An example is this new study from the University of Pittsburgh about muscle-bound men by evolutionary psychologist William Lassek.

Many other studies have shown that women tend to prefer more toned men, and muscle-bound men tend to have more sexual partners than slender men, when other factors are controlled for.

How exactly might evolutionary scientists control for "other factors," like the fact that women are socially conditioned to find muscle-y men attractive? Oh, right. They can't. But a study purporting to show that there is evolutionary evidence for that ought to at least try to tease out the difference between women's supposed evolutionary tendencies — which, if true, should have left us with an over-proportion of Vin Diesels and an underproportion of Justin Longs but hasn't — and women's potential socialization toward a particular body type.

And then there's this study from Indiana University's Heather Rupp which will likely be cited as evidence that women are evolutionarily-inclined against mate-shopping when they have one.

In the study, women both with and without sexual partners showed little difference in their subjective ratings of photos of men when considering such measures as masculinity and attractiveness. However, the women who did not have sexual partners spent more time evaluating photos of men, demonstrating a greater interest in the photos.

No such difference was found between men who had sexual partners and those who did not. "These findings may reflect sex differences in reproductive strategies that may act early in the cognitive processing of potential partners and contribute to sex differences in sexual attraction and behavior," said Rupp, assistant scientist at The Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender and Reproduction.

Again: socialization is quite difficult to tease out from evolutionary impulses. We're all socialized to believe that women want a mate to take care of their offspring ("be faithful") and men want to maximize the genetic differentiation of their offspring ("play the field"), so it is impossible to tell whether a woman's wandering eye is innate or a result of years of socialization that we ought not to have one.

One study, however, attempts to actually disprove these stereotypes. Scientists at Northwestern University have found that, stereotypes about picky women and indiscriminate men to the contrary, women are equally indiscriminate when they have to do the choosing.

Three hundred fifty undergraduates were recruited for the study's speed-dating events. In half of the events, the men rotated while the women sat. In the remaining events, the women rotated. Following each four-minute "date," the participants indicated their romantic desire in that partner and how self-confident they felt. Following the event, the students indicated on a Website whether they would or would not be interested in seeing each partner again.

When the men rotated, the results supported the long-held notion of men being less selective. When the women rotated, this robust sex difference disappeared.

The study draws upon embodiment research that suggests that physical actions alter perception.

In other words, when the scientists structured the experiment to reflect existing social norms (men approaching women), their results conformed with existing social expectations (picky women). When they deliberately, but subtly, changed their approach, their results not longer reflected those social norms. What did the scientists have to say about that?

"Our society is structured in gendered ways that can be subtle but very powerful," Eastwick concluded.

And our experiments about society, gender, relationships and evolution, furthermore, need to be a lot more subtle and a lot more thoughtful about taking that structure into account if they're going to be powerful.

Hunks Get More Sex, But There's A Price To Pay [New Scientist]
Sexual Partner Status Affects A Woman's, But Not A Man's, Interest In The Opposite Sex [Science Daily]
Women May Not Be So Picky After All About Choosing A Mate [EurekAlert]

Earlier: Justin Long And Obama Are Change Even Iran Can Believe In

And, unsurprisingly, they found that men's brains do tend to turn off when there's an attractive woman around.

They made participants – both male and female – talk with a stranger, of either sex, and complete a cognitive task, like mental arithmetic, before and after the interaction.

When men – whether single or not – spoke to women, their ability to carry out the task dropped. But when they spoke to other men, their abilities remained unchanged.

Want to guess how the women in the experiment fared?

Women's performance stayed the same throughout.

The researchers speculate that men are trying so hard to impress women that they're impairing their own cognitive function.

Scott Berry Kaufman of Psychology Today explains:

Since impression management isn't easy (it requires careful cognitive control as one is constantly monitoring and modifying one's behavior), it can be very effortful and cognitively demanding, thus depleting an individual's cognitive resources (consistent with Roy Baumeister's self-regulatory resource model) and therefore can result in declined cognitive performance after the interaction.

