According to the Times of London, University of Helsinki researcher Markus Jokela has found that attractive women (those rated in the second highest quartile of hotness) had 16% more children their less attractive peers, while very attractive (top quartile) women had 6% more. The Times couples this with previous research by evolutionary psychologist Satoshi Kanazawa (author of, no joke, Why Men Gamble and Women Buy Shoes: How Evolution Shaped the Way We Behave), which found that good-looking parents were "26% less likely to have sons." If true, I guess this would explain Sasha and Malia. Kanazawa says,

If more attractive parents have more daughters and if physical attractiveness is heritable, it logically follows that women over many generations gradually become more physically attractive on average than men.

So is this true? Let's look at Jokela's study first. Feminist Law Professors points us to the abstract, which says the study was conducted on "1244 women, 997 men born between 1937 and 1940." Feminist Law Profs also reports that the basis for attractiveness was yearbook photos from the 1957 graduating classes at Wisconsin high schools. But people on average married earlier in 1957 and they do now, and had children earlier, so whether you were "hot in high school" may have had much more to do with your "reproductive success" than it does today. The study didn't track the women's attractiveness as they got older, nor did it study women from later generations, who may have had more options to confound the purported link between attractiveness at age 18 and popping out lots of kids.

Now to Kanazawa's study. At least one statistician has called his numbers into question. Razib at Gene Expression links to this critique of Kanazawa's work, which states that if you do the math right, the most attractive parents in his study had "an 8% higher rate of girls," and that the 26% figure "cannot be interpreted in the way suggested in the paper." "This is particularly unfortunate," says statistician Andrew Gelman, "since 26% was the number reported in the press."

Razib also points out that the idea of women getting more attractive over time is complicated by the constant presence of mutations, and that attractiveness difference between the sexes would likely be very slow to emerge, if it emerges at all. But perhaps the most disturbing thing about Satoshi Kanazawa is not his flawed research, but his politics. From an editorial in Pyschology Today (published during the 2008 primary):

Here's a little thought experiment. Imagine that, on September 11, 2001, when the Twin Towers came down, the President of the United States was not George W. Bush, but Ann Coulter. What would have happened then? On September 12, President Coulter would have ordered the US military forces to drop 35 nuclear bombs throughout the Middle East, killing all of our actual and potential enemy combatants, and their wives and children. On September 13, the war would have been over and won, without a single American life lost.

Yes, we need a woman in the White House, but not the one who's running.

That's right — if only we'd had Ann Coulter instead of Bush in the White House, the world would be a better place. But the real question is, who's hotter?

Women Are Getting More Beautiful [TimesOnline]
Are Women Getting Better Looking? [Gene Expression]
The Science Of Sexism [Feminist Law Professors]
Physical Attractiveness And Reproductive Success In Humans: Evidence From The Late 20th Century United States [Evolution and Human Behavior]
Why We Are Losing This War [Psychology Today]

Warburton polled 441 university students about their parents' bad behavior, such as ""making a child feel ashamed," being unloving or rejecting, and frequently telling the child they were stupid or would fail." Then he "asked questions designed to uncover destructive thinking patterns in the students, such as being "clingy" out of a fear of being abandoned." He identified twenty-two percent of mothers as "toxic" (a possible reason for the Britney Spears pic that accompanies the story in the Herald), along with fourteen percent of fathers.

One possible explanation for the results, admits Warburton, is that "kids spend more time with their mothers, especially in the crucial early years." But what if people also remember their mothers less fondly than their fathers for other reasons? Because they have higher expectations for female parents to be warm and nurturing? Or perhaps because they've been conditioned to think — a la the "refrigerator mother" theory — that their moms are to blame for their problems? Having subjects self-report on the "toxicity" of their mothers seems especially fraught with error. So, frankly, do the questions designed to uncover "unhelpful patterns of thinking." Who's to decide what's "unhelpful"? The whole study seems like specious mommy-bashing to us, but what do you think? In the long, complicated process of fucking you up, do moms do more than their fair share?

The Sins Of The Mothers [Sydney Morning Herald]

Turns out the study does make a distinction between "vaginal orgasm" and "clitoral orgasm." Vaginal orgasm is defined as orgasm resulting from "penile buffeting of the cervix" (hottest description of sex we've read all day) and not by clitoral stimulation. The study alleges that because more nerves and hormones are involved in cervix-buffeting action, vaginal orgasms are better for "sexual satiety and mental health." Women who can orgasm vaginally also apparently less likely to use "immature psychological defense mechanisms" like converting psychological problems into physical ailments.

So how did those sexologists determine whether a woman could achieve this sexual gold standard? "The basis for judgment was the global impression of the women's free, fluid, energetic, sensual manner of walking." Judging the sensuality of a woman's walk sounds like a job for scientists at Maxim University, but it is worth noting that the scientists were accurate over 80% of the time in judging whether a woman could have a vaginal orgasm.

What does this mean? It means that in a study population of sixteen Belgian university students, a particular sexual response may be associated with a particular walk. What the scientists have added to this somewhat interesting revelation are value judgments — a "free, fluid, energetic, sensual" walk, "immature defense mechanisms." They even say that their study may support the notion that "muscle blocks" are related to "impairment of sexual and character function." Basically the whole study hinges on the rather Freudian notion that some behaviors are more "mature" than others, and that if we don't walk sensually we might have a malfunctioning character.

