Disney Elevates Heterosexuality To Powerful, Magical Heights

It's common to think of "the media" as providing a window on the "real world" that's imaginative and metaphorical – ostensibly to make it more "entertaining" – yet nevertheless essentially accurate.

At some level people also know and, to an extent, understand and even approve that mass media are distinctly slanted to celebrating and inculcating the majority ideology and values of the society in which they are embedded.

What doesn't seem to be generally understood, though, is how distorted the resulting picture of the "real world" can be, in order to reinforce the fortuitous ideology and values prevailing in any given society.

Here's research demonstrating how extreme the distortion can become. And the focus on Disney is so appropriate. It is so exquisitely fitting that a place called "Fantasyland" is found at the heart of Disney's theme parks Disneyworld/Disneyland. It's a metaphor for what is to be found at the heart of "real world" societies.

Disney Elevates Heterosexuality To Powerful, Magical Heights (6/22/09)

Martin and Kazyak analyzed all G-rated movies released, or rereleased, between 1990 and 2005 that grossed more than $100 million in the United States (see Supplemental Materials). Three trained research assistants extracted story lines, images, scenes, songs and dialogue that addressed anything about sexuality, including depictions of bodies, kissing, jokes, romance, weddings, dating, love, where babies come from, and pregnancy. The text describing this material was inductively coded using a qualitative software program.

The analysis found the films "depict a rich and pervasive heterosexual landscape," despite the assumption that children's media are free of sexual content. The movies repeatedly mark relationships between opposite sex lead characters as special and magical.

Research article abstract:

Hetero-Romantic Love and Heterosexiness in Children's G-Rated Films

In this article, the authors examine accounts of heterosexuality in media for children. The authors analyze all the G-rated films grossing $100 million dollars or more between 1990 and 2005 and find two main accounts of heterosexuality. First, heterosexuality is constructed through hetero-romantic love relationships as exceptional, powerful, magical, and transformative. Second, heterosexuality outside of relationships is constructed through portrayals of men gazing desirously at women's bodies. Both of these findings have implications for our understanding of heteronormativity. The first is seemingly at odds with theories that claim that heterosexuality's mundane, assumed, everyday ordinariness lends heteronormativity its power. In fact, the authors suggest heterosexual exceptionalism may extend the pervasiveness of heterosexuality and serve as a means of inviting investment in it. The second offers ways to begin to think about how heteronormativity is gendered and racialized.

Tags: mass media, ideology, social conditioning, social construction of reality

Mirror neurons control erection response to porn

Does anyone find this surprising? Isn't it exactly the effect one would expect mirror neurons to have? (Past discussion here.) However, it is welcome to note basic research that has practical applications...

Mirror neurons control erection response to porn (6/16/08)

You don't have to be a scientist to observe that pornographic images lead to erections in men. But you would have to be one to show those images to volunteers while meticulously measuring the volume of response in the brain and penis.

Harold Mouras, at University of Picardie Jules Verne in Amiens, France, and his colleagues wanted to understand the cerebral underpinnings of visually-induced erections.

They suspected there might be a role for mirror neurons, a special class of brain cell that fires both when people perform an action and when they observe it being performed.

Not a terribly difficult guess to make. So what did they find?

While the volunteers watched the movies, the researchers watched their brains using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI).

They also kept tabs on the tumescence of the other target organ, using a hand-crafted "penile plethysmograph" – essentially an airtight tube in which the enlarging penis causes measurable pressure changes.

As expected, all the subjects got erections and many parts of the brain lit up.

Interestingly, the volume of the erections correlated with the strength of activation in a part of the brain called the pars opercularis, which is known to display mirror neuron activity. Even more intriguing, the brain activation, say the researchers, precedes the penile response.

Tags: mirror neurons

Male homosexuality

Doesn't it really suck to be a religious adversary of homosexuality these days? All their favorite arguments against genetic predispositions in some people for same-sex attraction are crumbling into dust. But then, when has their position ever had a foundation in the use of reason?

One of the favorite arguments against homosexuality is that it couldn't survive evolutionary selection, since only male-female couples can reproduce naturally.

It has previously been shown (2004), by one of the same researchers involved with a follow-on study, that females in the maternal line of male homosexuals were more fertile than average. This suggests that such females have some genetic characteristics that at the same time help them have more offspring and also to have more male offspring with homosexual inclinations than the overall average. This should be enough to allow homosexual males to stay in the population at some level, even if they never actually have children of their own.

Of course, questions still remained. What evolutionary model of this situation would actually show statistically that homosexual males would continue to persist in the population? And what characteristics of certain females promote both higher fertility and higher proportion of homosexual male offspring?

There are now some answers:

Male Homosexuality Can Be Explained Through A Specific Model Of Darwinian Evolution, Study Shows (6/17/08)

An Italian research team, consisting of Andrea Camperio Ciani and Giovanni Zanzotto at the University of Padova and Paolo Cermelli at the University of Torino, found that the evolutionary origin and maintenance of male homosexuality in human populations could be explained by a model based around the idea of sexually antagonistic selection, in which genetic factors spread in the population by giving a reproductive advantage to one sex while disadvantaging the other.

