Responsiveness or, conversely, callousness affects our attractiveness in the eyes of members of the opposite sex in different ways at an early stage of acquaintance. Men easily “peck” attention and sympathy, but women cannot be seduced by responsiveness and care.
Women don’t like the “bad guys” anymore. But you can’t tempt them with responsiveness and care either. This conclusion was reached by an international team of psychologists who found out how responsiveness or, conversely, callousness affects sexual attractiveness in the eyes of members of the opposite sex at an early stage of dating.
Research report* published in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin.
It turned out that at the stage of the first dates, these qualities of a potential partner are not of interest to women: they begin to play their role later when it comes to long-term stable relationships.
But everything is in order. Experts from the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya (Israel), the University of Rochester in New York and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (USA) conducted a series of three tests, each of which involved from 80 to 161 students.
During the tests, each participant talked with a representative of the opposite sex either online, without seeing the interlocutor (but before the conversation they were shown a photo – the same one for everyone), or “live”, and during the conversation he mentioned his problems and failures, for example, he talked about failed exam.
The interlocutors reacted either with responsiveness and sympathy (for example, “how difficult it must have been for you”), or callously and indifferently (“in my opinion, nothing special”). After the interviews, the participants rated their potential partners on scales of responsiveness, sexual attractiveness, and femininity or masculinity.
Among men, the result was predictable and easily explained.
All these qualities – care, attention, the ability to feel other people’s problems and sympathize, in other words, responsiveness – correspond to traditional gender stereotypes. Therefore, the men who showed their interlocutors were considered more feminine and, therefore, more attractive, including sexually.
Caring, attention, empathy, responsiveness correspond to traditional gender stereotypes
Women, on the other hand, did not choose either “good guys” or “bad guys,” that is, strictly speaking, the study did not reveal a statistically significant correlation between the responsiveness of a potential partner and an assessment of his sexual attractiveness.
How to explain it?
According to study leader Gurit Birnbaum, women who cannot be bought with responsiveness may “perceive such partners as inappropriately kind, or as manipulators seeking an intimate victory, or as wanting to please, maybe even out of desperation, and therefore less attractive. An alternative explanation is that a sympathetic man may seem defenseless to a woman, not dominant enough.
But in the eyes of other women, Birnbaum continues, “a sympathetic stranger will look like a sincere and caring person, that is, a desirable long-term partner.”
Another researcher, Eli Finkel, explains: “A man can be responsive or not, it does not affect his attractiveness in any way. Women, on the other hand, do not have such a luxury: in order to please, they are forced to be nice.
* * Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, июль 2014.