Saturday, October 11, 2014

Human relationships: Studies

Table of Contents
1. “Passion trap”, attachment theory (anxious/avoidant/secure), rejection sensitivity, neediness in relationships
2. Shyness, “vulnerability”, self-disclosure, social anxiety
3. Factors contributing to the attractiveness of a man
4. Factors contributing to the attractiveness of a woman
5. Social life, touch and health
6. Touch in social interactions
7. Social skills (and various "tricks")
8. Social status and hierarchies
9. Funny studies/results
10. SMP (sexual marketplace)
11. LTR, living together, marriage etc
12. Other studies
13. Some very random research
Appendix 1: Scientists
Appendix 2: Blogs and websites
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Relationship Studies (300+ papers) (compiled by Vladimir Heiskanen)
1. “Passion trap”, attachment theory (anxious/avoidant/secure), rejection sensitivity, neediness in relationships
Eastwick&Finkel: Selective vs. Unselective Romantic Desire: Not All Reciprocity is Created Equal (2006) “These results are the first to suggest that romantic desire comes in two distinct “flavors” depending on whether it is exhibited uniquely toward a particular individual (with positive reciprocal effects) or toward individuals in general (with negative reciprocal effects).”


Downey et al. The Self-Fulfilling Prophecy in Close Relationships: Rejection Sensitivity and Rejection by Romantic Partners (1998) “These caveats notwithstanding, our results confirm that women's expectancies help create their own reality in romantic relationships. During conflicts, women's expectations of rejection led them to behave in ways that elicited confirmatory reactions from their romantic partners.”
Stinson et al. Deconstructing the “Reign of Error”: Interpersonal Warmth Explains the Self-Fulfilling Prophecy of Anticipated Acceptance (2009) “The authors tested the hypothesis that interpersonal warmth is the behavioral key to this acceptance prophecy: If people expect acceptance, they will behave warmly, which in turn will lead other people to accept them; if they expect rejection, they will behave coldly, which will lead to less acceptance. A correlational study and an experiment supported this model.”
Stinson et al. Rewriting the Self-Fulfilling Prophecy of Social Rejection Self-Affirmation Improves Relational Security and Social Behavior up to 2 Months Later (2011) “Chronically insecure individuals often behave in ways that result in the very social rejection that they most fear. We predicted that this typical self-fulfilling prophecy is not immutable.”
Murray et al. When rejection stings: how self-esteem constrains relationship-enhancement processes. (2002) “Ironically, chronic needs for acceptance may result in low self-esteem people seeing signs of rejection where none exist, needlessly weakening attachments.”
Murray et al. Balancing connectedness and self-protection goals in close relationships: a levels-of-processing perspective on risk regulation. (2008) “For people low in self-esteem, however, the activation of connectedness goals triggers a control system that prioritizes self-protection goals and directs them away from situations where they need to trust or depend on their partner.”
Murray et al. Self-esteem and the quest for felt security: how perceived regard regulates attachment processes. (2000) “The results revealed that low self-esteem individuals dramatically underestimated how positively their partners saw them. Such unwarranted and unwanted insecurities were associated with less generous perceptions of partners and lower relationship well-being. The converse was true for high self-esteem individuals.”


Withers&Vernon: To err is human: Embarrassment, attachment, and communication apprehension (2006) “Faux Pas and Sticky Situations embarrassment triggers were independently associated with anxious attachment”




Turan&Vicary: Who Recognizes and Chooses Behaviors That Are Best for a Relationship? The Separate Roles of Knowledge, Attachment, and Motivation (2010) “Secure individuals and individuals strongly motivated to have supportive relationships were more likely to identify and to choose relationship-enhancing options.”
Impett et al. Approach and avoidance sexual motives: Implications for personal and interpersonal well-being (2005) “In the realm of sexuality, approach motives focus on obtaining positive outcomes such as ones own physical pleasure, a partners happiness, or enhanced intimacy in the relationship. Avoidance motives, in contrast, focus on evading negative outcomes such as ones own sexual frustration, a partners loss of interest in the relationship, or conflict in the relationship.” “for each unit increase in avoidance motives, participants were more than 2.5 times as likely to have broken up by the 1-month follow-up”
Impett et al. Giving up and giving in: the costs and benefits of daily sacrifice in intimate relationships. (2005) “Whereas approach motives for sacrifice were positively associated with personal well-being and relationship quality, avoidance motives for sacrifice were negatively associated with personal well-being and relationship quality.”
Baldwin et al. Social-Cognitive Conceptualization of Attachment Working Models: Availability and Accessibility Effects (1996) (in study 1, secure/avoidant/anxious people reported attachment styles of their own relationships… in all groups, romantic relationships were more often avoidant/anxious than friendships were)
“We view RS in terms of an underlying defensive motivation system that is particular to interpersonal contexts, biases individuals to readily perceive and strongly react to cues to rejection, and predisposes the individual to hostility and reactive aggression.”
Ayduk et al. Tactical Differences in Coping With Rejection Sensitivity: The Role of Prevention Pride (2003) “In the absence of rejection, they [HRS–high prevention people] evaluated a potential dating partner more favorably than others and showed the sharpest reduction in the positivity of their evaluation of the partner when led to believe that the partner had rejected them. [...] Study 2 also showed that when conflicts with partners did happen, HRS–high prevention individuals displayed less overt hostility that risks potentially escalating the conflict and increasing the likelihood of rejection from partners. Rather, they expressed their anger by acting cold and distant; they withdrew positive behavior, replicating the results of Study 1.”
Higgins et al. Achievement orientations from subjective histories of success: promotion pride versus prevention pride (2001) “The studies found that participants with higher RFQ Promotion scores were less likely to make an ‘error of omission', and, independently, participants with higher RFQ Prevention scores were less likely to make an ‘error of commission'.”
Li et al. Economic decision biases and fundamental motivations: how mating and self-protection alter loss aversion. (2012) “Findings reveal that mating motives selectively erased loss aversion in men. In contrast, self-protective motives led both men and women to become more loss averse.”
Gere et al: The independent contributions of social reward and threat perceptions to romantic commitment. (2013) “Stronger threat perceptions were associated with lower satisfaction in all 3 studies.”




2. Shyness, “vulnerability”, self-disclosure, social anxiety
Kashdan&Roberts: Affective outcomes in superficial and intimate interactions: Roles of social anxiety and curiosity (2005) “In the small-talk condition, individuals with higher social anxiety reported significantly greater NA [negative affect] compared to individuals with lower social anxiety” (negativity scores approximately  5,5 vs 14,5 -> socially anxious people have quite negative feelings in small talk context)
Collins&Miller: Self-disclosure and liking: a meta-analytic review. “(a) People who engage in intimate disclosures tend to be liked more than people who disclose at lower levels, (b) people disclose more to those whom they initially like, and (c) people like others as a result of having disclosed to them.” [scienceofrelationships: “and we like people more when they disclose positive5 rather than negative information.6”]
Sprecher et al. Effects of self-disclosure role on liking, closeness, and other impressions in get-acquainted interactions (2012) “After the first interaction, listeners (vs. disclosers) reported more liking and other positive interpersonal impressions. These differences disappeared after participants switched roles in the second interaction. Furthermore, listening was associated with greater degrees of perceived similarity.”
Laurenceau et al. Intimacy as an interpersonal process: the importance of self-disclosure, partner disclosure, and perceived partner responsiveness in interpersonal exchanges. (1998) “Overall, the findings strongly supported the conceptualization of intimacy as a combination of self-disclosure and partner disclosure at the level of individual interactions with partner responsiveness as a partial mediator in this process. Additionally, in Study 2, self-disclosure of emotion emerged as a more important predictor of intimacy than did self-disclosure of facts and information.”
Forest&Wood: When social networking is not working: individuals with low self-esteem recognize but do not reap the benefits of self-disclosure on Facebook. (2012) “We found that although people with low self-esteem considered Facebook an appealing venue for self-disclosure, the low positivity and high negativity of their disclosures elicited undesirable responses from other people.”
Lenton et al. How does "being real" feel? The experience of state authenticity. (2013) “Study 1 demonstrated that people are motivated to experience state authenticity and avoid inauthenticity and that such experiences are common, regardless of one's degree of trait authenticity. [...] Study 3 corroborated the results of Study 2 and further revealed positive mood and nostalgia as consequences of reflecting on experiences of authenticity.”
Slatcher RB: When Harry and Sally met Dick and Jane: Creating closeness between couples (2010) “Compared to the small-talk condition, those in the high-disclosure condition felt closer to the couples they interacted with and were more likely to meet up with them again during the following month.”
Alden&Bieling: Interpersonal consequences of the pursuit of safety. (1998) “Subjects' appraisals of the situation were manipulated to be either positive or negative by highlighting the likelihood of positive or negative social outcomes. [...] As predicted, socially anxious individuals elicited significantly more negative responses from others in the negative appraisal condition, where they employed safety behaviors, than in the positive appraisal condition, where they did not.”
Schmid&Mast: Power increases performance in a social evaluation situation as a result of decreased stress responses (2013) “We hypothesized and found that thinking about having power reduced fear of negative evaluation and physiological arousal during a self-presentation task (Studies 1 and 2). In Study 2, we also showed that simply thinking about having power made individuals perform better in a social evaluation situation. Our results confirmed our hypotheses that the mechanism explaining this power–performance link was that high power participants felt less fear of negative evaluation.”
Cuddy et al: The Benefit of Power Posing Before a High-Stakes Social Evaluation (2013) “As predicted, high power posers performed better and were more likely to be chosen for hire, and this relationship was mediated only by presentation quality, not speech quality. Power pose condition had no effect on body posture during the social evaluation, thus highlighting the relationship between preparatory nonverbal behavior and subsequent performance”
Kim EJ: The effect of the decreased safety behaviors on anxiety and negative thoughts in social phobics. (2005) “These results imply that exposure could be more effective if social phobics are encouraged to drop their safety behaviors in the feared social situation”
McManus et al. Why social anxiety persists: an experimental investigation of the role of safety behaviours as a maintaining factor. (2008) “Both the high and low social anxiety groups perceived their safety behaviours to be helpful. Study two involved experimentally manipulating the use of safety behaviours and self-focus and demonstrated the use of safety behaviours and self-focused attention to be unhelpful in a number of ways.”
Uysal et al. The Role of Need Satisfaction in Self-Concealment and Well-Being (2010) “Overall, the findings suggest that concealing personal distressing information is detrimental to the satisfaction of basic psychological needs, which in turn predicts negative well-being.”