Male homosexuality is thought to be influenced by psycho-social factors, as well as having a genetic component. This is suggested by the high concordance of sexual orientation in identical twins and the fact that homosexuality is more common in males belonging to the maternal line of male homosexuals. These effects have not been shown for female homosexuality, indicating that these two phenomena may have very different origins and dynamics.

Male homosexuality is difficult to explain under Darwinian evolutionary models, because carriers of genes predisposing towards male homosexuality would be likely to reproduce less than average, suggesting that alleles influencing homosexuality should progressively disappear from a population. This changed when previous work by Camperio Ciani and collaborators, published in 2004, showed that females in the maternal line of male homosexuals were more fertile than average.

It was necessary to consider specific models of traits and genetic inheritance in order to eliminate any (and possibly all) that were inconsistent with existing data:

Challenged by all these empirical data, the authors of the new study considered a range of different hypotheses for the genetic diffusion of male homosexuality. These included: the genetic maternal effects on sons, the heterozygote advantage (as is found in malaria resistance), and "sexually antagonistic selection." The latter is a particular aspect of Darwinian evolution, in which genetic factors spread in the population by giving a reproductive advantage to one sex while disadvantaging the other. ...

To discover and clarify the dynamics of the genetic factors for homosexuality, the researchers had to screen a large set of models and exclude them one by one. They concluded that the only possible model was that of sexually antagonistic selection. The other models did not fit the empirical data, either implying that the alleles would become extinct too easily or invade the population, or failing to describe the distribution patterns of male homosexuality and female fecundity observed in the families of homosexuals. Only the model of sexually antagonistic selection involving at least two genes -- at least one of which must be on the X chromosome (inherited in males only through their mother) -- accounted for all the known data.

The results of this model show the interaction of male homosexuality with increased female fecundity within human populations, in a complex dynamic, resulting in the maintenance of male homosexuality at stable and relatively low frequencies, and highlighting the effects of heredity through the maternal line.

It makes a lot of sense, when you stop to think about it for even a moment, that a genetic factor favoring male homosexuality should be on a chromosome (X) that females have one more copy of than males. In that way, the factor can potentially be inherited, regardless of what her mate's genetics are. It also helps if the genes, whatever they are, tend to make female offspring more fertile, even if the male offspring are less fertile (because of homosexuality).

So what sort of characteristic might it be that favors females by making females more likely to reproduce but males less likely? Another report on this research spells it out:

"Gay Genes" May Be Good for Women (6/18/08)

Camperio Ciani's team suggests that these gay genes may actually increase how attracted both men and women are to men rather than making gay men more "feminine," as some researchers had earlier proposed. Although this is bad for male fertility, it is good for female fertility and allows such genes to survive at low but stable rates in a population, the authors say.

Dean Hamer, a behavioral geneticist at the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda, Maryland, who pioneered the search for gay genes, calls the study "an elegant mathematical analysis." He adds that the team has come up with a "simple solution" to the Darwinian paradox posed by homosexuality: "What is a 'gay gene' in a man is a 'superstraight gene' in a woman," he says.

With the evolutionary questions about male homosexuality out of the way, it's interesting to note that there is also recent evidence about the physiological nature of it. That is, there are physical differences between the brains of homosexual and non-homosexual individuals, both male and females. And further, the brains of homosexual individuals are different in ways that make them more like the brains of non-homosexuals of the opposite sex.

Symmetry Of Homosexual Brain Resembles That Of Opposite Sex (6/17/08)

Swedish researchers have found that some physical attributes of the homosexual brain resemble those found in the opposite sex. ...

Some psychological tests have shown differences between men and women in the extent to which they employ the brain’s hemispheres in verbal tasks. Other research has hinted that homosexuals may exhibit the tendencies of the opposite sex in brain behavior unrelated to sexual activity.

Ivanka Savic and Per Lindström, of the Department of Clinical Neuroscience at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden, now report that the brains of heterosexual men and homosexual women are slightly asymmetric — the right hemisphere is larger than the left — and the brains of gay men and straight women are not.

Positron emission tomography (PET) scans taken by the researchers also show that in connectivity of the amygdala (which is important for emotional learning), lesbians resemble straight men, and gay men resemble straight women.

A couple of remarks about this. First, these results don't have much to do with those of the research discussed earlier, in that they don't indicate how females who tend to have male homosexual children might be more attracted to men. But they aren't inconsistent, either. Second, although there are physiological differences, these could be due to exposure of the fetus to sex hormones in the womb, rather than to genetic factors.

In fact, it is possible that genetic factors aren't involved in male homosexuality per se. It could be that the genetic factors carried by females who tend to have male homosexual children are responsible for the hormonal environment in their wombs that pruduces both homosexuality and the brain differences just noted. But this may be unlikely, as the effect would have to be different, depending on the sex of the child – female children would still get brain characteristics atypical of females, yet the same attraction to males as their mothers have.

Sexuality is complicated.

More news reports about this:

• Gay brains structured like those of the opposite sex (6/16/08)
  
• Gay men, straight women share brain detail: report (6/16/08)
  
• Scans see 'gay brain differences' (6/16/08)
  
• Study Says Brains of Gay Men and Women Are Similar (6/16/08)
  
• Gay men and straight women have similar brains, study says (6/17/08)
  

An interesting question that still remains is: what does the evolutionary and physiological evidence say about female homosexuality? Not being lesbian, or even female, I don't have any particularly good insight into this. Just speculating, I would guess that the physiological factors tipping a female towards preferring another female rather than a male as a partner are complicated.

