Hot or not? Men agree on attractiveness, women don’t

Hot or not? Men agree on the answer. Women don’t.

There is much more consensus among men about whom they find attractive than there is among women, according to a new study by Wake Forest University psychologist Dustin Wood and Claudia Brumbaugh of Queens College.

“Men agree a lot more about who they find attractive and unattractive than women agree about who they find attractive and unattractive,” says Wood, assistant professor of psychology. “This study shows we can quantify the extent to which men agree about which women are attractive and vice versa.”

More than 4,000 participants in the study rated photographs of men and women (ages 18-25) for attractiveness on a 10-point scale ranging from “not at all” to “very.” In exchange for their participation, raters were told what characteristics they found attractive compared with the average person. The raters ranged in age from 18 to more than 70.

Before the participants judged the photographs for attractiveness, the members of the research team rated the images for how seductive, confident, thin, sensitive, stylish, curvaceous (women), muscular (men), traditional, masculine/feminine, classy, well-groomed, or upbeat the people looked.

Breaking out these factors helped the researchers figure out what common characteristics appealed most to women and men.

Men’s judgments of women’s attractiveness were based primarily around physical features and they rated highly those who looked thin and seductive. Most of the men in the study also rated photographs of women who looked confident as more attractive.

As a group, the women rating men showed some preference for thin, muscular subjects, but disagreed on how attractive many men in the study were. Some women gave high attractiveness ratings to the men other women said were not attractive at all.

“As far as we know, this is the first study to investigate whether there are differences in the level of consensus male and female raters have in their attractiveness judgments,” Wood says. “These differences have implications for the different experiences and strategies that could be expected for men and women in the dating marketplace.”

For example, women may encounter less competition from other women for the men they find attractive, he says. Men may need to invest more time and energy in attracting and then guarding their mates from other potential suitors, given that the mates they judge attractive are likely to be found attractive by many other men.

Wood says the study results have implications for eating disorders and how expectations regarding attractiveness affect behavior.

“The study helps explain why women experience stronger norms than men to obtain or maintain certain physical characteristics,” he says. “Women who are trying to impress men are likely to be found much more attractive if they meet certain physical standards, and much less if they don’t. Although men are rated as more attractive by women when they meet these physical appearance standards too, their overall judged attractiveness isn’t as tightly linked to their physical features.”

The age of the participants also played a role in attractiveness ratings. Older participants were more likely to find people attractive if they were smiling.

BPA found to leach from polycarbonate bottles into humans

Attention parents, athletes, and everyone using plastic bottles. Let the debate about the dangers of bisphenol A (BPA) and whether or not it leaches finally come to an end.

A new study from Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) researchers found that participants who drank for a week from polycarbonate bottles - the popular, hard-plastic used in drinking bottles and baby bottles - showed a two-thirds increase in their urine of the chemical BPA. Exposure to BPA, used in the manufacture of polycarbonate and other plastics, has been shown to interfere with reproductive development in animals and has been linked with cardiovascular disease and diabetes in humans. The study is the first to show that drinking from polycarbonate bottles increased the level of urinary BPA, and thus suggests that drinking containers made with BPA release the chemical into the liquid that people drink in sufficient amounts to increase the level of BPA excreted in human urine.

The study appears on the website of the journal Environmental Health Perspectives and is freely available at http://www.ehponline.org/members/2009/0900604/0900604.pdf.

In addition to polycarbonate bottles, which are refillable and a popular container among students, campers and others and are also used as baby bottles, BPA is also found in dentistry composites and sealants and in the lining of aluminum food and beverage cans. In bottles, polycarbonate can be identified by the recycling number 7. Numerous studies have shown that it acts as an endocrine-disruptor in animals, including early onset of sexual maturation, altered development and tissue organization of the mammary gland and decreased sperm production in offspring. It may be most harmful in the stages of early development.

