Sex differences in relationship regret: The role of perceived mate characteristics

[…]

Regret reported by men in both study 1 and study 2 varied as a function of the perceived attractiveness of the participants’ actual and potential mate. Regret reported by women in study 2 varied as a function of the perceived stinginess of the participant’s mate and perceived wealth of the participants’ potential mate. Study 3 found that sex differences in type of regret (with men regretting inaction more than women) occurred only when the mate presented in the scenario was described in ways consistent with mate preferences. Together these findings suggest that regret differs between the sexes in ways consistent with sex differences in mate preferences.

{ Evolutionary Psychology | Continue reading }

You’re on the bus, and one of the only free seats is next to you. How, and why, do you stop another passenger sitting there?

New research reveals the tactics commuters use to avoid each other, a practice the paper describes as ‘nonsocial transient behavior.’ […]

“Avoiding other people actually requires quite a lot of effort and this is especially true in confined spaces like public transport.”

{ EurekAlert | Continue reading }

They might say that sex between people who are in love is special (maybe even sacred), but they also know sex is part of the partnership of getting through life together and has to be considered pragmatically as well. Even people in love do not have identical physical and emotional needs, with the result that sex takes different forms and means more or less on different occasions. […]

Part of the mythology of love promises that loving couples will always want and enjoy sex together, unproblematically, freely and loyally. But most people know that couples are multi-faceted partnerships, sex together being only one facet, and that those involved very often tire of sex with each other. Although skeptics say today’s high divorce rate shows the love-myth is a lie, others say the problem is that lovers aren’t able or willing to do the work necessary to stay together and survive personal, economic and professional changes. Some of this work may well be sexual. In some partnerships where the spark has gone, partners grant each other the freedom to have sex with others, or pay others to spice up their own sex lives (as a couple or separately). This can take the form of a polyamorous project, with open contracts; as swinging, where couples play with others together; as polygamy or temporary marriage; as cheating or betrayal; or as paying for sex. […]

Many people, not just professional sex workers, know that the work of sex can mean allowing the other to take an active role and assuming a passive one as well as taking the active role or switching back and forth. Sometimes people do what they already know they like, and sometimes they experiment. Sometimes people don’t know what they want, or want to be surprised, or to lose control.

For some critics, the possession of money by clients gives them absolute power over workers and therefore means that equality is impossible.

{ Jacobin | Continue reading }

photo { Tim Geoghegan }

Throughout the past several decades, the United States has seen a steady increase in women’s status. Overt sexism is on the decline and women are becoming increasingly well represented in prestigious, high-paying jobs. Despite these welcome improvements, many gender-typed norms related to heterosexual courtship and marriage have remained remarkably stable over time.

For example, it is relatively rare for women to propose marriage to men. In addition, the majority of women still take their husband’s last name upon marriage, whereas few men consider taking their wife’s last name. People typically adhere to marriage-related norms in the name of tradition or romance.

However, there is also reason to believe that these norms are subtle manifestations of sexism within heterosexual romantic relationships. In the present study, we sought to establish an empirical connection between women’s and men’s marriage- tradition preferences and their level of sexism. We began by examining participants’ personal preferences regarding marriage proposals and marital name changes. We then tested whether endorsing benevolent sexism was predictive of holding traditional marriage preferences.

{ Journal of Adolescent Research | PDF }

painting { Gérard Gasiorowski, L’Approche, Des Limites de ma pensée, 1970 }

They walked to Ringsend, on the south bank of the Liffey, where (and here we can drop the Dante analogy) she put her hand inside his trousers and masturbated him. It was June 16, 1904, the day on which Joyce set “Ulysses.” When people celebrate Bloomsday, that is what they are celebrating. […]

Joyce had known only prostitutes and proper middle-class girls. Nora was something new, an ordinary woman who treated him as an ordinary man. The moral simplicity of what happened between them seems to have stunned him. It was elemental, a gratuitous act of loving that had not involved flattery or deceit, and that was unaccompanied by shame or guilt. That simplicity became the basis of their relationship.

