Personality traits that predict women will get cheated on (sample size = 850)

The MIDUS Study asked respondents if their spouse had ever been unfaithful. The Inductivist blog sorted out the personality characteristics that were associated with being cheated on. Without access to the data and/or more information about these calculations, I can’t really vouch for the data’s reliability, but here are their results…

Logistic regression coefficients

Extraversion -.11
Negative emotionality .01
Conscientiousness -.44
Agreeableness -.03
Openness to experience .43
Age .00
Social class .00
Religiosity -.14
BMI .01

(red = Big Five traits; bold = statistically significant)

As with the men, being religious appears to provide some protective effect against being cheated on. And as with the men, this could say as much about the mate doing the cheating as it does about the mate being cheated on. In any case, religiosity isn’t a Big Five trait, so we’ll move along.

The largest personality trait predictor of women being cheated on was Openness…

Openness is a general appreciation for art, emotion, adventure, unusual ideas, imagination, curiosity, and variety of experience. The trait distinguishes imaginative people from down-to-earth, conventional people. People who are open to experience are intellectually curious, appreciative of art, and sensitive to beauty. They tend to be, compared to closed people, more creative and more aware of their feelings. They are more likely to hold unconventional beliefs.

People with low scores on openness tend to have more conventional, traditional interests. They prefer the plain, straightforward, and obvious over the complex, ambiguous, and subtle. They may regard the arts and sciences with suspicion or even view these endeavors as uninteresting. (source)

There’s nothing obviously inherent in Openness that screams “please cheat on me”. There’s no immediate reason to believe people who are into diversity, new experiences, and art would rather be cheated on than those at the more conservative end of the spectrum. However, there is a hint of “I’m more likely to cheat” inherent in Openness. This again seems to be a case of dual long-term/short-term mating strategies colliding.

If we make a basic assumption in alignment with assortative mating that women with high Openness prefer men with high Openness, we quickly arrive at a reasonable explanation. Women could be selecting men with high Openness, who in turn are more likely to cheat. Studies have shown that women find men with high levels of creativity more attractive while fertile (Haselton and Miller 2006). This wouldn’t necessarily lead to extra-pair copulations if both partners were practicing short-term strategies. However, if the woman was practicing a long-term strategy by convincing the man to commit long-term, and the man continued to practice short-term strategies, we would see precisely the effect that the Openness-Infidelity data here show.

Unlike the data for men, there was also a second statistically significant Big Five trait associated with being cheated on. In this case, high levels of Conscientiousness appeared to provide a protective effect against being cheated on.

Conscientiousness is a tendency to show self-discipline, act dutifully, and aim for achievement against measures or outside expectations. The trait shows a preference for planned rather than spontaneous behavior. It influences the way in which we control, regulate, and direct our impulses. (source)

Going back to the previous idea of short-term/long-term strategies rooted in parental investment theory, the data again fit almost perfectly. High levels of Conscientiousness would tend to lead women to more carefully select for men who are also practicing long-term strategies. In some sense, this may provide a trade-off between “good dads” and “good genes”, but it may also reflect increased discretion leading to higher overall mate value.

Confounds and questions

While BMI wasn’t statistically significant, it would be interesting to know if there was an effect associated with increased differences in BMI. I would hypothesize that while a higher BMI wasn’t significant on average, it would be increased in couples with large differences in BMI. I would expect the effect to be present for both men and women.

Similarly, it would be interesting to see the numbers for those couples with varying “Social class” and/or individual earning power. Based on the 2008 paper by David Buss, I would expect the numbers to change more with the difference in social class than the absolute value.

Knowing the mix of highly Conscientious individuals in the sample would be helpful. There may be some selection bias at play where + Contentiousness individuals are more likely to be in committed relationships. Conversely, ultra-high levels of Conscientiousness may preclude committing to a long-term relationship.

Evolutionary angle

As previously mentioned, most of the effect in these data fit nicely with predictions expected within the frameworks of female mate choice and parental investment theory. It would have been advantageous over evolutionary time for men to engage in extra-pair copulations in order to maximize their reproductive success. Not only might we expect men with higher levels of Openness to engage in extra-pair copulations, we would also expect them to be afforded more opportunities because of increased perceived attractiveness by women (Haselton and Miller 2008).

Application

The data themselves provide no reliable causative link. As such, prescriptive strategies are bound to be tentative.

One possible strategy is already provided by the data. Increased Conscientiousness during mate selection may counteract the effect of increased Openness. Since Conscientiousness is nearly 50% heritable (Bouchard and McGue 2oo3), it’s likely that this strategy would have to be intentionally stressed. Perhaps we can call it the Conscious Cognitive Conscientiousness strategy.

Another strategy would simply to be to not practice strict monogamy when involved with men displaying high levels of Openness. In other words, recognize that men practicing short-term mating strategies are not practicing long-term mating strategies. While trite and obvious when framed thusly, failing to recognize that humans aren’t always practicing long-term mating strategies is a short path to infidelity.