“We found that drinking cold liquids from polycarbonate bottles for just one week increased urinary BPA levels by more than two-thirds. If you heat those bottles, as is the case with baby bottles, we would expect the levels to be considerably higher. This would be of concern since infants may be particularly susceptible to BPA’s endocrine-disrupting potential,” said Karin B. Michels, associate professor of epidemiology at HSPH and Harvard Medical School and senior author of the study.

The researchers, led by first author Jenny Carwile, a doctoral student in the department of epidemiology at HSPH, and Michels, recruited Harvard College students for the study in April 2008. The 77 participants began the study with a seven-day “washout” phase in which they drank all cold beverages from stainless steel bottles in order to minimize BPA exposure. Participants provided urine samples during the washout period. They were then given two polycarbonate bottles and asked to drink all cold beverages from the bottles during the next week; urine samples were also provided during that time.

The results showed that the participants’ urinary BPA concentrations increased 69% after drinking from the polycarbonate bottles. (The study authors noted that BPA concentrations in the college population were similar to those reported for the U.S. general population.) Previous studies had found that BPA could leach from polycarbonate bottles into their contents; this study is the first to show a corresponding increase in urinary BPA concentrations in humans.

One of the study’s strengths, the authors note, is that the students drank from the bottles in a normal use setting. Additionally, the students did not wash their bottles in dishwashers nor put hot liquids in them; heating has been shown to increase the leaching of BPA from polycarbonate, so BPA levels might have been higher had students drunk hot liquids from the bottles.

Canada banned the use of BPA in polycarbonate baby bottles in 2008 and some polycarbonate bottle manufacturers have voluntarily eliminated BPA from their products. With increasing evidence of the potential harmful effects of BPA in humans, the authors believe further research is needed on the effect of BPA on infants and on reproductive disorders and on breast cancer in adults.

“This study is coming at an important time because many states are deciding whether to ban the use of BPA in baby bottles and sippy cups. While previous studies have demonstrated that BPA is linked to adverse health effects, this study fills in a missing piece of the puzzle—whether or not polycarbonate plastic bottles are an important contributor to the amount of BPA in the body,” said Carwile.

Why you may lose that loving feeling after tying the knot

Will the partner who supports your hopes and aspirations while you are dating also help you fulfill important responsibilities and obligations that come with marriage? The answer to that question could make a difference in how satisfied you are after tying the knot.

Dating couples whose dreams include marriage would do well to step back and reflect upon the type of support they’ll need from their partners when they cross the threshold, a new Northwestern University study suggests.

Believing a partner is there to help you grow into the person you aspire to be predicted higher relationship satisfaction for both dating and married couples. But the belief that your partner helps you live up to your responsibilities and uphold your commitments only predicted higher relationship satisfaction after marriage.

For dating couples, the relationship itself tends to revolve around whether things are moving forward. Happiness with a partner depends on whether the relationship will grow into something more, whether a partner will support the dreams the other eventually hopes to achieve.

For married couples, the feeling that their partners are helping them to advance their relationships and realize their ideal achievements is still important. But the relationships of married couples, now more interconnected both practically and psychologically, tend to revolve around upholding the commitment made to their partners. Unlike dating couples, married couples also put a high premium on their partners’ support of whatever they determine to be necessary obligations.

“In other words, the feelings of being loved and supported that people use to judge who makes a good girlfriend or boyfriend may not be completely trustworthy in deciding who makes a good husband or wife,” said Daniel Molden, assistant professor of psychology at Northwestern. “Those feelings may only partially capture the emotions that will determine your satisfaction with the person you marry.”

The findings, Molden said, could be important in explaining why so many marriages fall apart.

The studyincluded 92 heterosexual dating couples and 77 married couples. They completed a battery of questionnaires that included an assessment of how much they thought their partner understood and supported both the hopes and responsibilities they had set for themselves. To measure how different types of perceived support were related to happiness with the relationship, couples also completed well-validated measures of satisfaction, intimacy and trust.

