It may be that the unattractive man has a lot of money, or some other compelling attribute.
But a new study by Satoshi Kanazawa, an evolutionary psychologist at the London School of Economics, suggests it may be a simple supply-and-demand issue: there are more beautiful women in the world than there are handsome men.
Why? Kanazawa argues it’s because good-looking parents are 36% more likely to have a baby daughter as their first child than a baby son — which suggests, evolutionarily speaking, that beauty is a trait more valuable for women than for men. The study was conducted with data from 3,000 Americans, derived from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, and was published in the Journal of Theoretical Biology.
According to this news article, “Selection pressure means when parents have traits they can pass on that are better for boys than for girls, they are more likely to have boys. Such traits include large size, strength and aggression, which might help a man compete for mates. On the other hand, parents with heritable traits that are more advantageous to girls are more likely to have daughters.”
Beauty is apparently just one “female” trait. Kanazawa has done previous research suggesting that nurses, social workers and kindergarten teachers — those with “empathic” traits — also had more daughters than sons. Meanwhile, he found that scientists, mathematicians and engineers are more likely to have sons than daughters.
It is good that Kanazawa is only a researcher and not, say, the president of Harvard. If he were, that last finding about scientists may have gotten him fired.
(Hat tip: Nadine Groney)
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Just background- I have looked at the same dataset for other reasons before and can you that the data on attractiveness is very sketchy. It is rated on a 1-5 basis by the interviewer. Data on race of interviewer is not recorded. So if there are systematic pairings of mixed race between interviewer and interviewee that would bias the results substantially. I don’t know if they even included interviewer fixed effects.
Just background- I have looked at the same dataset for other reasons before and can you that the data on attractiveness is very sketchy. It is rated on a 1-5 basis by the interviewer. Data on race of interviewer is not recorded. So if there are systematic pairings of mixed race between interviewer and interviewee that would bias the results substantially. I don’t know if they even included interviewer fixed effects.
An underlying assumption here that has always fascinated me is the reliance on so-called (by me at least) rules of attraction. The rule relied upon here is that attractive people are supposed to mate with other attractive people. It is like beauty entitles you to date other beautiful people, which is something we think we everyone wants to do, and so we are amazed when a beautiful person will pass this opportunity up. I have always been interested in how people pair up. Do people assess their own level of beauty, or intelligence, or any other trait and then pick a mate accordingly? And when that breaks down, is that when we begin to look at a pairing with curiosity?
An underlying assumption here that has always fascinated me is the reliance on so-called (by me at least) rules of attraction. The rule relied upon here is that attractive people are supposed to mate with other attractive people. It is like beauty entitles you to date other beautiful people, which is something we think we everyone wants to do, and so we are amazed when a beautiful person will pass this opportunity up. I have always been interested in how people pair up. Do people assess their own level of beauty, or intelligence, or any other trait and then pick a mate accordingly? And when that breaks down, is that when we begin to look at a pairing with curiosity?
I agree with #1: Beauty is a matter of taste. And the special “male” trait of scientist and engineers can be a major obstacle to be attractive. Women prefer “female” traits like empathy feeling … you name it. I will stick with my old theory “Why Do Beautiful Women Sometimes Marry Unattractive Men?”
1. Yet another proof: “Good Marketing is worth every Cent”.
2. Big wallet. Big tits.
I agree with #1: Beauty is a matter of taste. And the special “male” trait of scientist and engineers can be a major obstacle to be attractive. Women prefer “female” traits like empathy feeling … you name it. I will stick with my old theory “Why Do Beautiful Women Sometimes Marry Unattractive Men?”
1. Yet another proof: “Good Marketing is worth every Cent”.
2. Big wallet. Big tits.
How many ways is this “study” flawed? We do not have a working definition of beauty, let alone any way of measuring it. We do not have a working definition of intelligence, nor any way of measuring it. We don’t have any reason to believe that either of them are hereditary, to any interesting degree (the most attractive people, by my lights, often have relatively unattractive parents, and lots of smart people have dumb kids (and vice-versa)). However we define or describe them, we certainly don’t have any reason to think they’re mutually exclusive. This seems to me to be almost a parody of social science in its most meretricious form: the construction of a monument of cliches on top of a foundation of sand.
I’m with starfish on this one. The whole study seems suspect to me, from sample size to analysis to conclusions. A study of 3000 Americans, based on very subjective data premises, then extrapolated to reflect changes in all humankind across it’s history and breadth of cultures and societal mores? Talk about a stretch…
Even the contention that types of physical prowess or attractiveness supports one sex more than another consistently through history and cultures would need to be argued at great length before we could reach such conclusions.
How many ways is this “study” flawed? We do not have a working definition of beauty, let alone any way of measuring it. We do not have a working definition of intelligence, nor any way of measuring it. We don’t have any reason to believe that either of them are hereditary, to any interesting degree (the most attractive people, by my lights, often have relatively unattractive parents, and lots of smart people have dumb kids (and vice-versa)). However we define or describe them, we certainly don’t have any reason to think they’re mutually exclusive. This seems to me to be almost a parody of social science in its most meretricious form: the construction of a monument of cliches on top of a foundation of sand.