Is natural selection picking "bad boys" for reproduction?
 

I'm not sure what to make of this study. I was always taught, and firmly believe, that being a gentleman and an overall nice person is important, that others should always be treated with respect, and that politeness counts. And then something like this comes along, which jibes intuitively with what we know, but doesn't seem to fit anything like what we also know is a strategy for societal success.I got to this article via Overcoming Bias, a blog I really like a lot. And Prof Hanson didn't even really comment on the article as much as throw the issue out for comment - does it seem correct? Should it be correct? And perhaps most critically, what could account for women (in the aggregate, not individuals) cooperating with this strategy by continuing to give sexual rewards to men with these traits?

What do all of you think?

Mating is a socio-genetic dog and pony show. You take the etiquette and customs of the day and combine them with the timeless physical fitness factor.

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Dude, totally my favorite subject! This topic totally sounds like the rants I used to engage in my TFP journal.

*cracks knuckles, cranks Jack in the Box handle on the side of his head*

The logic: Women want to mate with the "strong" one and nest with the "stable" one. It maximizes the fitness and survivability of their offspring as well as the fitness of their bank account and the contents of their refrigerator.

Admit it: What girl doesn't wanna screw (insert hot celebrity) and shack up with (insert rich old coot)? I argue that women that suggest otherwise are simply being sentimental, not logical. Why would they not want to have offspring with someone who has a superior body and live with someone who can provide them a cushy lifestyle that will maximize their future prospects. The bullshit answer is always "feelings" and that's okay with me. Humans overcome these impulses and find mates that please their higher needs such as those for companionship, something that isn't easily made qualitative.

This whole thread? Other species engage in it all the time. Monogamy, while good for tax purposes, is generally bad for evolution. Birds that "mate for life" are often found giving birth to chicks with all sorts of DNA. Back at the nest: While Humble Hank is off looking for juicy worms, Susie Snarky is speed-banging Raunchy Ralph for his genetic squirtings. Humble Hank doesn't know that she's double-dipping (or being double-dipped) and continues to provide the food and attention she needs while she gets a higher level of genetic material that means Hank Jr. doesn't have the same retarded tail feathers or snaggly beak that daddy does... it's all about the grass being greener in the other guy's sperm. Raunchy Ralph doesn't give a shit about anybody but himself (probably sucks at nest building and remembering to bring worms back for others), but he's successful in that nature made him bigger and stronger and more aggressive than the others... and thus he's way-super-hot in bird terms.

Math: Nature tells us that we want better, bigger, harder, stronger, faster... but those traits (whatever they are), when manifested in a potential mate, in all likelihood, equal a mate that won't stick around (...and why would they? They have more ass to chase!) and might even eat the kids one day when dinner is fifteen seconds late.

Dickheads rule: Evolution supports the self-centered human as the most self-centered man will probably be the most intelligent, most aggressive, make the cut above the highest amount of other males, mate with the most females, and other things like eat the biggest steak, drive the fastest car, and wipe his ass with the most expensive TP. It would seem individual survival is the best kind of survival, at least according to nature. It's the same philosophy they tout on airplanes regarding the emergency oxygen mask: Put your mask on first so you can help others aka SAVE YOURSELF.

Henry Rollins (oh-god-Crompsin-mentioned-him-again) repeatedly covers this topic in his books, speaking of the animal in man and how the swine of the crotch-sheathing two-step has simply been dressed up with the pearls of particular attitudes, behaviors, and social conventions. Humans don't have antlers to crack or tailfeathers to display... we have lame fist fights in high school and orange Mitsubishi Eclipses with turbos.

This of course is all my opinion without an ounce of research.

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How do you think all those ass-ugly guys in '80s hair bands got laid, anyway? Their charm? The make-up? Tight pants? No. They were narcissistic assholes and somehow women equate that with strength.

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Martian, this is why Ronny James Dio never got laid. He cared too much.

Hey C-Dad. Long time no read. I began to dissect and address your post and became so caught up in it I had to stop. Whoa. You might hear from me again, but the only thing I can address right now is this:

Too much caring? Probably not all.

Higamous hogamous
women are monogamous.

Hogamous higamous
men are polygamous.

