A Psychologist at Aberdeen University claims to have discovered what women really want in order to be seduced.

If the reports are to be believed, then it seems that this formula does away with all the traditional advice, such as chat-up lines, wealth, good looks and a sense of humour etc. Because his research indicates that a man can significantly increase his pulling power by simply catching a woman’s eye and lightly touching her on the arm.

The study by Aberdeen University’s Dr Ben Jones found that two-thirds of women agreed to dance with a man who rested his hand on her arm for a second or two whilst making the request. However, when the man kept his hands by his side as he asked the same question, his success rate fell by half.

Additionally, women were also more likely to give their phone-number to a man who touched their arm as he approached them in the street.

The study, published in Focus Magazine, suggested that touching makes a man appear dominant, and therefore more attractive to the opposite sex.

Dr Jones claimed that making eye contact also signals interest in a woman, but only if it is genuine:

Smiling can make you more attractive but it is worth bearing in mind that faking a smile is quite tricky

He added:

Men who find it hard to fake a smile could try taking better care of their skin, or surrounding themselves with other women to appear more appealing

At this point, regular readers will no doubt be eager to point out that Focus Magazine isn’t exactly a proper peer-reviewed scientific journal. However, Seduction Labs aims to bring together newer pick-up, dating and relationship related information from a wide variety of sources.

Other points that the reports are somewhat sketchy on were:

• Which area(s) of the woman’s arm did the experimenters touch?
• Why the arm? Why not some other [non-intimate] area of her body?
• Were any specific sections of the woman’s arm more efficacious than others?

• To my mind, touching seems natural, whilst someone keeping their arms straight down by sides seems stilted and unnatural; was this effect controlled for?
• Were other positions aside from ‘touching’ and ‘arms by sides’ tried? (Arms folded or arms behind the back, for example?)

• Were women significantly more likely to give their phone-number to a man who touched their arm as he approached them in the street? (Having a stranger walk up and demand a phone-number doesn’t seem like an especially effective pick-up strategy to me…)
• What percentage of the numbers obtained in the street were fakes?
• How did this compare with women prepared to dance (or otherwise)?
• After touching then dancing, were the women more likely to give their phone-number / go on a date / etc. compared with women who danced but wern’t touched first?

• Do all women really want to be dominated? I’ve seen enough spam to suggest that it’s more likely men who want a dominatrix.

• How do we differentiate between “fake eye-contact” and “genuine eye-contact”?

• Finally, the smiling advice also seems counter to the pimp wisdom of Iceberg Slim, and contemporary research.

If I’ve missed anything, or if you have the answers, please do comment or email.

---

Oliver writes.

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What I find dubious about the Focus Magazine article’s claims was the suggestion that touching makes a man appear dominant. I remember an old girlfriend of mine who, on meeting me face to face for the first time (in our college library), held my arm as she introduced me to herself. She’d clearly remembered who I was, but I hadn’t recalled meeting her before, so this physical gesture came a bit out of the blue for me. She wasn’t a dominant person, not in behaviour and definitely not in appearance, being diminutive, smiley, and always wearing flowery dresses.

The surprise physical contact romanticized the whole interaction in way that wouldn’t have happened if she’d not made the gesture. Perhaps this was because she had obviously already dropped any shield that she might instinctively hold up to a strange man - so half my work was done. Or more probably because the gesture was one that I had only recently experienced from my previous sexual partner… positive associations.

You can try to break the gesture down and rationalise it as a form of dominance, or a demonstration of bravery… or whatever. But it seems to me that to say this is to try to over-sexualise it. Touching in the right kind of way is simply a demonstration of warmth. Just because adults hold children in such a way to give them a feeling of security doesn’t mean that it is actually a show of strength or power.

Posted by Jonathan as Psychology, Sociology at 1:49 AM EDT

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Self-styled ‘on-line fashion bible’ cosmopolitan.co.uk has produced some rather surprising information, that seems to paint women as selfish imbeciles, obsessed with Manolo Blahnik heels and H&M skirts.

According to a new survey of 778 Cosmopolitan readers aged between 19 and 45, 74% of respondents confessed that thoughts of splashing out on shoes, bags and dresses pop into the heads every 60 seconds. This compares to the dubious but commonly-held belief that men think about sex every 52 seconds.

Even more surprisingly, half of the women surveyed claimed they preferred ‘retail therapy’ to spending time with their partner, and nearly as many confessed to keeping their shopping escapades secret from their partner, so as to hide their level of spending.

These figures mean that if we assume an average sleep of eight hours a night, then thoughts of shopping trips consume these women an astonishing 960 times a day, or 6,720 times a week.

Further, the survey suggests that the thrill is in the chase for women, where shopping is concerned, because about half the respondents said they didn’t wear everything in their wardrobe, and 40% described themselves as bag or shoe ‘addicts’, with one in ten becoming bored with a new item after only a fortnight.

And, it doesn’t end there: Apparently even the current credit crunch can’t stand in the way of a shopping spree, with 62% saying that they would delay payments using credit cards, and 8% even prepared to use the funds saved to pay the rent or mortgage.

On average, those surveyed said they spent at least 30% of their annual income on clothes; around a quarter would think nothing of spending £200 or more on a longed-for item, and more than a third would buy it in three or more colours.

Discussing the survey, psychologist Dr Jane Prince, of the University of Glamorgan, said:

People think about things which bring them pleasurable feelings. The pleasure is usually in the anticipating and planning.