However, it could be as simple as that, as in the research discussed above, homosexual females have, like straight males, neural wiring that results in attraction to females. So that, consequently, there are few natural inhibitions, and some rewards, for females to seek other females for pair bonding.

Furthermore, since females can easily get pregnant with only brief (and usually ready, willing, and able) assistance from males, it would not be difficult for paired females to raise children together. Perhaps even less stress than trying to do the same with a male partner who has a roving eye. The males, for their part, might be just as happy not to assume the burdens of fatherhood, so they can go off hunting (for game, or more females) with their pals.

The evolutionary position of males and females who pair with their own sex just isn't symmetrical. Male couples cannot have children of their own, without the substantial assistance of a female for an extended period of time (especially if you count, as you must, a couple years for breast feeding.) But female couples just don't have such a problem. Life's not fair. This lack of similar evolutionary obstacles suggests a larger tendency towards bisexuality, at least, in females, which seems to be the case.

Update, 7/12/08:

A recent study of twins concluded that homosexuality results from a mixture of genetic and environmental factors: Homosexual Behavior Largely Shaped By Genetics And Random Environmental Factors.

A somewhat earlier study by one of the authors of the twin research found that male homosexuals navigate in virtual reality in a way similar to (straight) females: Gay Men Navigate In A Similar Way To Women, Virtual Reality Researchers Find

Update, 8/20/08:

Here's more recent research from Camperio Ciani and colleagues:

Bisexuality passed on by 'hyper-heterosexuals' (8/15/08)

Tags: homosexuality, evolution

Trading sex for resources

The title really says it all. Not much further commentary needed. Care for another example? How about bower birds?

Just Like Penguins And Other Primates, People Trade Sex For Resources

Female penguins mate with males who bring them pebbles to build egg nests. Hummingbirds mate to gain access to the most productive flowers guarded by larger males.

New research shows that even affluent college students who don't need resources will still attempt to trade sexual currency for provisions, said Daniel Kruger, research scientist at the University of Michigan School of Public Health.

The exchange of resources for sex---referred to by scientists as nuptial gifts---has occurred throughout history in many species, including humans, Kruger said. The male of the species offers protection and resources to the female and offspring in exchange for reproductive rights. For example, an arranged marriage can be considered a contract to trade resources.

However, the recent findings suggest that such behaviors are hard wired, and persist no matter how much wealth, resources or security that people obtain.

Tags: evolutionary psychology

Valentine's Day news

Yeah, yeah, this is late. So?

Every year we read news stories like the following right around this time. Worth thinking about. (By the way, Wagner's Prelude and Liebestod from "Tristan und Isolde" is playing on my computer right now. Synchronicity?)

And here's a little more advice you didn't ask for. First, go see the movie Juno, if you haven't yet. It's good. Really. Second, if you want to understand all this you need to get the perspective of evolutionary psychology. Matt Ridley's The Red Queen: Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature is a good place to start, if you need one.

The Differences in Gender -- Sealed With a Kiss

A kiss, it turns out, is definitely not always just a kiss.

As Valentine's Day approaches, research has begun shedding light on that most basic of all human expressions of love -- the smooch -- which has received surprisingly little scientific scrutiny.

"You'd think there would be a lot of research on kissing behavior. It's so common," said Susan M. Hughes, an assistant professor of psychology at Albright College in Pennsylvania, whose recent study is one of the first to probe snogging in depth. "But there isn't. It's really been ignored."

In fact, much about love and attraction remains mysterious.

"This is a seminal paper," said Helen Fisher, a Rutgers University anthropologist who studies love. "It's remarkable that we don't know more about these things. But love has not really been well studied until recently."

In people, kissing to express affection is almost universal. About 90 percent of human cultures do it.

Carnal Knowledge: They give pleasure; science asks why

There are some natural phenomena whose wonder only deepens upon scientific investigation.

Take the orgasm. Scientists know it involves muscle contractions. They know it makes your pupils expand, and heart rate and blood pressure surge.

But why do orgasms feel good?

I was surprised to find that this is still something of a scientific mystery - though one that a few intrepid researchers are just starting to unravel.

"Really and truly, people don't know," says Julia Heiman, director of the Kinsey Institute for Sex Research and coauthor of Becoming Orgasmic.

Right now, says Heiman, there's a big debate over how the female orgasm evolved. Researchers would also like to know just how different the female kind is from the male.

"Why is it easier for women to have multiple orgasms than it is for men?" Heiman asks. "How does it interact with attachment issues?"

There are lots of other questions, she says, but oddly, in our supposedly sex-obsessed society, it's nearly impossible to get funding for sex research.

Another complication: The orgasm question touches on some profound mysteries about how feelings and consciousness can emerge from the brain.

The Merry Band of Wrigglers

The old adage says that a wife can't change her husband, but the truth is that women for thousands of years have been shaping one crucial male attribute: sperm. Men tend to produce as many sperm as possible as quickly as possible, a manufacturing decision that sacrifices quality control: Their sperm are frequently mutated or deformed as a result. Why, then, do men make millions of sperm at once? Because they're adapting to ward off the effects of women's frequent cheating, according to a paper published in December in the Journal of Theoretical Biology.

