A woman can only bear a single man's child in a 9 month period.
A woman with a large number of male suiters is theorectially less appealing, since the chance of successful mating (where successful -> results in offspring in the near future) is very low (assuming each man has an equal chance, it's essentially 1/(#ofSuiters) ). In reality, the energy cost of impregnating a woman is so low that it doesn't really matter that much, since he doesn't actually have to bear the child.
A man can impregnate many woman in this same period of time. All of these woman have a good chance of creating offspring, so the main concern of an individual woman is finding a man who will be able to provide for her child. This is a complex requirement - it isn't necessarily sufficient to just look at a man to gauge his ability to secure resources. Also, the energy cost of becoming pregnant is extremely high for a woman. Therefore, the woman reacts based on a large number of variables. She also assumes that other woman are searching for a man based on similar requirements, so the fact that a man is surrounded by other woman increases his value as a potential mate.
I realize that this simplifies things quite a bit, but I think the fundamental argument is sound.
Completely anecdotal, but kind of along similar lines: I have heard from female friends and and other less personal sources that often times women feel more comfortable around men they don't know who have an observable female partner because it indicates (if even only on a near unconscious level) that this man is most likely "safer" than a man they don't know who does not have a partner. That is, the man's female companion has "tested the water", he's likely not a serial killer, by having a partner he's demonstrating right there and then that he can commit to more than a one night stand etc.
My experience confirms your point. (If I understood your point correctly...)
I remember when I was a student, going to parties with my homies, some of them genetically blessed indeed. Even though these guys were very attractive, it was still hard to get girls to feel comfortable around them. I conjecture that went on inside these girls' minds was:
"yeah, these guys are quite handsome, but if the market is efficient, then they should have girlfriends or flings accompanying them, and since they are in a group of guys, there must be something wrong with them."
I adopted a different strategy. I started going to these parties accompanied by my best friend only, and a bunch of stunning eastern european exchange students I knew at the time. Oh boy, all of a sudden, it was so easy to get engaging conversations going with members of the opposite sex :-))) [insert evil smile here] I guess what the girls were thinking was:
- couple of guys and 5 gorgeous foreign girls
- the girls seem to be accompanying them on a voluntary basis, so there must be something interesting about those two guys
- if girls of that caliber hang out with them, then they're probably not assholes.
Enough of theories. It worked wonders. "Using" attractive out-of-my-league female friends as "social validation" to flirt girls who were more in my league at parties was one of the coolest things I ever did in my life. Call it a "social hack" if you will.
My stunning eastern european friends had a great time, too. There were tons of guys asking for their phone numbers everytime. They received so much attention that they felt like princesses or something. And since I have traveled around Eastern Europe quite a bit, I know they're not that amazingly beautiful when compared to the beauty standards of their homecountry.
I knew about the cool "underground" parties. They benefited from my information. I benefited from their company. They met tons of guys. I met tons of girls. It was a win-win situation. I wouldn't call it a "mercenary way" (not that I am offended by that notion). I just think that in life there are positive-sum games to be played, and those are the games I like to play :-)
Yeah, fair enough. I'm sure your European friends wouldn't have stuck around if there was nothing in it for them. And I'm sure the women you met through your European friends also would not have stuck around if there was nothing it it for them.
I'm a big believer in free will. The idea of moral absolutes have always seemed quite odd to me. In my experience the world is very rarely black and white, usually more shades of grey. Only those who can't handle the complexity introduced by ambiguity seem to need moral absolutes.
That explains why women would have evolved this way, but it doesn't explain the actual mechanism.
I would posit that women on average tend to perceive the world in a way that makes sensory information and emotion more salient than it is for men, and somehow men already in relationships seem more desirable when seen through this lens. But I could just be completely full of it.
Perhaps it is because the man that other women like is likely to have offspring that are also attractive. In other words, women like what other women like because other women will like it, which is evolutionarily beneficial.
"Similarly, a person who has been unemployed for a long time may have a hard time finding a new job - even if they are highly skilled and qualified. Potential employers attribute wrongly the person's lack of employment to the person rather than the situation. This causes the potential employers to search more intensively for flaws or other negative characteristics that are "congruent" with or explain the person's failure and to discount the applicant's virtues."
Social proof can't explain it but I've known very few individuals who have the guts to approach a party of mixed sexes (e.g. who are couples - when it's all women - you can assume they're just socializing, not dating (usually)). Actually, it doesn't matter whether it's all women or mixed - still intimidating.
