Subconscious and Sex
Below is an excerpt from Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain, by renowned neuroscientist David Eagleman. The book is not about sex per se, but rather how the subconscious mind influences our behavior. Fascinating read!
Beauty: So Palpably and Flagrantly Made for All Eternity to Be Loved
Why are people attracted to young mates and not to the elderly? Do blondes really have more fun? Why does a briefly glimpsed person appear more attractive than a person at whom we’ve taken a good look? At this point, you won’t be surprised to find that our sense of beauty is burned deeply (and inaccessibly) into the brain - all with the purpose of accomplishing something biologically useful.
Let’s return to thinking about the most beautiful person you know. Well-proportioned, effortlessly well-liked, magnetic. Our brains are exquisitely honed to pick up on those looks. Simply because of small details of symmetry and structure, that person enjoys a destiny of greater popularity, faster promotions, and a more successful career.
At this point it will not surprise you to discover that our sense of attraction is not something ethereal - properly studied only by the pens of poets - but instead results from specific signals that plug, like a key into a lock, into a dedicated neural software.
What people select as beautiful qualities primarily reflect signs of fertility brought on by hormonal changes. Until puberty the faces of boys and girls are similar. The rise in estrogen in pubescent girls gives them fuller lips, while testosterone in boys produces a more pronounced chin, a larger nose, and a fuller jaw. Estrogen causes the growth of the breasts and buttocks, while testosterone encourages the growth of muscles and broad shoulders. So for a female, full lips, full buttocks, and a narrow waist broadcast a clear message: I’m full of estrogen and fertile. For a male, it’s the full jaw, stubble, and broad chest. This is what we are programmed to find beautiful. Form reflects function.
Our programs are so ingrained that there is little variation across the population. Researchers (as well as purveyors of pornography) have been able to discern a surprisingly narrow range for the female proportions that males find most attractive: the perfect ratio between the waist and hips usually resides between 0.67 ad 0.8. The waist-to-hip ratios of Playboy centerfolds has remained at about 0.7 over time, even as their average weight has decreased. Women with a ratio in this range are not only judged by males as more attractive, but are also presumed to be more healthy, humorous, and intelligent. As women become older, their features change in ways that depart from these proportions. Middles thicken, lips thin, breasts sag, and so on, all of which broadcast the signal that they are past peak fertility.
Males are often more visually driven than females, but women are nonetheless subject to the same internal forces; they are drawn by the attractive features that flag the maturity of manhood. An interesting twist is that woman’s preferences can change depending on the time of month: women prefer masculine-looking men when they are ovulating, but when not ovulating they prefer softer features - which presumably flag more social and caring behavior.
Although the programs of seduction and pursuit run largely under the machinery of consciousness, the endgame becomes obvious to everyone. This why thousands of which countries shell our for face-lifts, tummy tucks, implants, liposuction, and Botox. They are working to maintain the keys that unlock the programs in other people’s brains.
Not surprisingly, we have almost no direct access to the mechanics of our attractions. Instead, visual information plugs into ancient neural modules that drive our behavior. Recall the experiment in the first chapter: when men ranked the beauty of women’s faces, they found the women with dilated eyes more attractive, because dilated eyes signal sexual interest. But the men had no conscious access to their decision-making processes.
Attraction is not a fixed concept, but instead adjusts according to the demands of the situation - take, for example, the concept of being in heat. Almost all female mammals give off clear signals when they are in heat. The rear end of female baboons turns bright pink, an unmistakable and irresistible invitation for a lucky male baboon. Human females, on the other hand, are unique in that that participate in mating year-round. They do not broadcast any special signal to publicize when they are fertile.
Or don’t they? It turns out that a woman is considered to be most beautiful just at the peak of fertility in her menstrual cycle - about ten days before menses. This is true whether she’s judged by men or b women, and it’s not a matter of the way she acts: it is perceived even by those looking at her photographs. So her good looks broadcast her level of fertility. Her signals are subtler than the baboon’s rear end, but they only need to be clear enough to tickle the dedicated, u*********s machinery of the males in the room. If they can reach those circuits, the mission is accomplished. They also reach the circuitry of other females: women are quite sensitive to the effect of other women’s cycles, perhaps because this lets them assess their competitors when fighting for mates. It is not yet clear what the tip-offs for fertility are - they may include some quality of the skin (as tone becomes lighter during ovulation) or the fact that a woman’s ears and breasts become more symmetrical in the days leading up to ovulation. Whatever the constellation of clues, our brains are engineered to latch on, even while the conscious mind has no access. The mind merely senses the almighty and inexplicable tug of desire.
The effects of ovulation and beauty are not just assessed in the laboratory - they are measurable in real-life situations. A recent study by scientists in New Mexico counted up the tips made by lap dancers at local strip clubs and correlated this with the menstrual cycles of the dancers. During peak fertility, dancers raked in an average of $68 an hour. When they were menstruating, they earned only about $35. In between, they averaged $52. Although these women were presumably acting in a high capacity of flirtation throughout the month, their change in fertility was broadcast to hopeful customers by changes in body odor, skin, waist-to-hip ratio, and likely their own confidence as well. Interestingly, strippers on birth control did not show any clear peak in performance, and earned only a monthly average of $37 per hour (versus an average of $53 per hour for strippers not on birth control). Presumably they earned less because the pill leads to hormonal changes (and cues) indicative of early pregnancy, and the dancers were thus less interesting to Casanovas in the gentlemen’s clubs.
Beauty judgments are not only constructed by your visual system but are influenced by smell as well. Odor carriers a great deal of information, including information about a potential mater’s age, sex, fertility, identity, emotions, and health. The information is carried by a flotilla of drifting molecules. In many a****l species, these compounds drive behavior almost entirely; in humans, the information often flies beneath the radar of conscious perception, but nonetheless influences our behavior.