But there's hope! The authors note that they misidentified two women as vaginally orgasmic who actually were not. They may have just been wrong, they admit, but "it might be that the women have the capacity for vaginal orgasm, but have not yet had sufficient experience or met a man of sufficient quality to induce vaginal orgasm." Yes, men, this study has something for you to feel bad about too. If your partner can't come, it's probably because your "quality" sucks. Better get to a quality therapist right away.

Earlier: Something In The Way She Moves: Does A Woman's Gait Predict Her Orgasmic Ability?

First of all, let's take the term "history of vaginal orgasm." We've asked for access to the study itself, but so far we only have the press release to go on. According to this rather bizarre document, "history of vaginal orgasm" appears to mean a woman's ability to have orgasms from penile-vaginal sex. But does that mean penis contact alone, or was additional clitoral stimulation also allowed? Since only about 7 percent of women can always come from P-in-the-V alone, the question is an important one.

Then there's study author Stuart Brody's analysis: "Blocked pelvic muscles, which might be associated with psychosexual impairments, could both impair vaginal orgasmic response and gait." Brody also hypothesizes that women who experience penile-vaginal orgasm are more confident. Could be true, but it shouldn't be. Having an orgasm isn't like sinking a free throw or delivering a PowerPoint presentation — it's not a skill women should judge themselves on. Thinking of yourself as good or bad at orgasms (a mindset only encouraged by the use of words like "impairment") probably leads to worse sex, not better.

The fun continues! The authors say that "confidence might also be related to the relationship(s) that a woman has had, given the finding that specifically penile-vaginal orgasm is associated with indices of better relationship quality." That study is online (subscription-only), and it was conducted on 30 Portuguese women who "were all undergraduate psychology students, workers in a facility for the mentally retarded, or performing artists" (a follow-up study will no doubt consider the relationship quality of cowgirls, aquarium workers, and rodeo clowns). These women rated their relationships more highly if they experienced penile-vaginal orgasms, but not orgasms from anal, oral, or masturbation. Again no data on whether in those P-V orgasms included vibrator or finger assistance. Do sexologists not get that this is important? Apparently not, nor do they shy away from statements like "It is possible that women who are focused on clitoral masturbatory stimulation are less attuned to the more interactive and neurophysiologically more complex behavior of penile-vaginal intercourse" (nah, they're probably just blind) or "Characterological factors might lead some women to choose sexual behaviors other than penile-vaginal intercourse for the very reason that those other behaviors are less intimate" (because the intimacy of an act is totally a measurable quantity that's the same for everyone).

I don't mean to knock sex research here — it can be interesting and even useful. And I'm prepared to believe that penile-vaginal sex has unique benefits for some heterosexual couples. But let's take these studies for what they are — measurements of other people, and often incomplete measurements at that. They can't measure what makes us feel good, and they shouldn't dictate how we feel about ourselves.

Gait May Be Associated With Orgasmic Ability [EurekAlert]

Men with the gene, which, as the Washington Post notes, regulates the hormone vasopressin, are more likely to live with women without marrying them; if they are married, these men are more likely to fight with their spouses and consider divorce. Their female partners (the study only looked at heterosexual couples) also "reported lower levels of satisfaction, affection, cohesion and consensus in the relationship" than partners of men without the variant.

"No one is saying biology is destiny," says anthropologist Helen Fisher, who studies romantic love. She might marry a man with the "love-rat gene" — "but," she says, "I might not start a joint bank account with them for the first few years."

Kidding aside, this study looks at first glance like another great way to reduce human relationships to biological imperatives. As if comparisons between men and male animals weren't popular enough, the Post cites an earlier study in which the same gene variant was found in mountain voles, who are apparently more caddish than their prairie cousins. (Interestingly, Ayelet Waldman got the jump on this years ago, calling her faithful husband Michael Chabon a "prairie vole.")

People seem to find it comforting to believe that their behavior is predetermined. Fisher says a man with the variant "might be able to use the knowledge to ignore tugs of restlessness he might feel in his marriage: "You can say, 'Oh, it is just my DNA, and I am going to ignore it.'" Certainly better than the alternative — "oh, it is just my DNA, and I can't do anything about it" — but still kind of disturbing. The danger in putting too much stock in this kind of research is that we'll use it as yet another proxy for actual communication in relationships. In the last five years, the science sections of newspapers have started to read a little like Cosmo — they tell us how to learn all about our men without ever actually asking.

On the other hand, the study does counter a spate of recent books and articles that blame women for male inability to commit. In addition to Dante Moore, there's psychotherapist Gary Neuman, whose The Truth About Cheating: Why Men Stray and What You Can Do to Prevent It says "Men will eventually find their way into the arms of another if they are not getting enough sex at home." And of course there's Elroy Riggs at the Central Kentucky News-Journal, who blames divorce on modern women's unwillingness to whip up homemade biscuits.

If the love-rat gene makes people realize that infidelity is often more about the cheater than the cheat-ee, then more power to the Karolinska Institute. The most interesting research, however, has yet to be done. The Institute plans to study whether oxytocin, another hormone, affects women's ability to commit. This study might take some of the annoying stereotypical sting out of sex research. Thus far, much of it has been about why men "can't commit," with the assumption that women want them to. Corresponding research into women's predispositions might underscore the fact that we're not all sad little lady voles who sit around waiting for our man vole to come home. Nor are we slaves to biology. Some men and some women want to commit, and some don't, and our goal should be to avoid a mismatch of the two, not to pore over our genes for predictors of our happiness.

The love-rat gene: Why some men are born to cause trouble and strife
Study Links Gene Variant in Men to Marital Discord
Monogamy gene found in people
Author risks fury of millions of women with a claim that THEY are to blame when husbands stray