The 21-year-old woman was carefully trained not to flirt with anyone who came into the laboratory over the course of several months. She kept eye contact and conversation to a minimum. She never used makeup or perfume, kept her hair in a simple ponytail, and always wore jeans and a plain T-shirt.
Each of the young men thought she was simply a fellow student at Florida State University participating in the experiment, which ostensibly consisted of her and the man assembling a puzzle of Lego blocks. But the real experiment came later, when each man rated her attractiveness. Previous research had shown that a woman at the fertile stage of her menstrual cycle seems more attractive, and that same effect was observed here — but only when this woman was rated by a man who wasn’t already involved with someone else.
The other guys, the ones in romantic relationships, rated her as significantly less attractive when she was at the peak stage of fertility, presumably because at some level they sensed she then posed the greatest threat to their long-term relationships. To avoid being enticed to stray, they apparently told themselves she wasn’t all that hot anyway.
This experiment was part of a new trend in evolutionary psychology to study “relationship maintenance.”
A difference between an addict and a recovering addict is that one hides his behavior, while the other can’t stop talking about it. Self-revelation is an important part of recovery, but it can lead to awkward moments when you meet a person who identifies as a sex addict.
For instance, within a half-hour of my first meeting Neil Melinkovich, a 59-year-old life coach, sometime writer and former model who has been in Sex Addicts Anonymous for more than 20 years, he told me about the time in 1987 that he made a quick detour from picking up his girlfriend at the Los Angeles airport so he could purchase a service from a prostitute. Afterward, he noticed what he thought was red lipstick on himself. It turned out to be blood from the woman’s mouth. He washed in a gas-station bathroom, met his girlfriend at the airport and then, in the grip of his insatiability, had unprotected sex with her as soon as they got home — in the same bed he said he had used to entertain three other women in the days before.
In a good kiss, our pupils dilate, which is one of the reasons we close our eyes, our pulse quickens, and our breathing can deepen and become irregular. But we’re also hard at work on a subconscious level. Scent plays a really powerful role in whether it’s a good kiss or not. Women are actually most attracted to the natural scents of men who have a different set of genes called the major histocompatability complex that codes for immunity. We’re most attracted to people whose MHC genes have a lot of diversity from ours—the advantage of that would be if you reproduce, that child’s probably going to have a stronger immune system, and so be more likely to survive to pass on their genes. This isn’t something that we’re consciously aware of, but we do seem to know if something feels off. And actually, more than half of men and women—fifty-eight per cent of women, fifty-nine per cent of men—report ending a budding relationship because of a bad kiss.
How important is a couple’s first kiss?
A first kiss has the power to shape the future of a relationship for a particular couple. Of course, there are other factors that play a role, but kissing is really nature’s ultimate litmus test. It puts us right up close so that we can sense whether this is someone we want to continue a relationship with.
A recent meta-analysis has indicated that falling in love can take a little as a fifth of a second and can produce similar euphoric effects to cocaine.
“These results confirm love has a scientific basis,” says Stephanie Ortigue who conducted the study at Syracuse University. (…)
Ortigue claims that while this is interesting in terms of being a neuroscience curiosity it could have potential therapeutic possibilities for those suffering depression after heartbreak.
First we must ask Why does a woman (or a man, for the matter) vocalize during sex at all? Sure, there might be a host of valid social reasons - one might be to boost the ego of the man [92% of the women in study agreed to this statement, and 87% reported vocalizing for this very purpose] (Brewer and Hendrie, 2010), or to deceive the man that they are a competent lover (68% of women reported wanting to stay with a man even though he never helped her climax) (Brewer and Hendrie, 2010).
But from an evolutionary perspective we must be mindful of a few things: First, men do not vocalize in the same manner as women. Second, comparative evidence in chimps suggests that vocalizations are for attracting more males to a sexual encounter (in order to have more sex), which is further supported by the fact that when chimps are engaging in down-strata copulation (that is, if the women is having sex with someone she ’shouldn’t’ be having sex with) she still makes chimpanzee sex-faces, but fails to make the vocalizations.