I forgot who wrote that.

a) does natural selection "do" things?
i thought it was a kind of inferential construct.
now here it is, moving things about.
but if it moves things about, how is it not just god, except retuned (in this case) with a dickhead biais?

b) ronny james dio?
you mean the substitute ozzy?

this has made something shake in my skull.
i need a beverage.

The nice-guy strategy is for beta males like me. It's a competitive set of traits that convinces women we will stick around for the children.

Our traits include being funny and sensitive, liking children and small pets, and we often clean up after ourselves.

We might not get the most tail, but, hey, it's better than getting none.

We have higher rates of being cuckolded, but as long as we get what we can, we consider ourselves successful enough.

ditto on the beverage.

carry on.

Nicely done, sir, nicely done. I hope you don't mind me paraphrasing you.

In all seriousness, I think that there's some basis in fact here, although just like everything else, humans have fucked it up with "society" and "progress". Biologically speaking there's nothing that would make any woman want to worship at the cock of Bill Gates. He does have a boatload of money, but after a certain point there are diminishing returns for the amount of it.

Spirituous and alcoholic, I hope. It lubricates the synapses.

Seriously, though, I just don't get what women would see in narcissistic, psychopathic, Macchiavellian men? What's the attraction? I could understand powerful men, but that's a different trait.

"Bad boys" just brag about it more. "Nice guys" who play it well can be just as reproductively successful as bad boys, but one of the tenets of the 'nice guy' reproductive strategy is that you're not allowed to boast about it.

They both have the potential to be incredibly successful in terms of reproductive success, its just that 'nice guys' are unable to boast about it as loudly or as as proudly as 'bad guys'. The flipside is that the 'nice guys' get to whine about the 'bad boys'.

So for men who want to be able to whine but not brag, 'nice guys' is the way to go, but for men who like to brag but not whine, 'bad guy' is the way to go.

sure, Jinn, except that the study linked up in the OP seems to confirm that the bad boys really are getting more, quantity-wise. It's not just the issue of who brags. Whether quantity is what should be aimed for is a totally different question. But quantity-wise it appears to be that the bad boys get more.

And Will, that's interesting but it doesn't answer the question why women reward "bad boy" behavior by supplying the bad boys with sexual favors. I can figure out why bad boy behaviors persist if they are effective - what I don't understand is why many women find that behavior attractive.

Is there a place for humility in nature? Perhaps you're just another chess player waiting for the rooks to move away from the queen?

Key word? Enough. I dig it. Enough is enough to make ya happy.

I think it's a tertiary motivation: You have better things in life to do than worry about superuberfit offspring. You have places to see and books to read and crafts to construct and food to try and a whole world to experience.

Perhaps the thing that makes us different than mere animals.

We notice the world around us and value it for simply being there.

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I wouldn't define myself or anybody else as a "Alpha Male" or "Beta Male" because there is too much societal control on such activities. I can't be all Alpha Male and bust a cap in guys hitting on my girlfriend, now can I? I'm not all beta male because I... well... let's leave that alone for the moment.

:sad:

I define natural selection the inevitable "natural" process operating in the background that gets to poke through and say, "Hi!" every once in a while when we drop the facade of being civilized beings... say, remove the ties that bind such as language and family relationships and increase the hardships of competition for food and mates. Religion, philosophy... mere shingles we use to cover the roof of the "hot animal machine" we eventually retrograde into when circumstances require. Natural selection is very do or die, no? I'm not that noble... if survival depended on it, I'd probably take eating (most of) you if I had the choice between cannibalism or starving to death. Not that TFP is a menu or anything.

Was the combination of neural flavors too much? I know Dio was a stretch. Do you feel the need to stand up and shout like a rainbow in the dark?

AWESOME.

Crompsin has managed to pack a better argument than I was thinking of formulating, so I'll have to basically say "what he said".

Thing is: Real "bad boys" don't even brag. They don't get the point of bragging. They just "hit it" and run. They have a sexual body count like some people have World of Warcraft characters... just a bunch of numbers that are important because they're bigger than everybody else's.

If all young women were raised in supportive, loving families - with loving, attentive, non-abusive, emotionally available fathers - I think we'd see this statistic go way, way down. Alas.