But so many women displaying this level of preoccupation, thinking about something once a minute, would indicate widespread addictive behaviour with regard to shopping which really does not seem to be evidenced in any academic literature I have ever seen.

Posted by Jonathan as Anthropology, Psychology at 4:56 PM EDT

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A new sexuality survey has confirmed what women know and some men fear - single females have far more luck achieving orgasm than those partnered off.

Taking men out of the picture allows women to “better connect with themselves”, according to sex therapists behind the Queensland study of 500 older women.

The research found that 56 per cent of sexually-active women with no current partner could reach orgasm every time with masturbation compared with only 24 per cent of women with partners.

“That’s a significant difference and I’d imagine there are few men out there a little surprised and unimpressed that women have better luck without them,” said medical sex therapist Dr Jane Howard.

The findings come from the study What Does Sexuality Mean To Older Women?, which assessed the sex lives of women in their 40s, 50s, 60s and 70s to find trends over the ages.

Dr Howard said she believed women on their own were better at achieving orgasm because they don’t have the “distraction” of having to please a man or subscribe to male-type sexual fantasies.

“Arousal is a lot about what erotic thoughts go through the mind, and for women that’s very different to men,” Dr Howard said.

“It may be focusing on Colin Firth’s smouldering eyes, some romantic novel or a waterfall or whatever.”

The therapist said the most outstanding aspect of the study was the variety of ways people lived their lives.

“Some people are in relationships and having sex, some are in relationships with no sex, others are single and are having sex … it was just so varied,” Dr Howard said.

She said her results destroyed the cultural myth that people stay in life-long relationships and are sexually functional until they die.

“We like to think of people having wild sex for their whole lives but the reality isn’t quite like that,” Dr Howard said.

More than 80 per cent of women in their 40s were sexually active, but this figure declined to 27 per cent for those in their 70s.

The fact that 70 per cent of men in their 70s were not capable of having an erection could affect this figure.

But results showed that three quarters of women over 70 were indifferent to sex.

While their libido dropped off and arousal was less, their capacity to orgasm was seemingly unaffected by age.

“That was quite surprising, actually,” Dr Howard said.

She said the results would help people understand the true impact that ageing had on sex.

The findings are part of the Longitudinal Assessment of Ageing in Women, conducted by the Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital.

Posted by Jonathan as Psychology, Sociology at 10:59 PM EDT

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A few people have asked about covert hypnosis, which they seem to believe might be some sort of seduction magic bullet that gets people to lose all inhibition and jump into bed with them straight away.

However, this notion does seem to be rather too optimistic, because hypnosis is not all about altering someone’s state. In actual fact, the effective element in hypnosis is that you can increase a person’s responsiveness to suggestions.

One of the most regularly suggested ideas is the belief that you can confuse people into a trance. Even though this idea falls at the first hurdle, and is one of the legion of reasons that NLP practitioners are so irritating. These people do not seem to have realized that Confusion is not covert, and most people are not daft - they know that something weird is happening, and they know who is doing it!

If you’ve ever tried confusion techniques, you will notice that subjects tend to retreat. And this is fine if you’re doing therapy in a therapeutic setting, since in this situation there is nowhere to retreat to. The client is caught in a double bind because they choose to be in your therapy room, and so they have no exit. Therefore, they must deal with the confusion at that moment, and this opens the gateway to an enjoyable trance experience.

Meanwhile, back in the real world, people will cite performers like Derren Brown; pointing out that he appears to be using a lot of confusing doublespeak, getting away with it, and producing remarkable results to boot.

So, it certainly is possible to use confusion techniques in public; but it should be noted that to pull this off requires an incredibly charismatic personality. Should you to try to duplicate those effects, and then show any signs of incongruity or hesitation, the chances are extremely high that you will lose all therapeutic rapport, and the subject would decide that you are an escaped lunatic / criminal / sex-pest or some other type of deviant, before trying to get away from you as fast as they can.

Now, if you haven’t already been dissuaded from experimentation with confusion techniques in public, then you need to present yourself as very safe and very friendly, simply because people need a lot of trust in order to stay confused long enough to go into a trance.

Thus, were you to take part in one of Derren Brown’s TV shows, he would most likely appear with a TV camera crew; and as anyone who has ever pointed a home video camera at a friend or family member will attest, that person suddenly comes under intense social pressure, and their higher brain functions and reasoning skills tend to shut down. However, a professional TV camera crew also implies trust because you know that a major national TV network cannot be seen to let innocent members of the public come to harm, so therefore everything must be safe.

To continue, you might assume that there are millions of people watching your every move, and then you may become very compliant, doing and saying things that you wouldn’t ordinarily do or say, because unconsciously you’d like the approval of the audience - This is an old trick of stage hypnotists and TV evangelists.

Next, the very friendly and very charismatic Mr Brown is, amongst other things, a Magician and a Showman; so not everything he does is hypnosis, and much of the language is just for show. Part is psychological, and part is trickery or misdirection – but even in this situation, you know that you are going to be fooled, so it’s a fun and entertaining experience. As an aside, I might also add that he will also tend to play the odds, so that he can be seen to succeed more often than he fails; if necessary, too many failures could even be edited out of the TV show, to make his hit rate even better than it already is.

