Post Date December, 02 2023
In our daily lives, many people find that men who become fathers seem more likely to be favored by the opposite sex, which means that fathers seem to have more heterosexual charm than young men. In psychology, experts have studied the connection between men and women who are fathers. What was the result? Let's take a look together.
1、 Men who become fathers only become more charming
The basic premise of evolutionary psychology is that many human behaviors are directed towards future generations - the purpose is to pass on one's own genes. The reproductive cost of the female partner is high, so women are more inclined to choose a stable relationship and raise children together with a long-term spouse; If a man exhibits characteristics such as "reliability", "maturity", and "proficiency in taking care of offspring", and is willing to invest resources and time in taking care of them, then he will be more sexy in the eyes of women.
Even if a man takes care of someone else's child, the problem is not significant as long as his relationship with the woman is stable. The trait of 'liking children' in men can be important in a long-term relationship, and women will not lower their overall evaluation of men due to the current scarcity of resources.
Psychologist Pegila Serra designed a set of slides that include: 1. A man standing alone; 2. Interaction between a man and 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); 5. A man is cleaning the living room. 240 women were asked to rate the sexual attractiveness of the characters in the above 5 images, with a maximum score of 5.
In the second state, men scored the highest, with 2.75 points; In the third state, the score is the lowest, only 1.25 points. In this way, being with children not only does not harm male charm, but also serves as a great decoration for personal charm - in the eyes of women, a man's ability to independently take care of his children 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 contexts. We will find that a woman's attractiveness to men does not change whether she is doing household chores, taking care of children, or just standing alone. That is to say, taking care of children does not increase the attractiveness of women in the eyes of men.
2、 Will men take care of their children? Women are naturally intuitive
Usually, women have not seen their partner take care of their children before getting married, but sometimes women have this intuition.
In 1991, a study mentioned that it was found that some of the personality traits reported by men, especially the necessary qualities for taking care of children, such as "warmth" and "closeness", could be discovered by women simply by looking at a photo 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 both an animal and a child, allowing participants to choose which one they prefer, repeated 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 and determine whether the participant's attitude towards the baby is positive or negative). Then, 29 women were asked to view their photos and evaluate whether they were attractive to themselves as long-term partners or short-term partners, while also speculating on some of their traits such as "liking children", "health", and "kindness".
The result is that women's evaluation of whether men like their children is not very correlated with men's own performance in interest tests for children. But further analysis found that men's interest in children is the main factor affecting their long-term attractiveness to women.
So from the subjective perception of women, the factor that affects long-term attractiveness is "whether they think they like children", and the factor that affects short-term attractiveness is "whether they have a masculine personality".
Overall, a man with children not only does not decrease 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.
(Intern Editor: Huang Qianyi)