Not to mention staffing problems at the local strip club.

I'm going to make some big assumptions about what you mean by "bad boys".

In order to maximize her offspring's inclusive fitness, a woman may be innately attracted to a male who is also gene centered. Those men who serve their own implicit interests are genetically stronger than those who don't, and as that has become a survival trait, those women who were attracted to such a man had better offspring, making that attraction a survival trait by association.

Quantity vs quality. Although if i understand Cdad's point correctly they may be one and the same - the mixing of DNA brings about better quality humans. But in everyday life dude, as much as we may want to we cant keep going around mixin it up because as you pointed out who will be looking after the better, more beautiful offspring? Besides, you bad boys get older.

Okay. Thats all for now.

over ice with a twist.

Totally a societal construct. Was the nuclear family of the 1950s ideal? Not in my book. As appealing as the "Bitch, get in the kitchen and get my beer." thing is to the primitive part of my brain, I need a woman that has an education and, more importantly, wants an education.

I read somewhere that education is the number one method of birth control in most third world countries.

I can't relate to this thread at all, just thought I'd share :p

Excuse me. That should have been over ice with a twist, bad boy.

That is a prurient image for sure.
Cool.

This thread is fascinating.

I read this and enjoyed the discussion. But am left which women you are considering. Women you actually know? Or, if so, most of the women you know? Or me, for that matter.

Some of this seems to be the product of People magazine and novels. I have met a reasonable number of people in my life, including some women who would lie down for the suggested reasons and some sociopaths, but honestly not that many. So, wondering how much of this is likely or average.

And that is reasonable to ask because natural selection works on group averages. If most women and most men don't behave this way, well, this isn't a good explanation.

Alta

Any woman who is sexually attracted to men who do not conform to reasonable social norms, i.e. proper manners, sympathy and empathy, etc. would fall under this discussion.

And where are those people to be found, in these parts?... I don't think I've made the acquaintance of any on TFP.

geez--the study produces a profile of the sexual-aesthetic preferences of a group of 200 18-22 year olds.

no wonder it's so rife with cliche.


no offense.
harumph.

Yeah, pretty much. I'm not saying they don't exist, because I've known plenty of women like that, but more often than not, those women are also inherently attracted to drama, and guess what those bad boys bring? Drama. I try not to associate with those kinds of people any more.

I love the so-called "beta males" Baraka referred to in his post. I can't say I've ever been interested in a stereotypical bad boy--oh, I mean, sure, sometimes Jason Statham turns me on with his ass-kicking, but it doesn't really work that way in my actual life. I'm more interested in having a compatible partnership, and I just don't see that happening with the alpha male/bad boy/whatever he is.

Yup.

Snowy--I'm with you, but I'm sure that doesn't come as a surprise to anyone here.

Actually, monogamy (for a social species) can actually be considered better for evolution than polygamy. If we relied on genetic fitness alone, rather than social relationships, to determine our species' future, there would be a lot fewer people in the world and our technology would never be where it is today. Monogamous relationships foster the survival variety in the human gene pool, and variety is the driving force of evolution. Sure, if I have three kids by three different men you could say I am contributing to variety in the gene pool, but if I don't have someone to help me care for them that variety will die out before it reaches reproductive age.

A scholar of social evolution will tell you that your individual survival is only important because you will help care for your children, your children's children, your siblings' children, and x other future generations carrying parts of your same genetic information. If you die? Who cares as long as your relative survive? The survival of the group, the other carriers of the same genes, is more important than the individual. Women may see traits contributing to an individual's survival as attractive due to their genetic fitness potential, but ultimately it means jack shit unless the progeny survives, which requires social interaction and cooperation.

Being a self-centered asshole, to me, is not at all a measure of strength. Family men are really the strongest men I know (it takes a lot to balance family, work, education, fitness, life in general), and a lack of concern for others is a big turn off. Sure, it can provide a sense of mystery that allows for initial attraction, but one night stands hardly EVER result in pregnancy. A woman is more likely to reproduce with someone she appreciates and is comfortable and practiced with in bed (orgasms DO help sperm reach the egg, you know) than with someone she sleeps with just for the thrill of it.