As for why effect was most pronounced in men, the researchers cite research that suggests that "compared to women, men are more likely to consider mixed-sex interactions in terms of a mating game.", and therefore "men in particular might therefore be prone to engage in effortful and cognitively demanding attempts to impress an opposite-sex partner."

In other words, it might be socially-ingrained in men to try to impress the opposite sex, but it generally makes them incapable of certain kinds of brain functions (which often then has the opposite effect of impressing women).

As someone subjected to male stupidity in the course of trying to impress me, I can only say, "Duh!"

Researchers: Talking To Women Makes Men Thick [The London Paper]
Interacting With Women Makes Men Stupid [Psychology Today]

Earlier: A Guy's Guide To Not Getting It On
The Unfuckables...The Sequel

The mind-wandering study asked participants to read from Tolstoy's War and Peace and press a key every time they caught themselves thinking about something else. Participants who drank during the study got distracted twice as much as their sober counterparts, but didn't notice it any more often, which will come as no shock to anyone who has ever tried to, say, talk to a philosophy major at a keg party.

While all British minds are doing a bit more booze-induced wandering these days, women showed the biggest increase — 15% now binge once a week, compared to 7% in the mid-90s. Interestingly, the biggest jump in consumption came for women over 65, whose weekly average drinking nearly doubled. Researchers from Oxford Brookes University say women may be drinking more because of advertising, because they have more money, or because — at least in Northern Ireland — they no longer have to worry as much about getting blown up at the bar.

However, another reason may be changes to Britain's incredibly confusing standards for measuring alcohol. According to the Guardian, "Binge drinking is defined as consuming on at least one day a week more than twice the safe limit recommended by the government, which is three to four units of alcohol for a man and two to three units for a woman." The definition of a "unit" changed in 2006, to reflect stronger wine and beer, so now a 175 ml glass of wine is worth two units, while two 125 ml glasses are worth three. The math on this makes no sense even when you're sober. Perhaps if the British government wants to reduce drinking, rather than increasing alcohol taxes, they should make their alcohol guidelines easier to follow than War and Peace.

Alcohol Drinkers Not Only Zone Out — But Also Are Unaware That They Do [ScienceDaily]
Female binge drink rates 'double' [BBC News]
Binge drinking Britain: surge in women consuming harmful amounts of alcohol [Guardian]
More British women drinking to excess [Reuters]

The initial study was conducted in 1948 by Angus J. Bateman, who showed that female fruit flies had fewer mating partners and their overall offspring had less genetic diversity than male fruit flies' overall offspring.

Bateman concluded that, because a single egg is more costly to produce than a single sperm, the number of offspring produced by a female fruit fly was mainly limited by her ability to produce eggs, while a male's reproductive success was limited by the number of females he inseminated. These studies supported the conventional assumption that male animals are competitive and promiscuous while female animals are non-competitive and choosy.

No one disputes the accuracy of Bateman's work, just its indiscriminate application to human behavior without any regard to social of cultural factors. A new study by Dr. Gillian R. Brown at the University of St. Andrews seeks to provide more depth to our understanding of human sexuality.

"The conventional view of promiscuous, undiscriminating males and coy, choosy females has also been applied to our own species," says lead study author Dr. Gillian R. Brown from the School of Psychology at the University of St. Andrews. "We sought to make a comprehensive review of sexual selection theory and examine data on mating behavior and reproductive success in current human populations in order to further our understanding of human sex roles."

That's a rather generous explanation for the acceptance of a model that conforms to cultural norms and expectations of men and women's roles in society and reinforces the idea that women who aren't seeking to settle down with one sex partner are somehow dysfunctional, but ok.

Brown's study, as The Telegraph reports, actually looks at, you know, human behavior.

The study of more than 10,000 people in 18 countries seems to throw on its head the generally accepted expectations that men tend naturally towards promiscuity and women are more particular when it comes to choosing a mate.