The times I've done it / the first twenty seconds after you have broached their airspace is among the most scary and exhilirating experiences. The more women, the better. Do not hover!
For bonus points, sidle over and drag a chair loudly from one side of a room to where they are and sit down (presuming they are seated, you have most likely pulled off the icebreaker that needs no icebreaker)
I've noticed that when I go somewhere with a friend, even if just one, I feel like I can hang out forever. While, if I were to go to a bar by myself, even though that's easy to do, it's not fun - I feel über self conscious (everyone is looking at me / even though that is probably your false perception).
When you go to a bar by yourself, you have to invest a lot of your energy to initially meet people (think of the times when you've been travelling and in a place where you know no
one).
And, on the social side, when I am out with a female friend, I feel even more confident and feel like I have license to flirt shamelessly with near everyone.
I feel going out with friends can give you the support base to go out and venture. However, too many friends can devolve into the classic circle-the-wagons formation. Of course, there is the social hack of working the room that nearly always works and requires fearless action: start with one, engage him/her, offer him/her an opportunity to approach with him/her to a group or leave, engage the group confidently, wave at someone in another group, etc. Done confidently and charmingly, it is quite a feeling / to bootstrap yourself from a loner to someone other people are looking at and wondering 'who is this guy?'
"Research on human preferences does show that women rate men as more desirable when they are surrounded by other women, compared to being alone or surrounded by other men. Conversely, men rate women as less desirable when they are surrounded by other men, compared to being alone or surrounded by other women."
In other words, men are undesirable in heterosexual culture.
So we conclude that, if you're a guy, your only hope is to find a hot bisexual girlfriend and then surround yourself by women that she likes.
The results show that women do not find men signaling engagement, or being perceived as having a partner, more attractive or higher in socioeconomic status. Furthermore, signs of engagement did not influence the women’s reported willingness to engage in short-term or long-term relationships with the men.
Interesting. Another study with a different finding. Now there is some scope for methodological discussion about how the data were gathered and interpreted.
EDIT: A simple proof to this would be to set your facebook profile to "In a relationship" and go out and add ten random beautiful women as friends. Do the same with "Single" and you will end with significantly lower amount of "accepted".
That's not really proof of this. Randomly friending someone of the opposite gender is usually interpreted as a creepy attempt to pursue someone. If they're in a relationship, that motive has to be incorrect. Maybe it's someone you know from somewhere, or someone who likes your work. In that mindset, accepting the request is far more likely.
The way I understood this article is that women are more interested in guys who are not single whether they know him or not. This experiment will prove just that.
The experiment doesn't measure interest; it measures the likelihood of accepting a friend request. Accepting a friend request is not strong evidence of romantic interest due to the interactions I described.
It's a pretty well know effect predicted by evolutionary psychology (and confirmed in several species). Basically, no matter what strategy female use to identify good mates it can be improved by peeking at what other female do.
"Poaching" is also very cheap and relatively safe (as far as identifying goes), so it would be more popular with females/males who don't have other good criteria.
reported here inspires confidence in the conclusion, but this would definitely be an issue worth investigating some more. I'm not sure how many men would guess this, or for that matter how many women would guess what this article says about men. I can think of one example of a woman I knew (back when I was single) who seemed to be signalling to me that she wanted me to "poach" her by telling me she had a boyfriend. But to me that was just off-putting. (I was already put off from a romantic relationship with her--I knew her strictly through studies we were both pursuing at the time.)
> Across ten world regions, 57% of men and 35% of women indicated they had engaged in an attempt at mate poaching, … people who mate poach are more likely to be low in agreeableness and conscientiousness than those who do not.
Interestingly, it seems that while women prefer it, they do it a whole lot less than men. And that men that are in a relationship may be more attractive, but the women they will get will on average be less nice...
There's a bit about this in _The Book of Laughter and Forgetting_, roughly to the effect that women don't want handsome men, they want men with beautiful consorts.
A man can impregnate many woman in this same period of time. All of these woman have a good chance of creating offspring, so the main concern of an individual woman is finding a man who will be able to provide for her child. This is a complex requirement - it isn't necessarily sufficient to just look at a man to gauge his ability to secure resources. Also, the energy cost of becoming pregnant is extremely high for a woman. Therefore, the woman reacts based on a large number of variables. She also assumes that other woman are searching for a man based on similar requirements, so the fact that a man is surrounded by other woman increases his value as a potential mate.
I realize that this simplifies things quite a bit, but I think the fundamental argument is sound.