Annals of Obvious: College Guys Would Prefer to Bang Hot Chicks

According to an article in yesterday's Daily Texan, "Science says men like shapely ladies." To wit, David Lewis, one of (surprise, surprise) David Buss's graduate students offered this explanation of a research article published this month in Evolution and Human Behavior:

"I would say that a male strategy of searching for cues to immediate fertility in a potential short-term mate, and cues to long-term reproductive value in a long-term mate, would have been favored by natural selection."

Well thanks for that lesson in evolutionary psychobabble, David. I think what you mean is that what men want for short-term sex is, you know, a phat ass while what they look for in a long-term mate is a lady in the street but a freak in the bed (apologies to Ludacris).

Here is what the study actually measured. I know because I read the whole thing.

A mere 381 University of Texas students, 194 male, 187 female, were asked to look at a single picture that was covered up by two boxes: a face box and a body box. When the dudes (whose average age was 18.85, SD=1.29) were told to consider whether the gal would be suitable for a one night stand, more of them uncovered the body whereas when told to look for a 'long term committed relationship' more bros uncovered the face. The conclusion? 18.85 year old dudebros, when forced to choose one or the other, look at a girl's body if they want to fuck her.

Evolutionary psychology has the most hilariously narrow definition of "health" and "attractiveness" that it shouldn't surprise anyone that, as usual, they are providing evidence for something that sells magazines (hot models) but does not really play out in real life (men having the opportunity to fuck hot models). Their claims of how tall/hot/thinness indicates health:

Health-correlated cues of reproductive value [future reproductive potential] can be conveyed through both the face and the body. Pocked-marked facial skin, for example, reveals a history of disease (Buss, 1994), while increased leg length is correlated with a multitude of health benefits: lower risks of cardiovascular disease (Gunnell, Whitley, et al, 2003), diabetes (Davey Smith et al, 2001) and cancer (Gunnell, May, et al, 2003). Finally, age-dependent cues also related to reproductive value, such as taut facial skin and firm breasts (Symons, 1979) can be diagnosed through a woman's face and body.(p 349)

Hear that ladies? All those chick mag articles about how tall skinny people aren't healthy are LIES. So keep buying that foundation and keep working out. And if you're short? Guess you have no value.

While the authors include in their discussion the caveat that, because the sample was all college students, this research should be replicated with a more diverse population so women can feel like they aren't good enough for a wider variety of men, not just college dudebros, they don't acknowledge the huge limitation of only working with 17-20 year old college kids. In my experience, the vast majority of college guys haven't had much experience with short OR long term 'mating,' and many college students, despite their reports to the contrary, are really just interested in short-term sex. "Long term," in a college relationship, could mean two weeks.

For the record, this is a real study that was published in a real journal.
"More than just a pretty face: men's priority shifts toward bodily attractiveness in short-term versus long-term mating contexts." Jaime C. Confer, Carin Perilloux, David M. Buss
Evolution & Human Behavior - September 2010 (Vol. 31, Issue 5, Pages 348-353, DOI: 10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2010.04.002)

Annals of Obvious: Sexual Side Effects of Birth Control Are Complicated

I do not shy away from discussions of how hormonal birth control can cause a reduction in desire (among other, more acutely disagreeable side effects) in some patients--indeed, I experienced it myself. But I wanted to add a few points to the debate about this research. Jezebel posted* on a German study on the sexual side effects of birth control and here is my take.



First, this study's sample is large but very homogenous--every participant was a German medical student. The authors say: "Although this [homogenous sample] simplifies interpretation for this specific group, the results cannot be applied to broader populations."



Secondly, the researchers specifically examined whether different preparations of pills had disparate effects on the Female Sexual Function Index (FSFI) scores of participants, and there was no difference between pills that had androgenic or anti-androgenic progestins nor was there a dose-response relationship among pills that had low-, medium- or high- doses of estrogen ethinylestradiol. This doesn't necessarily mean that hormonal contraceptives don't affect sexual desire and function--indeed, we know they do--but it means that there is a more complex problem that has yet to be solved. From the researcher's conclusion:

"According to our online investigation, neither androgenic or antiandrogenic progestins in OCs nor the EE dosage in the OCs used significantly influenced sexual function in German medical students. Oral contraceptive users, however, did have lower FSFI scores than users of nonhormonal contraceptives or no contraception at all. These results could be explained by two alternative hypothesis: (1) The difference in FSFI scores between users and nonusers of OCs is not due to biological actions of the steroids but due to differences in psychosocial variables (personality, relationship, sexual script, etc.) between the two groups. (2) The difference in FSFI scores may indicate that even small dosages of steroids have a direct influence on the sexual response of women. This effect would then not be dose or type dependent. We will need further studies to understand these interactions better and to clarify which hypothesis holds true."

I'm inclined to go with hypothesis #2, but we have yet to see research proving it true. Further, I would caution casual readers of research to be wary of the measurements taken in this study because while the researchers declare no conflicts of interest and the research itself was not funded by any pharmaceutical company, there is tremendous bankroll behind the effort to zero-in on Female Sexual Dysfunction is and create profitmaking drugs to treat it.



