Decimus
BTW, our evolutionary instincts are not perfect. Are you implying that each and every evolutionary instinct we have will never mislead us?