Are you a Nice Guy who can't seem to get a date because you're too nice?

[Crezth]

It is a difficult question made more difficult because discussing with women is not an option: sustained conversation does not seem possible, however it is possible to gauge the vague, shrieking sounds that come from women and compare them against a chart to determine the optimal vocal arrangement necessary to trigger any means of response from the creatures. However it is by no means an exact science.

 

[Borachio]

It could well be just you, yes. In which case, well done you!

Or on the other hand, you just might be deceiving yourself. Or perhaps you'd just be muddled by everyone, and everything, equally.

 

[caketastydelish]

I'd like to point out that I'm not entirely sure that it's true that "nice guys don't end up with girlfriends". I'm not a fan of overgeneralizations in general, and this seems to be one of them.

I've seen some really genuinely nice guys with girlfriends, and I've also seen some complete jerks with girlfriends. You might as well say "nice girls don't get boyfriends" because the reverse is equally true (or untrue, as I'm having it).

All people are different. No two men are exactly the same, and no two women are exactly the same.

All of that said, a more common correlation (although even this is not always true) is that confident guys are more likely to get girlfriends. Shy guys who won't approach women are less likely to have a girlfriend, but that isn't to say it can never happen.

 

[Borachio]

Sex between two shy people is possible. But unlikely. And who'd know?

 

[caketastydelish]

Maybe they actually hate each other, but they're too shy for confrontation, so they keep dating and eventually have sex, hating it the whole time.

 

[warpus]

So-called alpha males appear to be difficult, unpleasant and unskilled people, in a general or stereotypical sense. Is this true, if so, why should these destructive personality traits be desirable?

1. Confidence. Women can smell it from miles away.
2. Alpha male cavemen were more successful hunters and acquirers of women than their geeky counterparts.

When analyzing this, you really have got to look at humans as just another species. Why do female dolphins pick the mates that they do? Why do turtle females pick the mates that they do?

If you approach the question from that angle, alpha males being more successful with women makes a lot more sense.

 

[Kozmos]

Some women are quite reasonable. In relationships however reason goes out the window. Even with super smart ones.

 

[Farm Boy]

1. Confidence. Women can smell it from miles away.
2. Alpha male cavemen were more successful hunters and acquirers of women than their geeky counterparts.

When analyzing this, you really have got to look at humans as just another species. Why do female dolphins pick the mates that they do? Why do turtle females pick the mates that they do?

If you approach the question from that angle, alpha males being more successful with women makes a lot more sense.

Bear in mind the generalizations of the kind of women that tend to be considered most desirable. This one cuts both ways. Also keep in mind in species that reproduce sexually, even ones that tend to be monogamous, competition is a factor in how those species mate and socialize. Competition that, almost universally, falls on the male. One can't win the game if one is too shy/scared/intimidated to actually play.

"Alpha" males frequently aren't unskilled. They're often very skilled. Usually skilled at the things a social circle or age group values. That's part of the reason the makeup of who is an alpha male changes with age. When you're in your 40s sure, some of the guys who were alpha at 16 still are, but many aren't and some 40 year old alphas weren't very much so 25 years prior.

 

[warpus]

Bear in mind the generalizations of the kind of women that tend to be considered most desirable. This one cuts both ways. Also keep in mind in species that reproduce sexually, even ones that tend to be monogamous, competition is a factor in how those species mate and socialize. Competition that, almost universally, falls on the male. One can't win the game if one is too shy/scared/intimidated to actually play.

"Alpha" males frequently aren't unskilled. They're often very skilled. Usually skilled at the things a social circle or age group values. That's part of the reason the makeup of who is an alpha male changes with age. When you're in your 40s sure, some of the guys who were alpha at 16 still are, but many aren't and some 40 year old alphas weren't very much so 25 years prior.

All good points. In the end I think we agree that alpha males are better able to compete for women, for various reasons. Their women-acquiring arsenals tend to be more impressive, even if they might not know what 2 + 2 equals.

 

[downtown]

So is it just me who finds most women to be no more weird or unfathomable than most men?

Nah, I'm with you too.

 

[Mise]

I'm very sceptical of arguments that say "we evolved that way because of XYZ". I mean, there's just no way to prove or disprove it. Not without, like, a lot of work, anyway. I'm certainly not equipped to do a literature review or write a textbook on it, so I just can't trust these arguments. And even then, when you consider that things that were in textbooks for decades like [wiki]Bateman's Principle[/wiki] are later shown to have serious methodological and inferential errors, rendering the original study and its findings fundamentally flawed, it's hard to get behind any kind of evolutionary hypothesis for human behaviour.

I just don't trust theories that are as general as the ones Warpus is advancing. To me, talking about "alpha male-ness" in that way is on par with saying "ladies in China really liked men with almond-shaped eyes, which is why so many of them have eyes that are more almond-shaped than in European men. Almond-shaped eyes were useful for hunting in China's environment, weather and landscape."

 

[Farm Boy]

I'm very sceptical of arguments that say "we evolved that way because of XYZ". I mean, there's just no way to prove or disprove it. Not without, like, a lot of work, anyway. I'm certainly not equipped to do a literature review or write a textbook on it, so I just can't trust these arguments. And even then, when you consider that things that were in textbooks for decades like [wiki]Bateman's Principle[/wiki] are later shown to have serious methodological and inferential errors, rendering the original study and its findings fundamentally flawed, it's hard to get behind any kind of evolutionary hypothesis for human behaviour.