What other strategies can you come up with to counteract the Openness effect?

Related: The one personality trait that makes your girlfriend want to cheat

References

Bouchard, T. J., & McGue, M. (2003). Genetic and environmental influences on human psychological differences.Journal of Neurobiology, 54(1), 4-45. [full-text pdf]

Buss, David. (2008). Attractive Women Want it All : Good Genes , Economic Investment , Parenting. Evolutionary Psychology, 6(1), 134-146.

Haselton, M., & Miller, G. F. (2006). Women’s fertility across the cycle increases the short-term attractiveness of creative intelligence compared to wealth. Human Nature, 17, 50-73.

Personality traits that predict a man will get cheated on (sample size = 717)

Skin Color and Beauty

Tanning seems like an obvious case for the social constructivists to prove, once and for all, that our conceptions of beauty are products of immersive socialization. We hear the arguments about pasty skin being attractive in times when the bourgeoisie lounged indoors counting money and adjusting powdered wigs while the proletariat labored in the fields. The story goes that having a tan was a dead giveaway that one was a low-status individual. Of course, we’ll momentarily ignore that this narrative tends to leave out the part that darker skin also carries varying racist overtones. In any case, the social constructivist points to modern society in which very few people know farmers, let alone have ever labored on a farm.

Since the cultural milieu has shifted away from an agrarian dominated context, the stigma of sun-induced dark skin has lifted. With the swing in culture, the attractiveness pendulum has swung the other way as well. This is evidenced by the widespread obsession for the “healthy glow” gained from spending time in the sun. The narrative has subsumed this observation and explained that, in fact, tans are now a signal of bourgeois status because, clearly, proletarian office drones don’t have expendable leisure time to spend laying around on the beach. Doesn’t the story fit together so nice and commonsensically!?

The Color Theory of Tanning

Design nerds, get out of CMYK, RGB, or HSV mode for a second. Scientists working with human visual perception use the (aptly named) Lab color space to most accurately replicate the way our eyes process inputs. For non-uber design geeks, Lab represents a 3-axis color system represented by L, a, and b. The L-axis describes the spectrum from Lightness-darkness. The a-axis describes the spectrum from red-green. The b-axis describes the spectrum from yellow-blue. I’ll try to just use “red-green”, et cetera when possible, but the shorthand is woven into all of the charts and quotes from the papers.

Sun tanning primarily changes values along two axes, the L (lightness) and b (yelowness). The increased melanin resulting from tanning results in a decrease in lightness and an increase in yellowness (Stamatas, et al. 2004). Therefore, we can make the simple prediction that if people indeed prefer tans resulting from the sun, we should see a preference for relatively darker skin and relatively yellower skin.

Though tanning has now been popular in Western culture for decades (Melia & Bulman. 1995), studies haven’t isolated the color variables necessary to test the “tan is beautiful” hypothesis until now. Ian Stephen, PhD and colleagues presented research in the journal Evolution and Human Behavior that address this question. Their study involved a group of white UK-based students who rated white faces, and a group of black South African students who rated black faces. The data from both groups was similar, and both are shown below…

South African rater’s adjustments of black face and similar results of Scottish rater’s of white face

The picture on the left is an example of the extremes available in the adjustment along both axes for the black faces. Note that the UK raters were rating a different face (not shown here).

Both cohorts show a strong grouping to the same quadrant. However, the quadrant selected was not what we’d expect if the “tan is beautiful” hypothesis was true. We should expect to see both groupings shifted to the top-left quadrant. It turned out that yellowness was perceived as a positive indicator of health, but relative lightness was preferred over darkness. Based on these data, we must conclude that the “tan is beautiful” hypothesis is incorrect.

The social constructivist narrative is also refuted by these findings. Since tanning behaviors are heavily influenced by socialization, we would expect to see a preference in the data for darker relative skin tones. Further, a constructivist explanation seeking to simultaneously explain pro-darker skin tanning in white individuals AND pro-lighter skin attitudes in black individuals would require the data to show the South African data to be in a different quadrant than the UK data. These data refute the existence of a culturally imparted ideal of beauty or health that can be plotted on the spectrum from lightness-darkness.

Since the “tan is beautiful” hypothesis and social constructivist arguments both fail, what explanations are we left with?

The Pasty Veg*ns Are Sexier than Sun-Bathed Carnivores Hypothesis

Enter the carotenoid. Sun exposure isn’t the only thing that affects skin color. Significant consumption of [carotenoid-containing] plant matter also impacts coloration. Stephen, et al conducted a study (results in the same paper) measuring the relationship in fruit and vegetable intake with skin color and the change in skin color resulting from carotenoid supplementation. They found that both supplementation and fruit and vegetable intake correlated with, and increased skin yellowness as measured by spectrophotometer. Further, the measured colorations were inconsistent with coloration changes from melanin (sun tan) and hemoglobin. The carotenoid coloration data fit with the results above; namely, an increase in yellowness without an decrease in lightness. This lead to another study (also reported in the same paper).