Maner et al. Does Social Exclusion Motivate Interpersonal Reconnection? Resolving the “Porcupine Problem” (2006) “The tendency for acts of exclusion to motivate positive social perceptions and behavior emerges most strongly among individuals who are socially optimistic. For these individuals, the pain of rejection appears to be transformed into strategic attempts to fulfill the unrequited need for social connection. No such tendency emerges, however, among individuals who are socially anxious and pessimistic about the consequences of future interactions. For these folks, it seems, the lingering fear of rejection outweighs the unrequited need for social connection.”
Cameron et al. The Bold and the Bashful Self-Esteem, Gender, and Relationship Initiation (2013) “When interpersonal risk was high, low self-esteem men used less direct initiation strategies (Study 1) and exhibited less direct and more interpersonally negative behaviors, conveying less liking (Study 2) than their HSEs counterparts.”


3. Factors contributing to the attractiveness of a man
Appearance and hygiene (shoulder/hip ratio, muscularity, tan, skin color, odor, clothes)
Hughes&Gallup: Sex differences in morphological predictors of sexual behavior: Shoulder to hip and waist to hip ratios (2003) “We investigated sex differences in shoulder to hip ratios (SHR) and waist to hip ratios (WHR), and their relationships to different features of sexual behavior. Males with high SHR and females with low WHR reported sexual intercourse at an earlier age, more sexual partners, more extra-pair copulations (EPC), and having engaged in more instances of intercourse with people who were involved in another relationship (i.e., having themselves been EPC partners).”
Frederick&Haselton: Why Is Muscularity Sexy? Tests of the Fitness Indicator Hypothesis (2007) “Across three studies, when controlling for other characteristics (e.g., body fat), muscular men rate their bodies as sexier to women (partial rs = .49-.62) and report more lifetime sex partners (partial rs = .20-.27), short-term partners (partial rs = .25-.28), and more affairs with mated women (partial r = .28).”
Broadstock et al. Effects of Suntan on Judgements of Healthiness and Attractiveness by Adolescents (1992) “Results indicate that a medium tan is perceived as healthiest and most attractive, and “no tan” is perceived as both least healthy and attractive.”
Stephen et al. Cross-cultural effects of color, but not morphological masculinity, on perceived attractiveness of men’s faces (2012) “For Caucasian faces rated 255 by Caucasian raters, greater attractiveness was predicted by increased yellowness 256 (b*; β=0.658; p=0.032) and decreased lightness (L*; β=-0.385; p=0.032) of the face”
Lee et al: Genetic Factors That Increase Male Facial Masculinity Decrease Facial Attractiveness of Female Relatives (2013) “However, we also found that masculinity of male faces is unrelated to their attractiveness and that facially masculine men tend to have facially masculine, less-attractive sisters.”
Kerr et al. Odors and the perception of hygiene. (2005) “For example, a hypothetical person whose clothes smell of pine was rated as relatively more successful, intelligent, sociable, sanitary, and attractive than one whose clothes smelled of lemon, onion, or smoke.”
Havlicek et al. Women's preference for dominant male odour: effects of menstrual cycle and relationship status (2006) “Here, we show that women in the fertile phase of their cycle prefer body odour of males who score high on a questionnaire-based dominance scale”
Thornhill&Gangestad: The Scent of Symmetry: A Human Sex Pheromone that Signals Fitness? (1999) “In both sexes, facial attractiveness (as judged from photos) appears to predict body scent attractiveness to the opposite sex. Women’s preference for the scent associated with men’s facial attractiveness is greatest when their fertility is highest across the menstrual cycle.”
Elliot et al. Red, rank, and romance in women viewing men. (2010) “Specifically, in a series of 7 experiments we demonstrate that women perceive men to be more attractive and sexually desirable when seen on a red background and in red clothing, and we additionally show that status perceptions are responsible for this red effect.”
Mautz et al. Penis size interacts with body shape and height to influence male attractiveness (2012) (youtube-videoselostus) "larger penis size and greater height had almost equivalent positive effects on male attractiveness. Our results support the hypothesis that female mate choice could have driven the evolution of larger penises in humans."
Mehrabian&Blum: Physical appearance, attractiveness, and the mediating role of emotions (1997) “Self-care, Masculinity (Femininity), and Pleasantness were positive correlates of male (female) attractiveness.”
Durante et al. Ovulation Leads Women to Perceive Sexy Cads as Good Dads (2012) “Using both college-age and community-based samples, in 3 studies we show that ovulating women perceive charismatic and physically attractive men, but not reliable and nice men, as more committed partners and more devoted future fathers. Ovulating women perceive that sexy cads would be good fathers to their own children but not to the children of other women. This ovulatory-induced perceptual shift is driven by women who experienced early onset of puberty.”
Personality, flirting styles, dominance, humor, intelligence, niceness, warmth/coldness
Markey&Markey: The interpersonal meaning of sexual promiscuity (2007) ”individuals in this sample who were dominant and were either very cold or very warm were more likely to have multiple sexual partners” “results [...] were also consistent with previous research suggesting that extraverted and antagonistic individuals [...] tend to be more sexually promiscuous than introverted or agreeable individuals” [the graphs are very interesting, and  they seem to apply to both genders]
Hill et al. Quantifying the strength and form of sexual selection on men's traits (2013) “Results indicate that dominance and the traits associated with it predict men's mating success, but attractiveness and the traits associated with it do not.”
Urbaniak&Kilmann: Physical Attractiveness and the “Nice Guy Paradox”: Do Nice Guys Really Finish Last? (2003) “Overall results indicated that both niceness and physical attractiveness were positive factors in women's choices and desirability ratings of the target men. Niceness appeared to be the most salient factor when it came to desirability for more serious relationships, whereas physical attractiveness appeared more important in terms of desirability for more casual, sexual relationships.”
Rosenbaum J: Sexual behavior in juveniles with psychopathic traits (2010) “A promiscuity score was calculated as the number of sexual partners reported by the participant divided by the number of years of sexual activity. [...] promiscuity was negatively related to agreeableness (r = -.274, p<.05) [...] In the female sample, promiscuity was positively related to APSD [antisocial personality disorder] total score (r = .498, p<.05)”


Yao et al. Criminal offending as part of an alternative reproductive strategy: Investigating evolutionary hypotheses using Swedish total population data (2014) “Convicted criminal offenders had more children than individuals never convicted of a criminal offense. Criminal offenders also had more reproductive partners, were less often married, more likely to get remarried if ever married, and had more often contracted a sexually transmitted disease than non-offenders. [...] We conclude that criminality appears to be adaptive in a contemporary industrialized country, and that this association can be explained by antisocial behavior being part of an adaptive alternative reproductive strategy.”
Sadalla et al. Dominance and Heterosexual Attraction (1987) “All four experiments indicated an interaction between dominance and sex of target. Dominance behavior increased the attractiveness of males, but had no effect on the attractiveness of females”
Xu et al. Human vocal attractiveness as signaled by body size projection. (2013) “The results show that male listeners preferred a female voice that signals a small body size, with relatively high pitch, wide formant dispersion and breathy voice, while female listeners preferred a male voice that signals a large body size with low pitch and narrow formant dispersion. Interestingly, however, male vocal attractiveness was also enhanced by breathiness, which presumably softened the aggressiveness associated with a large body size.”


Tracy&Beall: Happy guys finish last: the impact of emotion expressions on sexual attraction. (2011) “happiness was the most attractive female emotion expression, and one of the least attractive in males. In contrast, pride showed the reverse pattern; it was the most attractive male expression, and one of the least attractive in women”




Botwin et al. Personality and mate preferences: five factors in mate selection and marital satisfaction. (1997) “Women expressed a greater preference than men for a wide array of socially desirable personality traits.”


