morgana
THE Bitch
Registered: Jul 2000
Location: my mother's bloody womb
Posts: 7148 |
damnit, it's just a smile.
Wednesday February 6 5:36 PM ET
Men Overestimate Women's Sexual Interest: Study
By E. J. Mundell
SAVANNAH, Georgia (Reuters Health) - Sorry guys, sometimes a smile is just a smile: new research suggests that men too often mistake women's everyday behavior as a sign of sexual interest.
The phenomenon seems connected to a kind of psychological self-projection, according to researcher Robyn LeBoeuf of Princeton University in New Jersey. ``They say, 'Well, if I were to smile at a woman, I would be interested in having sex with her. So if she's smiling at me, then she's probably interested in having sex with me as well.'''
What's more, the investigators found that this type of wishful thinking is most common among men whose sex life--or lack thereof--leaves much to be desired.
The findings were presented here Saturday at the annual meeting of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology.
In their study, LeBoeuf and co-researcher Leif Nelson had 285 adults read detailed descriptions of typical behaviors acted out by a man, a woman or the individual themselves. They then asked the study participants to rate, on a 7-point scale, just ``how likely it was that the person was interested in sex.''
The result? In most cases, ``men's ratings of how interested a woman would be were higher than both a woman's ratings of another woman, or of women's ratings of themselves.''
The findings are consistent with earlier studies conducted over 20 years ago using videotaped scenarios.
Indeed, psychologists have long known that men ''over-perceive'' women's sexual interest. Speaking with Reuters Health, Nelson said the most widely accepted theory for why this happens is one based on evolution. ``What men are trying to do is minimize costly (mating) errors--that is, missing an opportunity,'' he explained.
But evolutionary theory doesn't completely explain the phenomenon. A second theory hinges on self-projection, a state where our desires fool us into thinking that our own urges and behaviors are mirrored in others. Men's level of sexual over-perception might therefore rely on ``how much they think about sex themselves,'' Nelson said.
To test that theory, the Princeton team repeated their first experiment, but this time they had male participants answer questions beforehand such as ``How is your love life?'' to assess current levels of sexual satisfaction.
Not surprisingly, men who said their sex lives were in the doldrums ``showed the exact same (over-perceiving) effect as we had measured before,'' according to Nelson.
On the other hand, those men who said they were ``totally sexually satisfied'' were found to be ``totally accurate--exactly right in how they judge women's sexual intent,'' he said.
The bottom line, the researchers suggest, is that when men aren't overly interested in sex themselves, they seem to be more objective--and accurate--in judging women's behaviors.
According to LeBoeuf, this still leaves women with the sad fact that a majority of men will see lust where none exists.
``Basically,'' she said, ``if a woman just goes out and stands anywhere, (some) men are going to think 'she's fairly interested in sex right now.'''
For their part, women ``just about always get the sexual intent of men right,'' LeBoeuf added, guessing correctly that when a man seems aroused, he probably is.
Women aren't 100% right when it comes to other male traits, however. Previous research has suggested that women tend to underestimate a man's level of romantic commitment. This too could have evolutionary roots, Nelson said, with women ``trying to avoid the costly error of seeing a man as committed when actually he's not.''
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02-07-2002 04:35 PM
