5 Insignificant Things That Determine Who You Have Sex With
#2. Whether You Approach Them or They Approach You
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When you see an attractive person in a bar, chances are you will start working up the courage to go over and say hello. You want to seem assertive and sure of yourself, after all, and people admire that sort of thing, right?
Not so fast. Who walks up to whom in a bar or club could be the deciding factor in getting those phone digits. It turns out the best chance you have of getting that special someone interested in you may be if you can somehow get them to be the one to approach you.
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That should do it.
Science Says:
Don't mix up what we're saying here -- it sounds stupidly obvious to say, "The one doing the approaching tends to be the one who finds the other more attractive." Well, duh. That's why they approached them. Right?
That's not the point; the point is that if we put a gun to your head and made you approach a completely random guy or girl, the act of approaching will make you find that person more attractive.
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The obvious conclusion? Guns make everything sexy.
According to experiments, anyway. The researchers set up a "speed dating" situation where pairs would be randomly matched. When women were the ones who remained seated, they were pickier about the men they found attractive. But when the positions were reversed, they became 2 percent more likely to say yes to a potential date. Men showed an even more drastic difference, with those approaching the seated women 7 percent less likely to say they were attracted to her.
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"I see you can bend your body at a 90-degree angle for relaxation ... I like that."
It also brought the number of men and women who said yes to a potential partner almost exactly even, indicating that women's perceived "pickiness" when it comes to men may just be the fact that it has always been more socially acceptable for men to approach them first.
Or, it could be that when you walk toward something, your brain just assumes you want the thing. Maybe because it figures it saves the effort of going and finding something else.
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"At this point it's either decades of intimacy or turning slightly to the left."
#1. Your Level of Facial Scarring
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Let's say you're a not just a man, but a real man. We here at Cracked know what that's like. You've lived a hard life out on the streets. Every day is a struggle to survive, filled with knife fights and dancing.
We understand your struggles, man. Sometimes 4/4 time is hard.
Maybe you got cut during one of these beautifully choreographed West Side Story-type numbers and are worried that your sex life (and film career) is over. Don't despair: Women find men with facial scars extremely attractive.
Unfortunately, if you are looking for "the one," women are more likely to see scarred men as dangerous seekers of adventure (i.e., short-term sex partners) than as mates with whom to settle down.
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"Yeah, this was a mountain lion. He tripped me up and I fell onto the TV stand."
And if you're a woman and you're thinking that it's the same opposite effect as the other items on this list, because no man could love a scarred woman, well, it turns out it really doesn't matter either way.
Science Says:
At least one study found that women actually rate men with "post-traumatic scarring" more attractive than men with no scars. Once again, we owe this to evolution. A man with facial scars is seen as a survivor of difficult fights, possibly with a saber tooth tiger. This in turn means his children would be more likely to survive if they ever had a run-in with some large, deadly animal.
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"I may die from trauma any minute, but yes. Sex."
Women's interest in these men was purely short-term, though, indicating once again that women like manly men (read: the asshole who will start bar fights and end up with scars all over his stupid, manly face) for sexual flings, while they gravitate to more "feminine" men for long-term relationships and the care of their children.
Strangely, the study did not find a preference for or against women with facial scars, possibly indicating once again that men aren't that picky. Who cares if she has been in a few knife fights, as long as there's the chance she'll still sleep with you?
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"Hey, doll, is that a knife or ... it's a knife. Right. My wallet's in my coat."
Follow Kathy on Twitter or befriend her on Facebook. Paul K. Pickett is a Canadian writer who never smiles and can be contacted at paulkpickett@hotmail.com.
For more ways Cracked will help you find the perfect mate, check out 6 Things Everyone Knows About Women (That Aren't True) and 6 Things Men Do To Get Laid That Science Says Turn Women Off.
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"Unfortunately, if you are looking for "the one," women are more likely to see scarred men as dangerous seekers of adventure (i.e., short-term sex partners) than as mates with whom to settle down."
