Women Prefer Poaching

http://www.overcomingbias.com/2009/08/women-prefer-poaching.html

by rams • 17 years ago

67 39 17 years ago

wallflower3• 17 years ago

"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."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_proof

nopassrecover• 17 years ago

It's pretty obvious one would have thought. Success is a better confirmation than alleged ability.

mhartl• 17 years ago

Social proof doesn't explain the result adequately; to wit:

Conversely, men rate women as less desirable when they are surrounded by other men, compared to being alone or surrounded by other women.

wallflower3• 17 years ago

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)

Confusion• 17 years ago

That's not the most relevant Wikipedia link you could give. This is called the fundamental attribution error: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_attribution_error

tokenadult2• 17 years ago

Upvoted for interesting implications.

I'm not sure if the study design or sample size

http://norvig.com/experiment-design.html

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.)

llimllib• 17 years ago

> 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

Really? I've always believed it to be common wisdom that some women strongly prefer men in relationships.

manish• 17 years ago

Looks like VC's and women have something in common.

jacoblyles2• 17 years ago

The fact that someone likes you is a badge of value. Social proof.

This is also why guys that go to bars with friends have a significantly lower chance of being labeled "creepy" than a guy that goes by himself.

wallflower3• 17 years ago

> being labeled "creepy

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?'

biotech• 17 years ago

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.

Alex3917• 17 years ago

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.

jonny_noog4• 17 years ago

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.

TriinT3• 17 years ago

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.

pavel_lishin• 17 years ago

Little do your female friends know that the only reason that woman is with me is because I have the antidote.

jacoblyles2• 17 years ago

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.

xiaoma• 17 years ago

>"In reality, the energy cost of impregnating a woman is so low that it doesn't really matter that much"

I guess they don't have child support wherever you're from.

bootload• 17 years ago

"... Conversely, men rate women as less desirable when they are surrounded by other men ..."

I think "Flight of the Concords" got this one right (nsfw) ~ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Wl_uQOABxg

jacquesm• 17 years ago

Flight of the concHords is great stuff, check out 'jenny' and 'business time' too if you have a minute or ten... and 'the humans are dead'

dave_au• 17 years ago

"If you're into it" is also pretty sweet. For several meanings of the word. Kind of.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pY8jaGs7xJ0

rokhayakebe2• 17 years ago

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".

natrius2• 17 years ago

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.

rokhayakebe2• 17 years ago

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.

kqr2• 17 years ago

This study of the "Wedding Ring Effect" (abstract only) suggests otherwise:

http://www.springerlink.com/content/hn2ufdx4rruyllnc/

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.

tokenadult2• 17 years ago

Interesting. Another study with a different finding. Now there is some scope for methodological discussion about how the data were gathered and interpreted.

lucumo2• 17 years ago

> 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...

gaius• 17 years ago

If you steal someone, then all you get is someone who is easily stolen. It's never worth it.

lucumo2• 17 years ago

And if you let yourself be stolen, all you get is a thief... Honesty is really a good policy here.

bravura• 17 years ago

"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.

radu_floricica• 17 years ago

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.

onreact-com• 17 years ago

Why don't submit the source instead, it's just a citation? http://www.synergy-pr.com/press/MelissaBurkley,PhD/51/800/0

balding_n_tired• 17 years ago

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.

Psyonic• 17 years ago

Crazy. I just read that book about a month ago, but certainly didn't expect to see it mentioned here. Fantastic book

Women Prefer Poaching

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