Why do some men insult their partners?

Men who habitually insult their wives or girlfriends do so, somewhat paradoxically, as part of a broader strategy to prevent them from leaving for someone else – what evolutionary psychologists call 'mate retention'.

Steve Stewart-Williams and colleagues asked 245 men (average age 29 years) to report how many times in the last month they had insulted their partner using one or more examples from a list of 47 insults, arranged into 4 categories: physical insults, insults about personal value or mental capacity (e.g. “I called my partner an idiot”), accusations of sexual infidelity, and derogating their value as a person (e.g. “I told my partner she will never amount to anything”).

The men were also asked to report their use of 104 mate-retention behaviours, such as whether they became jealous when their partner went out without them, and whether they checked up on where their partner said they would be at a given time.

The men who insulted their partners more also tended to engage in more mate-retention behaviours. A similar association was found in a second experiment in which a separate sample of 372 women were asked to say how often their partners insulted them, and how often they engaged in mate-retention behaviours. The researchers said insults might serve a mate-retention function, by making a “woman feel that she cannot secure a better partner, with the result that she is less likely to defect from the relationship.”

Past research has shown that men who engage in mate-retention behaviours are more likely to be violent towards their partners. This study appears to support that research by showing that such men are also more likely to use what might be considered verbal violence.

The researchers said that future research should also focus on the extent of women's use of partner-directed insults and the function they serve.
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McKibbin, W.F., Goetz, A.T, Shackelford, T.K., Schipper, L.D., Starratt, V.G. & Stewart-Williams, S. (2007). Why do men insult their intimate partners? Personality and Individual Differences, 231-241.

Post written by Christian Jarrett (@psych_writer) for the BPS Research Digest.

Link to related Digest item.

The power of a light touch on the arm

A good-looking man approached 120 women in a night club over a period of three weeks, and asked them to dance. It was in the name of science – the man was an assistant to the psychologist Nicolas Guegen. Remarkably, of the 60 women who he touched lightly on the arm, 65 per cent agreed to a dance, compared with just 43 per cent of the 60 women who he asked without making any physical contact.

A second study involved three male research assistants approaching 240 women in the street and asking them for their phone numbers. Among those 120 women who the researchers touched lightly on the arm, 19 per cent agreed to share their number, compared with 10 per cent of the women with whom no physical contact was made.

Guegen says that when men make this light touch on the women's arms, they are perceived as more dominant which is an attractive trait associated with status.

To test this, more women were asked for their phone numbers in the street. Again, half were touched on the arm and half were not. After the male researchers had done their bit, a female researcher approached the women and asked them questions about the men. Supporting Guegen's explanation, the women who had been touched on the arm tended to rate the male researcher who had approached them as more attractive and more dominant.

This study was conducted in France, and Guegen cautioned the findings might not translate to other cultures. “It is possible that in a non-contact culture, the effect of touch in a courtship relation would be perceived negatively by women,” he said.

This is not the first time psychological research has revealed the social effects of physical touch. Other studies have shown, for example, that when observers view a picture of one person touching another, they perceive the “toucher” to be more dominant than the “touchee”. Yet another study found waiters and waitresses who touched customers lightly on the arm, were perceived more positively than those who made no physical contact.
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Guegen, N. (2007). Courtship compliance: The effect of touch on women's behaviour. Social Influence, 2, 81-97.

Post written by Christian Jarrett (@psych_writer) for the BPS Research Digest.

The downside of having too much love

Those people who give the impression they like pretty much everyone, tend to be popular and liked themselves. But a new study of speed daters suggests the opposite is true in a romantic context. In this case, the more daters a person reported finding desirable, the less likely they were to be rated desirable themselves – a finding not explained by (lack of) physical attractiveness, which was controlled for in the calculations.

The finding suggests a person's desperation for love can be picked up by others in as little as four minutes, an effect that is off-putting to potential dates who want to be made to feel special.

Dan Ariely (MIT) and colleagues made these observations after setting up a speed-dating session among 150 undergrad students. Each student conducted a four-minute 'date' with between 9 and 13 other students of the opposite sex. After each date, the students answered a few brief questions about how desirable they found the last person, how much chemistry they had, and how likely they thought that person was to find the other daters desirable.

“...the need to feel special plays a central role even within the first few moments of a romantic encounter”, the researchers said.
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Eastwick, P.W., Finkel, E.J., Mochon, D. & Ariely, D. (2007). Selective versus unselective romantic desire. Psychological Science, 18, 317-319.

Post written by Christian Jarrett (@psych_writer) for the BPS Research Digest.

The downside of being good-looking AND wealthy

A rich, good-looking man seeking a wife might do well to play down his wealth. That's the implication of a study by John Lycett and colleagues suggesting that some women are wary of men who are both attractive and wealthy.