Niceness and Dating Success: A Further Test of the Nice Guy Stereotype “One hundred and ninety-one male college students completed a computerized questionnaire to assess their levels of agreeableness and aspects of their dating history. Twenty college-aged women rated the men’s photographs for attractiveness. Results supported the nice guy stereotype. Lower levels of agreeableness predicted more less-committed, casual, sexual relationships.”
Herold&Milhausen: Dating Preferences of University Women: An Analysis of the Nice Guy Stereotype (1999) “The findings indicate that nice guys are likely to have fewer sexual partners but are more desired for committed relationships.”
McDaniel A: Young Women's Dating Behavior: Why/Why Not Date a Nice Guy? (2005) “The results of the present study suggest that reasons for dating (i.e., not wanting physical contact, wanting stimulating conversation, and wanting an exclusive relationship) and perceived personality traits (i.e., sweet/nice and physically attractive) influence a young woman's desire to date a nice guy”
Halpern et al. Smart teens don't have sex (or kiss much either). (2000) “Higher intelligence operates as a protective factor against early sexual activity during adolescence, and lower intelligence, to a point, is a risk factor.”
Snyder et al: The dominance dilemma: Do women really prefer dominant mates? (2008) “Our findings suggest that women prefer potential mates who obtain status through prestige-based strategies over potential mates who obtain status through dominance-based strategies”
Berg et al. Personality and long-term reproductive success measured by the number of grandchildren (2014) “Higher extraversion, lower conscientiousness, and lower openness to experience were similarly associated with both higher number of children and grandchildren in both sexes. In addition, higher agreeableness was associated with higher number of grand-offspring only.” [”Surely these results would be more interesting if they were divided by sex.”]
Mate choice copying (preselection)
Eva&Wood: Are all the taken men good? An indirect examination of mate-choice copying in humans (2006) “The mean attractiveness rating assigned to the 10 male images was greater when the males were labelled as being married (mean 3.65 [...] relative to when they were labelled as being single (2.96 [...]”
Waynforth D: Mate Choice Copying in Humans (2007) (a ugly man is seen with a beautiful woman -> the ugly man becomes suddenly more interesting to other women)
Bowers et al. Generalization in mate-choice copying in humans (2011)  “Each of the above experiments replicates earlier findings (Place et al. 2010) that one's assessment of another's appeal is heightened upon acquiring social information indicating that person as a successful mate.”
Place et al. Humans show mate copying after observing real mate choices (2010) “The strength of the mate copying effect was found to be similar in men and women, but the pattern of rating changes producing the effect differed: Men showed an increase in relationship interest in all conditions, whereas women exhibited a decrease after seeing a date where the individuals were not interested in each other and an increase only if the individuals were mutually interested.”
Graziano et al. Social influence, sex differences, and judgments of beauty: Putting the interpersonal back in interpersonal attraction. (2012) "In Study 2, women evaluated physical attractiveness after seeing ratings supposedly made by same-sex peers."


Stanik et al. Rejection Hurts: The Effect of Being Dumped on Subsequent Mating Efforts (2010) “We tested the hypothesis that impressions of a person as a candidate for a romantic partner would decrease after people learned that the target had been dumped by his or her last partner. Results supported this hypothesis and revealed that people quickly change their opinions of potential partners when they receive this information [...] Interestingly, we found that female participants reported an increased desire to have a sexual relationship with a potential partner after learning he had rejected his last partner.”
Hill&Buss: The Mere Presence of Opposite-Sex Others on Judgments of Sexual and Romantic Desirability: Opposite Effects for Men and Women (2008?) “Study 1 (N = 847) documented that women rated men more desirable when shown surrounded by women than when shown alone or with other men (a desirability enhancement effect). In sharp contrast, men rated women less desirable when shown surrounded by men than when shown alone or with women (a desirability diminution effect).”
Jones et al. Social transmission of face preferences among humans (2007) “Here, we show that observing other women with smiling (i.e. positive) expressions looking at male faces increased women's preferences for those men to a greater extent than did observing women with neutral (i.e. relatively negative) expressions looking at male faces.”
Special skills (music, sports, dance etc)
Guéguen et al. Men’s music ability and attractiveness to women in a real-life courtship context (2013) “In the guitar case condition, 31% of the women gave their phone number to the confederate, compared to 9% in the sports bag condition and 14% in the no bag control condition.”


Faurie et al. Student athletes claim to have more sexual partners than other students (2003) “Both male and female students who compete in sports reported significantly higher numbers of partners than other students, and within the athletes, higher levels of performance predicted more partners.”
Neave et al. Male dance moves that catch a woman's eye (2010) “Nineteen males were recorded using the ‘Vicon’ motion-capture system while dancing to a basic rhythm; controlled stimuli in the form of avatars were then created in the form of 15 s video clips, and rated by 39 females for dance quality. Initial analyses showed that 11 movement variables were significantly positively correlated with perceived dance quality. Linear regression subsequently revealed that three movement measures were key predictors of dance quality; these were variability and amplitude of movements of the neck and trunk, and speed of movements of the right knee. In summary, we have identified specific movements within men's dance that influence women's perceptions of dancing ability. We suggest that such movements may form honest signals of male quality in terms of health, vigour or strength, though this remains to be confirmed.”


Romantic interest, neediness, aloofness
Birnbaum&Reis: When does responsiveness pique sexual interest? Attachment and sexual desire in initial acquaintanceships. (2012) [“[W]omen are less attracted to men who seem too caring on a first date, according to research in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. In the study, women were less likely to want to sleep with male acquaintances who expressed concern when they opened up than with men who were less emotionally responsive. It’s another case of nice guys finishing last. “The ‘too-nice stranger’ may come across as desperate,” says lead study author Gurit Birnbaum, Ph.D., a lecturer at the Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya in Israel. Rather than trying to empathize with a new interest, “just really listen, without interrupting,” says Birnbaum.”]





Money, status
Shuler&McCord: Determinants of Male Attractiveness: “Hotness” Ratings as a Function of Perceived Resources (2010) [“In one study, men were rated as more attractive when standing in front of an expensive car (believed to be theirs) as compared to when standing in front of a less expensive car.”]
Sundie et al. Peacocks, Porsches, and Thorstein Veblen: Conspicuous Consumption as a Sexual Signaling System (2011) “Furthermore, conspicuous purchasing enhanced men’s desirability as a short-term (but not as a long-term) mate.”
Guéguen&Lamy: Men’s social status and attractiveness: Women’s receptivity to men’s date requests. (2012) [“In a recent study, male confederates (guys in cahoots with the researchers) approached over 500 young women who were walking in a city. To test whether a males’ car affected women’s likelihood of sharing their digits, the male confederates waited in one of three cars (high, medium, or low value) before getting out and approaching the women. Men with a high status car were more likely to get a number (23.3%) than men with middle (12.8%) or low status cars (7.8%).”]
Rudman&Heppen: Implicit Romantic Fantasies and Women’s Interest in Personal Power: A Glass Slipper Effect? (2003) “In each experiment, women’s implicit romantic fantasies were dissociated with their conscious beliefs. More important, implicit (but not explicit) romantic fantasies negatively predicted women’s interest in personal power, including projected income, education goal, interest in high-status jobs, and group leadership appeal. By contrast, men’s implicit romantic fantasies were not routinely linked to their interest in personal power. In concert, the findings are consistent with positing a “glass slipper” effect for women that may be an implicit barrier to gender equity”
Traditional gender ideologies
Pleck&Sonenstein: Masculinity Ideology: Its Impact on Adolescent Males' Heterosexual Relationships (2010) “With sociodemographic and personal background factors controlled, males who hold traditional attitudes toward masculinity indicate having more sexual partners in the last year, a less intimate relationship at last intercourse with the current partner, and greater belief that relationships between women and men are adversarial”
Flirting styles, self-esteen, self-confidence, body language
Hall et al. Individual Differences in the Communication of Romantic Interest: Development of the Flirting Styles Inventory (2010) “The physical, sincere, and playful styles correlated with more dating success. The physical and sincere styles correlated with rapid relational escalation of important relationships with more emotional connection and greater physical chemistry.”
Craig Roberts et al. Manipulation of body odour alters men's self-confidence and judgements of their visual attractiveness by women. (2009) “Our results demonstrate the pervasive influence of personal odour on self-perception, and how this can extend to impressions on others even when these impressions are formed in the absence of odour cues.”
Renninger et al. Getting that female glance: Patterns and consequences of male nonverbal behavior in courtship contexts (2004) “It was found that males who successfully made contact courtship initiation with females exhibited different body language in this precontact phase than did males who did not make contact with females, including significantly more glancing behaviors, space-maximization movements, intrasexual touching, and less closed-body movements.”
Walsh A: Self-esteem and sexual behavior: Exploring gender differences (2011) “The present study found that high self-esteem males and females had a significantly greater number of sexual partners than low self-esteem subjects. The relationship is particularly strong for males. The greatest difference in self-esteem levels was found between male virgins and nonvirgins.”
Back et al. Why are narcissists so charming at first sight? Decoding the narcissism-popularity link at zero acquaintance. (2010) (pdf) “Three main findings were revealed: First, narcissism leads to popularity at first sight. Second, the aspects of narcissism that are most maladaptive in the long run (exploitativeness/entitlement) proved to be most attractive at zero acquaintance. Third, an examination of observable verbal and nonverbal behaviors as well as aspects of physical appearance provided an explanation for why narcissists are more popular at first sight.”
Brand et al. What is beautiful is good, even online: Correlations between photo attractiveness and text attractiveness in men’s online dating profiles (2012) “- Women rated men’s internet dating photos independently from their profile texts. -> Men with attractive photos wrote texts that were rated as more attractive. -> Perceived confidence seemed to play a mediating role.”