Humans aren't especially good at monogamy. Evidence gathered from surveys and paternity tests suggests that 25 percent of women and 30 percent of men cheat on their spouses at least once during marriage. The evolutionary reason that men cheat is pretty simple: to father as many children as they can. It's more complicated for women, who can only give birth so many times. The quality of the child, then, wins over quantity. Because men with the best genes aren't always the most stable and resourceful partners (they don't have to be), women might marry the latter but cheat with the former. Then they can become pregnant with a genetically superior child who will, if her mother can pull it off, grow up with the help of her unwitting spouse.

Why Perfect Dates Make Lousy Partners

The best "catches" in dating land may be the worst choices in the long-run, new research shows.

Popular people who monitor themselves carefully in social situations and thereby appear to be the most socially appropriate are often highly sought after as romantic partners, a study finds, but these people show less satisfaction and commitment in relationships than socially-awkward people.

By self-monitoring, people assess how their actions affect others and adjust to fit the appropriateness of the situation. They screen their words and behavior to suit the people around them.

"High self-monitors are social chameleons," said Northwestern University professor of communication studies Michael E. Roloff."And, because they're quick to pick up on social cues, are socially adept and unlikely to say things upsetting to others, they are generally well-liked and sought after."

Self-monitoring is often a helpful attribute.

"Research finds [self-monitors] to be excellent negotiators and far more likely to be promoted at work than their low self-monitoring peers,” Roloff said.

But there’s a downside for high self-monitors when it comes to their romantic relationships.

"High self-monitors may appear to be the kind of people we want to have relationships with, but they themselves are less committed to and less happy in their relationships than low self-monitors," Roloff said.

More: Is Your Dating Partner Happy? With Some People It Is Hard To Know

The next item is about rats, but human folklore suggests it's very likely true for humans as well:

Females love the sweet smell of sexual success

It might be the sweet smell of success or the bitter whiff of despair, but there's something in the odour of a male rat that tells a female whether he's been copulating like crazy or starved of sex for days. And to make matters worse for frustrated males, the females much prefer the smell of road-tested studs.

The next is a fairly interesting article. Unfortunately, the link may turn into a pumpkin rather soon, since Nature isn't very generous with such things. Snarf it quickly if you want it.

Love: You have 4 minutes to choose your perfect mate

Eli Finkel and Paul Eastwick have probably seen more first dates than most. The social scientists at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, have watched hundreds of videos of single people as they participate in a curious, but not unpopular, trend known as speed dating. Two participants spill their souls to each other for a set time, say four minutes, and try to decide whether they might have a future together. When the time is up, they move on to a new partner, sometimes talking to a dozen or more people in a night. ...

From a purely biological standpoint, the success of a partnership hinges mainly on one thing, reproduction. But for humans, who give birth to exceptionally weak, awkward and totally dependent babies, strong pair bonding and the sharing of parental duties can play an important part in the success of their offspring. It is strange, then, that a goal as simple as forming a pair bond could lead to an emotion as complex as romantic love. ...

Since the 1940s, social scientists have brought the tools of their trade to bear on such lofty questions. Finkel and Eastwick are now using some of the newest and most controversial techniques. The fast-paced format of speed dating could be exhilarating, daunting or perhaps even dorky for participants and observers alike. Nevertheless, the researchers say that it could help to reveal some of the mysteries behind that uniquely human emotion — love. Indeed, their research, including a paper published today1, has already started to turn up some surprises.

In the 1940s, when scientists first started to pick at the basis of human attraction, psychologists interviewed single people and asked them what they would value in a partner. Many of the values were the same in both men and women, but two things stood out in survey after survey. Women valued the wealth of their partner much more than men did, and men valued attractiveness more than women did.

These differences can even make sense in evolutionary terms. A woman looking to have children would want the support of a good provider to help her children succeed in life. Men's seemingly superficial preference for beauty was seen as a proxy for health. Symmetry, skin tone and a favourable waist-to-hip ratio could reasonably point to a woman who would not only survive childbirth, but also pass on lots of healthy genes.

More: What Men And Women Say And Do In Choosing Romantic Partners Are Two Different Matters

Other studies on such themes:

Women More Perceptive Than Men In Describing Relationships

'Love Hormone' Promotes Bonding: Could It Treat Anxiety?

Beauty Bias: Can People Love The One They Are Compatible With?

A Sense Of Scarcity: Why It Seems Like All The Good Ones Are Taken

'Hotties' Not So Hot When You're In Love, Online Dating Researchers Find

Probing Women's Response To Male Odor

The religious right is wrong again

Here's a cheery follow-up of more news of the sort in this earlier post.

Report: Abstinence Not Curbing Teen Sex

Programs that focus exclusively on abstinence have not been shown to affect teenager sexual behavior, although they are eligible for tens of millions of dollars in federal grants, according to a study released by a nonpartisan group that seeks to reduce teen pregnancies.

"At present there does not exist any strong evidence that any abstinence program delays the initiation of sex, hastens the return to abstinence or reduces the number of sexual partners" among teenagers, the study concluded.

The report, which was based on a review of research into teenager sexual behavior, was being released Wednesday by the nonpartisan National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy.

The study found that while abstinence-only efforts appear to have little positive impact, more comprehensive sex education programs were having "positive outcomes" including teenagers "delaying the initiation of sex, reducing the frequency of sex, reducing the number of sexual partners and increasing condom or contraceptive use."