So, if you want people in trances in public places, then firstly you need to create an atmosphere where people want to go into a hypnotic state. Therefore, it’s much easier and safer (and probably most ethical) just to get their permission first. You could, for example, tell everyone you meet that you’re a hypnotist, and then step back and wait for their reactions - half the people you meet will be intrigued and frightened - while the other half will just be intrigued. Offer people from this second group a demonstration, and emphasise that they’ll be safe – the experience will be fun – talk up how good they’ll feel, and promise not to have them running round with a lampshade on their head, talking to their shoe or pretending to be a chicken.

The reason this idea works well is because you are using the power of expectation, the atmosphere, mood, timing, catching the moment, preparing the subject, and creating a unique condition in the person’s mind - all of which will help make their going into the hypnotic state a breeze. Of course, this isn’t the only way to do it: You just need to set an appropriate context for the sort of trance experiences that you want to create.

If you’re trying to be covert, then you will find that getting people to close their eyes is a problem, especially if they don’t realise what you are up to. Whereas if they knew, they’d go straight into a trance, as soon as they realised something was happening.

When trying to put someone into a trance in a public place, what you will typically see is that they get fascinated and begin showing the classic signs of trance (breathing becomes deeper and more rhythmic, body becomes more rigid, blink rate slows, eyes becomes fixed, pupils dilate and the subject becomes more reluctant to talk, etc.) basically, imagine your co-workers at a really boring meeting. Now, if you try to deepen this state, very soon, just like in the meeting mentioned above, they’ll shake themselves awake and continue to interact with the conscious world.

So, with straightforward hypnosis, you have the problem that public locations set an expectation of conversation, your subject will be expecting to pay attention and contribute something to the discussion, or they will feel like they’re being rude, and therefore it would be completely out of context for them to shut their eyes and drift into a deep trance.

In this situation, your options are to either overwhelm the person; and a few people who are unconsciously enjoying going into the trance you’ve started (even though they don’t realise it) may just slip deeper into that trance, before their social programming can caution them to be good citizens, and rationality kicks them back to consciousness. However, these people are pretty rare.

With other people, especially if they’re already aware that you know something about hypnosis, it’s probably best to follow Milton Erickson’s example, and switch from a covert trance to an overt style about halfway through. This is indirect hypnosis as seen in the available footage of Milton Erickson - The subject knows something is going on, they know who’s doing it, they just don’t know how to respond - so they give Dr Erickson the lead.

You could still keep your hypnotic conversations covert, but then you’ll need to make allowances for the person’s social programming, and fractionate the conversation i.e. you induce a light trance, and let them become fully conscious, create another deeper trance and let them rouse, then continue fractionating until they’re in a much deeper state of hypnosis. If you’re coaching a small group or dealing with a number of people at the same time, this can be particularly useful as you’ll get indirect feedback about their mental state each time they come out of trance.

However, once your subject is in a state of trance, don’t just throw random suggestions at them and hope for the best. When you get to this stage, be kind and give some pleasant, life-enhancing suggestion that they can carry with them for the rest of their day.

Finally, you should also keep in mind that whilst you may be able to reduce someone’s inhibitions etc., if that person didn’t have any desire for you in the first place, then they might only be less inhibited in telling you where to go, if you later suggest something more sexual to them.

Posted by Jonathan as Psychology, Sociology at 11:40 AM EDT

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As mentioned previously, many seducers could use some additional help coping with stress and relaxing.

Although in all probability, it doesn’t matter whether you have a highly strung boss, or a lack of choices when talking to attractive strangers - The following commonsense hints and tips should be of some use in managing your stress levels.

1. Learn how to say ‘No’.
Very simple, but very effective - Where a ‘No’ is the appropriate response - say it without guilt.

2. If you’re ill, rest.
Don’t carry on regardless. Working will tire your body and prolong your illness. So recognise that you have limits, and don’t carry on as if you were firing on all cylinders.

3. Get enough sleep.
Sleep is essential for the body to function properly. And sleeping pills shouldn’t be necessary with the right life-style. If you’ve habitually skimped on sleep, you probably won’t even remember how it feels to wake up fully rested. Give it a go for a week and see if there’s a reduction in stress, and a difference in how well you perform during the day.

4. Listen to your body.
When you’re tired, hungry or thirsty, do something about it. Also, recognise stress, anxiety and anger in your day and counter it immediately with a brisk walk, ten minutes of a visualisation exercise, some deep relaxation or whatever else works best for you.

5. Avoid nicotine and caffeine.
These are stimulants, so they won’t calm you down. If you’re feeling stressed, steer clear of them and keep yourself well-hydrated by drinking water or fruit juice instead.

6. Fight off stress with physical activity.
Pressure or anger releases Adrenaline and other stress hormones in the body. Sports and physical exercise helps to reduce this, and produces ‘good mood’ chemicals in the brain. So go for a brisk walk around the block when you feel tense, or try some regular sport or exercise after work.

7. Agree with people once in a while.
Life shouldn’t be a constant battle, and conflict is often due to someone feeling defensive out of fear of losing face. People sometimes set goals for how others should treat them, and then rigidly expect that others will fulfil those expectations. However, this rarely produces satisfaction, because others also have an agenda for their own rigid goals. So even if you disagree with someone, you can avoid this impasse by agreeing with them, helping them reach their own goals, or just keeping quiet if that person is quite unpalatable. Remember, idiots only have status if you grant it to them.