Hooray!

What else does it say? Plenty, according to Live Science writer Sally Law.

However, Gillian R. Brown, a professor at the School of Psychology at the University of St Andrews and the study's lead researcher, says that the research also found big differences among populations on the patterns of reproductive success for men and women.

For example, the study cites societies in Botswana, Paraguay and Tanzania in which women – not just men – conceive children with multiple partners.

As is sometimes the case even in America, what with divorces and single parenthood not exactly out of the question.

But there's more!

"Evidence for sex differences in variation in reproductive success alone does not allow us to make generalizations about sex roles, as numerous variables will influence [Bateman's findings] for men and women," Brown writes.

Population size is one such variable: both men and women will be selective about mates when there are lots of options - in a large city, for example. Conversely, neither gender will be choosy in low-population areas. In such a scenario, both men and women will take what they can get.

That probably explains why every woman in every major city I know complains about how their city is the worst to date in.

But Brown's research does show that overall, across the 10,000 subjects in 18 countries, men tended to have more children by different women than women did by men. That, though, requires a fairly basic statistical explanation.

Brown's research also addresses the issue of reproduction within a monogamous partnership; while only 16 percent of societies have monogamous marriage systems, they make up a large percentage of relationships in the developed world. In such societies, variances in male and female reproductive success were similar. Furthermore, in half of the world's polygamous marriages - which account for 83 percent of the world's societies - less than 5 percent of men take more than one wife.

You might be wondering why Brown only looks at reproductive success (the number of mates by whom people have children) versus the number of sex partners. Well, it turns out that's because we all lie about it.

Here is why: the studies reporting these statistics are scientifically unsound, she said, which helps explain the mathematical difficulties in research that finds that men have more sex partners than women. (One such study, conducted by the National Center for Health Statistics, claims that men have an average of seven sex partners during their lifetime, while women have four.)

"[The reported numbers are] logically impossible if we're assuming these are heterosexual interactions and that all individuals have been questioned," Brown says. "We were particularly interested in asking whether the variance (not average) in mating success differs between men and women, but questionnaire studies don't seem to be a sufficiently reliable source of evidence."

In other words, men may be exaggerating upwards, but women are probably also exaggerating downwards, contributing to the expectation that men will have more sex partners and women fewer.

And it's not just women who are being judged. The social expectation for men to sleep around — particularly in the developing world, where Brown's research shows the greatest variance in reproductive success between men and women — is toxic for society at large and the people in it.

Newswire IRIN is running an interview with Purmina Mane, an executive director of the UN Population Fund, who says the idea that men should have multiple sexual partners, take risks, are resilient to disease, reject contraception and be too strong to ask for help continue to affect access to healthcare and reproductive health services and is increasing exposure to the HIV virus for both men and women.

"Late diagnosis and treatment means that many continue to practice unprotected sex, running the risk of reinfection and of unknowingly infecting their partners," said Mane.

I guess the Pope's abstinence-in-Africa-you-don't-need-condoms is working?

Others agree with Mane.

The story also quotes Graca Sambo, an executive director of Forum Mulher, a women's rights NGO in Mozambique, which said the idea that men should have many different sexual partners was a major contributing factor to the country having one of the highest HIV prevalence rates in the world – 16%.

"A lot of men have many sexual partners because this is what is expected of them," she said. "Masculinity is very much instilled by culture and by tradition, which say that men have to be studs."

Which, of course, backs up Brown's findings that promiscuity in men is by no means biological — but it does fit into preconceived notions about expected and appropriate behavior for men and women, which, it turns out, is good for none of us.

Evolution Of Human Sex Roles More Complex Than Described By Universal Theory [EurekAlert]
Men Are No More Promiscuous Than Women, Survey Finds [Telegraph]
Basis for Male Promiscuity Questioned [Live Science]
How Can We Change 'Macho' Attitudes To Sex? [The Guardian]

A new study in The Journal of Sex Research shows that men who self-identify as "fat admirers" not only find overweight women exceedingly attractive, they have an more robust appreciation of feminine beauty than men who don't identify that way. The former men (dubbed FAs) and latter were both shown 10 pictures of women of various body types and asked to pick the woman they found most attractive and to identify the heaviest and thinnest women they found attractive.

