Psychology of Seduction

by Jesse James

The fundamental asymmetry between the male and female reproductive systems creates major differences in sexual preferences for the two genders. Like President Coolidge, the average male wants to inseminate as many females as possible; old or young, ugly or pretty, heavy or skinny, high status or low status, rich or poor - it doesn’t much matter. The costs involved in impregnating a woman are just so low – and the rewards of genetic eternity are so high – that the male mind has been programmed by sexual selection to seek quantity over quality.

  Since ancestral males increased their reproductive success through casual sex with multiple partners, male psychology is characterized by a desire for sexual variety. Not surprisingly, male sexual fantasies focus on anonymous sex with strangers, multiple partners, and the infamous menage-a-trois. Men are four times as likely as women to experience sexual fantasies about greater than a thousand partners.49 We should not be surprised to find that male sexual fantasies focus on pornography, the embodiment of gratuitous anonymous flesh, while the romance novel epitomizes female sexual fantasy.

  Because the female bears all the costs of reproduction and invests the most in raising the offspring, sexual selection has endowed her with strong incentives toward severe choosiness. The woman favors quality over quantity because she gains absolutely nothing by additional matings – she can only be impregnated by one man at a time. The laws of classical economics dictate that people will compete for scarce and valuable resources. As we have seen, the female ovum is much more valuable than the male sperm, so men must compete for access to women. Women can afford to be choosy, waiting for a high quality male who will offer her either quality genes or commitment, or both.

  Because a female produces a limited number of eggs over her lifetime at a relatively slow rate, she has little to gain from casual sex with multiple partners.

  Robert Wright sums it up nicely:

  ‘Whatever the typical level of [sexual] reserve for females in our species, it is higher than the level for males - the particular environment doesn’t much matter. For this point depends only on the premise that an individual female can, over a lifetime, have many fewer offspring than an individual male. And that has been the case, basically, forever: since before our ancestors were human, before they were primates, before they were mammals - way, way back through the evolution of our brain, down to its reptilian core. Female snakes may not be very smart, but they’re smart enough to know, unconsciously, at least, that there are some males it’s not a good idea to mate with.’50

  Experiments by Elaine Hatfield and R.D. Clark in 1978 and 1982 clearly illustrate the contrasting degree of sexual choosiness between men and women. The researchers hired average-looking men and women to approach strangers of the opposite sex on the campus of Florida State University. Subjects initially greeted potential partners with the opener: ‘I have been noticing you around campus. I find you very attractive.’ They followed up immediately with one of three questions; ‘Would you go out with me tonight?’, ‘Would you come over to my apartment tonight?’, ‘Would you sleep with me tonight?’ Not one single female – zero percent – agreed to come over to the man’s apartment, while 69% of men answered yes. No woman in the experiment consented to the proposal for sex, yet again 69% of the men enthusiastically agreed.51

  These experiments suggest that men are much more willing to forego the ‘getting to know you’ stage of dating than women. This study seems to validate the ‘seven hour rule,’ postulated by pickup artists who claim a woman needs a minimum of seven hours exposure to a man before agreeing to sex. Females are extremely unlikely to consent to casual sex without forging some familiarity with a potential partner. For men, any woman with a heartbeat will do. Billy Crystal points out that ‘Women need a reason to have sex. Men just need a place.’

  Sure, women are choosy. We already knew that. The real shocker comes from the response to the first question. In 1982, 50% of the men and 50% of the women agreed to a date after being approached by a complete stranger on campus. Responses were similar in 1978, with 50% of women again agreeing to a date after less than two minutes of interaction with a random man. I was surprised by these results because we generally consider women to be less receptive to casual dating offers than men, apparently a misconception. According to this study and subsequent experiments in the 1990s, women are just as likely to say ‘yes’ to a respectful proposal for a dinner date as men.52

  TIP: Play the Numbers Game At Your Local University

  Approach a random girl on a college campus and you can expect her to accept your date proposal roughly fifty percent of the time.

  Since participants in the study used the most basic, nuts-and-bolts approach line, one could potentially increase acceptance by utilizing techniques of evolutionary and social psychology described in this book. Whether these promising numbers would translate to success with random females on the street, or in bars or clubs, remains unclear. College girls tend to be libertines, more open to casual dating and less involved in committed relationships compared to the rest of the population. Approaching a college girl on campus during the day would yield better results than approaching the same girl at a bar on Saturday night, where you would be competing with other males for the woman’s attention.

  Women expect to be seduced at bars and clubs, erecting elaborate filtering mechanisms to fend off hordes of fawning males. Instead, try catching a woman when she least expects it, as she ambles across the local college campus. Her defenses will be down and male competition nonexistent. As recent studies have shown, your success rate should be 50% or greater. Play the numbers game; even a broken clock gets to be right twice a day.

  Charles Darwin’s Tail

  An unsuccessful male may remain celibate for life, while even an unattractive, low-status female is likely to find a husband. Women do compete with each other for the best male genes, but it is not the kind of all-or-nothing battle in which the loser suffers genetic oblivion.

