Come Together, Right Now

Ok, so there is no good snarky way to introduce this next finding. Yet it will make you a little uncomfortable the next time you (or your wife or girlfriend) has an orgasm during sex. Unless you are using protection, which you should be doing anyway. Now get off my lawn.



Its long been theorized that women have more frequent orgasms with better looking and more masculine men. Its also believed that they did so as the man ejaculated, or soon after. This made pregnancy by that man more likely, as the orgasm took the sperm from the acidic environment of the vagina into the more hospitable cervix and uterus. The hormone oxytocin also makes orgasm more likely in women and it is shown to be more common during ovulation. Oxytocin also produces a semen like substance in the uterus, which helps protect and nourish the sperm. The substance also guides the sperm to the dominant oviduct, making fertilization more likely. Also, peristaltic uterine contractions help move sperm through the reproductive tract and reduces the flowback out of the vagina after sex.


The subjects were made up of 117 straight college students from north eastern university. The average age was 20.76 years old. The students met with the researchers two times, one week apart. During the first session, students had pictures of their faces taken, with a neutral expression and without glasses or jewelry. They then rated themselves at private computers and their partners in terms of attractiveness, as well as their own attractiveness. They were also asked to judge their partners masculinity and femininity, as well as those traits for themselves. The next week, the rating and judging was repeated. Data was also taken on how often the women had orgasms:

1. when they had sex with their partner besides penis/vaginal.
2. when they had penis to vagina sex.
3. before their partner did during sex.
4. after their partner during sex.
5. at the same time as their partner.
6. how often they had orgasms during masturbation.

The averages of the two sessions were then calculated. They found that the women with the most attractive, masculine men had the most simultaneous orgasms. A man's masculinity, a way of detecting his genetic quality, proved to be a good indicator of predicting if and when the woman would orgasm during penis to vagina sex.


Source:
David A. Puts, et al. "Men's masculinity and attractiveness predict their female partners' reported orgasm frequency and timing," Behavior and Human Genetics (2012).

Brains vs Brawn, Part Deux

So basically, what we have here is the fact that people of average intelligence are out breeding people of higher intelligence.

Here is the scenario: A young woman with a high school education goes out to a bar with her friends. She is ovulating, feeling adventurous and has sex on her mind. She drinks more alcohol than usual and starts looking out over the men. The skinny guy with his buddies discussing Middle Eastern geopolitics doesn't interest her but she does like the big guy throwing darts.

The part of her brain that evaluates risk and values inhibition is less active while the reward centers and risk taking center are firing on all cylinders. The alcohol that she drank helps her decide to go flirt. The big guy has a similar educational background and they go back to her apartment. He doesn't want to use protection and she doesn't want him to either. Bingo, she gets pregnant.

Educational level of a woman has a lot to do with how many children she will have over the course of her life. A study published in 1997 found that women with the lowest educational level had the highest birth rates. The average birth rate of women that never entered high school was 3.2 births, while women with a college degree average 1.6 to 2 children.

Contraceptive usage also varied depending on their mother's education level. Women whose mothers didn't graduate high school had a 52.8% birth control usage rate. Daughters of high school grads had a 69.3% rate. Daughters of college grads had a 83.9% contraceptive usage rate.


Look at another scenario: A young woman with a college education goes to the bar and she is also ovulating and feeling sexual. She is just as interested in sex as the less educated woman, but is more in control of herself. She has a "slow life history strategy," meaning she has better impulse control and judgment. They tend to have less sex with fewer partners. (Psychology Today, July/August 2011 edition)She is also most likely interested in the stud by the dart board, but if she does sleep with him, she will be more likely to use contraception.

Blogger's Musings:
But why isn't there more attraction to intelligence? Wouldn't being smart be an advantage in the caveman days? Well, yes. Women don't sleep with dumb men any more than they do with smart men but the physical hardships in those olden days were extreme. Hunting mammoths was a job for brawn, not a math champ. If you wanted to eat and be protected, you needed a tough guy that acted. Remember the previous post: intelligent people have a slow, cautious life history. There was no time to be too slow and cautious when the group was starving.