This time, rather than isolate the axes for lightness and yellowness, they provided raters with the ability to optimize for health along one axis corresponding to melanin coloration and another corresponding to carotenoid coloration. The results…

Scottish raters’ adjustments of Caucasian face. Melanin on the vertical axis. Carotenoid on the horizontal.

In a post about the same study on his blog Primal Wisdom, Don Maetz provides a heading “Carotenoid Complexion and Sun Tan Not Mutually Exclusive”. While that is literally true, it is also possible that the perception of health signaled by carotenoids and sun tans are mutually exclusive. In fact, that is what the cumulative data in Stephen, et al seems to indicate.

As the preceding image shows, when given the option to specifically optimize the appearance of health for melanin and/or carotenoids, raters unanimously preferred higher levels of carotenoid, but were almost equally mixed in preferences for melanin coloration. This adds support to the refutation of the “tan is beautiful” hypothesis, and opens the door for the “pasty veg*ns are hot” hypothesis.

Methodology

The usability of data in similar previous studies has been questioned on the grounds that giving raters the choice between two options on each axis, then asking them to choose between them, is prone to errors. Stephen, et al first narrowed the image samples to ranges that might be seen in normal populations, then allowed 13 variance points along each axis. Rather than showing all at once, raters were asked to adjust the spectrum up or down to optimize the appearance of health. When plotted across both axes, this results in 39 possible selections. This seems sufficient, but I’m not sure why they didn’t allow infinite adjustments along each axis.

Other criticisms have been made that the use of Photoshop® does not provide an image representative of real-world faces. However, it’s difficult to provide a wide range of skin tones for one individual with photographic accuracy. Surely, using different individuals with different skin tones would introduce myriad variables that would render coloration assessments useless. So while there is some validity to this line of criticism, I find it rather thin.

Criticisms/Improvements

• I’m not sure that South Africa’s history makes it the best choice for disentangling variables concerning race-based perceptions. So while I do think the method employed limits cultural influence somewhat, I’d like to see the study done where the two countries involved weren’t formerly linked via colonization. Also, the level to which South African college students are subject to “Westernization” is difficult to know.
• Since individuals’ colorations were tested before and after carotenoid supplementation, it would have been nice to see ratings of photos of this cohort before and after. Many other variables have the potential to spoil the results, but the hard parts of that experiment were mostly done by default.
• I don’t like celery.

Tanning Obsession: Evolutionary Misfire

Based on this research, I would suggest that visually perceivable results of carotenoid consumption were a reliable signal of health, and that preference is a serious candidate for positive selection that continues to influence our perceptions of health and beauty today. It is difficult to disentangle how much of this selection pressure may have been influenced by direct benefits to health and reproduction, and how it may also be an indirect signal of resource gathering ability. The data support the former…

“Carotenoids are associated with immunocompetence anddisease resistance in humans. Supplementation beneficiallyaffects thymus gland growth in children and increases T-lymphocyte number andactivity in healthy adults. Carotenoid levels become reduced in individuals with HIV and malaria, and in individuals with elevated levels ofserum α1-antichymotrypsin.”

…but the indirect role in sexual selection is a question for another day. For now, chalking up the motivation toward sun tans as an evolutionary misfire seems reasonable. When given the option, raters prefer carotenoid pigmentation to melanin. However, when not given a choice…

“In the single-pigment transforms, all faces were increasedin carotenoid and melanin color to improve healthy appearance. No effects of face sex or participant sex, or theirinteraction were found. Participants increased melanin and carotenoid color more in faces that were initially low in b*. Initial L* and a* values had smaller effects. Participants increased carotenoid more than melanin coloration.”

This demonstrates that the yellow gained through tans somewhat outweighs the darkening that comes along with it. Thus, “yellower is better” and “lighter is better” do not appear to be equal in heuristic value and could signal other things not considered here.

Application

My current interpretation of the health implications is that a veg*n diet is inferior to a paleo diet in important categories. At the same time, strictly carnivore interpretations and/or meat & potatoes interpretations of the paleo diet seem to be inferior to veg*n diets with respect to healthy carotenoid levels. For me, that means taking the best of the veg*n and paleo approaches and eliminating the worst of both approaches. Sure, you paleo-leaning veg*ns out there can disagree, but the meat & plant paleo camp will have better looking bodies. Sure, you anti-plant-matter-leaning paleos out there can disagree, but the veg*n-leaning paleos will have better looking skin. So… do you want to be right, or do you want to be healthy and hot?

Sun exposure appears to be best used as a tool for optimal levels of vitamin D and secosteroids, not a shortcut to health or hotness. Don’t argue with me, take it up with the data. You should definitely get some sun, but you probably can’t use color as an indicator that you’ve reached an optimal level.