{ The New Yorker | Continue reading }

related { Being in a relationship that others disapprove of }

Nearly 500 species of animals (ranging from mammals through to insects) have been observed performing homosexual behaviour, according to Aldo Poiani, a biologist at the University of Melbourne.

In addition to penguins, he says, koalas, flamingos, giraffes, monkeys, killer whales and dolphins are on list. In some cases, the animals commit themselves to a same-sex partner for life (like penguins), although in other species it appears that they have no preference, but rather act ‘bisexually’. […]

“Homosexual behaviour occurs in over 130 species of birds, yet explaining its maintenance in evolutionary terms appears problematic at face value, as such sexual behaviours do not seem in immediate pursuit of reproductive goals,” McFarlane and colleagues wrote in the journal Animal Behaviour in late 2010. […]

Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection suggests that animals, including humans, exist in order to continue their species, or rather, reproduce. It is an evolutionary paradox, says McFarlane, that animals engage in homosexual behaviour when “the prevailing view (is) that sex is for reproduction only”, which makes it scientifically significant to explain. According to Darwin’s theory, it’s a scientific conundrum that evolution hasn’t eliminated individuals that are not going to actively reproduce.

According to RV Kirkpatrick, an anthropologist from the University of California, Davis, in the Darwinian view, individuals should seek to maximise reproductive success. “Homosexual behaviour is too widespread to be a fluke or an aberration, but evolutionists in particular should be puzzled by its ubiquity,” he wrote in the journal Current Anthropology in 2000. […]

One theory is that because the percentage of exclusive homosexuality in both the animal and human world is so small, it poses no threat to the continuation of a species.

{ Cosmos | Continue reading }

photo { Cécile Menendez }

When a romantic relationship isn’t going well it seems like it influences everything in life. This brings up a slew of interesting questions. What is the exact nature of a relationship’s influence on unrelated decisions? How might different kinds of relationship troubles influence people in different ways? For example, in what ways do you behave differently when you’re considering breaking up your significant other as opposed to when you feel like they’re considering breaking up with you? […]

The researchers found that feeling as though your partner was the reason for incompatibility led people to become “promotion focused” – a psychological orientation where the tendency is to be motivated by gains, growth, and not missing out on positive outcomes. On other hand, when people felt that they were the reason for the incompatibility, it led to a “prevention focus” — an orientation where the tendency to is to be motivated by the need to maintain responsibilities and avoid negative outcomes.

{ peer-reviewed by my neurons | Continue reading }

photo { Isabel Martinez }

Are human beings intrinsically good but corruptible by the forces of evil, or the reverse, innately sinful yet redeemable by the forces of good? […]

Until about three million years ago the ancestors of Homo sapiens were mostly vegetarians, and they most likely wandered in groups from site to site where fruit, tubers, and other vegetable food could be harvested. Their brains were only slightly larger than those of modern chimpanzees. By no later than half a million years ago, however, groups of the ancestral species Homo erectus were maintaining campsites with controlled fire — the equivalent of nests — from which they foraged and returned with food, including a substantial portion of meat. Their brain size had increased to midsize, between that of chimpanzees and modern Homo sapiens. The trend appears to have begun one to two million years previously, when the earlier prehuman ancestor Homo habilis turned increasingly to meat in its diet. With groups crowded together at a single site, and an advantage added by cooperative nest building and hunting, social intelligence grew, along with the centers of memory and reasoning in the prefrontal cortex.

Probably at this point, during the habiline period, a conflict ensued between individual-level selection, with individuals competing with other individuals in the same group, versus group-level selection, with competition among groups. The latter force promoted altruism and cooperation among all the group members. It led to group-wide morality and a sense of conscience and honor. The competitor between the two forces can be succinctly expressed as follows: within groups selfish individuals beat altruistic individuals, but groups of altruists beat groups of selfish individuals. Or, risking oversimplification, individual selection promoted sin, while group selection promoted virtue.