  Men must compete ferociously to pass on their genes. Throughout history, males sorted out their status on the battlefield, the cauldron of war identifying winners and losers in the genetic lottery. Such competition has spread from the battlefield to the boxing ring to the ice rink and into the halls of academia. Successful, high status males win multiple female partners, while unsuccessful men languish in reproductive obscurity. After the voyage of the Beagle, Charles Darwin shot to prominence in English society, leading him to admit that his work was being ‘favorably received by the great guns, and this gives me much confidence, and I hope not a very great deal of vanity; though I confess I feel too often like a peacock admiring his tail.’53 And what a tail it was, Charles.

  Darwin’s prospects for marriage might have been bleak had he not elevated his status by discovering the theory of evolution. A woman doesn’t need to make world-changing discoveries in order to find a good husband. Observing human mating on the island of Samoa, Margaret Mead points out that ‘the small girl learns that she is a female and that if she simply waits, she will someday be a mother. The small boy learns that he is a male and that if he is successful in manly deeds some day he will be a man, and will be able to show how manly he is.’54

  Consider the striking difference in productivity between men and women throughout most of human history. An incontrovertible, though politically incorrect, fact is that men have driven most human progress in science, mathematics, the arts, humanities, and technology. The exceptions – Marie Curie, for example – simply prove the rule by virtue of their scarcity. Yet the male and female brains possess roughly the same intellectual capacity. Studies suggest that women excel in the social arena, while men excel at abstract mathematics, but the differences are rather small. Certainly, women during the twentieth century proved their ability to become great scientists and mathematicians. The mystery, then, is why females made such a low contribution to human scientific and technological progress prior to the twentieth century.

  Feminists claim that men tenaciously denied women the ch
ance to succeed in patriarchal societies; refused education, they were forced to marry young and spend time caring for multiple children. Men liked their women barefoot, naked, and in the kitchen, not scribbling equations in a notebook – or so the thinking goes. Three screaming toddlers in the home hardly creates an environment conducive to unraveling the secrets of the cosmos. While the feminist argument contains plenty of truth, I believe a deeper phenomenon is at work. Women simply do not possess the same level of ambition as men. Female competition takes the form of innuendo, gossip and jockeying for position in the female social ladder, rather than all-or-nothing combat on the battlefield or in the halls of academia for recognition and triumph. Unlike a young man, a woman doesn’t need to invent the telescope, discover relativity, paint the Mona Lisa, or defeat the Germans at Normandy to win a mate. Looking good is good enough.

  She Likes Me, She Likes Me Not

  When it comes to relationships, women are born skeptics.

  In what psychologists call the ‘commitment skepticism bias,’ women tend to be skeptical of a man’s level of commitment early in a relationship. Commitment skepticism helps females achieve their own reproductive goals, ensuring the commitment of prospective suitors.

  The commitment skepticism bias emerges from a new and extensive theoretical framework of perception and cognition biases developed by David Buss and Martie Haselton, who specialize in explaining sexual attraction. Like poker, the mating game involves incomplete information for both sides. A man does not know whether a woman likes him or not, while a woman does not know a man’s level of commitment. Will he help her raise a family or is he just interested in casual sex?

  According to error-management theory, evolution programmed adaptations in the human mind which helps us make these decisions automatically, absent the need for conscious thought. The core tenet of the theory is that psychological adaptations exist to help men and women avoid making costly reproductive mistakes under conditions of uncertainty. Those pesky ‘known unknowns’ again.55

  A woman can make two kinds of mistakes when evaluating a man’s sincerity in the mating game; she can over-infer his interest, giving him more credit for commitment than he actually deserves. Or she can under-infer his devotion, giving him less credit for commitment than he demonstrates. During the ancestral environment, a woman required the parental investment of the father to support a family. Survival depended on the man’s commitment. Over-estimating a man’s devotion was the greater reproductive mistake, so Buss argues logically that women evolved a tendency towards skepticism when a man professes his love. Women who fell for deadbeat dads in the Pleistocene era failed to pass on their genes because their children did not survive.

  Prior to sex, a woman’s genes have programmed her to warily evaluate the man as a potential father. For a female, affection does not quickly morph into overwhelming passion.

  For example, if a man gives a woman flowers and chocolates during courtship, she tends to underestimate the extent to which such gifts signal commitment on the part of the male. Elaborate and expensive gifts trigger a woman’s skepticism. Paradoxically, the more a man attempts to demonstrate his love early in a relationship, the more skeptical the woman becomes.

  TIP: Send Mixed Signals

  Appear interested, then feign disinterest. Deliver a compliment followed several minutes later by a criticism. Return emails, texts and Facebook messages promptly one day, then ignore them completely the next day.

  Pickup artists such as Mystery, David D’Angelo and Neil Strauss advise sending ‘mixed signals’ to a woman. Although they don’t mention the commitment skpeticism bias directly, their intuition - as usual - is dead right. In fact, sending mixed signals confers three major advantages.

  First, you will remain in her thoughts, as women love pondering a man’s desires. She will try to ‘figure you out.’