Summary (Just Do This)

• If health is your goal, eat a ton of carotenoid-dense fruits and vegetables.
• If looking healthy is your goal, eat a ton of carotenoid-dense fruits and vegetables.
• Get sun for the vitamin D and the secosteroids.
• Don’t get sun just for the color.
• Oh, you should probably subscribe so you don’t miss adding another dimension to the equation with the findings from this study: “Who is the fairest of them all? Race, attractiveness and skin color sexual dimorphism“

References
Glenn, E. N. (2008). Yearning for lightness: transnational circuits in the marketing and consumption of skin lighteners. Gender & Society, 22, 281–302. *also appears as a chapter in The Kaleidoscope of Gender: Prisms, Patterns, and Possibilities‘  (2010).

Melia, J., & Bulman, A. (1995). Sunburn and tanning in a British population. Journal of Public Health Medicine, 17, 223–229.

Stamatas, G. N., Zmudzka, B. Z., Kollias, N., & Beer, J. Z. (2004). Non-invasivemeasurements of skin pigmentation in situ. Pigment Cell Research, 17, 618–626.

Stephen, Ian D., Vinet Coetzee, and David I. Perrett. “Carotenoid and melanin pigment coloration affect perceived human health.” Evolution and Human Behavior 32, no. 3 (May 2011): 216-227. [full-text pdf]

The attractiveness of facial symmetry seems to have woven itself thoroughly into the nerdier shallower echelons of pop culture. Long-story short: symmetry is a reflection of developmental stability via genetic quality and/or resistance to parasites that would cause asymmetrical development.

In the eternal quest for defense of my own ego via self-justification, I need a loophole. You see, my brother did me the favor of breaking my nose via airborne frozen pine cone when I was about 13. Hence, the ol’ schnoze is somewhat lacking in symmetrical perfection on the Y-axis. Don’t get me wrong, the nose remains perfect, but the angle relative to my face is no longer exacly 90°. Fortunately, it’s almost balanced out by the scar bestowed upon me after my cousin tagged my face with a “snowball” (ice-packed dog bone embedded in the faintest veneer of snow).

Side Note: The comparing scar stories conversation has to be one of the Top 10 moments of any human relationship. So no, I’m not going to tell you about the rest of them now. Why are you trying to progress our relationship so fast? I’m starting to feel suffocated.

Prerequisite

Short-Term vs. Long Term Mating Strategies

Human matings can last a few years, a few months, a few weeks, a few days, or even a few minutes. One end of this temporal continuum may be called short-term mating. This temporal dimension turns out to be critical to many components of mating, perhaps none more central than the qualities desired. Furthermore, humans display remarkable creativity in their ability to mix and match mating strategies. It is not uncommon, for example, for a person to engage in one long-term committed mateship with heavy investment in children, while simultaneously pursuing an extramarital affair, or series of affairs, on the side.

Humans, in short, are neither solely monogamous, nor solely promiscuous; neither polygynous nor polyandrous. Which items on the menu of strategies a particular person chooses is heavily dependent on contexts. (Buss 2002)

Chicks Dig Scars: Sometimes

Post-traumatic scarring has been shown to increase perceived social worth in certain circumstances. In particular, women find facial scars on men more attractive in the short-term mating context, but not in the long-term context (Burriss et al. 2009). In a straightforward study, attractiveness ratings were gathered by showing images of non-scarred faces to raters. The same images were shown and rated with scars digitally added.

The increase in attractiveness was significant, but not overwhelming. The authors noted that the relatively light scarring used for the test may have tempered the attractiveness gain of the scarred faces in the short-term context. The image above shows the maximum intensity of digital scarring used in the study.

The Folk Wisdom of Scarification

In modern Western cultures, scarification can be associated with generally negative connotations. This makes sense when noting that modern Western cultures place higher values on strict monogamy (legal marriage) by way of religion, politics, and other reproductive-interest-driven mechanisms of socialization. As such, short-term mating strategies are taboo and hard to disentangle from the cultural framework. However…

In many non-Western cultures, scars derived from ritual scarification (intentional scarring) are prized. Scarification is employed to enhance beauty and symmetry in men and women and its use is positively associated with polygyny, warfare against other cultural groups, and with pathogen prevalence. Scarification is also employed to mark rites of passage in men and women, and in particular the passage from childhood to adulthood. It has therefore been suggested that intentional scarring, as well as other forms of visible body modification such as tattooing, may serve to promote solidarity amongst men as well as advertise or simulate genetic quality, signal sexual maturity, and aid in attracting and securing mates. (Burriss et al. 2009)

For those who’ve earned their scars the old-fashioned way, don’t hide ’em…

Yanomamö men often shave their heads and rub red pigment into their scalps to increase the visibility of their scars, thus demonstrating their bravery and ability to withstand and recover from an enemy’s blow. (Burriss et al. 2009)

Mechanism

Consistent with the practice of ritual scarification in non-Western cultures, Burris et al suggest scarification acts as a costly signal for heroism. In a study pitting heroism (and/or bravery) against altruism, women found heroism more attractive in men than altruism in both short and long-term mating contexts. However, the attraction to heroism was again more pronounced in the short-term context (Kelly & Dunbar 2001).