Other (similarity, digit ratio etc)
Little et al. Investigating an imprinting-like phenomenon in humans Partners and opposite-sex parents have similar hair and eye colour (2003) “Parental characteristics were found to correlate positively with actual partner characteristics for both men and women.”
Perrett et al. Facial attractiveness judgements reflect learning of parental age characteristics (2002) “We found that women born to ‘old’ parents (over 30) were less impressed by youth, and more attracted to age cues in male faces than women with ‘young’ parents (under 30). For men, preferences for female faces were influenced by their mother’s age and not their father’s age, but only for long-term relationships”


Hughes SM: Sex differences in romantic kissing among college students: An evolutionary perspective (2007) "females place more importance on kissing as a mate assessment device" “As evidence for just how biologically important this exchange can be, one of us (Gallup) recently completed an unrelated survey which included the question “Have you ever found yourself attracted to someone, only to discover after kissing them for the first time that you were no longer interested?” Out of 58 male respondents, 59% answered “yes,” and 66% of 122 female respondents also answered in the affirmative.”
Implicit vs. Explicit preferences
Eastwick et al: Implicit and Explicit Preferences for Physical Attractiveness in a Romantic Partner: A Double Dissociation in Predictive Validity (2011) “Specifically, explicit preferences predicted the extent to which attractiveness was associated with participants’ romantic interest in opposite-sex photographs but not their romantic interest in real-life opposite-sex speed-daters or confederates. Implicit preferences showed the opposite pattern.”






4. Factors contributing to the attractiveness of a woman
Rantala et al. Facial attractiveness is related to women's cortisol and body fat, but not with immune responsiveness. (2013) “plasma cortisol level was negatively associated with attractiveness, indicating that stressed women look less attractive. Fat percentage was curvilinearly associated with facial attractiveness, indicating that being too thin or too fat reduces attractiveness.”














Guéguen N: The effect of a woman’s smile on men’s courtship behavior (2008) [“Significantly more men approached when the woman smiled (22% vs. 4%).”]
Kocsor et al. Preference for facial self-resemblance and attractiveness in human mate choice. (2011) “Our results support the hypothesis that both facial similarity (i.e., cues of shared genes) and observer-independent features of attractiveness (i.e., honest signals of genetic quality) play an important role in males' mate choice. The lack of choice for self-resemblance on the female side in this particular study might reflect their more complex decision-making rules that are probably based on other cues beside visual stimuli.”


Swami et al. More than just skin deep? Personality information influences men's ratings of the attractiveness of women's body sizes. (2010) “participants provided with positive personality information perceived a wider range of body sizes as physically attractive compared with the control group, whereas participants provided with negative personality information perceived a narrower range of body sizes as attractive.”


Pazda et al. Sexy red: Perceived sexual receptivity mediates the red-attraction relation in men viewing woman (2012) “Men perceive women in red as sexually receptive. -> Men perceive sexually receptive women as attractive.”
Guéguen&Jacob: Clothing Color and Tipping: Gentlemen Patrons Give More Tips to Waitresses With Red Clothes (2012) “It was found that waitresses wearing red received more tips but only with male patrons.”
Beall&Tracy: Women Are More Likely to Wear Red or Pink at Peak Fertility (2013) “Across two samples (N = 124), women at high conception risk were more than 3 times more likely to wear a red or pink shirt than were women at low conception risk, and 77% of women who wore red or pink were found to be at high, rather than low, risk.“
Haselton et al: Ovulatory shifts in human female ornamentation: Near ovulation, women dress to impress (2007) “Using a sample of 30 partnered women photographed at high and low fertility cycle phases, we show that readily-observable behaviors – self-grooming and ornamentation through attractive choice of dress – increase during the fertile phase of the ovulatory cycle.”
Durante et al: Changes in Women's Choice of Dress Across the Ovulatory Cycle: Naturalistic and Laboratory Task-Based Evidence (2008) "the effect of more skin being revealed during high fertility for women closest to ovulation in their high-fertility session was true only for sexually experienced women (high-fertility M = 387.28, SD = 140.92; low-fertility M = 259.487, SD = 158.82)"




Singh et al. Cross-cultural consensus for waist–hip ratio and women's attractiveness (2010) “Results show that in each culture participants selected women with low WHR as attractive, regardless of increases or decreases in BMI.”




Dixson et al. Male preferences for female waist-to-hip ratio and body mass index in the highlands of Papua New Guinea (2010) “These results show that the hourglass female figure is rated as attractive by men living in a remote, indigenous community, and that when controlling for BMI, WHR plays a crucial role in their attractiveness judgments.”
Bremser&Gallup: Mental State Attribution and Body Configuration in Women (2012) “Women with low WHR’s are rated as more attractive, healthier, and more fertile. They also tend to have more attractive voices, lose their virginity sooner, and have more sex partners.”
Nedelec&Beaver: Physical attractiveness as a phenotypic marker of health: an assessment using a nationally representative sample of American adults (2014) “In sum, the more attractive a respondent was rated, the less likely he or she was to report being diagnosed with a wide range of chronic diseases and neuropsychological disorders. Importantly, this finding was observed for both sexes. These analyses provide further support for physical attractiveness as a phenotypic marker of health.”
Osborn DR: Beauty is as Beauty Does?: Makeup and Posture Effects on Physical Attractiveness Judgments (2006) “For women within plus or minus one standard deviation of average facial attractiveness, makeup effect size estimates were comparable to previously published estimates of the importance of structural factors in attractiveness judgments. Similarly, for average weight stimuli, posture was comparable to body build in influencing attractiveness judgments.”


Cerda-Molina et al: Changes in men’s salivary testosterone and cortisol levels, and in sexual desire after smelling female axillary and vulvar scents (2013) “Periovulatory axilla and vulva scents accounted for a general increase of interest in sex. These odors were also rated as more pleasant and familiar, while luteal vulvar odors were perceived as intense and unpleasant.”



5. Social life and health
Beckes&Coan: Social Baseline Theory: The Role of Social Proximity in Emotion and Economy of Action (2011) “Social proximity and interaction attenuate cardiovascular arousal, facilitate the development of nonanxious temperament, inhibit the release of stress hormones, reduce threat-related neural activation, and generally promote health and longevity. Conversely, social subordination, rejection and isolation are powerful sources of stress and compromised health. Drawing on the biological principle of economy of action, perception/action links, and the brain’s propensity to act as a Bayesian predictor, Social Baseline Theory (SBT) proposes that the primary ecology to which human beings are adapted is one that is rich with other humans. Moreover, SBT suggests that the presence of other people helps individuals to conserve important and often metabolically costly somatic and neural resources through the social regulation of emotion.”
Cacioppo&Cacioppo: Social Relationships and Health: The Toxic Effects of Perceived Social Isolation (2014) “Evidence indicates that loneliness heightens sensitivity to social threats and motivates the renewal of social connections, but it can also impair executive functioning, sleep, and mental and physical well-being. Together, these effects contribute to higher rates of morbidity and mortality in lonely older adults.”










Harris&Richards: The physiological and psychological effects of slow-stroke back massage and hand massage on relaxation in older people. (2010) “Physiological and psychological indicators suggest the effectiveness of slow-stroke back massage and hand massage in promoting relaxation in older people across all settings.”
Lindgren et al. Touch massage: a pilot study of a complex intervention (2013) “one theory suggests that activation of pressure receptors in the skin activates the parasympathetic nervous system (Field et al., 2010). Another theory posits that massage releases oxytocin, a hormone suggested to be involved in positive social experiences (Uvnäs-Moberg, 1998). [...] In spite of the fact that we only included 20 participants, the results revealed that TM significantly decreased anxiety levels in patients undergoing elective aortic surgery.”
Uvnäs-Moberg: Oxytocin may mediate the benefits of positive social interaction and emotions. (1998) “Positive social interactions have been related to health-promoting effects. Oxytocin released in response to social stimuli may be part of a neuroendocrine substrate which underlies the benefits of positive social experiences”
Hammett: STUDIES OF THE THYROID APPARATUS. V. THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE COMPARATIVE MORTALITY RATES OF PARATHYROIDECTOMIZED WILD NORWAY RATS AND EXCITABLE AND NON-EXCITABLE ALBINO RATS (1922) “The one group, called the “Stock Albinos,”, presented the normal picture of low threshold of response to stimulation and high muscle tone. These rats were easily excited. The mortality rate within 48 hours after parathyroidectomy was 79 per cent and was accompanied by tetania parathyreopriva. In the other group, designated as the “ Gentled Albinos,” in which excitability and muscle tone had been reduced to a low level by constant handling and petting, the mortality rate was but 13 per cent.” [Gentling produced gentle, unexcitable animals; lack of gentling resulted in fearful, excitable animals.*]


Hernandez-Reif et al: Multiple sclerosis patients benefit from massage therapy (1998) “The massage group had lower anxiety and less depressed mood immediately following the massage sessions and, by the end of the study, they had improved self-esteem, better body image and image of disease progression, and enhanced social functional status”
Billhult&Määttä: Light pressure massage for patients with severe anxiety (2009) “Findings revealed that the patients were able to rediscover their own capacity during the massage period. This was illuminated by the experience of being relaxed in body and mind, the experience of unconditional attention, the experience of decreased anxiety and the experience of increased self-confidence. The paper ends with a discussion of clinical implications.”
Henricson et al. The outcome of tactile touch on stress parameters in intensive care: A randomized controlled trial (2008) “The study showed that tactile touch led to significantly lower levels of anxiety. The circulatory parameters suggested increased circulatory stability indicated by a reduction in noradrenalin requirement.”
Morhenn et al: Massage Increases Oxytocin and Reduces Adrenocorticotropin Hormone in Humans. (2012) “Massage was associated with an increase in [oxytocin] and reductions in ACTH, [nitric oxide], and [beta-endorphin].”
Linnen et al: Intranasal oxytocin and salivary cortisol concentrations during social rejection in university students (2012) “Participants who were administered oxytocin exhibited a decrease in cortisol levels, relative to placebo, during the YIPS, F (4, 184) = 4.50, p < 0.05.”
Moyer et al: Does massage therapy reduce cortisol? A comprehensive quantitative review (2010) “MT’s effect on cortisol is generally very small and, in most cases, not statistically distinguishable from zero. As such, it cannot be the cause of MT’s well-established and statistically larger beneficial effects on anxiety, depression, and pain. We conclude that other causal mechanisms, which are still to be identified, must be responsible for MT’s clinical benefits.”


