Post Date December, 02 2023
Letting celebrity dads take their children with them to live in a more remote village for a weekend and take care of their children's daily lives - this is the main content of the variety show "Dad Going Where", which has attracted many viewers. It's easy to understand that parents with children enjoy such programs, but many single women also enjoy watching them, which can't help but be confusing. To understand them, one should actually analyze them from the perspective of evolutionary psychology, as well as learn more from psychological experiments.
Men become more attractive when they become fathers
The basic premise of evolutionary psychology is that many human behaviors are directed towards future generations - the goal being to pass on their genes. The reproductive cost of a female partner is high, so women are more likely to choose a stable relationship and raise their children together with a long-term spouse; If a man exhibits characteristics such as "reliable", "mature", and "good at caring for future generations," and is willing to pay resources and time for caring for future generations, he will be more sexy in the eyes of women.
Even if a man takes care of someone else's children, the problem is not significant as long as his relationship with the woman is stable. "Men with the trait of 'loving children' can be important in a long-term relationship, and women won't lower their overall evaluation of men because they are being thinned out of resources right now.".
Psychologist Pegila Serra designed a set of slides that included: 1. A man standing alone; 2. A man interacts with an 18 month old child; 3. A man turns a blind eye to a crying child; 4. A man and a child face to face (neutral situation); A man is cleaning the living room. 240 women were asked to rate the sexual attractiveness of the characters in the five images above, with a full score of 5.
In the second state, men scored the highest, with 2.75 points; In the third state, the lowest score was 1.25. In this way, spending time with children not only has no harm to male charm, but also has a good decorative effect on personal charm. In the eyes of women, a man's ability to take care of his children independently indicates that he has some excellent qualities that not all men possess.
If the conditions of this experiment were changed, it would be for men to rate the attractiveness of women in different situations. We will find that whether a woman is doing housework, caring for children, or just standing alone, her attractiveness to men does not change. In other words, caring for children does not increase the attractiveness of women in the eyes of men.
Whether men take care of children or not, women are naturally intuitive
Typically, women have not seen their partner take care of their children before getting married, but sometimes women have this intuition.
In a 1991 study, it was mentioned that some of the personality traits reported by men, especially the qualities necessary to take care of children, such as "warmth" and "closeness," were discovered by women just by looking at a photograph of the man.
Psychologists later conducted another study. They first tested the interest of 39 college boys in their children, This includes an explicit test (presenting a picture of an animal and a child at the same time, allowing the subject to choose which one they prefer, and repeating it multiple times to obtain an average result) and an implicit attitude test (repeatedly pairing infant related vocabulary with positive or negative vocabulary to form a psychological connection to determine whether the subject's attitude towards the infant is positive or negative). Then, 29 women were asked to view their photos and evaluate whether they were attractive to themselves as long-term spouses or short-term partners. At the same time, they were also asked to speculate on some of their characteristics, such as "whether they liked children", "whether they were healthy", and "whether they were kind.".
As a result, women's evaluation of whether men like their children is not significantly correlated with their own scores on interest tests for children. However, further analysis found that men's interest in children is the main factor affecting their long-term attractiveness to women.
Therefore, from a woman's subjective feelings, the factor that affects long-term attractiveness is "whether she likes children or not", and the factor that affects short-term attractiveness is "whether she is masculine or not".
In general, a man with children will not only reduce his attractiveness in the eyes of women, but if he can interact well with children and demonstrate his love for them, he will definitely gain points in the eyes of women.
Who prefers "Where's Dad Going"?
Let's take a look at the audience analysis of the recent hit "Where's Dad Going?" to further verify our hypothesis.
TGI index of women=proportion of women watching the program/proportion of women in all participating surveys × The standard number is 100. In other words, although there are more men than women participating in this survey, the proportion of women participating in the survey who watch "Where's Dad Going?" is significantly higher than that of men.
Based on this data, we can find that unmarried people and women aged 19-24 are the main audience group. This indicates that the content of the program is most attractive to unmarried women.
On the other hand, according to data from Sina Weibo, women account for 80% of users who participate in discussions on the topic "Where's Dad Going?". Although women are inherently more willing to discuss such topics than men, such a huge gap can also be seen in the number of "dad fans" among women.
If there could be a more detailed analysis report, it might lead to the following results: The focus of men and married women watching the program may be on the interaction between fathers and children; The focus of unmarried women watching the show is more on their fathers, especially those who are considerate, understand life, and can take care of their children.
