The latest piece by reporter John Tierney has been flying up the New York Times most-emailed list today. You may remember Tierney from his previousappearances on this site, where he argued that men are inherently better than women at math and science. Today's article, though, is about evolutionary psychology, a field that involves blessedly little in the way of numbers--perfect for my analytically impaired brain!
The article is about a new study by Florida State University graduate student Saul Miller and his advisor, John Maner. In the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, Miller and Maner argue that women put out sexy signals while they're ovulating. While single men respond by seeing ovulating women as more attractive, men in committed relationships rate ovulating women as less attractive. The authors call this phenomenon "relationship maintenance." That is, men in relationships insist that the most fertile women aren't attractive, in order to preserve ...
