Love Lab

But what about men, it's not the custom now for men to have long hair, but you'd think it'd be the same kind of health indicator for men.
Well, women do find men with hair much more attractive than bald guys, probably for similar reasons—it's an indicator of age and fertility.

You have a really interesting section on the famous female waist-to-hip ratio. Marilyn Monroe and Kate Moss had similar a similar waist-to-hip ratio though they obviously are of very different body types. Why is that ratio attractive to men?
They found that women men look at figures of women, they pick women whose waist is 7/10ths the size of the hip-which is much more of an hourglass than what you'd see on a runway. That's the ideal ratio for Western men. Men from poor rural backgrounds in other parts of the world prefer women whose ratio is 8/10th, so a little thicker waist, but still an hourglass which is a sign of fertility and youth.

One study in the book showed a connection between being liked and respected and being considered attractive, so it's not all superficial biology.
That was really fascinating. They asked a group of people to judge each other's attractiveness the day they met, then again after they'd worked together on an archeological dig for a summer. And the people who were most liked and respected were given higher ratings than they originally got and the people who weren't liked actually got lower ratings than they originally got. They did other studies that showed the same result. They took yearbook photos and showed that people who knew that person from school and liked them gave the person higher attractiveness ratings than strangers would looking at the same picture.

Are there issues you still want to explore?
The vasopressin gene study hit my desk not long ago-too late for the book. Everyone's calling it the cheating gene. It regulates vasopressin, a hormone that has been associated with bonding. They discovered it in some classic prairie vole [a rodent] studies. Prairie voles are monogamous because of the way this gene is expressed and how they react to vasopressin. Their cousin the montane vole do not have this gene and they're playboys. Recently they found evidence that human men also have variability in their vassopressin gene which means some are more inclined to monogamy than others. [Men with the "cheater" variant were less likely to be married and, if married, were were more likely to report marital problems. Approximately 40 percent of all men have the less monogamous variant, according to a recent report by Swedish researchers.]

So does that mean we'll some day have a test to see which man is predisposed to cheating?
Actually, I have an informal poll on my blog for women only, that asks would you want him tested? And about two thirds said yes, they'd test them.
Then maybe cheaters would have a hard time getting girlfriends.
[laughs] It could change our whole society. Women would only breed with the monogamous guys.

So how do you feel about romance now that you know all this?
Well, I'm still in the honeymoon phase, I've been married about a year, and I actually say my husband is the best of both breeds.

© 2008