Women tend to be better than men at reading other people’s subtle facial cues, especially cues from the eyes. Because of the gender difference in cognitive empathy – the ability to notice and correctly interpret body language – psychobiologists have hypothesized that testosterone levels could play a role in “mind reading” ability, or lack thereof.
A new study in PNAS validates this hypothesis by demonstrating that a dose of testosterone can make women lose some of their cognitive empathy.
According to a recent study commissioned by the Japanese government, the country’s desire for sex is dropping quickly.
The biennial survey, originally designed to gauge the success of the country’s birth-control education, revealed that 36.1 percent of Japanese males between 16 and 19 had no interest in or even loathed sex. In 2008, that number was 17.5 percent.
Of girls in that 16–19 age group, 59 percent had no interest in sex, up 12 points from 2008.
Forty percent of married people admitted to not having sex within the last month.
Overall, the fertility rate in Japan has dropped to 1.37 births per woman. It’s 2.06 in the U.S. Such a low rate, if it continues, could have major consequences for the Japanese economy.
Is there an Oscar curse for women who win the Best Actress award? According to a new study, the answer is a definite yes.
After examining the marital histories of 751 movie stars nominated for Best Actor and Best Actress Oscars between 1936 and 2010, researchers at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management found that women who win Oscars in the Best Actress category faced a much greater risk of divorce than men who win Best Actor awards. (…)
The researchers found that on average, Best Actress winners tended to stay married 4.3 years, while the non-winning nominees’ marriages lasted more than twice as long, 9.5 years.
Have you ever watched a loved one stub their toe and wince yourself in sympathy? If so, you’ve perhaps unknowingly experienced a psychological phenomenon known as ‘embodied simulation’.
When you see someone making a gesture, be it emotional or physical, the regions activated in their brain are also activated in yours, creating a common network. Scientists think that this network is needed for effective communication of information.
What had not been shown before, however, was direct evidence of embodied simulation in between two people. A group of scientists, including Dr Nikolaus Weiskopf from the Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging at UCL, have been working on this using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to directly investigate the workings of couple’s brains. […]
Analysis of the data showed that sending emotional information via facial expressions resulted in similar activity in both the sender’s and perceiver’s brains. Several brain areas showed common activity, suggesting that emotion-specific information is encoded by similar signals in both sender and perceiver. The results also showed that the part of the brain known to be activated when people fake an emotion in their facial expression, known as the ventral premotor cortex, was not activated during this experiment.
and the glorious sunsets and the figtrees in the Alameda gardens yes and all the queer little streets and pink and blue and yellow houses and the rosegardens and the jessamine and geraniums and cactuses and Gibraltar as a girl where I was a Flower of the mountain yes when I put the rose in my hair like the Andalusian girls used or shall I wear a red yes and how he kissed me under the Moorish wall and I thought well as well him as another and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes.
Harris has conducted two studies that show we may not enjoy watching a movie for two reasons: what we’re watching and who we’re watching it with. Particularly, the combination of watching a steamy love scene with your parents proved to be most unpleasant. (…)
The study focused on those uncomfortable movie-viewing moments and how viewers acted during the movie and after it. Harris said the gender of the viewer influenced reactions, a somewhat surprising result.
“Contrary to gender stereotypes, women were actually more likely to talk about it, both during the movie and after,” Harris said. “Men were more likely to do the avoidance types of responses: start talking about something else, not say anything at all or pretend it didn’t bother them.”
All teenage girls are at least half-lesbian, always admiring their friends’ still-shifting bodies, their superior wardrobes, their make-up application expertise, their better luck with the opposite sex. Teenage girls curl up together like newborn puppies, painting one another’s toes as if they were licking one another’s ears. If you sit long enough in any Starbucks, or loiter outside any high school, you will see girls climbing onto one another’s laps, kissing on the lips. They aren’t hitting on each other, not precisely, though they are in a constant state of arousal that borders on the insane. No other love is like the love of a teenage girl, all passion and fire and endless devotion—at least for a week.