ReplyWhat are you talking about? The source that was given directly states "They found that women preferred men with facial scars for short-term relationships and EQUALLY PREFERRED scarred and un-scarred faces for long-term relationships."
"Women's interest in these men was purely short-term, though, indicating once again that women like manly men (read: the a*****e who will start bar fights and end up with scars all over his stupid, manly face) for sexual flings, while they gravitate to more "feminine" men for long-term relationships and the care of their children"
ReplyWhat fool marries a woman with kids?
Here's a tip, boys. She doesn't care about you. She sees you as a financial support to raise the children she didn't have with you.
If the whore is going around getting pregnant with assholes because it's fun in the short term, her ass can rot on welfare.
... I interpreted that line as the man will be more likely to stick around after fathering her children.
Studies also show that strangely, if you're rich, none of this s**t matters. To the lottery machine!
ReplyIs the author of this article aware of how culturally biased some of this stuff is? Just because something is attractive in America doesn't mean it's attractive elsewhere. (For example, smiling is not considered generally attractive at all in France, where it is regarded as a sign of weakness and mental inferiority. Yeah, I know, the French are insane anyway, but you see my point.)
ReplySource for this? I mean, I agree, the French are generally insane, but my French boyfriend and his French friends are all pretty smiley people, and he seems to like mine. To be fair, they're usually smiling because they've just made a very mean joke and/or won a pointless political argument (both sides will believe they have won).
Actually you have a point in the general sense that all psychological tests are biased towards the culture of their test takers. Since most of the psychology test takers are college freshman, translating psychological test results to the wider population is a recurring problem.
I'm surprised that the "dominance" thing in #4 wasn't mentioned in #5, since an elevated chin clearly = dominance, while lowered chin is more submissive. Apologies if this has been mentioned earlier.
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I'll give this spambot credit for at least being slightly relevant to the article.
"Research suggests that smiling may be regarded as a generally feminine trait."
ReplySource?
The Joker tilts his head backwards, scowls, and has facial scars. My Dark Knight OTP succeeds once again!
ReplyWell married now, but I definitely found the opposite of #2 when I was single. I often found myself quite excited anytime a cute girl came up to me and just started talking to me. I would often think of it later after I've gone home and think it was awesome that a hot girl would actually try to pick ME up and not the other way around. I would think of it much more than if I had just approached a girl and had a really great conversation and she seemed interested.
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i smile alot..dont have any facial scars..and walk with my chin down..DOESNT MATTER! HAD SEX!
ReplyWomen may expect to be treated differently (in general), but they like to get laid too!
Well said, Mr. rampoop.
also, WHOA DID YOU SAY SEVEN PERCENT! am i the only one thinking "so it might have in effect in less than 1 in 10 of these situations. whoopdi doo thats a big f*****g breakthrough discovery you made, dumbass." when studying medicine we learn a bit about statistics (not enough to be experts) and im tempted to believe that the "p" in this study would be pretty high with such a small relationship and even if not, there are dozens, if not hundreds, of factors that play into how attractive, one person finds another. there is no way these studies can control for all of them to objectively analyze this one factor. and even if they could, these scenarios run parallel to the "Number Needed to Treat" statistic in deciding how many patients need to be treated for one positive outcome to be caused by the treatment. in this case, you have to repeat the scenario 50 times in the case of the 2% relationship to get one situation where your factor was the deciding factor. has anyone without any STD's approached or been by approached by someone 50 times in a bar? thats why when i read about studies like these i just roll my eyes and disregard them.
Reply Hide All See All 5 RepliesSeems like you disagreed, then worked backwards to try to find ways to make it sound authoritative. Does disregarding the generalizations made by research make anything easier for you?
massively disproportionate level of vitriol.
neither of these replies made any sense
When studying medicine you'd also learn that there is this thing called peer review in science, where if someone claims to discover something, all other scientists try and disprove them because scientists are huge dicks and I swear that turtles can communicate with me telepathically but according to all those stupid scientists that isnt true...
nihouma you genuinely made me lol
I call bullshit as well. If we had the option to have sex with someone after looking at one photo of them, maybe. But in real life women don't walk around head down, perpetually smiling. If a woman APPROACHED me in a bar with a smile plastered on her face and staring at the floor, I wouldn't give a s**t how sexy her scar was; I'd just figure the Joker had gotten to her or something.