Previous research overwhelmingly demonstrates an important connection between feelings about partner support and satisfaction with a relationship but does not reveal any differences for dating versus married couples.

By identifying different ways in which people feel supported by their partners, the new Northwestern study goes beyond past work to show that support for maintaining perceived responsibilities seems to be important for satisfaction only after marriage.

The study also showed that different types of perceived support predicted differences in people’s overall satisfaction with their lives.

“People planning to get married should think about not only how their partners support what they hope to achieve but also about how their partners support what they feel obligated to accomplish,” Molden said. “We could end up with both happier marriages and more satisfied people in general.”

How to reduce your energy costs and carbon footprint

In honor of Earth Day, I thought it would be great to share some different ways each and every one of us can help nurture our planet and promote a sustainable future for the next generation.

I have the privilege of working with many top engineers at Chemical Engineering Progress Magazine published by the American Institute of Chemical Engineers. In a recent issue on sustainability, Robert Sylvester, a consultant at DuPont Engineering Research and Technology, wrote a perspective on how he was able to reduce his energy costs by $2000 in one year and his carbon footprint by one-third.

While the article was written for chemical engineers, many of the simple changes can be applied by anyone. What is also nice is that the article goes beyond unplugging your electronics and turning off your lights, and explains the simple changes that make the largest difference - a great application of the 80/20 rule!

Because the article is copyrighted by CEP Magazine and posted here with permission, it can be found in its original form in the link below. Normally only AIChE members are able to access articles, so I thank CEP for allowing all of us to benefit from this information as well.

So celebrate our beautiful planet today and every day by doing what you can to promote a healthy and sustainable future for everyone.

Click here to read “A Personal Perspective on Sustainability Through Energy Efficiency”

Learn how to recession-proof your retirement and investments

If you watch the news, every day you’ll see reports about how the market has dropped, how many people have lost their jobs, and how we are entering another Depression. But few news sources are telling you about the opportunities - opportunities like in no other time in history.

Contrary to popular belief, we have what some are calling “the greatest financial opportunity in history.” You can choose to participate in this recession - or - you can choose to participate in your progression.

There are things you can do, strategies you can apply, ways you can position your portfolio, to not only keep your money, but to also create wealth.

Strategies for Conscious Living is all about sharing resources that you can use to consciously create your desired results. Two events are coming up in May to teach you strategies that you can apply immediately to not only recession-proof your investments, but to also take advantage of one of the many opportunities that may not occur in your lifetime again.

Dynamic Market Analysis System (DMAS)

The first resource we came across speaks for itself. Watch the video below:

I’ve been lucky enough to know Steve Linder since 2003. He is a man who walks his talk and applied his knowledge of developing trading systems to create the DMAS trading system. It wasn’t until only a few years ago that he began teaching this strategy to help others minimize their risk in trading stocks and to be in control of their financial lives. Just watch the testimonials from previous students on the DMAS site to find out the types of results they’ve created in such a short time. They prove - it’s never too late.

Only taught twice per year, the DMAS course is finally coming to the east coast May 2-3 in Orlando, FL. There is no better time than now to learn these trading strategies. If you wait until next year, or when the time is right for you, it will probably not present the same opportunities as when the time is right for the market.

Click the DMAS button below for details on the course and to register now. Spaces are limited and going fast.

Wealth Builders Summit - New York City

If you also want to immerse yourself in the best financial tools and strategies from some of the world’s most knowledgeable financial experts, then the second resource we found is for you.

In just two days in New York on May 16 & 17, you can learn about how to navigate through this “New Economy” using:

• 401k and options trading strategies from Aussie Rob Wilson
• Persuasion and influence strategies from Joel Bauer
• Creating opportunity strategies from Loral Langemeier
• Joint venture and marketing strategies from Ken McArthur
• Psychology strategies from Marshall Thurber
• Real estate investing strategies from David Lindahl
• Investment and retirement strategies from Ephren Taylor

And the best part? It’s only $97 to attend the whole weekend if you register by April 16! Normally these types of seminars cost in the thousands.

