Chapter 5: Attraction, arousal, and response.

Question 1

Are men intimidated by highly educated women in tinder study?

Answer 1

• 24 fictitious tinder profiles
• multiple cities in Flanders/Belgium
• areas of interest; education level was signalled by filling in the line ‘education’ on the main screen.
• fake education levels from bachelor’s degrees to master’s degrees.
• female’s chose men with higher degrees.

Question 2

What did evolutionary biologist Robert Trivers (1972) famously propose?

Answer 2

• famously proposed that mate preferences are defined in terms of reproductive capacity: physical attractiveness in females and ability to provide in males.

Question 3

What is the difference in attraction between male and female in means of rating?

Answer 3

Female - think financial prospects are more important.
Male - think physical attractiveness is more important.

Question 4

What are the differences between men and women in terms of mating preferences?

Answer 4

• revolve around different evolutionary pressures that men and women face.
• reproductive investments for men are minimal and only require sexual intercourse.
• women investment times are longer involving gestational periods and years of nurturing.

Question 5

What did the facial morphological cues to interpersonal perceptions of romantic partner quality study? find?

Answer 5

• more attractive for female than male faces.
• for perceptions of masculinity like eyebrow thickness, jawbone prominence, and facial height were relatively more salient than cheekbone prominence and eye size, although facial height was more important for female than male faces, and jawbone prominence was marginally more important for male than female faces.

Question 6

What are the overall preferences for masculinity in the different initial masculinity levels?

Answer 6

• falls into two separate groups
• this can mean that attractiveness and facial masculinity tend to have a threshold-like correlation, rather than a linear or curvilinear one.
• women show a preference for faces with higher masculinity

Question 7

Why do women prefer more masculine men?

Answer 7

• because more attractive women are better able to minimize the potential costs of choosing a masculine mate, such as low investment and increased risked of desertion.

Question 8

What is the Coolidge Effect?

Answer 8

it is explored via animal research; it dictates that male arousal/interest declines via habituation and can be re-ignited by novelty.

Question 9

What is the Westermarck effect?

Answer 9

• predicts that people tend to avoid mating with all individuals that resemble their other-sex siblings.
• women rated those who resembled their siblings as less attractive
• men however rated those that resemble their siblings or familiar as more attractive.
• perhaps because women have more to lose to engage in such behavior.

Question 10

What is the correlation between beauty and masks?

Answer 10

• the study found that masked ratings of beauty are higher than of no mask.
• same as showing a photo of a face upside down.

Question 11

What is sexual dimorphism?

Answer 11

• the differences between males and females of the same species, such as color, shape, size and structure.
• it may be to increase sexual selection so they will be chosen as a mate.
• they compete for mates and females do most of the choosing (aka mate choice).
• this imbalance is what leads to sexual dimorphism.

Question 12

What was the conclusion on the presenting your best self(ie): the influence of gender on vertical orientation of selfies on tinder (Sedgewick et al, 2017)?

Answer 12

• individuals may intuitively manipulate the vertical camera angle to embody how they want to be perceived by the opposite sex.
• concepts from evolutionary psychology and grounded cognition suggest that this manipulation can provide cues of physical height and impressions of power to the viewer which are qualities found to influence mate-selection. Males would lie to appear taller, and females would lie to appear shorter.

Question 13

What are the variations in facial masculinity?

Answer 13

• the 5 levels of initial masculinity are indicated, and a sample face is used to demonstrate average femininity and average masculinity.

Question 14

What was the overall results for preferences for masculinity in different initial masculinity levels?

Answer 14

• complex results suggesting that women prefer a moderate amount of masculinity that strikes a balance between opposing factors.

Question 15

What is the facial fluctuating asymmetry is not associated with childhood ill-health in a large British cohort study?

Answer 15

• many studies have explored links between FA and current or early-life physical health.

Question 16

What is the most attractive waist to hip ratio in male and females?

Answer 16

M = 0.9
F = 0.7

Question 17

What are the results of Grossbard et al. study for perceived norms for thinness and muscularity among college students: what do men and women really want?

Answer 17

• both males and females are a bit off in terms of what the opposite sex finds attractive, and in opposite directions.
• husbands’ satisfaction was linked to wives’ attractiveness… but not vice versa.
• Wives’ changes in satisfaction over time were linked to their own attractiveness.

Question 18

What is some evidence that physical attractiveness does convey valuable information?

Answer 18

• more attractive –> less likely to be diagnosed with various diseases.

Question 19

Is there a link between attractiveness and perceived truthfulness?

Answer 19

-researchers primed half the participants to feel sexually secure and the other half to feel generally secure.
- the link between attractiveness and perceived truthfulness disappeared when raters were sexually secure, highlighting a causative role for sexual insecurity.
- meaning that the more sexually secure you are the less truthful you are found.

Question 20

Does humor influence a person’s desirability (Bressler et al, 2006)?