I just don't trust theories that are as general as the ones Warpus is advancing. To me, talking about "alpha male-ness" in that way is on par with saying "ladies in China really liked men with almond-shaped eyes, which is why so many of them have eyes that are more almond-shaped than in European men. Almond-shaped eyes were useful for hunting in China's environment, weather and landscape."

Keeping things general is why his statments work, and getting specific as your case with the eyes is when they tend to fall apart. Sexual reproduction and mate selection seems - generally - to have a heavy emphasis on male competition across species. Rams with herds, mallard ducks with idiotic camouflage on half the species, birds of paradise with ridiculously cool looking dongly feathers(again only on half). The best theories I have seen on humans recently hypothesize about sperm competition in non-monogamous breeding.

 

[Borachio]

I just don't trust theories that are as general as the ones Warpus is advancing. To me, talking about "alpha male-ness" in that way is on par with saying "ladies in China really liked men with almond-shaped eyes, which is why so many of them have eyes that are more almond-shaped than in European men. Almond-shaped eyes were useful for hunting in China's environment, weather and landscape."

I agree. Evolution by sexual selection (if that's what it's called - actually I'm sure it isn't but I forget) has always seemed a spurious sort of argument to me. Yet how else can you explain a peacock's tail except by what females like to see? For no apparent reason.

Somebody will point out now that to develop a tail which has no function but to attract females shows how fit and robust the male must be. To which I say, well yeah, if that seems logical to you then go with it.

 

[warpus]

I just don't trust theories that are as general as the ones Warpus is advancing. To me, talking about "alpha male-ness" in that way is on par with saying "ladies in China really liked men with almond-shaped eyes, which is why so many of them have eyes that are more almond-shaped than in European men. Almond-shaped eyes were useful for hunting in China's environment, weather and landscape."

*shrug* that's how we analyze the mating habits of the animals on the planet.

We're just another species. Sure, slightly more complicated, but you'll get the most insights into our mating habits if you analyze them from an evolutionary perspective.

There are sociological and cultural influences as well, but biology is a big one. If you ignore it, you won't get a complete picture, only a partial one.

 

[Mise]

To be clear, I'm not saying that sexual selection is nonsense or whatever. I'm saying that I can't trust any specific hypothesis about human evolution that is supposed to predict supposedly universal behaviour among modern humans. There are simply too many unanswered questions. First of all, we're talking about selection pressures that happened 100,000 years ago. We don't know a great deal about that. Secondly, we are extrapolating from a tiny group of people, namely, the observed mating habits of modern Westerners, to the entire human population over all time. Thirdly, we we are proposing that those mating habits are genetic/evolved, rather than socialised/environmental (nature vs nurture). We simply can't be sure about any of these things.

Again, I am absolutely not saying that sexual selection is wrong. I am merely saying that there is very little to prove that a statement like "Alpha male cavemen were more successful hunters and acquirers of women than their geeky counterparts" is in any way true. There are simply so many BS theories about selection, especially as it relates to gender roles, that I'm not inclined to believe any of them without a whole lot of proof. That means literature reviews and textbooks, not internet links or newspaper articles. Just because a narrative sounds plausible doesn't mean it's true.

 

[Mise]

By way of example, it's entirely possible that confident men have more sex not because women are attracted to confidence, but because confident men have the confidence to talk to and ask out more women. Is that not just as plausible as the "evolutionary" hypothesis? If this non-evolutionary hypothesis is correct, then it would predict that other traits that cause men to talk to women and ask them out more often will lead to those men having more sex/sexual partners. If you do the field work, you might find that a lot of traits associated with "arsehole-ish" behaviour will also cause those men to talk to more women and therefore having more sex.

Is there any proof that the "fact" (call it a fact for the sake of argument) that arseholes have more sex is due to the preferences of women, rather than due to behaviours associated with being an arsehole?

EDIT: Actually, come to think of it, are we talking about frequency of sex or number of different sexual partners? You would expect an arsehole to have lots of sexual partners, i.e. to not be as monogamous, because, well, he's an arsehole. So if you measure it by the number of sexual partners, you will confirm that "women like arseholes". But people in monogamous relationships probably have sex more frequently than singletons, so if you measure it by the latter, you might find that "women like nice guys" who settle down in relationships and treat them well. Of course, the reason I put the "conclusions" in scare quotes is because it proves neither thing about what women like: it merely tells you about the behaviour of the men.

 

[Borachio]

How are you determining how much sex these people have?

So confidence could just be related to how much fantasy people report? If it's all self-reporting.

 

[Farm Boy]

good stuff

Oh for sure. I guess that was at least one of the point I was trying to make with what skills are considered "alpha" changing with age. That's probably socialization more than anything. Sexual evolutionary theories are more likely to be correct when analyzing anatomical traits that don't seem to have any direct correlation to survivability. Such as why human testicles are significantly larger proportionally to our closest animal relatives - hence the sperm competition theories.

 

[Chiteng]

I suppose its obvious that you can always have sex w someone and NOT intend to become their mate.

 

[Zelig]

How are you determining how much sex these people have?

Give them a free sex data collection device under the guise of providing something useful while you actually use it to track their sex and serve them advertisements.