{ Opinionator/NY Times | Continue reading }

{ In a study of more than a thousand compliments, women accepted compliments from other women 22% of the time. When they came from men? 68%. | The Beheld | full story }

photo { Bill Sullivan }

We know that love lives in the brain, not in the heart. But where in the brain is it – and is it in the same place as sexual desire? A recent international study is the first to draw an exact map of these intimately linked feelings.

“No one has ever put these two together to see the patterns of activation,” says Jim Pfaus, professor of psychology at Concordia University. “We didn’t know what to expect – the two could have ended up being completely separate. It turns out that love and desire activate specific but related areas in the brain.”

{ EurekAlert | Continue reading }

painting { François Boucher, Venus Consoling Love, 1751 }

Lu thought that elements of New Yorker style were ridiculous; for instance, our habit of putting points in I.B.M. when I.B.M. itself had long since done without them. […]

“Would you do me a favor?” And when the woman said yes, Lu told her, “Drop dead.”

{ New Yorker | Continue reading | Thanks Sasha }

How do spouses originally meet?
Friends: In the past, couples met through friends (~40% in 1990). Today, less than 30% meet through friends, but it’s still the most likely way to meet a future partner.

Online: Works for about 22% of us.

College: About 11% of us met our spouses in college.

Family: This used to be the most common method, but today it is less than 10%.

Primary & secondary school: A huge shift from 21% in the 1940s to about 5% today.



Who has highest quality relationships?
That would be couples who met in church or in primary or secondary school, followed by those who met online. Those who met through family are less likely to rate the quality of their relationship as high.

Who is more or less likely to break up?
Couples who met in church or primary or secondary school are less likely to break up. Couples who met online are also less likely to breakup. Couples who meet through friends are more likely to break up.

{ DatingWise | Continue reading }

screenshot { Greta Garbo in The Kiss, 1929 }

Is there a difference between love and addiction? Is being addicted to love a disease? […]

A group of French researchers, publishing in The American Journal of Drug and Alcohol Abuse, describe the clinical distinctions between “love passion,” “love addiction,” and “sex addiction”. Using advances in neurobiology to compare clinical, neuropsychological, neurobiological, and neuroimaging data on love and passion.

They begin with the most pertinent question: “Is there any legitimate reason to associate a pathological condition (addiction) and a natural, pleasurable one [love]?” […]

“Addiction would be defined as the stage where desire becomes a compulsive need, when suffering replaces pleasure, when one persists in the relationship despite knowledge of adverse consequences (including humiliation and shame).”

The fact that there is currently no data on the epidemiology, genetics, co-morbidity, or treatment of love addiction lead the researchers to conclude that to place some cases of “love passion” within a clinical disorder spectrum […] would be premature.

{ science left untitled | Continue reading }

A father’s love contributes as much — and sometimes more — to a child’s development as does a mother’s love. That is one of many findings in a new large-scale analysis of research about the power of parental rejection and acceptance in shaping our personalities as children and into adulthood.

{ EurekAlert | Continue reading }

You know the young Marx – I don’t idealise Marx, he was a nasty guy, personally – but he has a wonderful logic. He says: ‘You don’t simply dissolve marriage; divorce means that you retroactively establish that the love was not the true love.’ When love goes away, you retroactively establish that it wasn’t even true love. […]

For me, the idea of hell is the American type of parties. Or, when they ask me to give a talk, and they say something like, ‘After the talk there will just be a small reception’—I know this is hell. This means all the frustrated idiots, who are not able to ask you a question at the end of the talk, come to you and, usually, they start: ‘Professor Žižek, I know you must be tired, but …’ Well, fuck you. If you know that I am tired, why are you asking me? I’m really more and more becoming Stalinist. Liberals always say about totalitarians that they like humanity, as such, but they have no empathy for concrete people, no? OK, that fits me perfectly. Humanity? Yes, it’s OK—some great talks, some great arts. Concrete people? No, ninety-nine percent are boring idiots. […]

I especially hate when they come to me with personal problems. My standard line is: ‘Look at me, look at my tics, don’t you see that I’m mad? How can you even think about asking a mad man like me to help you in personal problems, no? […]

They claim sex is healthy; it’s good for the heart, for blood circulation, it relaxes you. They even go into how kissing is also good because it develops the muscles here – this is horrible, my God! […]

I like this idea of sex as part of love, you know: ‘I’m ready to sell my mother into slavery just to fuck you for ever.’ There is something nice, transcendent, about it. I remain incurably romantic.