Sadly, some Congressional facilitators of the religious right want to waste more of our tax money ($141 million) on more of this same sort of tax-sponsored religious propaganda:

A spending bill before Congress for the Department of Health and Human Services would provide $141 million in assistance for community-based, abstinence-only sex education programs, $4 million more than what President Bush had requested.

Contact your Congressperson and complain.

And incidentally, not only do abstinence-only programs not work, they are based on misinformation and myths about comprehensive sex education:

The study, conducted by Douglas Kirby, a senior research scientist at ETR Associates, also sought to debunk what the report called "myths propagated by abstinence-only advocates" including: that comprehensive sex education promotes promiscuity, hastens the initiative of sex or increases its frequency, and sends a confusing message to adolescents.

None of these was found to be accurate, Kirby wrote.

Instead, he wrote, such programs [i.e. comprehensive sex education] improved teens' knowledge about the risks and consequences of pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases and gave them greater "confidence in their ability to say 'no' to unwanted sex."

Additional information:

Emerging Answers 2007

National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy

Teenpregnancy.org

Readings, 12 September 2007

Today's edition deals with psychology and neuroscience

The text following each item is quoted material, except for editorial comments, which are in color.

Lobes of Steel

Scientists have suspected for decades that exercise, particularly regular aerobic exercise, can affect the brain. But they could only speculate as to how. Now an expanding body of research shows that exercise can improve the performance of the brain by boosting memory and cognitive processing speed. Exercise can, in fact, create a stronger, faster brain.

Researchers: New understanding of autism is near

While many parents of autistic children - Murdock included - suspect thimerosal, a mercury-based preservative used in routine childhood vaccines as the disorder's cause, most scientists suspect it lurks in the human genome, etched unmistakably in the DNA. ...

As Gould and Murdock worry about their sons, molecular geneticist Michael Wigler, a few miles away at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, believes he and his colleagues are on the cusp of understanding why autism occurs and how some families can be affected more than once. Wigler and his team have discovered how certain spontaneous genetic mutations are relatively common and how they can be passed on by very healthy parents to their offspring.

It's unfortunate, as the article points out, that parents of autistic children misconstrue the idea that autism is a consequence of genetic errors to be "blaming the parents". Perhaps this is partly a holdover from earlier hypotheses, which now seem very mistaken, that autism is a consequence of bad parenting. An example of this idea, sometimes called the "refigerator mother" theory of autism, was promulgated by the once-influential but now mostly discredited Freudian psychoanalyst Bruno Bettelheim. As some people who have had him as a teacher can testify, Bruno had serious psychological issues of his own.

For a press release that describes Wigler's research, see here. Another article on the research: here. Additional but different research on neurological aspects of autism: here.

This is your brain on love

All animals mate: The most primitive system in the brain, one that even reptiles have, knows it needs to reproduce. Turtles do it but then lay their eggs in the sand and head back to sea, never seeing their mate again.

Human brains are considerably more complicated, with additional neural systems that seek romance, others that want comfort and companionship, and others that are just out for a roll in the hay.

"Love makes the world go 'round" has served as an epigram to inspire a number of popular songs over the years. A more cynical point of view would suggest that it's the mating instinct that makes the world go 'round. Or even more crudely, it's sex that makes the world go 'round. Whatever. In any case, in humans this impulse manifests itself within their brains in a variety of elaborate and complicated ways.

Study Finds Men Go for Good Looks

Science is confirming what most women know: When given the choice for a mate, men go for good looks.

And guys won't be surprised to learn that women are much choosier about partners than they are.

"Just because people say they're looking for a particular set of characteristics in a mate, someone like themselves, doesn't mean that is what they'll end up choosing," Peter M. Todd, of the cognitive science program at Indiana University, Bloomington, said in a telephone interview.

Researchers led by Todd report in Tuesday's edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that their study found humans were similar to most other mammals, "following Darwin's principle of choosy females and competitive males, even if humans say something different."

If these findings aren't obvious to you, perhaps you're still a little wet behind the ears... More on this research: here, here, here.

The Whys of Mating: 237 Reasons and Counting

Perhaps you thought that the motivations for sex were pretty obvious. Or maybe you never really wanted to know what was going on inside other people’s minds, in which case you should stop reading immediately.

For now, thanks to psychologists at the University of Texas at Austin, we can at last count the whys. After asking nearly 2,000 people why they’d had sex, the researchers have assembled and categorized a total of 237 reasons — everything from “I wanted to feel closer to God” to “I was drunk.” They even found a few people who claimed to have been motivated by the desire to have a child.

This is so quintessentially human – the need for novelty and variety is so great that humans need to think of so many rationalizations for what essentially boils down to: reproduction. More on this research: here, here.

Who’s Minding the Mind?

In a recent experiment, psychologists at Yale altered people’s judgments of a stranger by handing them a cup of coffee.

The study participants, college students, had no idea that their social instincts were being deliberately manipulated. On the way to the laboratory, they had bumped into a laboratory assistant, who was holding textbooks, a clipboard, papers and a cup of hot or iced coffee — and asked for a hand with the cup.

That was all it took: The students who held a cup of iced coffee rated a hypothetical person they later read about as being much colder, less social and more selfish than did their fellow students, who had momentarily held a cup of hot java. ...