This paper seems transparently critical of hormonal contraception's role in female sexual desire (and for that I applaud it) and function but there is a real risk in the medicalization of women's sex lives. Women respond to and enjoy sex in a variety of ways and save for the very few who have real, diagnosable, treatable dysfunctions, I implore those who comment on this type of research to keep in mind that putting weight behind the specter of "female sexual dysfunction" will not necessarily help women--it will line the pockets of pharmaceutical companies interested in exploiting women's insecurities.



You can read extensive critique about the invention of Female Sexual Dysfunction at the New View Campaign founded by one of my heroes, Dr. Leonore Tiefer.

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Annals of Obvious is an occasional series wherein Julie Sunday reads popular research articles in full because nobody else does.





*And also, they headlined it "No Shit"--methinks somebody is reading HTHSIT and stealing story ideas.

Annals of Obvious: Abstinence Programs Prevent Sex In Teens Too Young to Have Sex Anyway

File this under You've got to be fucking kidding me: This week's hulabaloo about a supposedly effective abstinence program demonstrates, yet again, how loath reporters are to read beyond an article abstract. I can't believe that after the Guttmacher data came out last week about the increase in teen pregnancy during the Bush years that anyone is even still fucking testing abstinence programs.

But I digress. Researchers at Penn and the University of Waterloo (Canada) this week published an article in the Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine demonstrating the middling effectiveness of a:

"theory-based abstinence-only intervention that would not meet federal criteria for abstinence programs and that is not vulnerable to many criticisms that have been leveled against interventions that meet federal criteria." (pg. 158)

What was so good about it that it wouldn't meet the brain-exploding federal guidelines? It didn't moralize about how sex will make God hate you and did not disparage the use of condoms (or, presumably, talk about how condoms don't protect your heart).

Perpetual fuddy duddy Sarah Brown, president of the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy, had this to say:

"This new study is game-changing. For the first time, there is strong evidence that an abstinence-only intervention can help very young teens delay sex."

Memo to Sarah Brown: All teens are "delaying" sex. Until they have it, that is.

The study randomized more than 600 African American 6th and 7th graders into 5 different intervention groups, two of which were "comprehensive" in their approach, one of which focused only on condom use, one which was abstinence-only, and a control group that focused on other, nonsexual health behaviors.

In short, teens who were in the abstinence-only group were the least likely to have initiated sex in the 24 month follow up period. Of the participants in the safer sex only group, 52% had initiated sex at the end; 33% of the abstinence-only had debuted. Forty two percent of those in the "comprehensive" groups initiated sex by the end. (p. 156) A heartening finding, though, is that roughly 75% of those who had had sex across all intervention groups used condoms consistently. So, that's good news. (ibid)

Since the study's design was a randomized, control trial, in theory it meets the "gold standard" of public health research. However, the length of the programs (4 hours on 2 or 3 Saturdays, for a total of 8 or 12 hours) raises questions about their longer term efficacy: the most effective prengancy prevention programs are years long, after school type interventions that really keep their hooks in teens for a long time.

Study participants were young--6th and 7th graders--and all African American, so the population isn't generalizable. Also, while participants were followed for 24 months following the intervention, the majority of teens don't initiate sex until after 9th grade, which would have been the latest participants would have been followed. The study authors say:

"Unlike many risk behaviors (eg, cigarette smoking, drug use), sexual intercourse is an age-graded behavior; the expectation is that people will eventually have sexual intercourse." (p. 153)

Or, as I am wont to say, teen virginity is like the Titanic: it's going down. Considering the inconsistency which teens may have access to sex, I think the best abstinence vs. comprehensive trial is going to incorporate educational interventions followed by guaranteed access to sex which study participants will either accept or abstain from. I'm not sure how else we could really measure the success of these interventions because some people are, you know, circumstantially abstinent and not avoiding sex by choice. Such teens inflate the success rate of abstinence programs by virtue of their social awkwardness, not because of any effectiveness of the program per se.

I also question the ethical nature of research that discusses STIs, particularly HIV, and fails to provide information to participants about how to prevent infection. That seems a clear violation of the ethical obligation of medical researchers to, at a minimum, provide the currently accepted standard treatment to all participants**.

The researchers say:

"The ideal abstinence intervention would incorporate principles of efficatious HIV/STI risk reduction behavioral interventions." (p. 153)

The only "efficatious HIV/STI risk reduction" method that I know of is USING FUCKING CONDOMS. Teaching teenagers about STIs/HIV and failing to teach them about condoms seems like a clear violation of ethics. Just sayin'.






**Remember Tuskeegee? That was another "study" that enrolled only African American participants and declined to offer them any treatment or prevention just to see what would happen in late stage, untreated syphilis. (Results: it eats your brain) At the time, penicillin was known to cure syphilis and was already in use. After the public outcry when the study came to light in 1972, the Tuskeegee Experiment was the impetus for Institutional Review Boards and ethical standards in human subjects research that mandate that the standard treatment be given to everyone.