In every comparison between brave and non-brave potential partners, both for the short-term and long-term, bravery was always preferred. In evolutionary terms, there must have been some considerable advantages to choosing a brave mate. Sexual selection theory offers two general reason why bravery might be selected for in males. One is that such males can offer benefits to a female in terms of provision of food and/or defense. Anthropological evidence supports both suggestions. In traditional societies, the provision of meat acquired by hunting is generally a male province. Hunting for game often involves some degree of personal ris, either from the prey itself or from a dangerous environment. The best hunters enjoy social respect and increased sexual favors… Alternatively, brave men may simply provide better protection for women and their offspring against both marauders and from neighboring tribes and other members of their own group. Among the Ache, for example, the risk of infanticide by other males increases dramatically if a woman’s husband dies or leaves the group. The second advantage for a female of selecting a brave male may be that bravery is an honest cue for good quality genes, not least because only those males with good genes will be able to withstand the costs imposed by risk-taking. (Kelly & Dunbar 2001) *also see my post on The Adventure Gene.

It seems very likely that scars do act as a proxy for heroism, and that heroism is evolutionarily valuable. However, a dose of inductive reasoning to connect the dots until more research is done. What women found attractive about men with scars wasn’t explicitly studied here (or elsewhere as far as I know).

It would also be interesting to further explore why women don’t find men with scars more attractive in the long-term mating context. If scars are a proxy signal for heroism, and heroism is attractive in both contexts, then scars should be attractive in both. Perhaps stigmatization or other social mechanisms mitigate the effect. It’s also true that scars are an imperfect signal of heroism. Since we do see a rise in women’s ratings of men’s attractiveness in altruism in the long-term context, this could combine with the noise in the scarification signal to reduce its effect enough to be rather easily offset by social influence.

As far as my own self-justification, it looks like bad news. Off-axis broken noses are more likely to be read as developmental instability (bad) than any sort of heroism or ability to survive attacks. “Frozen projectile wounds don’t always heal. Chicks dig scars. Sometimes beauty is only skin deep.”

References
Buss, D.M. (2002). Human Mating Strategies. Samfundsokonomen, 4, 47-58. [pdf]

Burriss, R, H Rowland, and a Little. “Facial scarring enhances men’s attractiveness for short-term relationships.” Personality and Individual Differences 46, no. 2 (January 2009): 213-217. [pdf]

Kelly, Susan, and R I M Dunbar. “Who Dares, Wins: Heroism versus Altruism in Womenʼs Mate Choice.” Human Nature 12, no. 2 (2001): 89-105.

Other Articles In This Series
Male Physical Attractiveness Part I or: You Shallow, Shallow Ladies

Applied Evolutionary Psychology: Male Attractiveness

Over the course of running a few blogs, I’ve met some of the most interesting and fun people I know. When I started evolvify, I reached out to them for ideas for products that might be a good fit to advertise here. In general, the response was along the lines of “I have no idea what an evolutionary psychology blog would look like, and I’m not sure if I even know what evolutionary psychology is”. It seems that there’s not a huge market for “applied evolutionary theory” when spoken of in the abstract. Shocker, right? Yet two people mentioned some guy Clay who was working on some sort of bodybuilding or fitness program that had something or other to do with evolution so it might be a fit. Upon further inquiry, I discovered that this was a Clay that I’ve known for over a year. Note: Clay and Derek are both pictured (shirtless, ladies) in the product link later.

Anyway, shortly after hearing that Clay was working on “some evolution related thing”, I got an email from the man himself. It turned out he had been studying the evolutionary psychology relating to what makes men physically attractive to women for a couple years. And when I say studying, I don’t mean that he just read an article in Maxim. In fact, one of his college professors was none other than one of my Top 5 Favorite Evolutionary Psychologists, Martie Haselton…

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In addition to her work on attractiveness, Dr. Haselton is one of the developers of the infinitely insightful Error Management Theory which deals with the evolution of human cognitive biases and heuristics. But I digress…

Clay’s work was focused on a synthesis of the evolved physical cues women find attractive in men and the application of that to bodybuilding. Upon hearing this, I was immediately intrigued. In fact, when we compared notes, I already had three of the journal papers he was using for references in my personal library. So we were quite literally “on the same page” with all of this. A component of this that I’d totally missed was the tie-in to the male Hollywood actors that all men love to hate. You know, the Brad Pitt, Ryan Reynolds, Hugh Jackman, Daniel Craig types with the abs and the shoulders and the swooning adoration of women they’ve never met. Yeah, those guys.

It turns out that those guys happen to develop their physiques to dimensions that match up perfectly to what evolutionary psychology predicts women will find attractive. It’s not clear that the trainers of the Hollywood physiques are consciously aware of the evolutionary relationship of their clients’ physiques and what women find attractive, but the correlation is uncanny and the results are undeniable. Clay developed a combination paleo friendly, whole foods, no supplement training program to build bodies that women find attractive according to Hollywood and the best data evolutionary science has to offer. But let’s take a step back and look at what women find attractive…

Keys to Male Physical Attractiveness

Fist things first: This is article not about “status”. Status is important and I’ll write about how women find it attractive in the future. For now, I’m focusing on physical attractiveness. This topic is particularly important to me for a few reasons.