Answer 20

• like other studies, they had participants rate the attractiveness of pictures.
• but here, each picture had either a humorous or non-humorous statement attached.
• the ‘humor’ influenced ratings by the women, who more often chose the humor associated photos, but not by the men.
• the same researchers found similar things in a study that didn’t rely on their questionable sense of humor…

Question 21

What is the link between marriage age gap and short-term infant survival?

Answer 21

• birth outcomes peak here when male age is *5 years older than the female.
• there may be an ideal age gap, too young and they could have less earnings than older.

Question 22

Does good conduct makes your face attractive: the effect of personality perception on facial attractiveness judgments?

Answer 22

• human facial attractiveness is related to physical features, such as clear complexion and symmetry.

Question 23

Is there a link between voice pitch and attractiveness (Feinberg et al., 2008)?

Answer 23

• males prefer higher pitches in female voices..
• there is a positive association between voice pitch and attractiveness ratings, with the most attractive voices far higher in pitch than the average pitch of our sample.

Question 24

What are pheromones?

Answer 24

the natural smell a male or female have in their sweat glans

Question 25

What is the vomeronasal organ?

Answer 25

it influences mating and social behavior.

Question 26

What is the study on the evidence of Sexual Chemo signals? (Wisman et al., 2020)

Answer 26

• sexual arousal to female scent samples from both conditions.
• Note Error bars represent 95% confidence intervals.

Question 27

What are the sexual changes between high arousal, excitement and orgasm?

Answer 27

• excitement, plateau, orgasm, and resolution back to excitement.

Question 28

What are the steps in physiology with excitement, plateau, orgasm, and resolution in males?

Answer 28

Erection begins, testicles rise, bulbourethral glands contract, testicles engorge and fully elevate, scrotal skin thickens, penis fully erects, bulbourethral secretion.
- during orgasm the vasa deferentia contract, seminal vesicles contract, prostate gland contracts, anal sphincter contracts, urethra contracts, and semen in released.
- resolution - testicles descend and erection is lost, goes into refractory period.

Question 29

What are the steps in physiology with excitement, plateau, orgasm, and resolution in females?

Answer 29

• E = uterus rises, vagina lubricates labia engorges, clitoris becomes erect.
• P = upper part of vagina expands, orgasmic platform forms, clitoris retracts under hood.
• O = uterus contracts, Anal sphincter contracts, orgasmic platform contracts
• R = uterus descends, orgasmic platform relaxes, labia engorgement declines, and clitoris descends and shrinks.

Question 30

How is the orgasmic platform generating in women before orgasm?

Answer 30

• muscle contractions cause narrowing of outer part of vaginal canal, which generates the orgasmic platform.

Question 31

During orgasm what are the increased activity in the brain’s reward pathway, while activity throughout the cortex goes down dramatically?

Answer 31

• the mesolimbic dopamine pathway and ventral tegmental area goes toward nucleus accumbens, then towards the mesocortical dopamine pathway to the prefrontal cortex.

Question 32

What percentage do female have multiple orgasms?

Answer 32

40%

Question 33

What happens during the male refractory period (Yilmaz and Aksu, 2000)?

Answer 33

• the sensitivity of the penis is lower (i.e., the sensory threshold is higher), making it simply less responsive to stimulation.

Question 34

Are there different types of female orgasm?

Answer 34

• Yes, there are good-sex orgasms or not-as-good-sex orgasms.

Question 35

What is the bogus pipeline that Psychologists have used?

Answer 35

• to measure the direction and intensity of people’s attitudes.
• A subject reveals a particular attitude by moving the dial on the left.
• An experimenter secretly manipulates the dial on the right, leading the subject to believe that the machine accurately knows her ‘true’ attitude.

Question 36

Did the bogus pipeline change in men?

Answer 36

it did not change the relationship between subjective and physiological arousal.

Question 37

What do exclusively androphilic women tend to exhibit?

Answer 37

• a unique pattern of sexual responses compared to other women.
• exclusively androphilic women’s genital responses tend to be gender nonspecific, meaning that they exhibit similar degrees of genital response to male and female sexual stimuli.

Question 38

What is sexual concordance with women?

Answer 38

• they can have negative sexual concordance, no sexual concordance, or positive sexual concordance.
• the substantial variation in women’s sexual concordance suggests the presence of moderators in the relationship between physiological and psychological aspects of women’s sexual response.

Question 39

What are the inputs to female arousal?

Answer 39

Genital sexual arousal –> mechanical stimulation.
Extragenital changes
Subjective sexual arousal
Psychosocial variables

Question 40

What are the genital sexual arousal?

Answer 40

• vaginal lubrication
• engorgement of blood in genital tissue
• perception of genital pulsing, throbbing, tingling, and warmth.

Question 41

What are the extragenital changes to female arousal?

Answer 41

• nipple erection
• pupil dilation
• skin flushing
• heart rate goes up, respiration rate, and sweat gland activity
• blood pressure goes up
• body temperature goes up

Question 42

What is the subjective sexual arousal in women?

Answer 42

• positive mental engagement in sexual activity
• feeling ‘turned on’ during sexual activity

Question 43

What are the psychosocial variables?

Answer 43

• relationship and partner factors
• sexual attitudes and beliefs
• sexual history