Attraction

I recently ran across (thanks to a mention by HookerAddict [*]) a report of an interesting new study to be published in Psychological Science about attraction.  Specifically, the study identified some typical errors in judgment about how attractive we are to others.  You could probably predict even before reading the study that men tend to think women are interested in them even when the women really aren’t interested.  But the study refined some of the conventional wisdom a bit.  The authors determined that for men seeking a quick hook-up, there was a correlation between: (a) how attractive they considered a woman with whom they interacted; and (b) their perception of the woman’s sexual interest in them.  If you think she’s hot, you’re more likely to believe that she thinks you’re hot.  Even when you’re not.  (The authors also found that women tended to noticeably underestimate men’s sexual interest in them.)  The authors speculate that the over-estimation of how women perceive you might be a result of evolution.  If a guy is confident and just “goes for it,” he’ll be rebuffed and possibly embarrassed in a lot of cases.  But he may get a “yes” answer occasionally, and overall may increase his “reproductive success.”  Regardless of the reason for the phenomenon . . . well, as with a lot of scientific studies in psychology, you may not have thought about the question before but once you do, the answer they came up with is not tremendously surprising.