For Men on a Date, Evolution May Guide Where Their Eyes Go

Whether a man is drawn to a woman's body or her face may depend on whether he sees her as a short-term fling or a long-term lover, according to a new study that discusses evolutionary motivations in dating.

Men who, for the purposes of the study, were considering just a fling with a woman were more likely to peek at a picture of her body than men who were thinking about a long-term relationship, the research found. The guys considering a long-term relationship showed a preference for looking at her face.

The findings may reflect men's evolutionary drives, said study co-author Jaime Confer, a psychology graduate student at the University of Texas in Austin. Men who want a fling, she said, may be subconsciously looking to a woman's waistline to judge the woman's current fertility. Men looking for long-term partners, on the other hand, may be more interested in her face for clues of reproductive potential in the future.

Body or face?

Previous studies have noted that a woman's face reflects her youth and health, which can affect her future reproductive abilities. Lots of wrinkles might suggest she has few childbearing years left, for example. The body, on the other hand, holds clues as to how fertile a woman is right now. Waist-to-hip ratio can signal whether a woman is already pregnant, and maybe even whether she is currently ovulating, according to previous research.

Confer and her colleagues asked 192 men and 183 women, all heterosexual and in college, to consider entering into either a short- or long-term heterosexual relationship. The students were given a masked picture of a potential date, with boxes covering both the head and clothed body. They could choose to remove either the box covering the head or the box covering the body, but not both.

On the whole, 61 percent of men and 69 percent of women chose to see the individual's face. But among the men who were thinking short-term, the interest in viewing the woman's face decreased. Of the men considering short-term relationships, 52 percent chose to see the body. If men had been picking more or less randomly, with no particular rhyme or reason, statistics predict, 39.5 percent would have looked at the woman's body.

Similarly, if men had been choosing randomly, 55 percent of the men considering a long-term relationship were expected to look at the woman's face. In actuality, 68 did.

As for women, they preferred looking at the man's face regardless of relationship type, the researchers reported in the September issue of the journal Evolution and Human Behavior.

Unconscious urges

The study is a "fairly novel" look at mate preference that fits well with evolutionary theory, said Daniel Kruger, an evolutionary psychologist at the University of Michigan, who was not involved in the study.

"Most people probably wouldn't be able to say why they would have preferences for the face over preferences for somebody's body," Kruger said. "But it makes sense if you consider what the reproductive consequences of each choice would be."

Further research is needed to understand whether people were judging attractiveness or some other clue, like personality or a hint of returned romantic interest, Confer told LiveScience in an e-mail. Future studies should also examine more realistic scenarios, she said, to find out what sort of cues people use when on the prowl in the real world.
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References:

Pappas, Stephanie. 2010. "For Men on a Date, Evolution May Guide Where Their Eyes Go". LiveScience. Posted: September 14, 2010. Available online: http://www.livescience.com/culture/men-seeking-fling-scope-womens-body-100914.html

These Dance Moves Are Irresistible

Hey, guys, want to impress ladies on the dance floor? Keep your head and torso moving, and don't flail your arms and legs. This useful advice comes courtesy of a new study, which finds that women are more attracted to computer avatars that rock these moves.

Humans aren't the only animals that move in special ways to lure females. Male fiddler crabs wave an outsized claw to show off, and male hummingbirds display their flying prowess with a flamboyant mating dive. These moves probably show off their strength and motor skills. Evolutionary psychologist Nick Neave of Northumbria University in Newcastle Upon Tyne wondered whether there was something about male human dancing that impressed females as well.

Neave and colleagues couldn't just round up a bunch of men and ask them to gyrate in front of women, however. That's because it's hard to separate a man's physical appearance from his dancing skills. "You could be the best dancer in the world, but if you've got an awful haircut or something like that," women may still find you unattractive, says Neave. So he and colleagues cut out the effect of physical appearance by using motion-capture technology, like the techniques moviemakers use to make digital characters.

The researchers stuck 38 reflective markers to the joints and other body parts of 30 male students at Northumbria University. Then they asked the guys to dance for 30 seconds as if they were in a nightclub, while a thumping drum beat played over speakers. Twelve video cameras recorded the action. A computer used data on the location of the markers to construct an avatar of each man (see videos). The avatars are "not quite James Cameron [quality], but they're pretty good," says Neave. In a video of a bad dancer, the avatar trudges in a circle, awkwardly moving his arms. An avatar made from a good dancer moves his whole body from side to side, mixing up his moves with impressive creativity.

Heterosexual women watched the videos and rated them according to whether the man was a good dancer or a bad dancer. (Neave says pilot studies by his group found that asking women who's a good dancer is the same as asking who's attractive.)

The most important factor to the women was how much the man moved his head, neck, and torso, the researchers will report online tomorrow in Biology Letters. Better dancers are "nodding their head, they're turning the head to one side, they're turning their head to the other side, there's a large nod, there's a small nod, there's a nod to the left," Neave says.

The team expected to see a lot of action in the hands and feet. "Legs and arms we thought would be really important, and they're not, apart from the right knee," says Neave. He thinks that's because most people are right-footed—so they use their left leg for balance and execute fancy moves with the right. He and his colleagues think dance is an honest signal to women of the man's strength and health, just as it is in crabs and hummingbirds; in future studies, they'll look at the health of the good and bad dancers.

It makes sense that women would care about men's ability to dance, says Helen Fisher, a biological anthropologist at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey. "For millions of years, a man with well-coordinated movements of the head, neck, and trunk [which he used when throwing weapons] probably signaled his ability to provide," she writes in an e-mail. Varying his dance moves shows creativity, a trait associated with energy, optimism, and daring.

Judith Hanna, an anthropologist at the University of Maryland, College Park, who studies dance, calls the use of avatars "brilliant." She says it would be interesting to replicate the study with different populations; in different cultures, different dance moves may be seen as attractive.
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References:

Fields, Helen. 2010. "These Dance Moves Are Irresistible". Science. Posted: September 7, 2010. Available online: http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2010/09/these-dance-moves-are-irresistib.html