On April 17 the ticket price increases to $197.

Now what if even the $97 is a stretch for you right now? The summit has an amazing affiliate program that allows you to earn 50% commission on each ticket sold. So if you have 2 friends sign up, you get to attend the whole event for free. In addition, you can start earning another unlimited revenue stream by selling as many tickets as you want.

For further details, you can also sign up for the FREE “Wealth Builders Success Secrets” teleseminar series that starts on April 2nd. To sign up click here.

Opportunity is Knocking - What Will You Not Have if You Don’t Answer?

Take advantage of these incredible opportunities that are present NOW. There is no reason anyone should be participating in this recession. No matter what your income level or savings are, you have the resourcefulness to create the quality of life you need and desire. Start participating in your progression now.

UPDATE!

Important update - As if it couldn’t get any better, the Wealth Builders Summit in NYC is now offering a limited supply of complimentary tickets. You can lock in a free ticket now by using the code “DESTINY” to register yourself and your loved ones.

They are first come, first serve, so if you are serious about changing your own financial destiny this year and beyond, stake your claim now and get on and register. If you want change, then there is truly no excuse not to. See you at the summit!

Contrary to belief, romance can last in long-term relationships

Romance does not have to fizzle out in long-term relationships and progress into a companionship/friendship-type love, a new study has found. Romantic love can last a lifetime and lead to happier, healthier relationships.

“Many believe that romantic love is the same as passionate/obsessive love,” said lead researcher Bianca P. Acevedo, PhD, then at Stony Brook University (currently at University of California, Santa Barbara). “It isn’t. Romantic love has the intensity, engagement and sexual chemistry that passionate love has, minus the obsessive component. Passionate or obsessive love includes feelings of uncertainty and anxiety. This kind of love helps drive the shorter relationships but not the longer ones.”

Acevedo and co-researcher Arthur Aron, PhD, reviewed 25 studies with 6,070 individuals in short- and long-term relationships to find out whether romantic love is associated with more satisfaction. To determine this, they classified the relationships in each of the studies as romantic, passionate (romantic with obsession) or friendship-like love and categorized them as long- or short-term.

The researchers looked at 17 short-term relationship studies, which included 18- to 23-year-old college students who were single, dating or married, with the average relationship lasting less than four years. They also looked at 10 long-term relationship studies comprising middle-aged couples who were typically married 10 years or more. Two of the studies included both long- and short-term relationships in which it was possible to distinguish the two samples.

The review found that those who reported greater romantic love were more satisfied in both the short- and long-term relationships. Companion-like love was only moderately associated with satisfaction in both short- and long-term relationships. And those who reported greater passionate love in their relationships were more satisfied in the short term compared to the long term.

Couples who reported more satisfaction in their relationships also reported being happier and having higher self-esteem.

Feeling that a partner is “there for you” makes for a good relationship, Acevedo said, and facilitates feelings of romantic love. On the other hand, “feelings of insecurity are generally associated with lower satisfaction, and in some cases may spark conflict in the relationship. This can manifest into obsessive love,” she said.

This discovery may change people’s expectations of what they want in long-term relationships. According to the authors, companionship love, which is what many couples see as the natural progression of a successful relationship, may be an unnecessary compromise. “Couples should strive for love with all the trimmings,” Acevedo said. “And couples who’ve been together a long time and wish to get back their romantic edge should know it is an attainable goal that, like most good things in life, requires energy and devotion.”

Financial security, more than money alone, may be key to happiness

A study of the mental state of the modern American woman by a Princeton University psychologist has found a powerful link between concerns over financial security and satisfaction with one’s life.

In looking toward the future, women who concentrated much of their thinking on financial matters were much less likely to be happy with their lives, according to Talya Miron-Shatz, a postdoctoral research fellow in the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton. And, contrary to expectations, many of those with such worries had plenty of money by conventional standards, she said, suggesting that there is more at play in obtaining peace of mind than simply having cash.

