Quick article about the 5000000th study or survey showing the same thing; that (generally speaking) men can't intuit the emotional state behind a human expression as well as women can, and that men judge virtually any response from a woman short of spitting at them and telling them to "fuck off and die!" as a sign of sexual interest.
Farris and her colleagues examined non-verbal communication in a group of 280 undergraduates, both men and women with an average age of 20 years old.
The students viewed images of women on a computer screen and had to categorize each as friendly, sexually interested, sad or rejecting. Each student reported on 280 photographs, which had been sorted previously into one of the categories based on surveys completed by different groups of students.
Overall, women categorized more images correctly than men did. When it came to friendly gestures, men were more likely than women to interpret these to mean sexual interest.
More surprising, the researchers found guys were also confused by sexual cues. When images of gals meant to show allure flashed onto the screen, male students mistook the allure as amicable signals.
I wasn't going to bother posting about the article, since I thought the survey findings about as surprising and controversial as "water is wet," but after I skimmed it and got to the comments, I began to grow very depressed. The amount of misogynistic idiocy being spilled in the thread is literally painful. I have seldom been as embarrassed to be a man as I was while skimming over the posts about that article. A few have some nuance, and a few aren't caveman in their reasoning, but the vast majority essentially boil down to, "It's not my fault I can't understand women, because the bitches refuse to make clear how they're feeling at all times!" I really hope this article was linked from some right wing blogs, since that would at least account for the preponderance of stupidity and misogyny demonstrated by most of the commenters. If they weren't sent by some
Kim du Toit-esque crank, but are actually representative of the usual readers of LiveScience.com, then we're pretty much doomed to further incompetent, ineffective, war-mongering as a means of penis-compensation, freely-elected political leadership for the foreseeable future.
It's a shame too, since the issue of male perceptions of female actions is such an interesting one. It's one of the main animating issues in evolutionary psychology, and comes up continually in all sorts of male/female psychology, gender studies, human interaction studies, etc. I've
read and discussed/reviewed a few
books on the issue, and with such a highly non-qualified background, I shall now regale you with a quick overview of the issue, much as I presented in email to Malaya, who forwarded me the article link in the first place.
The fact that, on the whole, men are far more likely than women to want casual sexual contact, and to interpret friendliness as sexual interest, is not open to debate. It's been conclusively demonstrated in countless studies and experiments, such as the one cited in the afore-linked article. Even the commenters on that article don't dispute that fact. They just blame women for being subtle and hard to read and deceptive. (Which is perfectly fair, since men are always and at all times open and forthright about their feelings when dealing with women. Right?) This is pretty ironic, since the guys complaining about that would what, prefer that 99% of the women they meet outright told them, "I do not find you attractive and would prefer to never see you again, while the thought of engaging in sexual activity with you is gives me the sensation as would immersing my face in spider eggs." Not so much, I think. Still want openness and non-subtlety, boys?
No one's arguing that men have trouble reading women. More trouble than women have reading men (or other women, in theory), at least. Why this is was not addressed in the article, and it's not really the point at hand anyway. One can speculate, and there are many competing and overlapping theories, all of which are some parts truth and some parts fail. Women work harder at it and get better over time, women are naturally more empathic and better able to predict what other people are feeling, men are naturally disinclined to want to know/care what other people feel, etc. Those are general theories, though. Of more interest to me, and I suspect to most of the angry, defensive commenters on the article itself, is how this male non-insight factors into sexual relations.
The explanation in
The Evolution of Desire was that over time, if men benefited by misinterpreting all signals as sexual ones, since if even a small % of the time that resulted in sex (whether because the woman gave in, or the woman's signals were very subtle and might have been missed) that was a reproductive advantage and the man's genes would pass on more successfully. Maybe or maybe not, but it's a theory, though a fairly iffy one, as is usually the case with evo psych. Supporting/relating theories from the same field include stuff like; women who could more accurately intuit the moods of their offspring had more surviving young, women who could better anticipate threats from angry people survived more often, etc.
To move away from evolutionary theories for human psychology and abilities, how does this sort of thing translate into behavior in the modern world? Why do men believe any sort of female friendliness advertises sexual interest, despite countless incidents arguing to the contrary?
My theory/analysis is this: When men get to know women, men look for reasons
not to have sex, since the default is "Do her, if possible." For a man to immediately rule that interest out, she has to be unattractive, unavailable, way out of acceptable age range, etc. There's a gray area, of course. A woman can (and most women are) borderline on any or all of those categories, and in that case it's a matter of degrees. The man figures how much effort it would take to win over that woman, and if the effort would be worth it. Availability is a huge factor; a man will take home anything with a pulse at closing time, (beer goggles = drunk + dwindling options) but will only spend time/money/energy trying to win over a woman that he really desires. Clearly that's true of anything; no one saves up money to buy things they don't much want/need, but it's magnified with sex/dating.
Women, conversely, have a default of not having sex, and therefore look for reasons
to have sex with a guy. They must be won over by looks, personality, resources, etc. This also varies by individual and situation, of course. Women in a singles bar are looking harder and effectively lowering their standards for a man.
In both cases, the ultimate purpose effects the judgment quite a bit, and again, these are somewhat reversed between the genders. Especially when you consider what's valued for different types of relationships. Superficial things are more valued for short term flings, but aren't what people value as highly for LTRs.
Men have lower standards of attractiveness or personality for short term relationships than they do for long term. Men will fuck any girl for a one night stand, but are much pickier about who they'll marry. Women, conversely, tend to have higher standards for short term relationships (they'll go groupie on highly desirable men, such as rock stars or athletes, in ways they'd never do for ugly losers), but will marry less attractive men, since in an LTR qualities such as income/resources, patience, kindness, loving nature, etc, are more important than flashy traits like good looks, hot body, etc.
This, I think, largely sums up the "nice guys" typical complaint about how women are always their friends, and then go and fuck some asshole frat guy who inevitably cheats on and/or dumps them. Nice guys often handicap themselves with a poor appearance or lack of social skills, but even when they're more suitable, they're never going to project a rock star/most eligible bachelor vibe, which is what draws women into casual sexual encounters. Such a vibe is an active deterrent to LTR success though, and many women are scared away by it, once they stop fooling themselves that they can get the guy to settle down or change his ways. Witness all the charismatic, unrepentant multiple baby daddies on The Maury Show, and all the sad sack, devoted, broken hearted, cuckolded husbands sharing the stage with them and their weeping, remorseful wives.
The Evolution of Desire used this as part of a "beautiful sons" hypothesis, theorizing that women had a biological urge to cheat with gorgeous men, for the likely appearance improvement it would confer on their children, who would then have higher reproductive success, and thus widely propagate the mother's genes. Needless to say, this theory requires that the woman's husband not know he's been cheated on, since he's being counted on to provide for the children as if they were his own. This sort of thing isn't just a theory; various medical studies have shown at least a 10% illegitimacy rate in general populations. Your mom is almost certainly your mom, since it's pretty clearly which woman a baby emerges from. Your dad is quite possibly not your dad, though, for equally obvious reasons. I'm skimming very quickly here, and
The Evolution of Desire, and my review of it, goes into far more detail on these issues.
So, yes, men aren't as good at judging signals from women, and yes, women could possibly make their signals more obvious. But men could also work to improve their perception, or ask (difficult) questions that would elicit more direct responses, obviating the need to try to read subtle body language signals that the man has repeatedly proven himself unable to grasp. In any case, posting angry, defensive, semi-pathetic replies to scientific articles isn't going to bring any progress or improvement.
Labels: gender issues, psychology