Plus, women are attracted to dangerous men while ovulating. If a smart man passes on the chance to get her pregnant, an average intelligence man with brawn wont pass it up. True, caring for the new baby cuts down on time to study but it does get the biological job done. As far as nature is concerned, that's more important than learning for the sake of learning.

A chart comparing education level of people of varying IQ's for comparison.

IQ of 75 = 50/50 chance of reaching 9th grade
IQ of 100 = average of the total population
IQ of 105 = average of high school graduate
IQ of 115 = average of college graduate
IQ of 125 = average of person with a Ph.D or Masters Degree


Source:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/25/health/research/25stats.html
http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/97facts/edu2birt.htm
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-504763_162-20028272-10391704.html
http://www.webmd.com/sex-relationships/news/20071107/women-risk-risky-sex-at-worst-time

Women Want Burly Blastocysts, Not Expounding Embryos

The pictured woman is a rarity: a fertile woman that likes brains more than brawn. The point of my title is that when women are most likely to get pregnant, they fantasize about macho men, not so much about smart ones. Sleeping with either man at this time would determine if their baby is a football player or a chess champion. The football player beats the chess champ every time.

This was partially discussed in the November 21, 2010, blog post. Since then, Psychology Today published a new article in its July/August 2011 edition called "Intelligent Intercourse." Rosemary Hopcroft, a sociologist at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, says "Intelligence is negatively associated with sex frequency. It's a bit dismaying."

Yeah...

Not only that, but the higher education a person achieves, the fewer sexual partners they tend to have. For example, men with college degrees as half as likely to have had four or more partners in the past year than men with a high school education.Or they are less likely to admit it, says Anjani Chandra, a health scientist and demographer at the CDC.

Why this is true is hard to say. Carolyn Halpern, a professor at the UNC School of Public Health claims that teens at the top of the IQ charts tend to be virgins. She believes that the smart kids purposely abstain because they want to avoid negative consequences. Opportunity may also play a role, as the smart kids also are less likely to kiss. These intelligent teens are not ugly losers either, as the research factored in attractiveness, affability and personal grooming.

"Pursuing education takes up a lot of time," says Chandra.


Source:
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-504763_162-20028272-10391704.html

Ovulating Women Have Gaydar

I swear, as soon as women start ovulating each month, they get superpowers or something. Their voices change, they feel sexier, they want sex more, they smell better and dress sexier. It would all be great if only it weren't for the whole accidental pregnancy thing. Well, at least gay guys don't have to worry about that.

Add one more ability to the list: the ability to tell if a man is straight or gay just by looking at him. Forty undergraduate women were asked to look at pictures of 80 men, forty of whom were straight and forty of which were gay. The women that were closest to ovulation were more accurate at guessing which men were homosexual.

Another experiment tested 34 women, who looked at 200 pictures of women, one hundred of which were straight and the other one hundred were lesbian. The researchers found that women were unable to determine if the women pictures were hetero or homosexual, regardless of where they were in their menstrual cycle.

I do wish that the article had given numbers explaining just how accurate women were at judging a man's orientation. Were they a little more accurate or much more accurate?




Source:
http://ibnlive.in.com/news/fertile-women-can-tell-straight-from-gay/162208-19.html

You Smell Like Happy

Confidence. Some people have it, some people need it, everyone wants it. It is routinely rated as an attractive trait by women. Some men can be confident and others just put on a good show. As it turns out, the ever popular t-shirt test can help a person detect certain personality traits in the wearer.

A study published in the European Journal of Personality claims that Polish scientists asked 100 men and 100 women to take personality tests and then sleep in an unworn t-shirt for three consecutive nights. The shirts were then smelled by volunteers, who judged the wearers personality based on the smell of the shirt.

Results were not conclusive, but the smellers did detect if the wearer was outgoing or shy and how dominant their personalities were, said researcher Agnieszka Sorokowska. This was especially true when the wearer was of the opposite sex of the smeller.


Source:http://www.nydailynews.com/life-style/personalities-a-smell-study-article-1.986567