You've Got a Great Personality!

Have you have heard the saying that if someone has a great personality than it’s code for they are interesting but not attractive? Well, I’m ready to talk about why that’s just not true, and what people really find the most attractive, and important in choosing a mate.

There are a multitude of traits that people take into consideration when choosing a mate. From watching movies, and looking at magazine advertisements you would think that the most important trait to most individuals would be physical attractiveness. A study by Bojan Todosijević, Snežana Ljubinković, and Aleksandra Arančić entitled “Mate selection criteria: A trait desirability assessment study of sex differences in Serbia” shows that in a study of 127 individuals that physical attractiveness comes in at number 22 on a list of 60 different traits.

The study shows that the top ten traits that people look for in a mate are, in order from most importance; sincerity, faithfulness, tenderness, reliability, communicative, passion, carefulness, amusing, love for children, and self-confidence. None of these traits has anything to do with any sort of physical feature.

In this article it talks about how it is most popularly believed that men usually look for physical attractiveness in a woman while women look more for great personality characteristics and are not as interested in physical attractiveness. This also proves to be somewhat of a misconception. Women find strength and thinness as factors when deciding who they choose as a mate. These qualities can be attributed back to previous blog entries about the qualities that women looked for in the past that could reveal that the particular man was more capable of survival.

When it comes to negative traits it discusses which traits are the most negative and who tolerates these traits more readily. Some particular traits that men are able to tolerate better than women are the traits fearfulness, self-pity, and aggressiveness. Women might not be able to accept these qualities are readily as men can because these traits are not conventional masculine. The traits that are seen as the 10 least desirable are from less undesirable to more undesirable; shyness, overweight, introversion, spoilt brat, self-pity, aggressiveness, fearfulness, insecurity, selfishness, and conceitedness.

One of the most interesting bits of information that I found was the fact that in the past women were less involved in society in the area of the work force and in status than men. You would think that women would be able to choose mates with statuses lower than themselves since many women now have very high paying jobs and are capable of supporting not only themselves but others as well. Women are still shown to prefer higher status mates even when they are at a very high status themselves when it comes to income.

In the end what people are really looking for in a mate does have a lot to do with personality but it’s really a good balance between physical attractiveness, status, and specific personality traits. It is shown in this study that want people want to someone that they can grow with and having a satisfying relationship. The comparison that I like the best is that a relationship should be like peanut butter and jelly you can't have one with out the other.

You're So Vain, You'll Probably Choose a Mate That's Just Like You

Humans choose their mates based on many different variables. One of those variables is likeness. To be more specific I am referring to physical likeness. After reading an article by Liliana Alvarez, about an experiment done to test the theory that we are attracted to others like ourselves, I found a lot of insightful information. The article is titled "Narcissism guides mate selection: Humans mate assortatively, as revealed by facial resemblance, following an algorithm of 'self seeking like'."

My first thought was why would we want to find a mate that looks similar to ourselves? I thought that the theory might not have been very stable, because if we looked for others physically similar to ourselves than inbreeding would probably occur since close and even distant families members would theoretically resemble each other the most. Through reading this article I discovered that our instincts lead us away from both out-breeding and in-breeding since both can have deleterious effects. Too much out-breeding and in-breeding can both lead to too much homogenization which will lead to a decrease in variability. This is probably why we choose mates who look similar but have no linkable relation to ourselves.

In the experiment documented by Alvarez 36 randomly chosen couples were compared and the similarities between the six couples pictured is quite surprising. This picture can be found in the article at this link on page 6.

Different individuals were then asked to identify different things such as which male and female look most closely related, and which male and female look like they are a couple. The results of the experiment show that people matched the couples that looked the most similar to each other in both situations.

Another reason, that was stated in the article, as to why we choose to mate with people who look similar to ourselves, is the fear of rejection. People who think that they are less attractive than another individual have less of a chance of asking that individual on a date because they fear the idea of being rejected by a person that they believe to be very attractive.

People were also asked to rate the individuals pictures on how attractive they were. Another result was that people usually ended up pairing the people they considered most attractive with each other, and so on down the line to the people that they considered the least attractive to themselves. These pairings of individuals on this basis also have relatively accurate results.