8. Learn to accept what you cannot change.
Saint Francis of Assisi’s famous prayer asks for “the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference”. This philosophy will help you avoid unhappiness, cynicism and bitterness; all of which will help you combat stress.

9. Manage your time.
Take one thing at a time, and don’t overdo it. Create time buffers to deal with unexpected emergencies, and tackle them with a system that works for you.

One very simple method is:

1. List the things that you need to do
2. Put them in order of importance
3. Decide what you need to do yourself, and what can be delegated
4. Decide which need doing today, next week or next month
5. Decide what doesn’t need doing after all, and then drop it from the list

Your mountain of tasks is now in some sort of order, and could even be a bit smaller, which should help. These things might have controlled you before, but now you control them. And therefore you’ve lost any stress they used to cause you.

10. Think up a self-affirming mantra.
Suggestions could be ‘I have a choice in every situation’ or ‘I deserve calm in my life’. Repeat your mantra to yourself whenever you feel tense.

11. Relax with a stress-reduction technique.
Try self-hypnosis - it’s very easy and can be done almost anywhere.

12. Try a very simple visualisation exercise.

• Find a quiet spot where you won’t be interrupted for a few minutes.
• Just shut your eyes for a moment, and imagine what your life will be like when you’re able to live it in the way you’d like to.
• See, hear and feel what that is like.
• See yourself getting everything done in a relaxed way. Notice the way you’re sitting, standing or moving, then observe how calmly you’re interacting with people, and the positive way in which they’re responding to you.
• Hear the sound of your voice as you talk to people, and notice how it’s different from the way you tend to talk now.
• Listen to how people are talking to you and the kind of things that they’re saying.
• Feel what all of that is like, and enjoy the feeling.
• Perhaps you’ll see yourself having some time for new activities in your life (or some old ones that you haven’t done for a while) see and hear yourself doing them, and feel good.
• Take all the time you need, and allow yourself to enjoy the exercise.

 

Posted by Jonathan as Philosophy, Psychology at 1:44 AM EDT

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One of the more frequently occurring situations that arises when boy meets girl is that they both have very few options, and thus the inexperienced seducer ends up with a very stressful situation, in which he or she is confronted with a loss of control; whilst the seducee is left bemused by the seemingly bizarre behaviours of the person they have just met.

This is a negative feedback loop, in which the seducer feels stressed because he or she is in a situation that they feel is out of their control, yet at the same time, they cannot adequately salvage the situation because they are already feeling so stressed. Clearly this is a circumstance where more research is needed.

And as it happens, there is a substantial body of scientific knowledge concerning the effects of stress on humans, although obviously not in seduction situations. An interesting parallel, however, is the effect of exposure to heavy traffic, and the effect of exposure to loud noises and other irritants.

Research shows that a large increase in background noise at a constant, steady level is experienced as less intrusive as time passes; although prolonged exposure produces lasting elevations in blood pressure.¹ If the noise is not only loud, but also intermittent, then people remain conscious of their heightened irritability even after an extended period of adaptation; and their symptoms of central nervous system distress become more pronounced.¹

In a laboratory, subjects exposed to a loud, intermittent, and unpredictable noise experience not only showed physiological symptoms of stress but also behavioural symptoms. These subjects became less persistent in their attempts to cope with frustrating tasks, and suffered measurable impairments in performing tasks requiring care and attention.¹

In another ingenious experiment, the Psychologist David Glass and his collaborators exposed two groups of subjects to a recording of loud, unpredictable noises. And, whereas subjects in one group had no control over the recording, subjects in the other group could stop the tape at any time simply by flipping a switch. These subjects were told, however, that the researchers would prefer that they not stop the tape, and indeed most of them honoured this preference. Following exposure to the noise, subjects with access to the control switch made almost 60 percent fewer errors than the other subjects on a proofreading task, and made more than four times as many attempts to solve a difficult puzzle.¹

Similarly, commuting though heavy traffic is in many ways very stressful, and much more like exposure to loud, unpredictable noises than to constant background noise. Delays are difficult to predict, virtually impossible to control, and one never quite gets used to being cut up by other drivers who believe that their time is more valuable than anyone else’s. Thus, a large amount of scientific literature documents the many stress symptoms that result from protracted driving through heavy traffic.

One theme in this body of knowledge focuses on the experiences of Bus drivers, whose exposure to the stresses of heavy traffic is higher than that of most other road users, but who have also had greater opportunities to adapt to those stresses. Compared to workers in other occupations, a disproportionate share of the absenteeism experienced by Bus drivers stems from stress-related illnesses such as gastrointestinal problems, headaches, and anxiety.² Many studies have found sharply elevated rates of hypertension among city Bus drivers relative to a variety of control groups, including, in one instance, Bus drivers themselves during their pre-employment physical examinations.^3,4 And, additional studies have found elevations of stress hormones such as Adrenaline, Noradrenalin, and Cortisol in town Bus drivers.⁴ One study even found elevations of Adrenaline and Noradrenalin to be strongly positively correlated with the density of the traffic with which the Bus drivers had to contend.⁵ And, more than half of all urban Bus drivers retire prematurely with some form of medical disability.⁶