1. Men have body image issues too. In fact, fashion advertisers use photos of more muscular men in men’s magazines than in women’s magazines. Men tend to think women find bulkier men attractive than what women generally find attractive (Frederick et al. 2005)
2. The generally douchebaggy pickup community is often superficially based on evolutionary psychology to a greater or lesser degree. In many instances, it’s actually based on sociobiology. Unfortunately, the roots of sociobiology are in entymology (the study of bugs) and don’t necessarily apply to humans. Further, much of the pickup stuff is based on models of alpha-male dominance found in other primate species that don’t look anything like the social dynamics of our hunter-gatherer ancestors. Finally, I haven’t seen any pickup guru who didn’t say that “looks don’t matter. While it’s true that looks aren’t the only thing that matters, it is absolutely incorrect to say that “looks don’t matter”. To say as much demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of Darwinian evolution.
3. Whether faked or real, status is a subjective social metric. By definition, it doesn’t exist without respect to other individuals.
4. Status seeking is generally seen as negative and can be inferred whether said status cue is fake or real.
5. Status is often disconnected from legitimate fitness cues in the modern world because of inheritances, luck (e.g. winning the lottery), et cetera.
6. Physical attractiveness can be improved by simple means. As we’ll see later, this is even true of facial attractiveness.

Women Have Been More Superficial than Men Across Evolutionary Time

Despite the 20th century encroachment of men into superficiality, and the subsequent backlash by women at having their tactics aped, women have been judging men on the metrics of wealth and physical beauty for millions of years. This isn’t a judgment call, and there are no moral implications intended in that statement. It is a simple fact of evolutionary biology that the sex that invests most in reproduction is almost invariably the most selective about mating. In mammals, this is almost always females. In humans, the biological investment is drastic – 9 months (minimum) for women versus a few seconds for men. Thus, we would expect women to be more leery about mating with men of low mate value.

With status in our out of the question, women use superficial cues to determine the genetic quality of potential mates.

Let’s be clear; this is not necessarily a conscious calculation. Emotions are evolved motivational heuristics that preclude the need for intentional analysis. Instinctual attraction is not a choice. Love is not a choice. Lust is not a choice.  Certain physical attributes simply act to signal the genetic quality of individuals. I’ve previously discussed the relationship of female attractiveness to waist-to-hip ratio (WHR), and similar cues can be applied to male attractiveness. This is merely a standard principle of Darwinian evolution. In particular, Darwin termed this “sexual selection”, and more specifically, “mate choice.” It has been updated and integrated into parental investment theory.

Known Points of Male Physical Attractiveness

There is no doubt that nuances and specifics of male physical attractiveness are yet to be discovered. For now, they can be grouped into three main sensory categories.

1. Olfaction (smell)
2. Auditory (hearing)
3. Physical (vision)

Let’s go ahead and set aside taste, touch, and ESP for today. Numerous studies have been conducted to assess what, if any, role smell, hearing, and vision play in women’s assessments of male attractiveness. All have been shown to have measurable and predictable impact. Perhaps more interestingly, these sensory inputs tend to shift and increase in intensity during the peak fertility of a woman’s cycle. Aside from possible mentions of smell and hearing in passing, we’re going to look at visual cues.

This isn’t an arbitrary decision. Just as in my critique of racism as misguided sensory bias, it makes sense that our mating assessments be made based on our most perceptive sense(s). Most humans are heavily visually biased so the decision is made for us. (Foster 2008) Before proceeding, we need to break things down one further step. Studies have shown significant differences in attractiveness cues between face and body. Since there is little to be done about facial attractiveness outside of surgery (facial plastic surgery may be the number one evolution thwarting measure), we’ll mostly focus on physical cues found in the body.

“We found two factors that captured face and body attractiveness, respectively. Together they accounted for 49.9%… of the total variance in the variables . The first principal component in the male PCA was a body attractiveness factor that loaded significantly on body attractiveness, body sexual dimorphism and body averageness… The second principal component in the male PCA was primarily associated with attractive face traits and loaded significantly on face attractiveness and face sexual dimorphism. This study showed that rated face and body attractiveness contribute independently and substantially, with no interaction, to overall… male attractiveness. Importantly, face and body attractiveness did not significantly interact in predicting overall attractiveness in males or females. These results are critical because they confirm and quantify the assumption that the face and body both contain independent cues to overall attractiveness. Thus, even though our preferences have evolved by viewing the whole person, overall attractiveness judgements are based on separate, unique contributions of the face and body, with no interaction between the two.” (Peters et al. 2007) [emphasis mine]

Caveat: Since the previous study was done, another study found something particularly interesting:

