Pacific Standard March-April 2013 Cover

The Mating Advantage of Male Musicians

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For women, it seems, there’s something about a man holding an instrument. That’s the conclusion of a just-published study from France, which found a man is more attractive to the opposite sex if there’s a guitar in his hand. Its results confirm the findings of a similar study from Israel published last year. Across cultures, the research would suggest, male musicians are viewed as promising mating material. The more recent study, in France, was conducted by a team of researchers led by Nicolas Guéguen of the Universite de Bretagne-Sud, and published in the journal Psychology of ... Read More

Iceland: Stop Sleeping With Your Family Members

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I ... I don't even. I just. What is ... are they? Huhhhhhh? From the News of Iceland (which also boasts most-read stories with headlines of "Iceland Is the Coolest Place to Go on Vacation" and "Ben Stiller Walking Around in Icelandic Nature"): The Icelandic population is very small and all Icelanders are related. But yet, it is big enough so everyone doesn't know one another. This means that each and every Icelander that is in a relationship, is dating a relative. In most cases those relations are distant. But not always. But how can they know? Yes, the population is tiny: 321,857 people ... Read More

Pitfalls of the Teen Dating Scene

(PHOTO: JULIA ZAKHAROVA/SHUTTERSTOCK)

As someone who didn’t have, ahem, a wealth of opportunity to explore the high school dating scene, my interactions with female classmates came primarily in the form of AOL instant messages and orchestra bus trips. By senior year, I’d received the “let’s just be friends” talk so often that I knew it by heart. Was it any coincidence that I didn’t touch a drop of alcohol till my freshman year of college, and underlined my English texts with colored pencils and a ruler? According to a six-year longitudinal study that looks at teenagers’ dating patterns, partying habits, and study ... Read More

I Now Pronounce You FBO: Facebook Official

A budding romance tends to follow a prescribed pattern, with dating leading to an engagement and ultimately marriage. But in further evidence that Facebook is changing the rhythms and rituals of our lives, researchers report that, at least among college students, a new marker has been added on the bumpy road of building relationships: Updating your social-network status. Or, as it is commonly called, becoming Facebook Official, or FBO. “This status is a new milestone for couples,” writes a research team led by Jesse Fox of The Ohio State University. Occurring sometime after an ... Read More

Flowers Make Women More Receptive to Romance

Men have been known to engage in all sorts of behaviors to enhance their sex appeal. Work out. Write bad poetry. Buy expensive cars. Well, guys, it turns out there’s a simpler way. If you want to increase the odds a woman will find you attractive, all you have to do is buy her a beautiful bouquet. Or, alternatively, hang out near a rose garden. Research from (where else?) France, just published in the journal Social Influence, found females were considerably more likely to accept an invitation for a date if they had just been sitting in a flower-festooned room. “These results ... Read More

What If It’s Not Raining Men?

A few years back, evolutionary psychologist Daniel Kruger was wandering around Manhattan when a Time Out New York cover grabbed his eye — a Godzilla-sized woman in a red dress rampaging through the city streets next to the headline: "Attack of the Single Women!" Inside: an article about the plight of the unmarried women in a metro region where they outnumber potential male mates by three-quarters of a million (about a 10-to-9 ratio). Kruger, a research professor at the University of Michigan's School of Public Health, wondered: "What if there really were a lot more single women than ... Read More