The FAs were most attracted to the photo of a woman with a body mass index of 29.24....Furthermore, the study found that FAs considered a wider range of figures to be appealing, including those of two emaciated women (with BMIs lower than 15).

Scientists involved in the study speculated that it was because once those men has rejected "sociocultural norms of attractiveness" by self-identifying and being involved as FAs, they were more readily accepting of a wider range of female beauty.

The control group, meanwhile, supported those conventional ideals, finding the figure with a BMI of 18.45 - which, technically, qualifies as underweight - the most attractive. They also rated the overweight and obese images more negatively overall than the FAs did.

In other words, the other dudes still thought even normal-sized, healthy women were less attractive than underweight women.

To capitalize on this trend, Fox is preparing to launch a new reality series called "More to Love."

[It is] a new reality dating series produced by The Bachelor creator Mike Fleiss that will star a plus-size bachelor as he attempts to woo several plus-size bachelorettes

Because, really, what "normal" size guy would ever fall in love with a "plus-size" girl, amirite? And, even if he did, who would want to watch it?

Some Men Prefer Fat Women [Live Science]
Fox To Debut New 'More to Love' Plus-Size Reality Dating Show On July 28 [Reality TV World]

The study had 28 women and 26 men, all of college age, watch videos of speed-dating sessions. They were then asked to gauge the interest of the speed-date participants. Both sexes were much better at gauging male interest, even when comparing "hard to read" men with "hard to read" women:

"In five of the videos, 80 percent of the observers thought the women shown were interested when in fact they were not — they were acting friendly even though they had no interest in the men."

Here's my favorite quote from study co-author Skyler Place: "Nobody could really read what these deceptive females were doing, including other women."

Uh, maybe they really were just being friendly? As if you needed another reason to slap on your bitchface.

Don't Take Flirtatious Women For Granted [Psychological Science via Times of India]

The rocket scientists at the BBC translate: "In other words, avoid wasting time on attractive individuals who appear unlikely to reciprocate." Wow. this stuff is revelatory. I suppose this study could be useful to The Rules type of girls still convinced that playing hard to get and pretending to be indifferent is the way to snag a man. But to the rest of us who actually enjoy assertiveness as opposed to manipulation, this research is perched in the back of the mental file cabinet we keep marked "No Shit."

Declaring Love Boosts Sex Appeal [BBC]
Scientists Deduce The Key To Finding Love: Declare It [Independent]

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Author of The Rules Tricks Another Dude Into Marrying Her

One, societal expectations which imply that having children is an innately joyful endeavor. In fact, parents are often afraid to admit when they're unhappy because "it runs so counter to our cultural beliefs that children make you happy," Simon notes in an interview with NPR. And two, there aren't as many support networks in place for parents as there used to be.

Newsweek's Lorraine Ali says, "The majority of American parents now work outside the home, have less support from extended family and face a deteriorating education and health-care system, so raising children has not only become more complicated—it has become more expensive." But honestly, these sociological studies of "happiness" always feel essentially empty to me. Because what is happiness and how is it quantifiable in any real way? It's not surprising that people who are so easily swayed by societal expectations that they have children they don't really want are unhappy; but who's to say that they wouldn't have followed other damaging "societal expectations" as they're clearly so out of touch with what they want and who they are?

It's setting yourself up for disaster if you expect any life event to make you instantaneously, cartoonishly happy. But I can tell you this: I was hanging out with my mother a few months ago. We were perched on an escalator and she kept staring at our reflection in the mirrored walls adjacent to the moving staircase. She went silent for a second, and then said to me, "Sometimes the love you have for your children is so overwhelming that you are dumbstruck by it."

