As someone familiar with dieting, I’m very aware that when temptation comes my way, in the form of a cream bun or a chocolate, immediate gratification tends to win over my long-term goals. This is almost a universal psychological phenomenon. However some researchers believe that those in committed partnerships will tend to show the opposite, favouring the long term goal of a committed relationship to short term gratification, e.g. starting an affair.

While leading a research team at the University of California, Gian Gonzaga came to the conclusion that people in love are blinded to the charms of other potential partners. In a study of 60 heterosexual students, who had been in a relationship for an average of three years, they showed each subject a photo of a stranger, who they found to be attractive, and then asked the subject to write a five minute essay on what was attractive about that person, followed by another brief essay describing an ideal first meeting.

The subjects were then split into three groups and each group was asked to write a further two five-minute essays. One group had to write about the time they had felt the most love for their current partner and when they last felt such love; another group were to write about the time they felt the most sexual desire towards their current partner and the most recent time. The last group were told to write about whatever came to mind.

While writing their second essay, all the subjects were instructed not to think about the attractive person in the photo. Then, during the last essay they were encourage to do so, having been given a piece of paper to record every time their attention turned to thoughts of the person in the photo. The number of ticks made by a subject was then recorded.

When allowed to think about the attractive stranger, the “love” group marked their paper only one-third as often as the “sexual desire” group, and only one-sixth as often as the control group. Also, when prompted at the end of the experiment, the “love” group remembered significantly fewer details about what had made the person in their photo more attractive than the other two groups.

When people are instructed to not think of something, a “rebound effect” occurs, causing the taboo thought to present itself even more frequently than it otherwise would. Each groups’ repressed thoughts might have expressed equally high “rebound” during writing the final essay, but this wasn’t the case.

Gian Gonzaga said:

Feeling love for your romantic partner appears to make everybody else less attractive.

Posted by Oliver as Psychology, Sociobiology at 3:32 PM GMT

No Comments »

Something I noticed in the latest issue of New Scientist (9th Feb, page 19) was an article by Daniel Nettle about personality traits.

The big 5 are:

• Neuroticism (Amygdala + Serotonin)
• Openness (Mental association mechanisms?)
• Conscientiousness (Dorsolateral prefrontal cortex)
• Agreeableness / Empathy (Theory of mind mechanisms?)
• Extroversion (Mid brain Dopamine reward system)

What the author writes about extroverts makes for the most interesting reading:

I studied 545 British adults with a range of extroversion scores. High scorers had more sexual partners, and we know that they also do better in economic and career terms on average. But those in my sample were also more likely to be hospitalised as a result of an accident or illness, and their family lives were less stable. Since they were more likely to divorce, the men often ended up not living with their children. It is tempting to think of extroversion as an unalloyed blessing, but it is not.

Your personality will entail risks, and some alternative pathways might be closed to you. There will also be situations for which your personality is too risk-prone.

Agreeableness is a negative predictor of success in the worlds of executives and artists, where people need to put themselves first and focus on what they want.

His last word is:

To some extent we can alter who we are, but we might be better off recognising that for almost any personality profile, there is an optimal environment. So if your personality causes you grief, why not try changing the niche you occupy in this complex ecosystem that is modern life?

These words must sound hollow to the neurotic! Yes… whoopee, I’ll prosper the best in a dangerous environment… so um, how long before I can get my hands on a Sudanese visa, in order to immigrate to Darfur?!

Posted by Oliver as Philosophy, Psychology at 8:00 AM GMT

1 Comment »

If I had a bunch of Lab rats and loads of spare time I know what sort of experiments I’d set up! It seems the animal behaviour researchers at McMaster University in Ontario Canada share my perversions interests. Bennett Galef’s research team has been studying sexual attraction amongst rats.

Bored researchers placed two male rats behind mesh screens at either end of a tank, only one of which had recently copulated with a female.

A number of different female rats were then placed, separately, in the middle of the tank. Galef’s team found that these females typically moved over and lingered longer near the stud.

With blinding insight Galef notes:

It’s highly likely that the female rats are attracted by the smell of the sexually active male, rather than repelled by the stench of desperation from the sex-starved one. It’s unlikely that males would evolve a signal that makes them unattractive to females!

What really made me astonished was that turning over two pages revealed a full single page advertisement for Ontario, paid for by the Government of Ontario. Is this a coincidence?

Under a headline “One natural resource in Ontario is mined more than any other” sits a multicoloured image of a brain… I’m sceptical ;)

Posted by Oliver as Anthropology, Biology at 8:00 AM GMT

No Comments »

I’ve just noticed a great little article in New Scientist. It is a brief introduction into the work of Randy Thornhill (what an appropriate name!) at the University of New Mexico. He presented his theory about female oestrus at the Association for the Study of Animal Behaviour meeting at Newcastle University.

He claims that women don’t become more aroused on heat, but change their mating preferences to “good genes“. Outside of their peak fertility they prefer men with traits indicating willingness to invest in child-rearing.

“Oestrus doesn’t indiscriminately increase sexual desire,” Dr Thornhill said. “It functions to get good genes.”

He and colleague Steve Gangestad say there are many examples of mammals that don’t mate with just any male when on heat. Mice, for example, try to mate with males that have different immune systems from their own, while female elephants go for the most dominant male.

Thornhill believes applying the concept of oestrus to women resolves the apparent paradox that they are concerned with getting good genes at peak fertility, and outside of this time – when he says they are in a phase of “extended sexuality” – they are concerned with getting material benefits.

Source: New Scientist (15 September 2007) 2621:18

Posted by Oliver as Psychology, Sociobiology at 9:44 PM BST

1 Comment »