One hundred and eighty-six female students rated the attractiveness of several men whose photographs were displayed on slides together with 'lonely-hearts' style profiles.

The men's faces were taken from theatrical and modelling agencies and had been categorised earlier as either unattractive, of average attractiveness or highly attractive. The accompanying profiles were standard fare (e.g. “likes socialising, good sense of humour”) but also included the men's careers. These were deliberately chosen to imply high (e.g. Architect), medium (e.g. Teacher) or low (e.g. Postman) status and wealth.

The female students were asked to rate the men for their attractiveness as long-term partners. Overall, the better looking men were rated as more attractive, as were those men with higher status.

Crucially, however, there was an interaction between facial attractiveness and status, such that good-looking men with high status were actually rated as less attractive than good-looking men of medium status. The researchers said this reflected the female strategy of avoiding men who are more likely to be unfaithful in the future.

“We provide the first evidence that a subtle shift in preference takes place at the more desirable end of the mate-choice continuum,” the researchers concluded, “...by showing greater preference for physically attractive males of lower status, females may be slightly adjusting their preferences away from males who are potentially more likely to cheat”.
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Chu, S., Hardaker, R. & Lycett, J.E. (2007). Too good to be 'true'? The handicap of high socio-economic status in attractive males. Personality and Individual Differences, 42, 1291-1300.

Post written by Christian Jarrett (@psych_writer) for the BPS Research Digest.

You hunky smile magnet

It seems beauty isn’t all in the eye of the beholder after all. Researchers have shown women rate a man as more attractive after they’ve seen another woman smiling at him. By contrast, being a jealous bunch, male observers rate a man as less attractive after they’ve seen a woman smiling at him.

Benedict Jones and colleagues at Aberdeen University’s Face Research Laboratory first asked 28 women and 28 men to rate the attractiveness of several pairs of male faces. Next they were shown the same pairs again, except this time one face in each pair was shown with a woman’s face staring at it from the side, either with a smiling or neutral expression. When the participants then rated the male faces for a second time, their ratings had changed for those male faces that had been stared at by a woman.

Female participants rated a male face as more attractive after it had been stared at by a smiling woman, but less attractive if a woman with a neutral expression had stared at it. By contrast, the male participants showed the opposite pattern, tending to rate a male face as less attractive after they’d seen a smiling woman looking at it.

The researchers said this shows our preference for a man’s face is affected by social cues we pick up from how other people look at him. Apparently a similar phenomenon occurs in the animal kingdom – for example female zebra finches prefer a male who they’ve previously seen paired with another female.
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Jones, B.C., DeBruine, L.M., Little, A.C., Burriss, R.P. & Feinburg, D.R. (2007). Social transmission of face preferences among humans. Proceedings of the Royal Society B, published online (open access).

Post written by Christian Jarrett (@psych_writer) for the BPS Research Digest.

Does your boyfriend let you out of his sight?

So your boyfriend wants to hold your hand when you’re out together – that’s probably just a sign of affection and shows that he’s proud to be with you. But then he starts showing up unexpectedly to check that you’re doing what you said you’d be doing; refuses to introduce you to his male friends; and tells you he’ll die if you ever leave him. Uh oh! Evolutionary psychologists call these ‘mate retention behaviours’ and a new study shows they could be related to rates of relationship violence.

Todd Shackleford and colleagues asked 461 men to complete questionnaires about their use of ‘mate retention behaviours’ (see weblink) and their use of violence against their partners. They also asked a separate sample of 560 women to rate their partner’s use of mate retention tactics and their use of violence. Finally, 107 married couples gave the same information concerning the husband’s behaviour.

Across all three samples, the researchers found certain male behaviours tended to be associated with the use of violence against women. Men who were violent toward their partners also tended to use emotional manipulation (e.g. threatening to hurt themselves if their partner left them), to monopolise their partner’s time (e.g. not letting her go out without them), and/or to punish their partner’s infidelity (e.g. by becoming angry when she flirted with anyone else).

Other mate retention behaviours showed the opposite pattern and tended to be associated with a lack of violence. These included telling their partner they love them and spending a lot of money on their partner.

The researchers said “At a practical level, results of these studies can potentially be used to inform women and men, friends and relatives, of danger signs – the specific acts and tactics of mate retention – that portend the possibility of future violence in relationships in order to prevent it before it has been enacted”. They also acknowledged that women are sometimes violent towards men.
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Shackleford, T.K., Goetz, A.T., Buss, D.M., Euler, H.A. & Hoier, S. (2005). When we hurt the ones we love: Predicting violence against women from men’s mate retention. Personal Relationships, 12, 447-463.

Post written by Christian Jarrett (@psych_writer) for the BPS Research Digest.

