Should Bad Boys Win?
Why do psychopaths exist? The ladies help the psychopaths reproduce by going to bed with them. Men who are narcissistic, self-obsessed, liars, psychopaths, Machiavellian, and thrill-seekers get laid more.
Bad boys, it seems, really do get all the girls. Women might claim they want caring, thoughtful types but scientists have discovered what they really want – self-obsessed, lying psychopaths.
OK this isn’t really news to most people. But still it raises a basic question. The basic fact of mate selection is that men are collectively greatly responsible for which female traits win in competition for male attention, while women are collectively greatly responsible for which male traits win in competition for female attention. Accepting this, here are some possible responses to the above results:
The result is just wrong, such men do not get more women
The result is correct, such men do get more women
This is good, these are just the sort of men we want more of
Such men are good for each woman they are with
Such men are bad for each women, but good for women overall
Such men are bad for women overall, but still good overall
This is bad, these are not the sort of men we want more of
Such behavior results from an inefficient signaling game
By choosing such men, women help themselves but hurt other women
This is a gender power struggle, where such men are overall good for men but bad for women
What say ye? And why so little discussion on the gender reversed questions – do we want more of the kinds of women who win when competing to attract men?
**edit** for those reading, a lot of my other comments are being detected as spam :( */edit*
It's worth pointing out that statistically speaking, and this goes even for the very unattractive, while men as a group would clearly date/fuck a 10/10 good looking woman with big breasts and the like given the opportunity, and given they vary in shyness from individual to individual, and given the choice, they generally aim for the individual who is about as attractive as they are. Unlike women(who do NOT, they tend to aim about ~25% higher) men generally have a reasonable expectation of who is not just attainable, looks wise, but appropriate given what they bring to the table. The numbers were not yet available as of this comment, but they are now.
It might be that us nerds are less attuned to this than normal men. But normal men do not have this problem, and there would have to be data to support that claim beyond anecdotal.
[1] Christian Rudder - Dataclysm
Attraction to "bad boys" must be a hold over from when the talent for charisma buoyed manipulation and street smart fearlessness were a successful survival strategy - hey, like now.
Fumi Bankole, author of Canaan's Labyrinth