My two cents in a nutshell: monogamy is good for humans, pricks are unattractive, relationships result in more pregnancies than flings.

Word. :thumbsup: It's far easier to put way too much time into only one of those things ("work" is a default for a lot of men--thank goodness, not all); real strength and maturity (those two are synonymous, if you ask me) for both men AND women means juggling all with aplomb, not barely keeping your head above water. That has always been one of the foremost characteristics in mind when trying to figure out if a relationship was going to work in the long term. "Bad" guys might be alluring, but it doesn't take much insight to see right through it, to their cowardly interior. Usually, most women work it out of their system after 1, maybe 2 bad relationships with those kind of men, if they even made the mistake in the first place.

I'm confused as to why my name is attached to this. Are you comparing me with Dio, or is it just that you know I'd get the ref?

I always figured Dio never got laid because of this:

http://www.getreadytorock.com/review...en_hell2lm.jpg

I've never been particularly clear on what an alpha male is vs a beta male. So far as I've ever been able to determine I incorporate aspects of both and could get a lot more tail than I do, were I so inclined (I know this because there was a time when I did). I'm generally not inclined because detached pussy isn't as fun as it sounds. I get bored easily, and one night stands get old after a while. I expect a woman to keep me on my toes, physically and mentally.

I'm not entirely sure that the so-called 'dark triad' is so much successful. Proving that selfish guys get more ass doesn't necessarily mean that it's a better trait from an evolutionary standpoint. The problem is the layers; there are social aspects at play that go past the base physical.

A selfish guy is more likely to sleep with a girl because he doesn't give a shit about her. A 'nice' guy (lack of a better word here) might decide not to for fear of taking advantage of the drunk chick at the party. Or perhaps the 'nice' guys are the ones who are programmed genetically/socially to look for a monogamous female partner. One could argue that this is a valid evolutionary strategy, since if she doesn't stray there aren't other guys' sperm choking his out.

Let's make sure we keep in mind that the goal of evolution is not for the individual to survive, but rather for the offspring to survive.

I think that blaming everything on genetics is sort of in vogue at the moment. It gets overused.

Random musings.

I'm not a big fan of the nice vs bad labels. But I would use the polygamous vs monogamous one. (Even though you can't guarantee that the monogamous ones won't cheat...) And it seems like there is no problems (except increased risk of STDs) if females sleep with a guy who has had previous female partners, even if it is just a one time thing. She can tell that he has some good physical qualities and may not even care to want to settle down and start a family with this 'bad' boy. It does satisfy her urge to reproduce and that guy is willing to be flashy and advertise that he wants sex. The guy is content with getting different girls, even though a few or many other guys have been with them.

I wonder if they marked this image with the colors dark blue for those guys that thought they were bad and light blue for those that thought they were good (and include the abstinent ones in it), what they would find:
http://www.livescience.com/php/multi...ne+high+school.

It is a study that needs to be more in-depth and look at a lot of different cities, economic levels, education levels, race and parents to really make it better. But, if you go down to your local 20-something bar, it is evident that it is happening there. I would also like to see the researchers take a look at the effect of birth control and feminist attitudes that "I don't need a man" and how that effects things. When you don't need a man in your life to raise a family, what good is having a kid with the short fat guy when she could pick the 6'7" guy who goes to bed with a different girl every night?

This is why there are no such things as alpha human, beta human, etc. I use the terms loosely.

Bingo. Hence the benefit and advantage of the family man.

Which is odd. I read somewhere recently that biological determinism died before I was born. I'd be as happy with its comeback as I would be with social Darwinism's. :expressionless:

It's really the genes rather than the offspring and reproduction rather than survival.

I'm reasonably sure that the difference is semantic. The genes surviving equates to the offspring surviving. Reproduction requires survival, at least until it is successfully accomplished. In the case of homo sapiens sapiens the child-rearing strategy is used, which means that one equates to the other.

If we were talking arthropods, the distinction would be significant. Since we're not, I think it's really just a quibble.

Bad genes end a genetic line, not the species.

Hang on, who said anything about ending the species? I have bad genes, does that mean we're all doomed?

Offspring vs genes and survive vs reproduce. Neither of those is in anyway related to genetic line vs species in any way I can see.