Link to mate retention inventory

Hungry men prefer bigger women

Men in rich, Western countries tend to prefer thinner women, whereas men in poorer South Pacific countries tend to prefer bigger women. It’s been argued that this is due to cultural and ethnic differences, but increasingly psychologists now believe it has more to do with socioeconomics, so that men prefer bigger women when resources are scarce because a woman being bigger is an implicit sign that she’s got access to resources.

To test this idea further, Viren Swami and Martin Tovee asked 61 male undergraduates at a British University to rate the attractiveness of 50 differently-sized women as depicted in black and white photos. The women were either emaciated, underweight, normal, overweight or obese, according to their body mass index (the ratio of height to weight). They were dressed in identical grey leotards and their faces were obscured. The male participants were recruited as they were entering or exiting the university dining hall, and they rated whether they were hungry or full on a 7-point scale.

The researchers found that the hungrier participants rated heavier women as more attractive than the full participants did. The hungrier men’s ratings were also less affected by the women’s shape, as measured by their hip to waist ratio.

“Temporary affective states can produce individual variation in mate preferences that mirrors patterns of cultural differences”, the researchers concluded. They also speculated about the generalisability of the findings. “If hungry men judge heavier women as more attractive than satiated men, might they also judge other heavy objects as generally more aesthetically pleasing?”, they asked.
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Swami, V. & Tovee, M.J. (2005). Does hunger influence judgments of female physical attractiveness. British Journal of Psychology. In Press, DOI: 10.1348/000712605X80713

Post written by Christian Jarrett (@psych_writer) for the BPS Research Digest.

When women prefer taller men

Women who are in the fertile phase of their menstrual cycle, or who are looking for a short-term relationship, tend to prefer taller men. That’s according to Polish researchers Boguslaw Pawlowski and Grazyna Jasienska who asked 110 women to look at drawings of six male-female couples and say which they thought was the ‘best match’. The illustrated couples varied in the height difference between the man and woman. The man was either 19 per cent taller, 14 per cent taller, 9 per cent taller (the average male-
female height difference in Poland), the couple were the same height or the man was 4 per cent shorter.

More women in the fertile (13) phase of their menstrual cycle than women in the infertile (11) phase of their menstrual cycle chose a couple where the man was 19 or 14 per cent taller. In contrast, many more women in the infertile phase (25) than women in the fertile (8) phase of their cycle chose a couple who were the same height, or where the man was shorter.

Next the researchers asked the women to choose their ideal male-female height difference for a short-term vs. a long-term relationship. Over twice as many women (42) chose a taller man for a short relationship than for a long relationship, rather than the other way around (20). The remaining women chose the same ‘ideal match’ for a long or a short relationship.

“Our results confirm that when women are potentially fertile or seeking a partner for a short-term relationship, they more often choose larger men”, the authors said. “A man’s height may indicate his high quality genotype”, they explained, so “…women follow that strategy which increases the chances for acquiring better genes for their offspring”.
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Pawlowski, B. & Jasienska, G. (2005). Women’s preferences for sexual dimorphism in height depend on menstrual cycle phase and expected duration of relationship. Biological Psychology, 70, 38-43.

Post written by Christian Jarrett (@psych_writer) for the BPS Research Digest.

Looks matter most when it comes to a fling

by Anita Gay at Totton College

Is your partner fit, rich, beautiful and kind? No? Well, individuals who are a perfect 10 in every mating dimension are extremely rare, if they exist at all! So how do we choose which mate characteristics are most important to us when looking for a partner?

Participants chose their preferred partner from descriptions of six pairs of potential mates. Each potential partner had varying levels of warmth/trustworthiness, attractiveness/vitality and status and resources. For each pair, one trait remained constant (e.g. warmth/trustworthiness), whereas the remaining two traits were reversed in positivity across the two partners. For example, one partner was described as: warm and trustworthy, fit and attractive, but poor, with a low status job; whereas the other partner was described as: warm and trustworthy, unattractive and unfit but rich and with a high status job. Participants indicated their preference in three scenarios - a fling, casual date and a long-term relationship.

Both men and women overwhelmingly chose positive levels of warmth/trustworthiness when pitted against status/resources (with levels of attractiveness/vitality kept constant) regardless of whether long-term or short-term liaisons were considered.

However, when attractiveness/vitality was contrasted with warmth/trustworthiness, the results were much more stereotypical! Men desired much higher levels of attractiveness/vitality for both a fling and long-term relationship than women did.

Both men and women tended to maintain or even increase the importance given to attractiveness and vitality when shifting from long-term to short-term relationships, but to lower the importance assigned to warmth and trustworthiness.

"The results were generally as expected", the authors said, "...the sex differences were marked for both long-term relationships and short-term flings; however, unexpectedly, sex differences disappeared when respondents were considering a casual date".
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Fletcher, G. J. O., Tither, J.M., O'Loughlin, C., Friesen, M. & Overall., N. ( 2004). Warm and homely or cold and beautiful? Sex differences in trading off traits in mate selection. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 30, 659-672.