Bargh&Shalev: The substitutability of physical and social warmth in daily life. (2012) “In Study 1, higher scores on a measure of chronic loneliness (social coldness) were associated with an increased tendency to take warm baths or showers. In Study 2, a physical coldness manipulation significantly increased feelings of loneliness.”
Eisenberger et al. Does Rejection Hurt? An fMRI Study of Social Exclusion (2003) “This study suggests that social pain is analogous in its neurocognitive function to physical pain, alerting us when we have sustained injury to our social connections, allowing restorative measures to be taken.”
Slavich et al: Neural sensitivity to social rejection is associated with inflammatory responses to social stress. (2010) “As predicted, exposure to the laboratory-based social stressor was associated with significant increases in two markers of inflammatory activity, namely a soluble receptor for tumor necrosis factor-alpha (sTNFalphaRII) and interleukin-6 (IL-6).”


Audet et al: Social defeat promotes specific cytokine variations within the prefrontal cortex upon subsequent aggressive or endotoxin challenges (2011) “Among mice that had initially been repeatedly defeated, IL-1β and TNF-α expression was enhanced after the social defeat challenge”
Yee et al: Reciprocal Affiliation Among Adolescent Rats During a Mild Group Stressor Predicts Mammary Tumors and Lifespan (2008) “Affiliative reciprocity during a stressor, a structural quality of social interactions, protected females from early mammary tumor development (the primary pathology in Sprague-Dawley rats) and early all-cause mortality. Conversely, lack of reciprocity (whether disproportionately seeking or receiving attempted affiliation) was as potent a risk factor as neophobia. Thus a social role increased risk additively with individual temperament. Our data indicate that affiliative reciprocity functions as a buffer for everyday stressors and are likely mediated by attenuated reactivity of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis.”
Holt-Lunstad et al: Influence of a “Warm Touch” Support Enhancement Intervention Among Married Couples on Ambulatory Blood Pressure, Oxytocin, Alpha Amylase, and Cortisol (2008) “Salivary oxytocin was enhanced both early and late in the intervention group and alpha amylase was reduced at post treatment in intervention group husbands and wives relative to controls. Husbands in the intervention group had significantly lower post treatment 24-hour systolic blood pressure than the control group.”
Demirbağ&Erci: The effects of sleep and touch therapy on symptoms of fibromyalgia and depression. (2012) “the depression levels in the touch-music-aroma therapy group showed a larger decrease (before: 22.01±5.3; after: 14.52±3.7) than in the sleep-music-aroma therapy group (before: 24.81±5.1; after: 20.16±4.9)”


Chen et al: Common oxytocin receptor gene (OXTR) polymorphism and social support interact to reduce stress in humans (2011) “Only individuals with one or two copies of the G allele of rs53576 showed lower cortisol responses to stress after social support, compared with individuals with the same genotype receiving no social support. These results indicate that genetic variation of the oxytocin system modulates the effectiveness of positive social interaction as a protective buffer against a stressful experience.”
Baumeister&Leary: The need to belong: desire for interpersonal attachments as a fundamental human motivation. (1995) “Existing evidence supports the hypothesis that the need to belong is a powerful, fundamental, and extremely pervasive motivation.”
Coan et al: Lending a Hand: Social Regulation of the Neural Response to Threat (2006) “Results indicated a pervasive attenuation of activation in the neural systems supporting emotional and behavioral threat responses when the women held their husband's hand. A more limited attenuation of activation in these systems occurred when they held the hand of a stranger.”


McConnell et al. Friends with benefits: on the positive consequences of pet ownership. (2011) “In summary, pets can serve as important sources of social support, providing many positive psychological and physical benefits for their owners.”


Idler et al. Mending Broken Hearts: Marriage and Survival Following Cardiac Surgery (2012) “After adjusting for demographics and pre- and postsurgical health, unmarried persons had 1.90 times the hazard of mortality of married persons”


McAdams&Bryant: Intimacy motivation and subjective mental health in a nationwide sample. (1987) “professional men (e.g., doctors, lawyers, and teachers) scored higher on intimacy motivation than did men in other occupational categories, while among women the occupational groups with highest intimacy motivation were service workers and craftspersons.”
Fisher et al. Reward, Addiction, and Emotion Regulation Systems Associated With Rejection in Love (2010) “Activation of areas involved in cocaine addiction may help explain the obsessive behaviors associated with rejection in love.”


Seltzer et al. Instant messages vs. speech: hormones and why we still need to hear each other (2011) “We discovered that unlike children interacting with their mothers in person or over the phone, girls who instant messaged did not release oxytocin; instead, these participants showed levels of salivary cortisol as high as control subjects who did not interact with their parents at all.”
Kimata H: Kissing selectively decreases allergen-specific IgE production in atopic patients. (2006) “Twenty-four patients with mild atopic eczema and 24 patients with mild allergic rhinitis kissed with lovers or spouses freely for 30 min while listening to soft music. [...] Kissing selectively decreased allergen-specific IgE production with skewing cytokine pattern toward Th1 type.”




Paredes&Agmo: Has dopamine a physiological role in the control of sexual behavior? A critical review of the evidence. (2004) “There is no compelling indication in existing experimental data that dopamine is of any particular importance for sexual motivation.”


Dewall et al. Acetaminophen reduces social pain: behavioral and neural evidence. (2010) “Thus, acetaminophen reduces behavioral and neural responses associated with the pain of social rejection, demonstrating substantial overlap between social and physical pain.”
Deckman et al: Can Marijuana Reduce Social Pain? (2013) “Prior research has shown that acetaminophen—an analgesic medication that acts indirectly through cannabinoid 1 receptors—reduces the social pain associated with exclusion. Yet, no work has examined if other drugs that act on similar receptors, such as marijuana, also reduce social pain. Across four methodologically diverse samples, marijuana use consistently buffered people from the negative consequences associated with loneliness and social exclusion.”
Gould et al: Acetaminophen differentially enhances social behavior and cortical cannabinoid levels in inbred mice (2012) “Hence, it appears that other indirect actions of acetaminophen, including 5-HT receptor agonism, may underlie its sociability promoting properties outweighing any CB1 mediated suppression by locally-elevated endocannabinoids in these mice.”




Wilkinson et al. Eating me up inside: Priming attachment security and anxiety, and their effects on snacking (2013) “Priming anxiety led to a significantly higher food intake than priming security (p = .016). We suggest that participants consumed more food in response to the anxious prime in an attempt to manage the resulting feelings of insecurity.”


Ditzen et al. Effects of different kinds of couple interaction on cortisol and heart rate responses to stress in women (2007) “Women with positive physical partner contact before stress exhibited significantly lower cortisol and heart rate responses to stress”
Light et al. More frequent partner hugs and higher oxytocin levels are linked to lower blood pressure and heart rate in premenopausal women (2005) “Thus, frequent hugs between spouses/partners are associated with lower BP and higher OT levels in premenopausal women”


Cheng et al: Are Narcissists Hardy or Vulnerable? The Role of Narcissism in the Production of Stress-Related Biomarkers in Response to Emotional Distress (in press) “across a three-day period, highly narcissistic individuals showed elevated output of two biomarkers of stress—cortisol and alpha-amylase—to the extent that they experienced negative emotions”
“The current research examined whether narcissists respond to everyday experiences of negative emotions with exaggerated or reduced hormonal stress activity. In doing, we drew on 14  the fragile-ego account (Gregg & Sedikides, 2010; Kernberg, 1976; Kohut, 1976), which proposes that beneath narcissists’ outward veneer of self-inflation and positivity lies an implicit negative sense of self, and corresponding insecurity and shame.“
Lund et al: Stressful social relations and mortality: a prospective cohort study (2014) “Frequent worries/demands from partner or children were associated with 50–100% increased mortality risk. Frequent conflicts with any type of social relation were associated with 2–3 times increased mortality risk. [...] Those outside the labour force and men seem especially vulnerable to exposure.”

6. Touch in social interactions




Guéguen&Fischer-Lokou: Tactile contact and spontaneous help: an evaluation in a natural setting. (2003) “In one study, strangers who were touched lightly on the arm were more likely to help an experimenter pick up things they had dropped (Gueguen, 2003). The percentage of people who helped went up from 63% to 90%.”
Willis&Hamm: The use of interpersonal touch in securing compliance (1980) “participants were asked to sign a petition. While 55% of those not touched agreed to sign it, this went up to 81% of those participants touched once on the upper arm. A second study asked people to fill in a questionnaire. The same touch increased compliance from 40% to 70%.”