Your daily commute through heavy traffic is presumably less stressful than operating a bus all day in a busy town. And probably much less stressful than meeting an attractive member of the opposite sex somewhere. Yet, there is no question that the differences are one of degree rather than kind. Studies have shown that the demands of commuting through heavy traffic often result in emotional and behavioural deficits on arrival at home or at work.⁷ Compared to drivers who commute through low-density traffic, those who commute through heavy traffic are more likely to report feelings of annoyance.⁸ And at higher levels of commuting distance, time, speed, and months of commuting are significantly positively correlated with increased systolic and diastolic blood pressure.⁸

This prolonged experience of commuting stress also suppresses immune function and shortens longevity.^9,8 Even spells in traffic as brief as fifteen minutes have been linked to significant elevations of blood glucose and cholesterol, and to declines in blood coagulation time (all factors that are positively associated with heart disease). Commuting by car is also linked positively with the incidence of various cancers, especially cancer of the lung, although this is probably because of higher exposure to exhaust fumes.¹⁰ Among people who commute to work, the incidence of these and other illnesses rises with the length of commute,¹⁰ and is significantly lower amongst those who commute by bus or rail,¹¹ and lower still amongst non-commuters.¹²

In conclusion, there appears to be persistent and significant costs associated with long commutes through heavy traffic. And we can also be confident that Neurophysiologists would find higher levels of Cortisol, Norepinephrine, Adrenaline, Noradrenalin, and other stress hormones in a seducer who is in a situation that they feel they have no control over. Of course, nobody has done the experiment to discover whether poorly skilled seducers would report lower levels of life satisfaction than the rest of the population. But, because we know that drivers often report being consciously aware of the frustration and stress they experience during commuting, it is a plausible conjecture that subjective well-being, as conventionally measured, would be lower in those seducers. However, even if the negative effects of stress never broke through into conscious awareness, we would still have powerful reasons for wishing to escape them.

References:

1. Glass, D.C., J. Singer & J. Pennebaker, ‘Behavioral and Psychological Effects of Uncontrollable Environmental Events’ (1977) in Perspectives on Environment and Behavior, ed. D. Stokols, New York: Plenum
2. Long, L. & J. Perry, ‘Economic and Occupational Causes of Transit Operator Absenteeism: A Review of Research’ (1985) Transport Review 5:247-267
3. Ragland, D.R., M. Winkleby, J. Schwalbe, B.L. Holman, L. Morse, L. Syme & J.M. Fisher, ‘Prevalence of Hypertension in Bus Drivers’ (1987) International Journal of Epidemiology, 16:208-214; Pikus, W.G. & W.A. Tarranikova, ‘The Frequency of Hypertensive Disease Among Drivers in Public Transportation’ (1975) Terapevischeskii Archives, 47:135-137
4. Evans, G.W., M.N. Palsane & S. Carrère, ‘Type A Behaviour and Occupational Stress: A Cross-cultural Study of Blue-collar Workers” (1987) Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 52:1002-1007
5. Evans, G.W. & S. Carrère, ‘Traffic Congestion, Perceived Control, and Psychophysiological Stress Among Urban Bus Drivers’ (1991) Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 76:658-663
6. Evans, G.W., ‘Working on the hot seat: Urban Bus Operators’ (1994) Accident Analysis and Prevention, 26:181-193
7. Glass, D.C., & J. Singer, ‘Urban Stressors: Experiments on Noise and Social Stressors’ (1972) New York: Academic Press; Sherrod, D.R., ‘Crowding, Perceived Control, and Behavioral Aftereffects’ (1974) Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 4:171-186
8. Stokols, D., R.W. Novaco, J. Stokols & J. Campbell, ‘Traffic congestion, Type A Behaviour, and Stress’ (1978) Journal of Applied Psychology, 63:467–480
9. DeLongis A., S. Folkman, R.S. Lazarus, ‘The impact of Daily Stress on Health and Mood: Psychological and Social Resources as Mediators’ (1988) Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 54:486-495
10. Koslowsky, M., A.N. Kluger & M. Reich, ‘Commuting Stress‘ (1995) New York: Plenum
11. Taylor, P.J. & S.J. Pocock, ‘Commuter Travel and Sickness Absence of London Office Workers’ (1972) British Journal of Preventive and Social Medicine, 26:165-172; Koslowsky, M. & M. Krausz, ‘On the Relationship Between Commuting, Stress Symptoms, and attitudinal Measures’ (1993) Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, 29:485-492
12. European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions, ‘The Journey from Home to the Workplace: The Impact on the Safety and Health of the Commuters/Workers’ (1984) Dublin: European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions.

Posted by Jonathan as Biochemistry, Psychology at 11:22 PM EDT

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Over half of Australian women have difficulties getting sexual satisfaction, according to a new survey of more than 400 women, by Deakin University Psychology professor Marita McCabe, and PhD student Katie Giles, who studied Australian women’s sex lives and sexual feelings.

The researchers found that rates of sexual desire were similar to those shown in international studies; however, Australian women appeared to have more problems with arousal and orgasm.

Professor McCabe, who recently presented the data at a sexuality conference on Australia’s Gold Coast said:

All up we found 55 percent of women had a difficulty with sexual satisfaction

It seems women go into the bedroom and expect it will happen quickly, automatically, with orgasm, even be multi-orgasmic, but without spending the time to do so. They’re busy and stressed and not taking the time for their sexual expression.

Further, according to Professor McCabe, the survey revealed that 65 percent of women had some form of sexual dysfunction and half had a diagnosable sexual desire disorder.