“Humans are also good at assessing strength based on the face alone. Even though no part of the men’s bodies was available for inspection in these photos, the subjects were able to successfully perceive strength. Indeed, in our data, upper-body strength independently predicted facial ratings of strength, while leg strength did not. [M]any anthro-pologists might expect that humans would learn to exploit culturally specific cues through exposure. However, our subjects were just as good at judging strength from the faces of men of other cultures as from their own. That is, thousands of times more experience with members of one’s local culture had no effect on the accuracy of the system.” (Sell et al. 2009) [emphasis mine]

Clay doesn’t know I’m subjecting him to this impromptu and highly biased “study”, but see if you can detect a difference in his face in the before and after photos. Granted, his facial expression is slightly different, but aside from that…

Now, in the referenced study, the faces were isolated so even the neck couldn’t be seen, and the bodies were isolated and rated separately. Like I said, showing the pictures like this biases the study, but can you see a difference? It turns out that having a sexy body is contagious enough to at least reach your face.

Sexual Dimorphism: Surprise! Men and Women Look Different

Physical differences between the male and female of a species give a general indicator of the amount of sexual selection that has taken place – the more sexual selection, the greater the physical difference. These are often referred to as ornaments. Common examples of this are the antlers of male deer, the large canine teeth of male gorillas, the audacious plume of the male peacock, and the increased height and upper body musculature of male humans. In strict evolutionary biology terms, sexual selection is broken down into male-male competition and female mate choice.

Technically, these mechanisms often overlap into feedback mechanisms so I’m going to gloss over the minutia of that distinction momentarily. Briefly: In some species, men compete to show off and be chosen by females. In some species, men compete to dominate resources and mating opportunities. In some species, these overlap to varying degrees. To further complicate things, some traits in a single species may be acted on more by female mate choice and others by male-male competition. (Hunt et al. 2009)

Implications of Women’s Mate-Choice

Have you put the pieces together? This is a big point: Like natural selection and artificial selection (breeding), women have literally shaped the physical characteristics of men to their taste over the course of human evolution. That’s right, women find men physically attractive because men are shaped by female mate choice. Which leads to an obvious question…

How do women “know” what to choose?

Sexual selection can seem like a bit of a circular argument at times. However, it’s important to remember that it operates in concert with natural selection. Women who chose men with evolutionarily advantageous genes would have had more successful offspring. In this way, natural selection has a way of shaping the preferences of females over time. Because of the interplay, women will tend to evolve preferences that compel them to choose traits that correlate with “good genes.” Hypotheses on what is being signaled by each physical trait vary.

Since one of the main points women report as attractive is sexual dimorphism (masculinity), testosterone is a likely candidate and is studied often. A man’s ability to produce and regulate optimal levels of testosterone (and all other hormones) is advantageous for survival and reproduction. Cortisol has been the subject of studies of hormones and attractiveness as well, but have not yielded results as strong as those focusing on testosterone (Moore et al. 2010).

One other line of regular inquiry into adaptive benefits of mate choice is fluctuating asymmetry (FA). This the general assumption that symmetry is good, and asymmetry is bad. The locus of asymmetry may vary from trait to trait and may have multiple influences in any one particular trait. Oxidative stress at the genetic level may be responsible for some FA, and individuals with greater capacity for reducing oxidative stress may have survival and reproductive advantages (Gangestad et al. 2010).

Other hypotheses around sexual selection focus on fighting ability between individuals and its technical corrolary resource-holding potential (RHP). Without putting to fine a point on it, being big and strong has advantages in multiple domains. And guess what influences strength? Yes my astute lovelies… testosterone. It keeps coming back to the testosterone.

The proof is in the ____ing

The studies above relating to facial attractiveness versus body attractiveness relied on women’s ratings of attractiveness. There’s value in that, but conscious assessments aren’t necessarily a perfect substitute for how people behave in the real world. In the real world, the most effective measure of attractiveness is… um… apparently the PhDs call it “mating succcess”…

“Overall, body attractiveness was a better predictor of self-reported mating success than facial attractiveness. In line with our main hypothesis, we found a positive relationship between a composite measure of men’s physical fitness (PF) and men’s body attractiveness. This was obtained not only for aggregated attractiveness ratings but also for all 27 female raters individually. This finding is remarkable because individual attractiveness judgments reflect a strong idiosyncratic component, at least for faces. Attractiveness judgments were made fast and effortless. The strength of the attractiveness-fitness relation- ship obtained here suggests that signalling physical fitness may be one of the key functions of male attractiveness.” (Honekopp et al. 2006) [emphasis mine]

Not surprisingly, physical fitness “may be” important for physical attractiveness. You learn something everyday I guess. Thanks science!

Back to Clay’s Evolutionary Body-Hacking Program

I’m already approaching the 3,000 word mark in this article and I haven’t even gotten to the specifics of what exactly makes for a body that women find attractive. Fortunately, Clay has already done all the work of synthesizing this research into a clear physical model ( to be fair, he claims that the trainers and actors in Hollywood did the work for him, and he just reverse engineered it). So rather than talk about the numbers, here are the blueprints representing the intersection of Hollywood and Darwin.