Dolinski D: Touch, Compliance, and Homophobia (2010) “in the conditions when a man requests something from another man, touch actually negatively affects the chances for request fulfillment. This effect seems to be linked to the strong male homophobia characteristic of the society within which the experiments were carried out”




Guéguen N: Courtship compliance: The effect of touch on women’s behavior (2007) (20-year-old man approached young women on the street to ask for their phone numbers… the probability was raised from 10.0% to 19.2% if the man briefly touched woman’s forearm)



7. Social skills (and tricks)










Swaab et al. Early words that work: When and how virtual linguistic mimicry facilitates negotiation outcomes (2011) “negotiators who actively mimicked their counterpart's language in the first 10 min of the negotiation obtained higher individual gain compared to those mimicking during the last 10 min, as well as compared to control participants”






Huang et al: Powerful Postures Versus Powerful Roles: Which Is the Proximate Correlate of Thought and Behavior? (2011) “Although past research has found that being in a powerful role and adopting an expansive body posture can each enhance a sense of power, two experiments showed that when individuals were placed in high- or low-power roles while adopting an expansive or constricted posture, only posture affected the implicit activation of power, the taking of action, and abstraction. However, even though role had a smaller effect on the downstream consequences of power, it had a stronger effect than posture on self-reported sense of power.”
Cesario&McDonald: Bodies in Context: Power Poses As a Computation of Action Possibility (2013) “In Study 1, expansive and constrictive poses influenced power only when held in an interpersonal context, which provides action-relevant meaning to these poses as dominance and submissiveness.”
Welker et al: Upright and left out: Posture moderates the effects of social exclusion on mood and threats to basic needs (2013) “Social exclusion only affected participants' mood when individuals took a powerful posture”
Bohns&Wiltermuth: It hurts when I do this (or you do that): Posture and pain tolerance (2012) “Dominant postures led to higher pain thresholds than submissive postures. [...] Interacting with a dominant confederate led to lower pain thresholds than interacting with a submissive confederate.”


Korobov&Laplante: Using Improprieties to Pursue Intimacy in Speed-dating Interactions (2013) “The general, albeit surprising, finding is that far from being adversarial, improprieties tended to be useful for pursuing intimacy precisely because they presented interactive trouble. Successfully navigating the interactive trouble seemed to increase a subjectively shared sense of familiarity.”



8. Social status and hierarchies
Shariff&Tracy: Knowing who's boss: implicit perceptions of status from the nonverbal expression of pride. (2009) “Results suggest that the pride expression strongly signals high status”
suggest that pride is a fundamental emotion in the biological and evolutionary sense, and in the social and interpersonal sense. It plays a major role in interpersonal and, in all likelihood, intergroup functioning, and also importantly shapes each individual’s self-concept and self-esteem. Perhaps most important, pride is the single most important emotion underpinning the attainment and maintenance of social status; pride experiences motivate status striving in a variety of ways, and pride displays communicate status-relevant information to others.”
Martens et al: Status signals: Adaptive benefits of displaying and observing the nonverbal expressions of pride and shame (2012) “We argue that both pride and shame expressions function as social signals that benefit both observers and expressers. Specifically, pride displays function to signal high status, which benefits displayers by according them deference from others, and benefits observers by affording them valuable information about social-learning opportunities. Shame displays function to appease others after a social transgression, which benefits displayers by allowing them to avoid punishment and negative appraisals, and observers by easing their identification of committed group members and followers.”
Gilbert P: Evolution and social anxiety. The role of attraction, social competition, and social hierarchies. (2001) “this article has suggested that socially anxious people are highly attuned to the competitive dynamics of trying to elicit approval and investment from others but that they perceive themselves to start from an inferior (i.e., low-rank) position and, because of this, activate submissive defensives when attempting to present themselves as confident, able, and attractive to others. These submissive defenses (which evolved to inhibit animals in low-rank positions from making claims on resources or up-rank bids) interfere with confident performance, leading to a failure cycle.”
Romero-Canyas et al. Paying to Belong: When Does Rejection Trigger Ingratiation? (2010) “This research illuminates circumstances under which people are willing to ingratiate to gain acceptance from those who have rejected them. The ability to put effort into being helpful to others and accommodating to their needs can be highly adaptive [...] Persistence in efforts to meet the needs of a group or person who was initially rejecting can turn the situation around, leading to ultimate acceptance. However, such efforts can become maladaptive when they subvert other important personal goals or lead to socially harmful behavior. Preventing rejection or escaping from a state of rejection may be one of the underlying motives that drive people to a course of action that may render them susceptible to manipulation and abuse by others”


London et al. Social Causes and Consequences of Rejection Sensitivity (2007) “Being liked by peers, irrespective of level of dislike, predicted a reduction in anxious rejection expectations in both boys and girls”



9. Funny studies/results
Guéguen N: "Say it...near the flower shop": further evidence of the effect of flowers on mating. (2012) “It was found that women agreed more favorably to the confederate's courtship solicitation when solicited in the area of the flower shop. Positive mood induced by exposure to flowers was used to explain these results.”


Guéguen&Lamy: Weather and helping: additional evidence of the effect of the sunshine Samaritan. (2013) “Passers-by helped the confederates more favorably on the sunnier days. Positive mood induced by sun may explain such results.”
Guéguen N: Weather and courtship behavior: A quasi-experiment with the flirty sunshine (2013) "It was found that women agreed more often to the confederate’s courtship solicitation on the sunny days. Positive mood induction by the sun may explain such results."




Voracek et al. Clark and Hatfield's evidence of women's low receptivity to male strangers' sexual offers revisited. (2005) “research analyzed an informal "real-life" journalistic project (N= 100) initiated by an Austrian magazine, in which results indicated a 6.1% acceptance rate (95% CI: 2.8-12.6%) for a complete stranger offering women immediate sexual involvement”  //////////// [“It is interesting to note that ten of the refusing women were inclined to pursue the acquaintance by having a date or a drink with him. In addition, three women offered him their phone numbers for future contact; eight women provided apologetic responses by pointing to their relationship status (partnered or married); and five other women explained their refusal by referring to current time pressure (see here).”]


Conley TD: Perceived proposer personality characteristics and gender differences in acceptance of casual sex offers. (2011) “The author found, when participants were asked about actual casual sexual offers in their real lives, women reported accepting 40% of the time.”
Hald&Høgh-Olesen: Receptivity to sexual invitations from strangers of the opposite gender (2010) “Research by Hald and Høgh-Olesen (2010) found that 68% of single men and 43% of single women agreed to a date request by a stranger of average attractiveness.”
Kornrich et al. Egalitarianism, Housework, and Sexual Frequency in Marriage (2013) “Results show that both husbands and wives in couples with more traditional housework arrangements report higher sexual frequency”
Brody&Costa: Vaginal orgasm is more prevalent among women with a prominent tubercle of the upper lip. (2011) “A prominent and sharply raised lip tubercle was associated with greater odds (odds ratio = 12.3) of ever having a vaginal orgasm, and also with greater past month vaginal orgasm consistency (an effect driven by the women who never had a vaginal orgasm), than less prominent lip tubercle categories.”




Rule et al. Mating Interest Improves Women’s Accuracy in Judging Male Sexual Orientation (2011) “We examined heterosexual women’s accuracy in judging male sexual orientation across the fertility cycle (Study 1) and found that women’s accuracy was significantly greater the nearer they were to peak ovulation.”


Lieberman et al. Kin Affiliation Across the Ovulatory Cycle : Females Avoid Fathers When Fertile (2010) “we show that women selectively avoid interactions with their fathers during peak fertility”
Van Vugt&Iredale: Men behaving nicely: public goods as peacock tails. (2013)

Schoenfeld et al. Do Men and Women Show Love Differently in Marriage? (2012) “But whereas wives expressed love by enacting fewer negative or antagonistic behaviors, husbands showed love by initiating sex, sharing leisure activities, and doing household work together with their wives.”



10. SMP (sexual marketplace)


Eisenberg et al: Who is the 40-year-old virgin and where did he/she come from? Data from the National Survey of Family Growth. (2009) “A total of 122 (13.9%) men aged 25-45 reported never having had sex, representing approximately 1.1 million American men in this age cohort. Among female participants, a total of 104 (8.9%) women aged 25-45 reported never having sex, representing approximately 800,000 American women in this age cohort.”



11. LTR, living together, marriage etc
Rhoades et al. The impact of the transition to cohabitation on relationship functioning: cross-sectional and longitudinal findings. (2012) (living together -> more negativity, less satisfaction… but at least more sex during the first year)
Ahlstrom et al. Me, My Spouse, and My Avatar: The Relationship between Marital Satisfaction and Playing Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games (MMORPGs) (2012) [“Couples with one gamer partner were significantly less satisfied in their marriages compared to couples in which both partners played games. In this category, gamers (54%) and non-gamers (62%) said that they fought about gaming once in a while or more; whereas when both partners were gamers, fewer avid gamers (34%) and casual gamers (33%) said they fought about gaming. For one-gamer couples, the majority of both partners felt gaming had a bad influence on their relationship. However, when both partners were gamers, the majority thought that gaming had a good influence on their marriage.”]


The&Gordon-Larsen: Entry into Romantic Partnership is Associated with Obesity (2009) “Individuals who transitioned from single/dating to cohabiting or married were more likely to become obese than those who were dating at both waves. Partner concordance for negative, obesity-related behaviors was strongest for married couples and couples who lived together ≥2 years.”
Felmlee DH: Who's on top? Power in romantic relationships (1994) “A higher proportion of both women and men say that the male partner, rather than the female partner, made more of the decisions, was less emotionally involved, and in general was “getting a better deal.””


Wilcox&Dew: Is love a flimsy foundation? Soulmate versus institutional models of marriage (2010) “spouses who embraced a soulmate model of marriage experienced high levels of satisfaction but also experienced high levels of conflict and divorce [+150%]”
Wolf et al: Estimating the Prevalence of Nonpaternity in Germany (2012) [keyword: cuckoldry] “a maximum likelihood estimate of the nonpaternity rate in the population of 0.94% was obtained with asymptotic 95% confidence limits of 0.33% and 1.55%, respectively”



12. Other studies












Young&Pinsky: Narcissism and celebrity (2006) (interesting data about personality factors in different celebrity groups (musicians, actors etc.)