Anxiety and depression were found to be contributing factors, but stress and poor body image had the biggest influence on sexual interest and response.

Other scientists were more critical, and Jane Ussher, a women’s health psychologist at the University of Western Sydney, said while she did not dispute the statistics, to label a quarter of the Australian population sexually dysfunctional was ‘not helpful‘.

Professor Ussher was quoted as saying:

To talk about dysfunction implies some abnormality within the women, and whilst many women do have issues around sexual desire, especially in heterosexual relationships, that is very likely to be about the relationship rather than the woman herself.

She went on to say that there was strong evidence to suggest that women with low desire regained their interest in sex once they re-partnered. And, there was also an argument that pharmaceutical companies were trying to position a lack of desire as dysfunctional, so that it could be treated.

Posted by Jonathan as Psychology, Sociology at 12:18 PM EDT

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Any piece of writing with a title as bold as the one given to this article had better start with a massive disclaimer, or it’d be very hard for you to believe anything written in it.

So, firstly, I should note that despite what Body Language charlatans, and other people trying to sell books, DVDs and courses etc. might claim, there are no infallible guides to spotting liars. Think about it - if there was some foolproof guide, Police, Prison Guards, Customs Officers and other people whose jobs involve professional lie-catching would have very much higher detection rates. We can therefore conclude that most people are often pretty good at lying, and a very short article certainly won’t act as any sort of magic bullet.

In fact, in professional scientific studies examining college student’s abilities to detect lies, accuracy rates of about 54% are generally obtained (when an accuracy of 50% would be obtainable purely by chance). However, DePaulo and Pfeifer (1986) studied experienced and newly recruited law enforcement officers; Ekman and O’Sullivan (1991) studied members of the secret service, federal Polygraphers and Police officers; Garrido, Masip, Herrero, Tabernero and Vega (1998) studied Police students from a Spanish Police academy; Köhnken (1987) studied Police officers; Vrij (1993a) studied Police detectives; Vrij and Graham (1997) studied Police officers; while Vrij and Mann (1999) also studied Police officers. In each of these investigations, accuracy rates were in the range 45-60%.

Vrij (1993a) used regression analysis to determine which cues the Police detectives in his study were using to attempt to determine whether people were lying or telling the truth. His breakdown was as follows:

Socially anxious - 6%
More hand movements - 8%
Less co-operative - 8%
Less smiling - 10%
Untidily dressed - 12%
Public self-consciousness - 14%
Unexplained - 42%

These choices all seem pretty much arbitrary, and that somewhat explains why the Detectives achieved such low accuracy in the research.

Luckily, as seducers, we don’t have to detect thieves or murderers etc. And in some cases, you probably don’t even want to know if someone is lying. For example, if I spend some time and money choosing you a present, I’m setting myself up for a fall if I try to determine whether you are telling the truth, when you say that you like what I’ve given you. Equally, you would likely be fairly reluctant to allow me to attach you to a Polygraph, or film you while I searched for micro muscle movements.

On the other hand, a dysfunctional man might try to impress a woman by inventing stories about taking part in unusual sports, to compensate for his lack of an interesting life, or else claim that he drives a Ferrari, when in fact he has only borrowed one, or possibly doesn’t have one at all. Just as likely is a scenario where a deceptive woman may claim that she is interested in a man, simply to try to gain some material benefit; or she may state that she will meet a man at a certain time and place, when in actual fact she plans to be elsewhere at that time.

Clearly, in each of these cases, someone will be making an effort to start a relationship, only to be greatly disappointed later on, after they have expended time, money and effort. Obviously, these people would be better off being able to detect lies and protect themselves against deceptive people, so that their time and energies might be more profitably applied elsewhere.

So, why is this all so difficult?

1) Difference between liars and truth-tellers are usually very small, and human behaviour can be very complex and at times confusing.

2) Contrary to what Body Language charlatans might tell you, there is no such thing as ‘Typical deceptive behaviour’. That is to say, there is no one behaviour or set of behaviours that all liars exhibit, because there is no such thing as generic behaviour.

3) Conversation rules prevent people from analyzing the person talking in detail, and head-to-foot observation would be very unusual in conversation. Further it would be terrible to accuse a truthful person of being a liar.

4) Persons attempting lie detection may depend upon mindless decision making rules, following garbage spouted by Body language salespeople, or just spuriously deciding that any odd or complex behaviour constitutes deception.

5) People have a tendency to interpret nervous behaviour not simply as nerves, but as deception. (q.v. Bond and Fahey, 1987)

6) People often fail to take individual differences into account. For example, introverts and socially awkward people often make a dishonest impression, as do black people (to white observers at least). The behaviours that these groups of people show are often incorrectly interpreted as indicative of lying.

Where does all the crap come from?

• Old wives tales
• Body Language charlatans
• Neuro-linguistic programming

Old wives tales: are basically folk wisdom or folk law; and it’s pretty easy to find people who will tell you that “Liars can’t look you in the eye“, “Liars have shifty eyes“, “Liars fidget” or “Liars say ‘ah,’ ‘er,’ ‘uh,’ or ‘um’ a lot“. All no doubt reinforced by years of old Detective movies. Someone may have spotted this behaviour once or twice, and it happened to coincide with a moment during which a person was being deceptive, and the idea stuck.