The Hollywood Physique Blueprint (1 of 8)

Why the “Hollywood Physique”?

Clay found that essentially every feature in the research here is demonstrated in nearly every Hollywood actor after one of their scrawny-to-superhero transformations. In other words, although we have no proof it’s intentional, Hollywood trainers are leveraging the same principles in all of the research consciously or unconsciously. The system is designed to sculpt precisely the aspects of muscle necessary to highlight that exact cue and maximize the evolutionary factors most responsible for natural attraction. Most are simply emulating physical features associated with naturally elevated testosterone levels and other indicators of key fitness features related to survival purposes.

The name “The Hollywood Physique for Men” is designed for an audience not limited to the enlightened anthro-evolution nerd readers of evolvify. However, Clay himself is somewhat of an anthro-evolution nerd, but I haven’t yet asked him to change the name to “The Uber Abstract Darwinian Compendium of Hyper-Copulatory Hypertrophy.” While the system itself is built on a foundation of paleo and evolutionary psychology principles, Clay has designed it for a more mainstream audience. In other words, he’s cleverly disguising the stuff we love and bringing it to the masses.

What the Hollywood Physique is NOT:

• A fitness program designed around evolutionary movements
• A strength training program
• A functional fitness program

What The Hollywood Physique is:

• Methodical, detailed, and specific regarding food and workouts
• Applied evolutionary psychology
• 100% Paleo diet friendly
• Whole food nutrition plan
• Supplement free
• A completely aesthetic bodybuilding system designed to strategically achieve a body that’s naturally attractive to women in a short amount of time

How do Andrew and evolvify tie into this?

As I mentioned before, I worked with Clay on this for a couple months before he launched it. However, it’s totally his brainchild. My contributions have been reviews and suggestions regarding the evolutionary theory and minor tweaks (if anything). I had pre-release access to the materials and have gone over everything contained within. I’m not going to comment on any of the training methodology or jargon, but I have seen Clay’s and Derek’s results and they’re pretty amazing.

Here’s the thing… and it’s not a sales pitch, just the info. Clay is just now making this publicly available. He hasn’t even set up a full page selling it quite yet, and he’s not promoting it on a very grand scale at the moment because, simply put, he wants to make sure the information jives with a more intelligent, savvy crowd who are driven and ready to APPLY it and PROVE it works before unleashing it on a wider scale. I’m glad he came to me about this a while ago because it’s allowed us to team up to give evolvify readers to get the first crack at it.

UPDATE (August 2012): I ended up using THP for a couple months shortly after writing this originally, and I’ve since checked in on the progress of others. I can reissue whatever recommendations I had at the beginning. Theory shmeory, it works.

If you’re looking for an aesthetic approach to quickly building muscle that’s based on the evolutionary principles of physical attractiveness, then you can’t go wrong with The Hollywood Physique for Men.

Check Out Clay’s Site »

*don’t miss the individual muscle blueprints and topless Derek!

References

Foster, Joshua D. “Beauty is mostly in the eye of the beholder: olfactory versus visual cues of attractiveness.” The Journal of Social Psychology 148, no. 6 (December 2008): 765-73. [PDF]

Frederick, David a, Daniel M T Fessler, and Martie G Haselton. “Do representations of male muscularity differ in menʼs and women’s magazines?” Body image 2, no. 1 (March 2005): 81-6.

Gangestad, Steven W., Leslie a. Merriman, and Melissa Emery Thompson. “Men’s oxidative stress, fluctuating asymmetry and physical attractiveness.” Animal Behaviour 80, no. 6 (October 2010): 1005-1013.

Honekopp, J, U Rudolph, L Beier, a Liebert, and C Muller. “Physical attractiveness of face and body as indicators of physical fitness in men.” Evolution and Human Behavior 28, no. 2 (March 2007): 106-111.

Hunt, John, Casper J Breuker, Jennifer a Sadowski, and Allen J Moore. “Male-male competition, female mate choice and their interaction: determining total sexual selection.” Journal of evolutionary biology 22, no. 1 (January 2009): 13-26.

Moore, F R, R E Cornwell, M J Law Smith, E a S Al Dujaili, M Sharp, and D I Perrett. “Evidence for the stress-linked immunocompetence handicap hypothesis in human male faces.” Proceedings. Biological sciences / The Royal Society, (September 2010).

Peters, M, G Rhodes, and L Simmons. “Contributions of the face and body to overall attractiveness.” Animal Behaviour 73, no. 6 (June 2007): 937-942. [PDF]

Sell, Aaron, Leda Cosmides, John Tooby, Daniel Sznycer, Christopher von Rueden, and Michael Gurven. “Human adaptations for the visual assessment of strength and fighting ability from the body and face.” Proceedings. Biological sciences / The Royal Society 276, no. 1656 (February 2009): 575-84. [PDF]