There are many painful, moving stories about female friendship out there, but even the most beautiful stories about teenage girls fail to capture the obsessive, all-encompassing infatuations I remember. That is, all except one: My So-Called Life. It began on the air in August 1994, the summer before my freshman year of high school, and it was as if someone had placed a mirror inside my bedroom and broadcast it on television.
Odors can be a subtle factor affecting human mating, similar to the behavior of other animals. Monitoring the responses of men after smelling t-shirts worn by ovulating women, non-ovulating women and some not worn at all, they observed reactions and biological changes. This study provides evidence that ovulatory cues are detectable.
A lasting marriage does not always signal a happy marriage. Plenty of miserable couples have stayed together for children, religion or other practical reasons. But for many couples, it’s just not enough to stay together. They want a relationship that is meaningful and satisfying. In short, they want a sustainable marriage.
“The things that make a marriage last have more to do with communication skills, mental health, social support, stress — those are the things that allow it to last or not,” says Arthur Aron, a psychology professor. “But those things don’t necessarily make it meaningful or enjoyable or sustaining to the individual.”
The notion that the best marriages are those that bring satisfaction to the individual may seem counterintuitive. After all, isn’t marriage supposed to be about putting the relationship first?
Not anymore.
For centuries, marriage was viewed as an economic and social institution, and the emotional and intellectual needs of the spouses were secondary to the survival of the marriage itself. But in modern relationships, people are looking for a partnership, and they want partners who make their lives more interesting.
photo { Garry Winogrand | Marriage was never a success for Winogrand because he was too self-centered to make it work. After his divorce he single-mindedly devoted himself to pushing the boundaries of photography. | The Year in Pictures }
When we cry, we may be doing more than expressing emotion. Our tears, according to striking new research, may be sending chemical signals that influence the behavior of other people.
The research, published on Thursday in the journal Science, could begin to explain something that has baffled scientists for generations: Why do humans, unlike seemingly any other species, cry emotional tears?
In several experiments, researchers found that men who sniffed drops of women’s emotional tears became less sexually aroused than when they sniffed a neutral saline solution that had been dribbled down women’s cheeks.
Everyone already knows that romantic love requires sexual attraction, that’s a given. The second component is almost as well known. It’s called attachment, and its part of the show in both romantic and all other kinds of love, including love within families. Attachment is found in other mammal besides us humans: our cats Mischa and Wolfie have become attached to me and my wife, and we are attached to them.
Attachment gives a physical sense of a connection to the beloved. The most obvious cues to attachment are missing the beloved when they are away, and contentment when they return. Loss of that person invokes deep sadness and grief. Another less reliable cue is the sense of having always known a person whom we have just met. This feeling can be intense when it occurs, but it also may be completely absent.
Attachment accounts for an otherwise puzzling aspect of “love”: one can “love” someone that one doesn’t even like. (…)
Finally, there is a third component that is much more complex and subtle than attraction or attachment. It has to do with the lover sharing the thoughts and feelings of the beloved. The lover identifies with the loved person at times, to the point of actually sharing their thoughts their feelings. He or she feels their pain at these times, or joy, or any other feeling, as if it were her or his own. Two people can be attuned, at least at times, to each others’ thoughts and feeling.
It is important to note however, that to qualify as genuine love, the sharing need be balanced between self and other. One shares the others thoughts and feelings as much as one’s own, no more and no less. (…)
The definition of romantic love proposed here involves three components, the three A’s: Attraction, Attachment, and Attunement.
Oxytocin has been described as the hormone of love. This tiny chemical, released from the hypothalamus region of the brain, gives rat mothers the urge to nurse their pups, keeps male prairie voles monogamous and, even more remarkable, makes people trust each other more.