Psychologists say that “priming” people in this way is not some form of hypnotism, or even subliminal seduction; rather, it’s a demonstration of how everyday sights, smells and sounds can selectively activate goals or motives that people already have.

Gee, you don't suppose, do you, that this sort of mechanism is at work when somebody notices a person of the opposite sex wearing clothing that has connotations of, say, power, affluence, or allure – and decides that it might be advantageous to become better acquainted with that person... and can think of 237 reasons for that....

But aside from that, this idea of "priming" also reminds me of the following:

A New Study Suggests A Relationship Between Fear Of Death And Political Preferences

This research is based on the idea that reminders of death increase the need for psychological security and therefore the appeal of leaders who emphasize the greatness of the nation and a heroic victory over evil. ...

For their current research, the scientists asked students to think about their own death or a control topic and then read campaign statements of three hypothetical political candidates, each with a different leadership style: "charismatic" (i.e. those emphasizing greatness of the nation and a heroic victory over evil, as described above), task-oriented or relationship-oriented. Following a reminder of death, there was almost an 800 percent increase in votes for the charismatic leader, but no increase for the two other candidates.

This research came out in 2004. But it seems appropriate to remember any time one observes would-be "leaders" who seem to talk a lot about "9/11" or "War on Terror" or "Al Qaeda". There's a very recent and prescient article on this connection here.

Sleights of Mind

In his opening address, Michael Gazzaniga, the president of the consciousness association, had described another form of prestidigitation — a virtual reality experiment in which he had put on a pair of electronic goggles that projected the illusion of a deep hole opening in what he knew to be a solid concrete floor. Jolted by the adrenaline rush, his heart beat faster and his muscles tensed, a reminder that even without goggles the brain cobbles together a world from whatever it can.

Here's a delightful article on many other ways that our brains/minds can play tricks on us, by the versatile writer George Johnson, whom I recently had the pleasure of meeting. It shows, once again, how easily we can be misled by others who are motivated to do so (including, sometimes, our unconscious selves).

Ironically, and very sadly, the parrot mentioned in the article, named Alex, has just died. Obituaries: here, here, here, here, here, here.

Out-of-body experiences are 'all in the mind'

By deliberately scrambling a person's visual and tactile senses, it is now possible to give them an "out-of-body" experience.

Two procedures – which are the first to imitate an out-of-body experience artificially – use cameras to fool people into thinking they are standing or sitting somewhere else in a room. They provide the strongest proof yet that people only imagine floating out of their bodies during surgery or near-death experiences.

"The brain can trick itself, and when it is trying to interpret sensory information, the image it produces doesn't have to be a real representation," says Henrik Ehrsson, of the Institute of Neurology, University College London, UK, who designed the first experiment.

Accidental or deliberate deceptions of the mind, like this one (perpetrated by oneself or others) – besides simply chemical influences such as alcohol or other drugs – show how convincingly the mind can be fooled given the right conditions. Such findings seem able to account for experiences that people describe as "religious" or "spirtual" or "numinous" or the like.

Other reports on this research: here, here, here, here, here, here, here.

Adolescent sex

Handheld Computer Study Captures Emotional State Of Sexually Active Adolescents

Through a unique and innovative data-gathering method, researchers at Children's Hospital Boston have gained new insight into adolescents' sexual behavior and how sex affects their moods. Their findings appear on-line in the Journal of Adolescent Health.

Using handheld personal digital assistants (PDAs), the researchers closely tracked 67 sexually active youth, aged 15 to 21, from an adolescent medicine clinic at an urban children's hospital. Each participant was given a PDA that beeped them at random, four to six times a day, asking them a series of questions about any recent sexual activity and their emotional state and feelings.

Kind of surprising that kids these days are so open about their sex lives. That's a good sign.

The 67 adolescents reported on a total of 266 unique sexual intercourse reports, 94 percent of which were with a main partner and only 49 percent involved the use of a condom.

Don't tell this to the Pope. He might croak. Then again, that wouldn't be such a bad idea... However, he might just be ecstatic that fewer than half the reports involved a condom...

The findings suggest adolescents of both sexes tended to feel more positive and less negative after engaging in sex than at times after they had not.

What's amazing is how much trouble social scientists will go to in order to document the obvious... But I suppose this finding will disappoint those who think sex with a "main partner" should be an occasion for anything but positive feelings.

Tags: adolescent sex

Feeling hot tonight?

I really can't understand why this wasn't terribly obvious. Here's an update of a story I wrote about before.

New Measure Of Sexual Arousal Found For Both Men And Women

According to a new study published in the latest issue of The Journal of Sexual Medicine and conducted in the Department of Psychology of McGill University, thermography shows great promise as a diagnostic method of measuring sexual arousal. It is less intrusive than currently utilized methods, and is the only available test that requires no physical contact with participants.

Tags: sexual arousal

Oddest science story of the week

Public 'lack knowledge about sex'

The public have a worrying lack of knowledge and understanding about sex, a survey suggests.

A poll of 495 people by the Family Planning Association found some thought exercise or urinating after intercourse could prevent pregnancy.

And, unfortunately, these are the ones most likely to have babies...

