Do women accurately estimate the degree to which men are focused on sex?

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In fact, when considering females’ patterns of errors in the current study, one might say that they demonstrated a “males are always pigs” bias. Regardless of whether they were making judgments of males’ long or short-term preferences, they showed a strong tendency to overestimate the degree to which males desired the relatively sexual and promiscuous option (see Tables 3 and 4). Such a bias is consistent with the idea that women may be employing a simple heuristic suggesting that males “just want sex” – regardless of the temporal context. In other words, females tend to think that men predominantly care about sex for both short-term casual partners and for long-term partners. This bias may well be an adaptive strategy in the long run – women using such a decision-making rule may be more likely to actually end up with honest, committed, and long-term-seeking males (an outcome that would be very beneficial for women given the asymmetry in parental investment that typifies our species).

Source: “Accuracy and Oversexualization in Cross-Sex Mind-Reading: An Adaptationist Approach” from Evolutionary Psychology 2009. 7(2): 331-347

On an unrelated note, I’m headed to Tokyo in about 2 weeks. Might mention that more later. I purchased a few books for my trip but none that are really worth recommending here. One thing I will throw out there is that one of the most disturbing films I have ever seen is Japanese; Audition is not a movie to be taken lightly unless you are quite accustomed to the most graphic imagery out there. If that’s your thing, open up the Netflix queue right now, by all means…

If you’re looking for something sufficiently mind-bending and original but not so nightmare-inducing, check out the Korean film Oldboy. “15 years of imprisonment… 5 days of vengeance.”

Related posts:

Is a married man as likely to cheat on his wife as he is to experience a flight delay?

Are husbands more likely to cheat when their wives are pregnant?

What predicts cheating in a relationship?

Do people cheat because they’re stressed out?

How Many People Cheat?

Why are some more concerned with emotional fidelity and others with sexual fidelty?

Do women prefer men who are attached?

When does romantic involvement NOT reduce a man’s testosterone level?

Things you didn’t know about marriage and relationships

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