{ Slavoj Žižek | Continue reading }

related/recommended { The Pervert’s Guide to Cinema }

photo { Fernando Gregory }

Do rebelliousness, emotional control, toughness and thrill-seeking still make up the essence of coolness? […] Research has found the characteristics associated with coolness today are markedly different than those that generated the concept of cool. […]

The research is described as the first systematic, quantitative examination of what characteristics recur in popular understandings of the cool personality. […]

Participants in the study still appreciated the traditional elements of cool, such as rebelliousness and detachment, but not as strongly as friendliness and warmth.

{ University of Rochester | Continue reading }

Is there a point at which your efforts become counter-productive? According to a new study, the answer is yes.

In general, humans don’t like to have their behavior controlled by others, and the result is that we have an aversion to being persuaded. This is one reason why advice about persuasion often involves the idea of leading somebody to a conclusion, but making them think they got there on their own. Feiler and his colleagues wanted to know if providing additional reasons to do something could increase awareness that a persuasion attempt was occurring, and thus make somebody less likely to do it.

{ peer reviewed by my neurons | Continue reading }

image { Winnie Truong }

“Early love is when you love the way the other person makes you feel,” explains psychiatrist Mark Goulston of the University of California, Los Angeles. “Mature love is when you love the person as he or she is.”

{ Time }

Events occurring in the brain when we are in love have similarities with mental illness.

{ BBC }

photo { Sam Hessamian }

In every economic downturn some intrepid journalist pens a story about the “Lipstick Effect”  – the tendency for women to buy more beauty products when the economy is in bad shape. In theory, the behavior is driven by evolutionary concerns. With fewer men able to offer the security of financial stability, women must enhance their beauty in order to deal with the increased competition.

{ peer reviewed by my neurons | Continue reading }

photo { Anthony Suau }

HorrendousRex
No one seems to have mentioned it, so I’ll point out that this looks like an M4 Carbine with iron sights, without any magazine inserted (and I have to imagine no bullet round chambered, either).
It appears to have no attachments besides the iron sights, which I thought is surprising as I thought that the foregrip and picatinny rail and ACOG scope were standard attachments for the IDF. I would imagine this is because she is a new recruit (mentioned elsewhere in the thread). [Edit: Apparently no M4 attachments are standard in the IDF, they are either soldier-purchased or disbursed for relevant combat roles.]
The gun might also be the M4A1 automatic variant of the M4, but without any modifications I don’t really know how to tell. [Apparently it might also be a short-barreled variant of the M16 - but isn’t that what an M4 is?]
The umbrella stands belong to “Carlsberg” pale lager, a product of the Carlsberg Group. Their motto is “Probably the best beer in the world”, but it is not the best beer in the world.
I’m having trouble identifying the bikinis but the girl with the gun seems to be wearing a mismatched set, as is often the fashion.
The ass is good.

voodoopredatordrones
you just Sherlocked that picture…for no apparent reason

lampkyter
If he really Sherlocked it he would have told us something like how many times she’s had sex.

imatosserama
I can’t definitively say how many times, or if, she has had sex. What I can say is that it is unlikely that either of the two had orgasmed earlier that day.
Look at the way they hold their hips. When a woman orgasms, there is an involuntary relaxation of several of the hip muscles. The hips are carried in a way that looks relaxed and comfortable, rather unlike the somewhat stiff postures we see here. This effect usually lasts for several hours.
Of course, they could have had sex. Quite a lot, even. But it seems unlikely that they reached an orgasm that day. I could be wrong. But it seems unlikely. A more definite conclusion could be reached if we had a video of them walking.
Edit for proof: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18637995

{ reddit | Continue reading }