“Even if you are making a hundred grand a year, if you are constantly worried that you are going to get fired, that you are going to lose your health insurance or that you are simply not sure you are going to ‘make it,’ you are not going to be happy,” Miron-Shatz said. Such concerns, she found, affected a wide variety of women at all income levels.

Conversely, those who didn’t fixate on finances like retirement savings, tuition for college or simply making ends meet, reported being the happiest of the group.

The study was published Feb. 25 in Judgment and Decision Making, a scholarly journal. Miron-Shatz is hoping the results might guide policy decisions, especially those being devised by President Barack Obama and the U.S. Congress in the wake of today’s financial crisis. Her work would favor a focus on strategies that create social and financial “safety nets” over measures that would directly increase income.

To understand how income and concerns over financial security may relate to a person’s satisfaction with life, Miron-Shatz conducted two separate studies of a representative sample of nearly 1,000 American women of various ages and incomes. In one study, she showed that considerations of financial security were as important to the study subjects as their monetary assets.

She asked subjects in the second study to think about the future in an open-ended manner. Those who did so and mentioned financial concerns - retirement, college tuition, making ends meet, etc. - were less satisfied with their lives, she found, than those who did not raise such concerns. One of her participants said that when thinking of her future she wondered, “Will I be happy and financially stable?” The stability, Miron-Shatz says, is crucial. “It’s not about greed,” she added. “It’s about knowing whatever it is you have, be it your McMansion or your motor home, won’t be taken away from you.”

Discussions about wealth need to be expanded to include this notion of financial security, she said, and though valid and meaningful, this factor is “glaringly missing from economic discussions,” she said.

Psychologists have long sought to understand the connection between money and happiness.

Though the popular conception has been that “money can’t buy happiness,” studies have shown that wealth can play a role in enhancing happiness. Yet, wealth itself has been poorly defined in studies. And, contributing to this complicated relationship is what Princeton Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman has called the “satisfaction treadmill.” In pioneering studies of human happiness, Kahneman, the Eugene Higgins Professor Emeritus of Psychology, has found that satisfaction does not necessarily increase in a corresponding amount with an improved financial status.

Zen meditation alleviates pain

Zen meditation – a centuries-old practice that can provide mental, physical and emotional balance – may reduce pain according to Université de Montréal researchers. A new study reports that Zen meditators have lower pain sensitivity both in and out of a meditative state compared to non-meditators.

Joshua A. Grant, a doctoral student in the Department of Physiology, co-authored the paper with Pierre Rainville, a professor and researcher at the Université de Montréal and it’s affiliated Institut universitaire de gériatrie de Montréal. The main goal of their study was to examine whether trained meditators perceived pain differently than non-meditators.

“While previous studies have shown that teaching chronic pain patients to meditate is beneficial, very few studies have looked at pain processing in healthy, highly trained meditators. This study was a first step in determining how or why meditation might influence pain perception.” says Grant.

Meditate away the pain

For this study, the scientists recruited 13 Zen meditators with a minimum of 1,000 hours of practice to undergo a pain test and contrasted their reaction with 13 non-meditators. Subjects included 10 women and 16 men between the ages of 22 to 56.

The administered pain test was simple: A thermal heat source, a computer controlled heating plate, was pressed against the calves of subjects intermittently at varying temperatures. Heat levels began at 43 degrees Celsius and went to a maximum of 53 degrees Celsius depending on each participant’s sensitivity. While quite a few of the meditators tolerated the maximum temperature, all control subjects were well below 53 degrees Celsius.

Grant and Rainville noticed a marked difference in how their two test groups reacted to pain testing – Zen meditators had much lower pain sensitivity (even without meditating) compared to non-meditators. During the meditation-like conditions it appeared meditators further reduced their pain partly through slower breathing: 12 breaths per minute versus an average of 15 breaths for non-meditators.