Body Language charlatans: are basically greedy people trying to make a living by inventing their own field of study (much like Astrologers). These people would have you believe that everyone behaves the same way, all the time, in all situations, or that there is some standard set of behaviours that all people exhibit. In spite of the fact that people who want to be deceptive will have taken the trouble to familiarise themselves with this body of literature, and will therefore be monitoring their behaviour to make sure they don’t conform to this pattern.

According to these “unqualified experts” everyone feels guilty when they lie, and it doesn’t matter that “Professionally qualified Psychologists” have found that many people actually experience a sense of pleasure while lying. A behaviour known as “duping delight” (possibly because they see deception as part of a game that they believe that they are winning, at that point). However, that doesn’t matter, because the Body Language charlatans won’t have to deal with a situation where an innocent person is accused of being a liar, on the basis of arbitrary rules.

Neuro-linguistic programming (NLP): is more interesting, and in this case, the idea seems to be that you can tell whether someone is lying solely from whether the person breaks eye contact to the right or left. The belief that liars break to the left is popular, although there is absolutely no scientific evidence to support this theory.

The idea seems to be derived from the NLP “eye accessing cues” model, which holds that a persons preference for thinking visually, auditorily or kinaesthetically (emotionally) can be determined by watching the direction of their eye movements during communication. To be fair to Bandler and Grinder, I cannot recall any literature in which they have suggested a correlation between lying and looking to the left, so the idea seems to have been invented by some of their more over-enthusiastic students.

What can help you spot liars?

It’s important to take a balanced view, when it comes to determining whether you’re being lied to or not. If you assume that everyone is honest all the time, you’re more likely to be duped by a liar. But on the other hand, assuming that everyone is lying is unlikely to win you many friends, and ultimately leads to paranoia.

Next, in more recent years, Psychologists have developed a checklist of criteria collectively known as Reality monitoring theory (See Johnson, Hashtroudi & Lindsay (1993) and Johnson & Raye (1998) for a more academic overview of this subject). According to Reality monitoring theory, people rely on qualitative characteristics of memories to decide whether a memory is based on an actual experience or not. So, it is assumed that externally derived memories contain more references to sensory information (visual details, colours, sounds, smells, taste, and touch), contextual information (about space and time), emotions and feelings, and semantic information. On the other hand, internally derived memories are supposed to contain more references to cognitive operations at the time of encoding i.e. a person will reason “I must have dreamt this, because I know I’ve never been to China.”

One piece of information to look out for when trying to detect a liar is whether or not the person describes inferences that they made at the time of the event e.g. “His reactions gave me the impression that he was angry” or “It seemed to me that he didn’t know where he was going”. This criterion would also include repeated thinking about they are describing, and is probably the least helpful and most contentious part of Reality monitoring theory.

So, rather than detect liars, it’s actually much easier to determine people telling the truth, and in fact, the other criteria from Reality monitoring theory, are all concerned with judging whether people are more likely to be telling the truth. Thus, the more of these criteria that you can identify, the more likely the information being given to you is the truth:

Clarity/Vividness: The information that the person gives you should be clear, sharp and vivid (instead of dim and vague).

Realism: The information that the person gives you should be plausible, realistic and make sense.

Sensory information: This criterion is present if the statement includes perceptual information such as visual details (e.g. “I saw the man get into the car”), sounds (e.g. “She really shouted at me”), physical sensations (e.g. “It really hurt”), smells (e.g. “It had a smell of bacon”) and tastes (e.g. “The wine was very fruity”).

Emotions and feelings: This criterion is present if information is included about how the person felt during the event (e.g. “I was very anxious”)

Spatial information: This criterion is present if the statement includes information about locations (e.g. “It was in the park”) or the spatial arrangement of people and / or objects (e.g. “The man was sitting to the left of his girlfriend” or “The radio was obscured by the curtains”)

Temporal information: This criterion is present if the statement includes information about when the event happened, either from the time of year or time of day, (e.g. “It was early in the afternoon”) or explicitly describes a sequence of events (e.g. “When she heard the noise, she became nervous and left” or “As soon as the man entered the pub, the girl started smiling”)

Reconstructability of the story: This criterion is present if, despite the complexity of the story, it is possible to reconstruct the events on the basis of the information told to you.

How well does this work?

In laboratory studies of Reality monitoring theory using adults, Sporer was able to detect 75% of truths, 68% of lies and 71% overall. Then Vrij, Edward, Roberts and Bull managed 77% of truths, 74% of lies and 72% overall. So, whilst not perfect, this method is a massive improvement in accuracy over all the methods detailed above.

Posted by Jonathan as Psychology, Sociology at 2:35 AM EDT

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One of the biggest controversies still raging in the area of the first kiss is whether or not one should ask permission first.

The pro-permissioners’ point is easy to grasp: According to them, asking a girl for permission is to treat her as a civilized human being, to give her an opportunity to say what she actually thinks. There are no ‘ifs’ or ‘buts’, or attempts to decipher vague and misleading phrases of body language; the man gets an absolutely bell-clear answer. In addition, the permissioners argue, coming boldly out with the question, without a trace of a quiver in your voice, helps the girl feel confident about you. You appear calm, self-assured, in control, and this all helps her relax and succumb.