So where does this like of physical similarity stem from? According to Alvarez it stems from our parents. A process called imprinting is occurring when we are small children, and it is the process of formulating what we consider to be attractive qualities in our minds. As it states in this article there is no way to define what is attractive and what is beautiful. That is decided by the individual, but as we have discussed that idea of beauty comes from what we imprint as children, which just happens to be our parents who are very physically similar to ourselves.

All of this boils down to one of the assumptions of Evolution, non-random mating. Because if mating were random than people would just mate with anyone without any criteria necessary. Non-random mating is inherently assortative. We all have specific things that we like and that we don't like and we sort through people based on these criteria, as to who we would like to mate with.

Physical likeness is just one piece of a larger picture of why we choose the people that we choose as our partners, but it is also a very important one when it comes down to the instinctual pressure to avoid excessive out-breeding and in-breeding. There is a saying that came to mind while I was reading this article, "you must first learn to love yourself before you love another", and after reading the article I concluded that once you love yourself you'll want to love someone just like you.

Music and Sexual Selection

Music is something that has been around for hundreds of thousands of years if not longer, but why? What are the benefits of music, and why have we evolved with such great musical ability? After reading an article entitled "Evolution of human music through sexual selection" by Geoffrey Miller Ph.D. I felt like my questions concerning this topic were answered and thoroughly expounded upon.

Darwin was discussed briefly throughout the essay and is a good basis to start from concerning this topic. Darwin was one of the first to say that music concerning humans is definitely connected to sexual selection. While others were unsure of its purpose. Music is most simply comparable to the songs and mating calls of other species, the best example being birds. Music must be a part of sexual selection, but it was definitely not selected for by the evolutionary force of natural selection. The ability to produce music doesn't seem like a very evolutionary helpful quality. Music is loud and noisy so it can easily attract predators. It also incites competition between different musicians as to who is the better of the two. Music is usually accompanied by dancing which can be exhausting which can lead the person to be more vulnerable to predators. So just like the peacock's tail this ability evolved and flourished because of sexual selection. It seems like most of the more detrimental qualities toward our fitness come from sexual selection and yet this type of selection is still extremely important.

So since it appear that music and dance have no good qualities when it comes to survival, what are the qualities that make it so relevant for sexual selection. Just like the peacock feathers showed hints of a more robust and healthy male, music may do the same thing. People who are more musically inclined may be seen as being more creative and intelligent. Skills such as learning a musical instrument take time and practice. This time and effort are seen as abilities that can be applied to raising children. It's better to have a mate with lots of energy than a lazy one. It takes a lot of energy and strength to play for long periods of time, and to play with precision. So these individuals may be seen as stronger. Dancing which goes hand in hand with music takes a lot of strength and energy as well, and for a female looking for a mate they can weed out the strong and the weak. For our ancestors a lot of energy was needed for hunting and finding food, so this energy could be a sign that they are proficient hunters.

In today's music the most common lyrics are about love. Music is seen as an extension of language. Because language is seen as a species typical trait of humans, so is music, especially since music can be found in all cultures of humans around the world. More specifically music with lyrics, since the sound that birds make is defined as music as well. Since the best reason we can find for the existence of music is because of sexual selection, then it can be inferred that music is used to attract a mate. Even today the basic reason for music is still grounded in the idea of sexual selection. People gather at concerts in groups. Some people may argue that concerts are group gatherings to bring groups of people closer together and make their group bond stronger. And although this may hold true to a certain extent, many people definitely go to concerts because there is a good chance that there will be someone there that they like and that shares something in common with them. It is also a funny coincidence that so many young boys around the age of puberty suddenly want to play an instrument . This might have something to do with the fact that girls their age are talking about their favorite artist and how cute he is and so on. Dr. Miller also mentioned that a famous musician Miles Davis once said that musicians"avoid having sex before important concerts, because they need the sexual “edge” to play well (p.7)" It is interesting that there are more male musicians in the history of music than females. This may also be because of sexual selection since the male uses music to impress the female.

While reading this essay I learned a new word. That word is neophilia which is the preference for novel things in courtship displays. This can be seen in music throughout the world. There are so many different genres, and artists are constantly looking for that new sound to interest listeners, and they have been successful in keeping our attention and entertaining us every day. So, after reading about sexual selection I can't help but think as I listen to the Beatles about all of the screaming fans and how sexual selection was acting on them just like it did on our ancestors.