Nice to know it’s not men’s fault
Q: Did you see the headline? “Science proves beautiful women do make men cheat on their partners”?
A: Yes.
Q: Isn’t that a bit unethical? Doing experiments to make men cheat on their partners?
A: That’s not what they did.
Q: Well, not “make”, I suppose. “Encourage”.
A: “Seduce”, perhaps?
Q: Yes!
A: ◔_◔. No.
Q: No what?
A: No actual cheating on partners was measured. The study participants ‘cheated’ with small amounts of money — a few dollars.
Q: Oh. Did the researchers say this would extend to cheating on partners?
A: In the research paper they say “sexy women can seduce men away from behaving honestly and may more readily attract males who lie than was previously thought” and “For men whose mating motivation is heightened by exposure to sexual stimuli, dishonesty appears to be a tactic for projecting characteristics preferred by women (e.g., large economic resources)”
Q: So beautiful women make men cheat to get small amounts of money, because then they’ll look rich and desirable.
A: That seems to be the theory.
Q: And this is the women’s fault.
A: They don’t quite come out and say that. But it makes men lose self-control
Q: Yes, this evidence that sexualised pictures make men lose self-control. How did they measure that?
A: The men took longer to answer computer questions involving the Stroop Effect: like “what colour is the word RED”
Q: Is it just me who finds this slightly anticlimactic in context?
A: No.
Q: Isn’t the whole thing probably just chance?
A: They did have a preregistered replication of their main result, so that’s less likely than usual.
Q: How about that participants thought experimenters showing sexualised pictures of women were jerks and deserved to be taken for small sums of money?
A: Conceivable, I suppose. But that’s not an evolutionary explanation, and this is an evolutionary journal.
Q: Seriously, though, this wasn’t very novel or surprising (even to the researchers). Why is this research international news?
A: Because the Daily Mail evolved in an environment where sensationalising any research connected with sex or cancer was rewarded, and it can’t help itself.
Thomas Lumley (@tslumley) is Professor of Biostatistics at the University of Auckland. His research interests include semiparametric models, survey sampling, statistical computing, foundations of statistics, and whatever methodological problems his medical collaborators come up with. He also blogs at Biased and Inefficient See all posts by Thomas Lumley »