Brodt&Zimbardo: Modifying shyness-related social behavior through symptom misattribution. (1981) “When specific arousal symptoms previously associated with their social anxiety were misattributed to a nonpsychological source, high-frequency noise, these extremely shy women behaved as if they were not shy...”


Hill et al. Boosting beauty in an economic decline: mating, spending, and the lipstick effect. (2012) (during an economic decline, women spend more money on their looks)


Bailey et al. Men's perception of women's attractiveness is calibrated to relative mate value and dominance of the women's partner (2010) “The results suggest that men's mate searching is calibrated to the relative mate value of themselves and prospective mates and varies dynamically with the cost–benefit tradeoffs of pursuing such a relationship.”






Horan&Booth-Butterfield: Investing in Affection: An Investigation of Affection Exchange Theory and Relational Qualities (2010) “giving and receiving affection positively related to commitment and satisfaction. Receiving affection strongly predicted perceptions of satisfaction, and communicating affection better predicted commitment. Affection accounted for between 17% and 35% of the variance in perceptions of commitment and satisfaction.”
Miller RS: The Nature and Severity of Self-Reported Embarrassing Circumstances (1992) “The respondents' embarrassability predicted the intensity of their embarrassments; in addition, high school students suffered stronger embarrassments than college students, and women reported stronger embarrassments than men.”


Hall JA: Is it something I said? Sense of humor and partner embarrassment (2010) “these behaviors [self-defeating humor] may be seen as annoying, self-aggrandizing, or simply embarrassing to the self-deprecator’s relational partner.”  “when new romantic partners make a show out of a trivial incapacity like playing Frisbee, they may appear to be neurotic and emotionally needy”
Hall JA: Sexism and Assertive Courtship Strategies (2011) (sexist women appear to like sexist men...)


Afifi&Faulkner: On Being `Just Friends': The Frequency and Impact of Sexual Activity in Crosssex Friendships (2000) “67% of those who reported engaging in sexual activity with a friend perceived that the sexual contact increased relational quality”
Langlois et al. Maxims or myths of beauty? A meta-analytic and theoretical review. (2000) “within and across cultures; (b) attractive children and adults are judged more positively than unattractive children and adults, even by those who know them; (c) attractive children and adults are treated more positively than unattractive children and adults”


Ragsdale et al. Where the boys are: sexual expectations and behaviour among young women on holiday. (2006) [“nearly 50% of female tourists in Costa Rica reported a “vacation relationship” with a local or another tourist. Sex was more likely when women had greater intentions and when they were traveling solo or with only one other female companion.”]
Wismeijer&van Assen: Psychological Characteristics of BDSM Practitioners (2013) “BDSM practitioners were less neurotic, more extraverted, more open to new experiences, more conscientious, less rejection sensitive, had higher subjective well-being, yet were less agreeable”
Connolly PH: Psychological Functioning of Bondage/Domination/Sado-Masochism (BDSM) Practitioners (2006) “Although psychoanalytic literature suggests that high levels of certain types of psychopathology should be prevalent among BDSM practitioners, this sample failed to produce widespread, high levels of psychopathology on psychometric measures of depression, anxiety, obsessive-compulsion, psychological sadism, psychological masochism, or PTSD. In fact, on measures of clinical psychopathology and severe personality pathology, this sample appeared to be comparable to both published test norms and to DSM-IV-TR estimates for the general population. There were, however, some exceptions to this general pattern, most notably the higher-than-average levels of narcissism and nonspecific dissociative symptoms found in the sample.”
Liss et al. Empowering or oppressing? Development and exploration of the Enjoyment of Sexualization Scale. (2011) “Sexualization of girls and women in America is rampant and has many negative consequences. Women, however, often report enjoying being sexually admired by men.”
Basson R: The Female Sexual Response: A Different Model (2000) “Sexual arousal in women often is more a mental excitement, very much about the appreciation of the sexual stimulus and less about the awareness of genital changes.”




Williams&Bargh: Experiencing physical warmth promotes interpersonal warmth. (2008) “In study 1, participants who briefly held a cup of hot (versus iced) coffee judged a target person as having a “warmer” personality (generous, caring)”
Bernard et al. Integrating sexual objectification with object versus person recognition: The sexualized-body-inversion hypothesis. (2012) [“In fact, both male and female college students view sexy women as objects but view sexy men as people.”]


Dijsktra&Buunk: Sex differences in the jealousy-evoking effect of rival characteristics (2002) “men reported more jealousy when a rival was high in Social Dominance, Physical Dominance, and Social Status, whereas women reported more jealousy when a rival was high in Physical Attractiveness”










Burke et al. “You’re going to eat that?” Relationship processes and conflict among mixed-weight couples (2012) [“Couples with an overweight woman and healthy-weight man experienced the greatest level of conflict; overweight male - healthy female couples had the lowest levels of conflict.”]


Spielmann et al. On the Rebound: Focusing on Someone New Helps Anxiously Attached Individuals Let Go of Ex-Partners (2009) “These studies revealed that simply feeling optimistic about finding a new partner encouraged anxiously attached individuals to let go of an ex-partner.”
Lundgren&Schwab: Perceived appraisals by others, self-esteem, and anxiety. (1977) [“For example, people with low self-esteem experience greater anxiety when they get positive feedback, because that positive information is inconsistent with how they view themselves.”]




Dyrenforth et al. Predicting relationship and life satisfaction from personality in nationally representative samples from three countries: the relative importance of actor, partner, and similarity effects. (2010) “Couple similarity consistently explained less than .5% of the variance in life and relationship satisfaction after controlling for actor and partner effects.”
Montoya et al. Is actual similarity necessary for attraction? A meta-analysis of actual and perceived similarity (2008) “the effect of actual similarity in existing relationships was not significant. Alternatively, perceived similarity predicted attraction in no-interaction, short-interaction, and existing relationship studies.”


Battaglia et al. Breaking Up is (Relatively) Easy to Do: A Script for the Dissolution of Close Relationships (1998) “Analysis of their 1480 responses indicated a 16-step ordered script for relation-ship dissolution. The relationship dissolution script is discussed in terms of approach-avoidance theories of conflict and relevant relationship dissolution theories.”
Malouff et al. The Five-Factor Model of personality and relationship satisfaction of intimate partners: A meta-analysis (2010) “A meta-analysis that included 19 samples with a total of 3848 participants showed that scores on four of the Five-Factor Model personality factors correlated significantly with level of relationship satisfaction by intimate heterosexual partners. The four personality characteristics were low neuroticism, high agreeableness, high conscientiousness, and high extraversion.”
Zayas et al. Roots of Adult Attachment: Maternal Caregiving at 18 Months Predicts Adult Peer and Partner Attachment (2011) “These findings provide new empirical support that early maternal caregiving predicts later adult attachment patterns with peers and partners.”
Roisman et al. Earned-secure attachment status in retrospect and prospect. (2002) [“When an individual is able to overcome his/her insecurities and behave the way secure people do, psychologists refer to this phenomenon as “earned security.”3 Just as you may have “learned” to be clingy as a result of people who mistreated or neglected you in the past, you can “learn” secure attachment by having positive experiences with others in the future.”]
Mikulincer&Shaver: Boosting Attachment Security to Promote Mental Health, Prosocial Values, and Inter-Group Tolerance (2007) “On this basis, we review recent experimental studies showing how interventions designed to increase attachment security have beneficial effects on mental health, prosocial behavior, and intergroup relations, and discuss unaddressed issues concerning the mechanism underlying the beneficial effects of these interventions, the temporal course of these effects, and their interaction with countervailing forces.”


Carnelley&Rowe: Priming a sense of security: What goes through people’s minds? (2010) (pdf-latauslinkki) “Security priming led to thoughts related to felt security, positive care, a sense of merging with another, positive emotion, and communion”


Grammer et al. Non-verbal behavior as courtship signals: the role of control and choice in selecting partners. (2000) [“the study also found that a woman’s signals in the first minute are always the same, regardless of whether or not she is interested.”]