Yes, you knew there had to be a catch. As oxytocin comes into sharper focus, its social radius of action turns out to have definite limits. The love and trust it promotes are not toward the world in general, just toward a person’s in-group. Oxytocin turns out to be the hormone of the clan, not of universal brotherhood. Psychologists trying to specify its role have now concluded it is the agent of ethnocentrism.
There are now roughly 2 billion Internet users worldwide. Five billion earthlings have cell phones. That scale of connectivity offers staggering power: In a few seconds, we can summon almost any fact, purchase a replacement hubcap or locate a cabin mate from those halcyon days at Camp Tewonga. We can call, email, text or chat online with our colleagues, friends and family just about anywhere.
Yet, along with the power has come the feeling that digital devices have invaded our every waking moment. We’ve had to pass laws to get people off their cell phones while driving. Backlit iPads slither into our beds for midnight Words With Friends trysts. Sitcoms poke fun at breakfast tables where siblings text each other to ask that the butter be passed. (According to a Nielsen study, the average 13- to 17-year-old now deals with 3,339 texts a month.)
We even buy new technology to cure new problems created by new technology: There’s an iPhone app that uses the device’s built-in camera to show the ground in front of a user as a backdrop on the keypad. “Have you ever tried calling someone while walking with your phone only to run into something because you can’t see where you’re going?” goes the sales pitch. (…)
A growing number of researchers here and elsewhere are exploring the social and psychological consequences of virtual experience and digital incursion. Researchers observe the blurring boundaries between real and virtual life, challenge the vaunted claims of multitasking, and ponder whether people need to establish technology-free zones.
I’ve been dating this guy and the other night we finally took our clothes off. To make a long humiliating story short, he ended up admitting to me that I was too hairy. I’m okay with it, why can’t he be?
Now, as much as I would love to tell you that you are right, listen to me when I say, “You wanna be right or you wanna get laid? (…)
Also, remember, there is the “fun” part where you can pick your own design. The two most popular are the “landing strip” and the “Bermuda Triangle.”
Comments
Posted by Melsy
This is the WORST excuse for “advice” I have ever read! Go find a real man who doesn’t want a little girl’s vajayjay.
Posted by Giz
Horrible column. (…) Moreover, removing all hair is painful, doesn’t last long and leaves the area more open to infection. Nothing about it is attractive.
Posted by J
Please get rid of it, the area in question is the most beautiful landscape on the planet, and I would like to see it.
The first brain scans of men and women having sex and reaching orgasm have revealed striking differences in the way each experiences sexual pleasure. While male brains focus heavily on the physical stimulation involved in sexual contact, this is just one part of a much more complex picture for women, scientists in the Netherlands have found.
The key to female arousal seems rather to be deep relaxation and a lack of anxiety, with direct sensory input from the genitals playing a less critical role.
The scans show that during sexual activity, the parts of the female brain responsible for processing fear, anxiety and emotion start to relax and reduce in activity. This reaches a peak at orgasm, when the female brain’s emotion centres are effectively closed down to produce an almost trance-like state.
The male brain was harder to study during orgasm, because of its shorter duration in men, but the scans nonetheless revealed important differences. Emotion centres were deactivated, though apparently less intensely than in women, and men also appear to concentrate more on the sensations transmitted from the genitals to the brain.
“Men find it more important to be stimulated on the penis than women find it to be stimulated on the clitoris,” Gert Holstege of the University of Groningen said.
This suggests that for men, the physical aspects of sex play a much more significant part in arousal than they do for women, for whom ambience, mood and relaxation are at least as important. (…)
The experiments also revealed a rather surprising effect: both men and women found it easier to have an orgasm when they kept their socks on. (…)
The scans also show that while women may be able to fool their partners with a fake orgasm, the difference is obvious in the brain. Parts of the brain that handle conscious movement light up during fake orgasms but not during real ones, while emotion centres close down during the real thing but never when a woman is pretending.
