Mate Choice Copying
I met Rich at the university judo club when I was 18. He was a couple of years older than me and he was a very tall, skinny computer geek with a terrible haircut and equally terrible glasses. I don’t think he’ll be too upset with me if I say that he was unappealing to women at that time, although he had plenty of female friends. He was so shy that I had to ask him out (I have a thing for tall, skinny hyper-intelligent geeks with glasses), and he wore a hideous white suit that will forever be immortalised in my memory (O.K. he’ll never forgive me for outing that one!) He was very quiet and sweet.
After we started dating he didn’t suddenly have an image makeover (I’m not in the habit of changing my boyfriends’ appearance, although I did give him some conditioner), but suddenly he became incredibly appealing to women, including his pretty female best friend who had, up until then, completely ignored the fact that he was interested in her. Although she was dating someone else, she suddenly changed her tune, and decided that she wanted him instead, as did most of the other females in the judo club. Women have (on and off) hurled themselves at him ever since. The addition of a wedding ring, several years later, only made matters worse.
We thought that this was a bizarre phenomenon. Now, a new study has confirmed this. Dr Ben Jones at the University of Aberdeen has published a study that proved that women are more likely to be attracted to those men that other women find attractive. This is called “mate choice copying”, and appears widely in nature. Female birds, for example (finches, not women!) mate with males like the males they have seen other females paired with. Now it seems that humans are no different.
Jones asked a panel of women to rate male photos for attractiveness. He then picked two of the photos of different men that the women agreed were equally attractive, and displayed them side by side. The women again agreed the two men were equally attractive. He then inserted a third photo of a beautiful girl looking admiringly at the guy in the left hand photo. Suddenly the panel of women decided that the guy in the left photo was significantly more attractive, and when a panel of men were invited to look at the display, the men displayed open dislike for the guy in the left-hand photo.
This will probably not be news to any of you. Men usually do feel resentful of another guy who appears to be popular with women, simply because it is male nature to be in competition with each other for access to women.
Of course, most of you male photographers out there have constant access to beautiful nude women, which will no doubt result in envy and resentment by your average Joe Bloggs in the street, who can’t understand how you get away with it.
But the interesting thing is that if you do surround yourself with beautiful women (who actually look at you), then you will be a highly desirable Sex God in the eyes of other women.
Not that you care of course, because you’re only interested in the Art, right?!
Cheeky Lee, in one of my favourite images from her shoot.
After we started dating he didn’t suddenly have an image makeover (I’m not in the habit of changing my boyfriends’ appearance, although I did give him some conditioner), but suddenly he became incredibly appealing to women, including his pretty female best friend who had, up until then, completely ignored the fact that he was interested in her. Although she was dating someone else, she suddenly changed her tune, and decided that she wanted him instead, as did most of the other females in the judo club. Women have (on and off) hurled themselves at him ever since. The addition of a wedding ring, several years later, only made matters worse.
We thought that this was a bizarre phenomenon. Now, a new study has confirmed this. Dr Ben Jones at the University of Aberdeen has published a study that proved that women are more likely to be attracted to those men that other women find attractive. This is called “mate choice copying”, and appears widely in nature. Female birds, for example (finches, not women!) mate with males like the males they have seen other females paired with. Now it seems that humans are no different.
Jones asked a panel of women to rate male photos for attractiveness. He then picked two of the photos of different men that the women agreed were equally attractive, and displayed them side by side. The women again agreed the two men were equally attractive. He then inserted a third photo of a beautiful girl looking admiringly at the guy in the left hand photo. Suddenly the panel of women decided that the guy in the left photo was significantly more attractive, and when a panel of men were invited to look at the display, the men displayed open dislike for the guy in the left-hand photo.
This will probably not be news to any of you. Men usually do feel resentful of another guy who appears to be popular with women, simply because it is male nature to be in competition with each other for access to women.
Of course, most of you male photographers out there have constant access to beautiful nude women, which will no doubt result in envy and resentment by your average Joe Bloggs in the street, who can’t understand how you get away with it.
But the interesting thing is that if you do surround yourself with beautiful women (who actually look at you), then you will be a highly desirable Sex God in the eyes of other women.
Not that you care of course, because you’re only interested in the Art, right?!
Cheeky Lee, in one of my favourite images from her shoot.
posted by Lin at 6:38 PM
3 Comments:
Huh! This is not only very interesting in its own right (I seem to recall seeing an article about the study myself), but it offers an alternate explanation about models who agree to work with me. For a new model prospect, I always refer them to a page that contains both a number of my better photos and positive comments received from models after their sessions. So by this analysis, I become more appealing as a photographer, and a new model will want to work with me, both because I have photographed other appealing models and because those models have stated their appreciation for me and attraction to what we did together. It's a nice example of positive feedback.
I'm seen often enough with beautiful young women. These women do look at me when we're together. This, indeed, causes other women to look. But depending on the ages of those other "looking" women, the looks they give either denote confusion or bewilderment (if they're young) or resentment or disgust if they're older. So far, for the fifty-something jimmyd, having gorgeous blonde jewelry on his arm hasn't done much for his love life. So much for pychological/sociological studies.
Thankfully, I can be somewhat witty at times. That seems to help more than pretty young chicks.
Yep. Art.
You bet.
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