Read more in Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain by David Eagleman.
Beauty: So Palpably and Flagrantly Made for All Eternity to Be Loved
Why are people attracted to young mates and not to the elderly? Do blondes really have more fun? Why does a briefly glimpsed person appear more attractive than a person at whom we’ve taken a good look? At this point, you won’t be surprised to find that our sense of beauty is burned deeply (and inaccessibly) into the brain - all with the purpose of accomplishing something biologically useful.
Let’s return to thinking about the most beautiful person you know. Well-proportioned, effortlessly well-liked, magnetic. Our brains are exquisitely honed to pick up on those looks. Simply because of small details of symmetry and structure, that person enjoys a destiny of greater popularity, faster promotions, and a more successful career.
At this point it will not surprise you to discover that our sense of attraction is not something ethereal - properly studied only by the pens of poets - but instead results from specific signals that plug, like a key into a lock, into a dedicated neural software.
What people select as beautiful qualities primarily reflect signs of fertility brought on by hormonal changes. Until puberty the faces of boys and girls are similar. The rise in estrogen in pubescent girls gives them fuller lips, while testosterone in boys produces a more pronounced chin, a larger nose, and a fuller jaw. Estrogen causes the growth of the breasts and buttocks, while testosterone encourages the growth of muscles and broad shoulders. So for a female, full lips, full buttocks, and a narrow waist broadcast a clear message: I’m full of estrogen and fertile. For a male, it’s the full jaw, stubble, and broad chest. This is what we are programmed to find beautiful. Form reflects function.
Our programs are so ingrained that there is little variation across the population. Researchers (as well as purveyors of pornography) have been able to discern a surprisingly narrow range for the female proportions that males find most attractive: the perfect ratio between the waist and hips usually resides between 0.67 ad 0.8. The waist-to-hip ratios of Playboy centerfolds has remained at about 0.7 over time, even as their average weight has decreased. Women with a ratio in this range are not only judged by males as more attractive, but are also presumed to be more healthy, humorous, and intelligent. As women become older, their features change in ways that depart from these proportions. Middles thicken, lips thin, breasts sag, and so on, all of which broadcast the signal that they are past peak fertility.
Males are often more visually driven than females, but women are nonetheless subject to the same internal forces; they are drawn by the attractive features that flag the maturity of manhood. An interesting twist is that woman’s preferences can change depending on the time of month: women prefer masculine-looking men when they are ovulating, but when not ovulating they prefer softer features - which presumably flag more social and caring behavior.
Although the programs of seduction and pursuit run largely under the machinery of consciousness, the endgame becomes obvious to everyone. This why thousands of which countries shell our for face-lifts, tummy tucks, implants, liposuction, and Botox. They are working to maintain the keys that unlock the programs in other people’s brains.
Not surprisingly, we have almost no direct access to the mechanics of our attractions. Instead, visual information plugs into ancient neural modules that drive our behavior. Recall the experiment in the first chapter: when men ranked the beauty of women’s faces, they found the women with dilated eyes more attractive, because dilated eyes signal sexual interest. But the men had no conscious access to their decision-making processes.
Attraction is not a fixed concept, but instead adjusts according to the demands of the situation - take, for example, the concept of being in heat. Almost all female mammals give off clear signals when they are in heat. The rear end of female baboons turns bright pink, an unmistakable and irresistible invitation for a lucky male baboon. Human females, on the other hand, are unique in that that participate in mating year-round. They do not broadcast any special signal to publicize when they are fertile.
Or don’t they? It turns out that a woman is considered to be most beautiful just at the peak of fertility in her menstrual cycle - about ten days before menses. This is true whether she’s judged by men or b women, and it’s not a matter of the way she acts: it is perceived even by those looking at her photographs. So her good looks broadcast her level of fertility. Her signals are subtler than the baboon’s rear end, but they only need to be clear enough to tickle the dedicated, u*********s machinery of the males in the room. If they can reach those circuits, the mission is accomplished. They also reach the circuitry of other females: women are quite sensitive to the effect of other women’s cycles, perhaps because this lets them assess their competitors when fighting for mates. It is not yet clear what the tip-offs for fertility are - they may include some quality of the skin (as tone becomes lighter during ovulation) or the fact that a woman’s ears and breasts become more symmetrical in the days leading up to ovulation. Whatever the constellation of clues, our brains are engineered to latch on, even while the conscious mind has no access. The mind merely senses the almighty and inexplicable tug of desire.
The effects of ovulation and beauty are not just assessed in the laboratory - they are measurable in real-life situations. A recent study by scientists in New Mexico counted up the tips made by lap dancers at local strip clubs and correlated this with the menstrual cycles of the dancers. During peak fertility, dancers raked in an average of $68 an hour. When they were menstruating, they earned only about $35. In between, they averaged $52. Although these women were presumably acting in a high capacity of flirtation throughout the month, their change in fertility was broadcast to hopeful customers by changes in body odor, skin, waist-to-hip ratio, and likely their own confidence as well. Interestingly, strippers on birth control did not show any clear peak in performance, and earned only a monthly average of $37 per hour (versus an average of $53 per hour for strippers not on birth control). Presumably they earned less because the pill leads to hormonal changes (and cues) indicative of early pregnancy, and the dancers were thus less interesting to Casanovas in the gentlemen’s clubs.
Beauty judgments are not only constructed by your visual system but are influenced by smell as well. Odor carriers a great deal of information, including information about a potential mater’s age, sex, fertility, identity, emotions, and health. The information is carried by a flotilla of drifting molecules. In many a****l species, these compounds drive behavior almost entirely; in humans, the information often flies beneath the radar of conscious perception, but nonetheless influences our behavior.
Read more in Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain by David Eagleman.
6年前