Why opposites attract romantically

Just in time for Valentine's day:

New Study Is First To Link Romantic Relationships To Genes

New research suggests that choosing a mate may be partially determined by your genes. A study published in Psychological Science has found a link between a set of genes involved with immune function and partner selection in humans.

Vertebrate species and humans are inclined to prefer mates who have dissimilar MHC (major histocompatibility complex) genotypes, rather than similar ones. This preference may help avoid inbreeding between partners, as well as strengthen the immune systems of their offspring through exposure to a wider variety of pathogens.

The study investigated whether MHC similarity among romantically involved couples predicted aspects of their sexual relationship. “As the proportion of the couple’s shared genotypes increased, womens' sexual responsivity to their partners decreased, their number of extra-pair sexual partners increased and their attraction to men other than their primary partners increased, particularly during the fertile phase of their cycles,” says Christine Garver-Apgar, author of the study.

On the other hand... While this may apply to non-human mammals like mice and chimps, there could be trouble in our species with parters who are too opposite. If she prefers classical music, luxury cruising, a neat and tidy house, and eventually wants a large family, while he prefers hip hop, mountain climbing, a relaxed attitude towards domestic order, and doesn't care that much for kids, there could be trouble brewing.

Even if they have great sex together.

Why blue-eyed men prefer blue-eyed women - but not vice versa

Most people learn in high school (if they're paying attention) that human eye color is a genetic trait which follows fairly simple rules. The primary gene that controls eye color exists in several forms, called alleles. The protein produced by one of the alleles causes the eyes to be brown, while a variant allele producing a slightly different protein does not. Since the human genome contains two copies of each gene, if even one of these copies is the allele for brown eyes, brown will be the resulting color, regardless of the other allele. Such an allele is said to be "dominant". Another eye color (e. g. blue) will result only if both copies of the gene are non-brown alleles. Such alleles are said to be "recessive".

Children receive one copy of each paired chromosome from each parent. It follows that if one parent has two copies of a dominant gene, every one of their children will receive at least one copy, regardless of what the other parent has. All children of this mother and father will have brown eyes, if even one parent has two brown eye alleles, and even if the other parent has two blue eye alleles.

If both parents have one brown and one blue allele, then for any particular child, there's a 1 in 4 chance of receiving two brown alleles, a 1 in 4 chance of receiving two blue alleles (the only case that will result in blue eyes), and a 2 in 4 chance of receiving one brown and one blue allele (hence brown eyes). If one parent has blue eyes, and the other has both a brown and a blue allele, then the odds are 50/50 for each of their children to have either brown or blue eyes. So if one or both parents have brown eyes, it's possible for them to have blue-eyed children. But when both parents have blue eyes, so all of their alleles are for blue eyes, all of their children will have blue eyes. In that case, if any child has brown eyes, it must be the case that one parent – most likely the male – is not the biological parent. Oops.

So a blue-eyed man has an interesting advantage over men with brown eyes – a very dependable way of knowing that he is not the father of a particular child, provided he mates with a blue-eyed woman. Further, a blue-eyed man who regards blue-eyed women as more attractive than women of other eye colors is more likely to mate with blue-eyed women. And so such a blue-eyed man has a selective advantage over other blue-eyed men who have no such preference (or a preference for brown-eyed women).

This would be advantageous, at least in prehistoric times, if in addition such a man was less inclined to provide for a child without blue eyes – even if there was no conscious recognition that the child could not be his own. Some recent research has indicated that blue-eyed men sometimes actually, if unconsciously, do have a tendency to regard blue-eyed women as more "attractive", and hence (presumably) are more likely to choose them as mates:

Blue Eyes -- A Clue To Paternity

Eighty-eight male and female students were asked to rate facial attractiveness of models on a computer. The pictures were close-ups of young adult faces, unfamiliar to the participants. The eye color of each model was manipulated, so that for each model's face two versions were shown, one with the natural eye color (blue/brown) and another with the other color (brown/blue). The participants' own eye color was noted.

Both blue-eyed and brown-eyed women showed no difference in their preferences for male models of either eye color. Similarly, brown-eyed men showed no preference for either blue-eyed or brown-eyed female models. However, blue-eyed men rated blue-eyed female models as more attractive than brown-eyed models.

Since a mother almost always can be sure a given child is hers (except for rare events like accidental switching of infants), a mechanism that provides a way to recognize that a child isn't her own provides little additional advantage. And so, blue-eyed women do not have an evolutionary advantage from a tendency to regard blue-eyed men as more attractive than others. So they do not, in fact, have that tendency.

If you're looking around for an example of specific, and unexpected, behavior for which evolutionary psychology offers the simplest explanation, this may be a good choice.

Update 8/3/08: There is more recent news on this subject here and here.

Tags: biology, evolutionary theory, evolutionary psychology, eye color, blue eyes

Fertile women dress to impress

And as long as I'm writing about aspects of gender and sexuality, this is interesting:

Fertile women dress to impress, U.S. study finds

Women dress to impress when they are at their most fertile, U.S. researchers said on Tuesday in a study they say shows that signs of human ovulation may not be as mysterious as some scientists believe.

A study of young college women showed they frequently wore more fashionable or flashier clothing and jewelery when they were ovulating, as assessed by a panel of men and women looking at their photographs.

Some will say, "Nothing surprising about that." Others will say, "It's just a stereotype."

We report. You decide.