Having Kids Makes You Happy [Newsweek]
Studies Show Kids May Not Be 'Bundles of Joy' [NPR]

8% of women between the ages of 25 and 44 live alone, according to the UK Office of National Statistics (ONS), and that's twice as many singletons as twenty years ago. "The ONS report cited recent research which showed that two-thirds of freemales feel that they can enjoy a happy and fulfilled life without a partner," the Telegraph notes. Paula Hall, a shrink with Relate, a nationwide relationship counseling nonprofit in England, tells the Telegraph that many women have become cynical about longterm relationships. "If you're busy and fulfilled with lots of close friends, then relationships may seem a bit irrelevant, emotionally high-risk and a lot of hard work," Hall says. Maybe they just don't want to deal with those scads of men expecting "perfect" relationships.

Men Prefer Being Solo Over A Bad Marriage: Study [Reuters]
Women Shun Marriage In Favour Of Single Life [Telegraph]

So Why Have You Never Been Married?: 10 Insights Into Why He Hasn't Wed [Amazon]

Of course, just off the top of our heads we can think of more than a few exceptions to this study, but according to those Yalies, there are physical manifestations of this male emotional avoidance. "Men had greater blood pressure response to stress, but did not report greater sadness and anxiety, may reflect that they are more likely to try to distract themselves from their physiological arousal, possibly through the use of alcohol," Chaplin tells Science Daily. So the next time your best dude wants to drown his sorrows in booze, perhaps you should get him to talk it out...though you'll probably just end up doing Jaeger bombs with him anyway.

Men Are More Likely Than Women To Crave Alcohol When They Feel Negative Emotions [Science Daily]

Why Don't Girls Play Guitar? [BBC News]
Why don't Little Girls Play The Tuba? [Times of London]

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Having a large social network is also advantageous for a single person's health, but a contented single still does not have the blood pressure of a happily married person, the study showed.

You know what does elevate general health regardless of marital status? Sharing good news, says Science Daily. So don't be bashful about shouting the news of your promotion or that fancy new vibrator you discovered from the rooftop... or at least the bed-top.

Happy Marriage, Better Blood Pressure [CBS News]
Happily Marrieds Have Lower Blood Pressure Than Social Singles [Science Daily]

They're also over-prescribed by a health care system that's in bed with big pharma. Eli Lilly, the makers of Prozac, were accused earlier this year of suppressing a third of the drug trials they performed in order to win FDA approval. From the New York Times report, it sounds like some of Lilly's original trials had results similar to the University of Hull: "In published trials, about 60 percent of people taking the drugs report significant relief from depression, compared with roughly 40 percent of those on placebo pills. But when the less positive, unpublished trials are included, the advantage shrinks: the drugs outperform placebos, but by a modest margin."

According to Dr. Paul Keedwell, of the Institute of Psychiatry in London, the fact that Prozac might not work is a good thing, because depression only makes you stronger. "In its severe form [depression] is terrible and life-threatening, but for many it is a short-term painful episode that can take you out of a stressful situation for a while, according to Keedwell. "It can help people to find a new way of coping with events or your situation, and give you a new perspective, as well as making you more realistic about your aims."

Again, a resounding No shit. Being happy all the time is not only impossible, but dreadfully boring and creatively stifling. There is a range of human emotions that we're all meant to feel. Dealing with post-modern malaise will, for most of us, be a life-long struggle, and severe depression (as anyone who has ever experienced it knows) is a different animal entirely. So to conclude, Prozac doesn't work for everyone, it's normal to be depressed sometimes, and big pharmaceutical companies are filled with crooks and liars. Call me when they discover that Prozac makes you grow a second vagina.

[Image via AdBusters.]

Anti-Depressants 'Of Little Use' [BBC News]
Depression Makes Sufferers Stronger' [Telegraph]
Researchers Find A Bias Toward Upbeat Findings On Antidepressants [New York Times]

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In Defense Of Depression