ReplyI totally believe the ring finger one though; that has authenticity written all over it.
i have a tiny scar on my scalp from my brother hitting me with a brick. Ladies...
ReplyI have a tiny scar above one eyebrow from trying to polevault with a bamboo stick much to thin to support a human being without bending. Leftovers...
I call bullshit. I am tall, scarred, I don't smile, my ring finger is long and I never approach anyone. So where are all the babes I'm meant to be getting? Huh? You know what I think? No? Well, I'll tell ya. I think these studies are being falsified intentionally so we all go around not getting laid, leaving all the sex unhad. Then, the horny nerdlingers use the good advice learned from their studies into how to get laid to swoop down on their sexy prey like horny, nerdy, chicken-hawks.
ReplySeriously, I'm starting to get the impression this should have been called "5 Things only an idiot would believe"
Reply Hide All See All 6 RepliesTaking into account #3. We also have to recall the claim that spiders crawl in your mouth while you're sleeping. That you should drink eight glasses of water a day. Or that your tongue has a 'map'. Basically, we've been told a load of bullshit lots of times in the past. Well, I call bullshit here. This thing is an Urban Legen in the making. First of all. Various claims have been made (I think including on this site) that if you were exposed to less prenatal testosterone while in the whomb, you may be a younger sibling - and also more likely to be gay. (Yes that's what 'they' are said) Well if 'they' are right. Then how come women constantly claim (about men) 'all the best looking ones are gay'. Pairing the alleged results would mean that you can 'tell a gay person (more likely) by how ugly they are'....
Then there's the fact that I'm a younger sibling. My brother is quite a ways away, so I can't check with him. But *assuming* his ring finger is quite a bit longer than mine, he would be the 'attractive' one. So how is it that (despite him being about 4 inches taller than me) people can look me right in the face and get the two of us confused? 'Haha! I'm sorry, even though I know he's the good looking one, and you're f*****g atrocious, for about five or six minutes there - of looking right at your face - I thought maybe you were the exact same guy... You look a lot alike! But no seriously - you're the ugly one'...
And what about those dudes and ladies who use to be f*****g awful to look at in school, and suddenly they're 'the shit' because they went on a diet and found a trainer?
Ever here of 'Chinese face reading' or 'palmastry' how about 'Phrenology'? That's what this sounds like to me. What about when you were a kid, and some other kid went; "You know they say if your hand is bigger than your face it means you're stupid." then you put your hand up near your face, and they smacked the back of it, so that you would smack yourself. It was a pretty good demonstration of how stupid you were (being). Kind of like how gullible is not in the dictionary... That's what this is; I imagine the scientific community is metaphorically making anyone who believes this stupid crap smack the s**t out of themselves.
Oh, and apparently my ring finger is quite a bit longer than my index. You know how much I give a fuck? -_-
TL;DR
And 'They are said'? What an idiot? Somebody should ban this guy from posting on this site.
*Sigh* The internet
k
fascinating... have to disagree entirely with #4 though... a man with a great smile is a huge turn-on
You cared enough to check.
And you cared so little you had to post a 5 paragraph rebuttal explaining why none of these things mattered in your situation.
What is it about the internet that brings out the keyboard virtuosos?
Those faces in #5 look like they were rendered with the Oblivion engine...
ReplyIs it just me, or are both Jacob and Edward smiling in the poster directly below the statement "every Twilight poster features Jacob or Edward either scowling or brooding."
Reply Hide All See All 3 RepliesDo some people consider that a scowl instead, or was the person picking out art a Twilight fan who wanted to be a jerk?
it's photoshopped.
wow dude. dumb. ass.
You are an idiot
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ReplyAlso, their faces are probably scarred.