  Second, you will confuse and intrigue her, making her day a little less boring. Everyone loves a good mystery, and women in particular enjoy ruminating on a man’s motivations. At first, a woman isn’t sure whether the man wants casual sex or a long-term relationship. Sending mixed signals heightens this inherent uncertainty.

  Third and most importantly, you will avoid triggering her commitment skepticism bias. By mixing positive signals with ambivalent ones, you communicate liking and attraction without triggering skepticism. One minute you send a flattering text, the next minute you ignore her. One minute you pop up on Facebook all smiles and hugs, while a moment later you seem disinterested, even bored. Never knowing what to expect keeps a woman on edge, intrigued, confused, and attracted.

  Women tend to under-infer a man’s true level of commitment. Never profess your love for a woman after one or two dates. Such silliness will win you a trip to the singles bar rather than an invitation to the bedroom. Since women bear all the costs of reproduction and traditionally required a male to help raise the offspring, females stand to gain by mating only with devoted and committed males. Love is one way to measure devotion. Women tend to be very skeptical – indeed, downright suspicious – of men who profess their love too soon in a relationship, especially pre-sex. Women know intuitively that men will say just about anything to get laid, including ‘I love you.’ Whether you mean it or not, keep those words tightly bottled up for at least the first few months of a relationship.

  Early proclamations of love set off a flashing red warning light in the female brain. Show your cards too early and you look desperate or, worse, infatuated. A woman wants a proper challenge, not a slobbering dog.

  At least a dog’s love is reliable. If your affection is so easily triggered, the woman will think (rightly!) that you could easily become infatuated with someone else – anyone else - at any time, which is probably true.

  The biggest blunder men make is blathering about love too soon in a relationship, especially before sex. Would you show your hole cards at the poker table before the flop? Evolution has programmed women with finely-tuned instincts to avoid being conned. Women are instinctively more social than men, so they naturally play the relationship game better than you. You will not easily make a sucker of a woman.

  Successful seducers flaunt their desire while simultaneously playing hard to get. The contradiction makes sense when we consider the two principal aspects of romantic love: setting a minimal standard for a partner’s mate value and unreservedly devoting oneself to that person.

  Even if you love a girl – or think you love her – it is better to ‘play it cool.’ Keep a lid on your feelings. Choke on the ‘L’ word if you must. As a general rule, wait a minimum of two months before even mentioning love or risk triggering her commitment skepticism bias. She may feel that you are playing her. And you probably are.

  Sexual Overperception Bias

  The Bus Stop

  ‘It was my first year of college

  Waiting at the bus stop all alone

  A young woman shuffles up to me

  From biology class I think

  And she stares into my eyes and says

  ‘The day went by so fast.’

  And I smile at her, a big smile, and I know that she loves me

  And she backs away, slowly.

  I know I am walking home alone.’

  - Professor X

  Unfortunately men have evolved the opposite bias, leading to tremendous confusion and imbalance in the mating game. For an unmarried woman, casual sex entails high costs with few benefits. For a man, the opposite applies; no-strings-attached encounters cost almost nothing, while offering the potential for genetic eternity. Thus men evolved a propensity to over-estimate female attraction.

  Come on, admit it. The hot blond at Starbucks was checking you out, wasn’t she? She looked right at you – and smiled! We all know what that means. Sex.

  Or not. Martie Haselton and David Buss found that men tend to over-infer a woman’s sexual interest based on ambiguous information. A man often confuses a friendly smile with an invitation for sexual advance. Known as the
‘sexual overperception bias,’ women intuitively understand this male weakness and they know how to exploit it. Cindy Meston notes that ‘Other ambiguous cues - a touch on the arm, standing close, or even holding eye contact for a split second longer than usual - trigger men’s sexual overperception bias. As a consequence, women can exploit men’s overperception bias for economic gain, in what has been called a ‘bait and switch’ tactic, a strategy that involves persuading men to expend resources as part of a courtship, but then failing to follow through on an implied “promise” of sex.’56

  TIP: Women Do Not Find Most Men Attractive At First Glance!

  Over-perceiving female interest will either waste your time or trap you in a spider web of generosity towards a female who will never repay your kindness with kindness of her own.

  Sexual overperception is programmed deep into the male psyche by sexual selection. The evolutionary reasoning is straightforward; ancestral men who tended to overperceive female interest enjoyed more mating opportunities than their cautious counterparts who missed genuine female mating signals. The overperception bias led to increased reproduction in those males prone to it, so genes for sexual optimism won the day.

  In other words, it doesn’t cost you much, as a male, to overperceive female interest. Evolution has programmed the male mind to interpret a casual smile as an invitation for sex. As an adaptation, playing the numbers game makes sense. Even a broken clock gets to be right twice a day.

  Chapter 4

  Emma Bovary: Having Her Cake and Eating It Too

  ‘O, beware, my lord, of jealousy;

  It is the green-ey’d monster, which doth mock

  The meat it feeds on. That cuckold lives in bliss,

  Who, certain of his fate, loves not his wronger:

  But O, what damned minutes tells he o’er

  Who dotes, yet doubts, suspects, yet strongly loves!’