Kampe et al. Reward value of attractiveness and gaze. (2001) “Here we show that the perceived attractiveness of an unfamiliar face increases brain activity in the ventral striatum of the viewer when meeting the person's eye, and decreases activity when eye gaze is directed away. Depending on the direction of gaze, attractiveness can thus activate dopaminergic regions that are strongly linked to reward prediction, indicating that central reward systems may be engaged during the initiation of social interactions.”
Vaillancourt&Sharma: Intolerance of sexy peers: intrasexual competition among women. (2011) “Results provide strong empirical support for intrasexual competition among women. Using independent raters, blind to condition, we found that almost all women were rated as reacting negatively ("bitchy") to an attractive female confederate when she was dressed in a sexually provocative manner. In contrast, when she was dressed conservatively, the same confederate was barely noticed by the participants.”
Meston&Buss: Why Humans Have Sex (2007) "Study 1 used a nomination procedure that identified 237 expressed reasons for having sex, ranging from the mundane (e.g., ‘‘I wanted to experience physical pleasure’’) to the spiritual (e.g., ‘‘I wanted to get closer to God’’), from altruistic (e.g., ‘‘I wanted the person to feel good about himself/herself’’) to vengeful (e.g., ‘‘I wanted to get back at my partner for having cheated on me’’). Study 2 asked participants (N = 1,549) to evaluate the degree to which each of the 237 reasons had led them to have sexual intercourse.”
Parker et al. Effects of Acute Alcohol Consumption on Ratings of Attractiveness of Facial Stimuli: Evidence of Long-Term Encoding (2008) “Alcohol consumption increases ratings of attractiveness of facial stimuli, and this effect is not selective for opposite-sex faces.”
Ciarocco et al. Hungry for Love: The Influence of Self-Regulation on Infidelity (2012) “Thirty-two college students in exclusive romantic relationships interacted through a private chat room with an opposite-sex confederate. Prior to this interaction, a food-restriction task depleted half the participants of self-control. As predicted, depleted levels of self-regulation increased the likelihood of infidelity. Specifically, depleted participants were more likely to both accept a coffee date from and supply a personal telephone number to the confederate than non-depleted participants.”
Finkel&Eastwick: Arbitrary social norms influence sex differences in romantic selectivity. (2009) “Rotators were significantly less selective than were sitters, which meant that the tendency for men to be less selective than women at events where men rotated disappeared at events where women rotated.”
MacGregor&Holmes: Rain on My Parade: Perceiving Low Self-Esteem in Close Others Hinders Positive Self-Disclosure (2011) “Across three experiments, the authors show that people are reluctant to disclose their positive experiences (i.e., capitalize) when they believe that the recipient has low self-esteem. Furthermore, the results suggest that people hold back from LSEs largely because they expect the interaction to go poorly for themselves, not because they are concerned about making LSEs feel inferior.”
Bleske-Rechek&Buss: Opposite-Sex Friendship: Sex Differences and Similarities in Initiation, Selection, and Dissolution (2000) “Compared with women, men judged sexual attraction and a desire for sex as more important reasons for initiating OSFs, reported a preference for sexual attractiveness when selecting OSFs, and judged the lack of sex as a more important reason for dissolving OSFs.”




Aronson&Linder: Gain and loss of esteem as determinants of interpersonal attractiveness (1965) “The major results showed that the subjects liked the confederate best when her evaluations moved from negative to positive”
Confer et al. More than just a pretty face: men's priority shifts toward bodily attractiveness in short-term versus long-term mating contexts (2010) “These results suggest that men, but not women, have a condition-dependent adaptive proclivity to prioritize facial cues in longterm mating contexts, but shift their priorities toward bodily cues in short-term mating contexts.”


Lehmiller et al. Sex differences in approaching friends with benefits relationships. (2011) “Results indicated many overall similarities in terms of how the sexes approach FWB relationships, but several important differences emerged. For example, sex was a more common motivation for men to begin such relationships, whereas emotional connection was a more common motivation for women. In addition, men were more likely to hope that the relationship stays the same over time, whereas women expressed more desire for change into either a full-fledged romance or a basic friendship.”
Davis et al. Attachment style and subjective motivations for sex. (2004) “Sexual passion was positively related to attachment anxiety and negatively related to avoidance, and anxiety was related to the maintenance of passion over time, whereas avoidance was related to loss of passion over time.”


Sanchez et al. When Finding a Mate Feels Urgent: Why Relationship Contingency Predicts Men’s and Women’s Body Shame (2008) ”Given the central role of romantic relationships in the lives of men and women and the many benefits of having romantic relationships, some people may derive their self-worth from having a romantic partner (i.e., relationship contingency; Sanchez & Kwang, 2007). Moreover, relationship success may be viewed as related to being beautiful and attractive.” ”For people whose self-worth is invested in having romantic relationships, finding relationships may become urgent, driving both men and women to be concerned about their physical appearance.”




Graham et al. Turning On and Turning Off: A Focus Group Study of the Factors That Affect Women’s Sexual Arousal (2004) [An excerpt: “A potential turn-off was a partner who was too “polite” or who asked for sex: P: If somebody asked me to do something. I hate that. Like, “will you go down on me?” and stuff and like blatantly ask me . . . It will eventually get there, they don’t have to ask me, but like the asking is . . . the biggest turn-off ever. [18–24 group]“
Kraus et al: Tactile communication, cooperation, and performance: an ethological study of the NBA. (2010) “Consistent with hypotheses, early season touch predicted greater performance for individuals as well as teams later in the season. Additional analyses confirmed that touch predicted improved performance even after accounting for player status, preseason expectations, and early season performance.”
Bates et al. Testing predictions from the male control theory of men's partner violence (2013) "A student sample (N = 1,104) reported on their use of physical aggression and controlling behavior, to partners and to same-sex non-intimates. [...] Contrary to the male control theory, women were found to be more physically aggressive to their partners than men were [...] women were more likely than men to be classed as “intimate terrorists,” [...] Overall, these results do not support the male control theory of IPV [=intimate partner violence]"
Epley&Schroeder: Mistakenly seeking solitude. (2014) “Connecting with others increases happiness, but strangers in close proximity routinely ignore each other. Why? Two reasons seem likely: Either solitude is a more positive experience than interacting with strangers, or people misunderstand the consequences of distant social connections. To examine the experience of connecting to strangers, we instructed commuters on trains and buses to connect with a stranger near them, to remain disconnected, or to commute as normal (Experiments 1a and 2a). In both contexts, participants reported a more positive (and no less productive) experience when they connected than when they did not.”
13. Some very random research
Gartrell&Bos: US National Longitudinal Lesbian Family Study: Psychological Adjustment of 17-Year-Old Adolescents (2010) "According to their mothers' reports, the 17-year-old daughters and sons of lesbian mothers were rated significantly higher in social, school/academic, and total competence and significantly lower in social problems, rule-breaking, aggressive, and externalizing problem behavior than their age-matched counterparts in Achenbach's normative sample of American youth."


Weinstein et al. Parental autonomy support and discrepancies between implicit and explicit sexual identities: dynamics of self-acceptance and defense. (2012) [“Netta Weinstein and colleagues provide evidence that individuals who are homophobic may, in part, be suppressing their own desires for intimacy or relationships with same-sex partners.”]




Gershoff et al. Parent discipline practices in an international sample: associations with child behaviors and moderation by perceived normativeness. (2010) “mothers' use of corporal punishment, expressing disappointment, and yelling were significantly related to more child aggression symptoms, whereas giving a time-out, using corporal punishment, expressing disappointment, and shaming were significantly related to greater child anxiety symptoms”


Brewer&Hendrie: Evidence to suggest that copulatory vocalizations in women are not a reflexive consequence of orgasm. (2011) “while female orgasms were most commonly experienced during foreplay, copulatory vocalizations were reported to be made most often before and simultaneously with male ejaculation”
Levin RJ: Vocalised sounds and human sex (2006)

Wilson&Durrenberger: Comparison of rape and attempted rape victims. (1982) “39% of 52 rape victims as contrasted to 12% of 58 attempted rape victims dated their attackers again, after the assault"
Hirschberger et al. Strivings for Romantic Intimacy Following Partner Complaint or Partner Criticism: A Terror Management Perspective (2003) “However, when mortality was made salient strivings of intimacy were equally high under all three feedback conditions. The results are discussed in light of the growing body of literature on the terror management functions of close relationships.”
Vasilenko et al. Body image and first sexual intercourse in late adolescence. (2011) “Male students were more satisfied with their appearance after first intercourse, whereas female students became slightly less satisfied with their appearance.”


Walton&Cohen: A Question of Belonging: Race, Social Fit, and Achievement (2007) “In Experiment 1, students were led to believe that they might have few friends in an intellectual domain. Whereas White students were unaffected, Black students (stigmatized in academics) displayed a drop in their sense of belonging and potential. In Experiment 2, an intervention that mitigated doubts about social belonging in college raised the academic achievement (e.g., college grades) of Black students but not of White students.”
Lee et al. Interpersonal Relationships and Preferences for Mood-Congruency in Aesthetic Experiences (2013) “This article proposes a theoretical argument to explain when people are more likely to prefer mood-congruent to mood-incongruent aesthetic stimuli. It is suggested that mood-congruent aesthetic experiences, for example, listening to sad songs when feeling sad, (a) serve as a surrogate for the mood-sharing often observed in empathic relationships and hence (b) are preferred when emotional distress comes from failing interpersonal relationships (vs. noninterpersonal events).”


Harrison&Shortall: Women and Men in Love: Who Really Feels It and Says It First? (2011) "These results indicate that women may not be the greater “fools for love” that society assumes and are consistent with the notion that a pragmatic and cautious view of love has adaptive significance for women."
Valentova et al: Shape Differences Between the Faces of Homosexual and Heterosexual Men. (2013) “Homosexual men showed relatively wider and shorter faces, smaller and shorter noses, and rather massive and more rounded jaws, resulting in a mosaic of both feminine and masculine features.”



Appendix 1: Scientists & Labs
Markus J. Rantala http://users.utu.fi/mjranta/
Stanford Psychophysiology Laboratory (social anxiety) http://spl.stanford.edu/papers.html
Niedenthal emotions lab (facial expressions) http://psych.wisc.edu/niedenthal/articles2.html

Appendix 2: Scientific Blogs and websites
The Science of Relationships http://www.scienceofrelationships.com/
The Attraction Doctor (Jeremy Nicholson) http://attractiondoctor.com/
(to be continued)

Appendix 3: Unscientific relationship blogs
Paging Dr. NerdLove http://www.doctornerdlove.com/
Charlie Glickman http://www.charlieglickman.com/blog/


Appendix 4: Useful books on human relationships
The Passion Trap (Dean C. Delis)
Semantics and Scenarios (Alan Roger Currie)
Written for men:
Models: Attract Women Through Honesty (Mark Manson)
New Game+ (Harris O'Malley)
Mode One (Alan Roger Currie)

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