The point is that, even though human females have an estrous cycle like most other placental mammals do, it has been believed that they do not exhibit outward signs during the most receptive part of the cycle. According to the Wikipedia article,

Humans, unlike some other species, do not have any external signs to signal receptivity at ovulation. Research has shown however, that women tend to have more sexual thoughts and are most prone to sexual activity right before ovulation.

The new research is saying that lack of external signs is another gender myth, although the signs are subtle:

"They tend to put on skirts instead of pants, show more skin and generally dress more fashionably," said Martie Haselton, a communication studies and psychology expert at the University of California Los Angeles who led the study.

Writing in the journal Hormones and Behavior, Haselton and colleagues said their findings disproved the conventional wisdom that women are unique among animals in concealing, even from themselves, when they are most fertile.

It's interesting that, apparently, this is only a behavioral change, and that there are still no outward physiological signs of peak fertility.

Hormones are still at work. It's just that in humans their effect is on the brain only, rather than on the epidermis.

More detailed report: Forget Basal Body Temperature -- Check Out Her Clothes; Signs Of Ovulation May Be More Obvious Than Supposed

Tags: estrous cycle, gender issues

Women become sexually aroused as quickly as men

Let's hear it for gender equality...

And let it not be said that most scientific research has little practical application. The following might be very useful to know in "real life" situations...

Women become sexually aroused as quickly as men

Women may have a reputation for demanding lengthy foreplay, but they become sexually aroused as quickly as men, according to a new study that used thermal imaging to measure increased blood flow to genital regions.

While watching pornography, both sexes reach peak arousal within 10 minutes, on average, researchers report.

The new finding is based on the use of infrared imaging technology to measure skin temperature from a distance. This is not only more sensitive to temperature differences, but also does not require uncomfortable instruments in contact with the subjects' genitals.

In the new study, 28 men and 30 women first watched a video of the Canadian countryside in a room on their own, so that researchers could establish each individual’s baseline temperatures.

Subjects were naked from the waist down and positioned themselves such that their genital area was exposed and readable by the thermal imaging device. The participants next watched another video with the same subject matter, or one featuring pornography, horror or comedic clips from the Best Bits of Mr Bean.

The computer only registered a spike in genital temperatures while subjects watched pornography, and not the other films. In those viewing porn, these temperatures increased by about 2°C, on average.

Moreover, men reached peak sexual arousal in 665 seconds – about 10 minutes – while women arrived at maximal arousal in 743 seconds.

Other reports of the research: here, here, here.

However, Vaughan at Mind Hacks raises some questions about this research. For example, it seems that only physical arousal was measured, assuming skin temperature is a good indicator of that. But psychological arousal may be different between men and women.

Why there is such a marked difference in feeling sexy and being aroused in women is still a mystery, but it is something that needs to be borne in mind when interpreting any study (and particularly, any news story) that talks about 'sexual arousal' as a single type of experience.

Unfortunately, Kukkonen and colleagues' study seems to have been widely and uncritically reported as suggesting that women get 'hot' in about the same time as men do, when in fact, the picture is far more complex.

Another interesting question is raised if you take a look at information on some of the grad students in the lab that did the study, in particular, Tuuli Kukkonen, who was involved in this research project. Is the fact that these are young, attractive females relevant? Would this have had any differential effect on the male subjects vs. the females? Just wondering.

But suppose that there is some validity to the research findings. The next question would be, why is there a "gender gap myth" that men are more easily aroused sexually than women? Is it possible this is something women want men to believe, perhaps in order to justify longer foreplay? Do women want their men to "work harder" at sexual intimacy, to create a sense of higher perceived "value" in some economic sense? Evolutionary psychology might suggest this is something that happens without being a conscious intention on anyone's part.

Questions, questions.

Other blog articles: Pure Pedantry, Sciencebase,
Health Logics.

Tags: sexual arousal, sexuality, gender issues

Just for Valentine's day...

Can't allow this to pass without mention.

Penetrative sex the answer to speaking nerves

Stuart Brody, a psychologist at Britain's University of Paisley, compared the impact of different sexual activities on blood pressure when a person later undergoes a stressful experience.

Brody asked 24 women and 22 men to keep a diary of their sexual activities for two weeks.

The volunteers then underwent a stressful ordeal that involved making a speech in public and doing mental arithmetic out loud.

Volunteers who had had penetrative sex during the previous week or so had the least stress, and their blood pressure returned to normal fastest after their test.

Penetrative sex was far more effective in this regard than masturbation or oral sex. But those who had abstained completely from any sexual activity had the highest stress levels and blood pressure of all.

Something to keep in mind for the next time your boyfriend/girlfriend/spouse complains that you're seeming cranky or irritable.

And there may be some serious science behind this finding. Brody speculates that the hormone oxytocin may account for this calming effect of sex. The Wikipedia article suggests that (among other things) oxytocin is

Thought to induce pair bonding in people. Plasma concentrations of oxytocin have been reported to be higher amongst people who claim to be falling in love. It is also thought that oxytocin might mediate other forms of pair bonding such as friendship and family relationships as given above. Reduction of sociophobic behavior was shown after treatment with oxytocin.

Perhaps oxytocin tablets might be a more appropriate gift for Valentine's day than chocolate...

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See also: Sex before stressful events keeps you calm

Tags: stress, sex, health, oxytocin, Valentine's day