The doers, however, say that this is a technique for wusses: These born-again Hemingways believe in action, not words. They handle passes, and sex in general, the way that Hemingway handled words, keeping it all short and to the point. They act on gut feeling; they look the girl in the eyes, then try and plant one on her lips! Asking permission, they say, is to hold up a placard saying. “I’m too nervous to do it, please say it’s okay”; and they equate nerves with bad breath and dandruff, as pollutants to sexual chemistry.

However, a middle way does exist: The doers do have a point, wimpishness and nerves can be great destroyers of sexual advance (unless the girl is a mothering type). However, well-controlled nerves and the right sort of questions can be very effective.

Asking over-politely, or over-confidently on the other hand, either appears wimpish or plain rude. A confident question makes it sound like you’re expecting a ‘Yes’, and have been all along! or even worse, that you believe that she says ‘Yes’ all the time! - It deprives her of her mystery (and girls like mystery) - But, a Polite question makes it sound like the right to taste her lips is no more special than the right to ask for the salt at the dinner table.

The kiss itself seems to be the acid test of whether she wants you or not. But it’s wrong to think of “the first kiss” in the singular - it never hurts to be too cautious - remember how much it hurts to be rejected. What some seducers will do is try and break up the first kiss so that by the time lip-to-lip contact is about to be made, smaller-scale kisses in more neutral spots have already been delivered and accepted. In other words, they nuzzle a bit before a major pass, but this isn’t wet nuzzling in the sense of soppy and wimpish - it’s cool calculated, sophisticated nuzzling.

This is really quite easy once your arms are linked, or your arm is across her shoulders. As you walk you’ve been occasionally pulling her a little closer, testing the degree of her inertia, and then letting her out again. If it’s all going well on the next pull-in you can try whispering something in her ear. Don’t make it too romantic or passionate; just keep it mildly humorous, but pleasant. Then do the same again but keeping your face closer to hers, this time resting your cheek on hers, slightly grazing your lips across her cheek as you pull away. Then just keep this up, giving her occasional little grazes. If she isn’t impressed she’ll put a stop to this immediately, and if she doesn’t mind the chances are that she’ll definitely go for the main pass. It’s also worth noting that brushing kisses around the ears and neck can be very provocative to lots of girls, actually getting them as interested in more heavy breathing activity as fast as the lip-to-lip series.

Now, suddenly, you realise it’s time to begin the main kiss. You can see it in her eyes that she’s waiting for you to make a move, and you can also see that she isn’t giving you any more clues - You have to commit yourself - With girls you always have to take some sort of leap into the darkness, no matter how encouraging they are, or how observant you’ve been. The key with kissing is to keep it simple, especially on the first one.

Don’t try and do it too slowly to start off with, licking lips, sucking teeth, concentrating on advanced open-mouth flourishes - Keep these for later. Just make the first kiss a basic, gentle French kiss; Lips touch, tongue enters, slowly waggles around for a bit, then draws away and pauses for a moment. You can then catch your breath and prepare to plunge in seriously.

The symbolic offer and acceptance is over, and the worst mistake you could make there is to blast away at the first kiss too passionately, since this can be far too intimidating. Remember you’re putting your tongue into a complete stranger’s mouth; you need to do it slowly and politely. If she jumps on you when you do it, then of course it’s okay to respond, but as long as you’re leading, start slowly.

Then, however, another issue comes up. Should you kiss with eyes open or closed? On films, of course, all lovers have their eyes shut the moment the lips touch, the girls often for longer. Now for girls this isn’t a problem, they are essentially having all this done to them, and being in the passenger seat they don’t need to see what’s going on. For the male, keeping a good bearing is vital, especially as the kissing generally starts late at night, when he’s tired, and in a dark place.

Basically, it’s more stylish to kiss with eyes closed, but many men feel it’s too much of a waste to work that much for something, and then when it finally comes, not to watch it. And of course, that’s not a problem anyway, so long as the girl is keeping her eyes closed. The problem comes if she suddenly opens them in mid-kiss, then, immediately you feel rather silly, as if you’ve been caught out looking. In this instance don’t shut your eyes quickly, this is a complete giveaway and actually makes you look guilty! Instead, sort of melt your expression, as if overcome by emotion, and cuddle her tighter. Often the girl will then shut her eyes again.

Shutting eyes does have certain very distinct advantages, one in particular pointed out by many girls, is that you can pretend it’s someone else much more easily.

Your kiss should suggest what’s going to come later - it should be soft and moist, with elements of hard and precise mixed in. You’ve got to show that you can be gentle, and that you can dominate too. The girl doesn’t want to show you how she does it, she wants to lay back and let you do it. She wants to see what your like, and then decide:

1. If you’re any good at it.
2. What role to play herself (innocent virgin, experienced older woman, etc.)

A lot of girls will wait until that first kiss to decide whether they’re going to sleep with a man or not. This isn’t because they can’t make up their mind from the way he looks, talks and acts, it’s the same procedure with men that they really like. Somehow, the way a man does the first kiss can either be so good or so off-putting. And, if the kissing is really that bad, then no matter what you look like, she’ll just be completely turned off.

The kiss is therefore to relax the girl, to soothe her doubts, and to set the scene. It mustn’t be jerky, it must flow, and the man mustn’t give the girl time to think. If he does the same thing repeatedly, she will get bored, her mind will wander, and she’ll suddenly seize up. Finally, as if all that wasn’t complicated enough, it’s important that he uses his hands at the same time.

If you’re not sure whether you can touch her boobs this early, then use your hands on