“Slower breathing certainly coincided with reduced pain and may influence pain by keeping the body in a relaxed state.” says Grant. “While previous studies have found that the emotional aspects of pain are influenced by meditation, we found that the sensation itself, as well as the emotional response, is different in meditators.”

The ultimate result? Zen meditators experienced an 18 percent reduction in pain intensity. “If meditation can change the way someone feels pain, thereby reducing the amount of pain medication required for an ailment, that would be clearly beneficial,” says Grant.

Why you can’t hurry love

Scientists have developed a mathematical model of the mating game to help explain why courtship is often protracted. The study, by researchers at UCL (University College London), University of Warwick and LSE (London School of Economics and Political Science), shows that extended courtship enables a male to signal his suitability to a female and enables the female to screen out the male if he is unsuitable as a mate.

The research uses game theory to analyse how males and females behave strategically towards each other in the mating game. The mathematical model considers a male and a female in a courtship encounter of unspecified duration, with the game ending when one or other party quits or the female accepts the male as a mate. The model assumes that the male is either a ‘‘good’’ or a ‘‘bad’’ type from the female’s point of view, according to his condition or willingness to care for the young after mating. The female gets a positive payoff from mating if the male is a ‘‘good’’ male but a negative payoff if he is ‘‘bad’’, so it is in her interest to gain information about the male’s type with the aim of avoiding mating with a “bad” male. In contrast, a male gets a positive payoff from mating with any female, though his payoff is higher if he is “good” than if he is “bad”.

The study looks for evolutionarily stable equilibrium behaviours, in which females are doing as well as they can against male behaviour and males are doing as well as they can against female behaviour. It shows that extended courtship can take place, with a good male being willing to court for longer than a bad male and the female delaying mating. In this way the duration of a male’s courtship effort carries information about his type. By delaying mating, the female is able to make some use of this information to achieve a degree of screening. Because bad males have a greater tendency to quit the courtship game early, as time goes on and the male has not quit it becomes increasingly probable that he is a “good” male.

Professor Robert Seymour, UCL Mathematics, says: “Courtship in a number of animal species occurs over an extended period of time. Human courtship, for example, can involve a sequence of dinners, theatre trips and other outings lasting months or even years. One partner - often the male - may pay the greater part of the financial cost, but to both sexes there is a significant cost of time which could be spent on other productive activities. Why don’t people and other animals speed things up to reduce these costs? The answer seems to be that longer courtship is a way for the female to acquire information about the male.

“By delaying mating, the female is able to reduce the chance that she will mate with a bad male. A male’s willingness to court for a long time is a signal that he is likely to be a good male. Long courtship is a price paid for increasing the chance that mating, if it occurs, will be a harmonious match which benefits both sexes. This may help to explain the commonly held belief that a woman is best advised not to sleep with a man on a first date.”

Dr Peter Sozou, Warwick Medical School and LSE Centre for Philosophy of Natural and Social Science, says: “From a female’s point of view, males are not all equal. A female would like to mate with a good male, but cannot tell a male’s type from his appearance alone. The strategic problem the female faces is how to screen out bad males, and this is where long courtship comes into play. A male is assumed to always want to mate with a female, but a good male is more willing to pay the cost of a long courtship in order to claim the prize of mating. This leads to an outcome in which the female is not willing to mate immediately, but instead requires the male to wait for an indeterminate time before she agrees to mate with him. During this time, the male may give up on courting the female.

“Bad males give up at some random time if the female has not by then mated with them, but good males are more persistent and do not give up. The female’s strategy is a compromise - a trade-off between on the one hand the greater risk of mating with a bad male if she mates too quickly, and on the other hand the time cost of delay. Under this compromise there remains some risk that she will mate with the wrong type of male. She cannot eliminate this risk completely unless she decides never to mate.”

Physically fit kids do better in school

A new study in the Journal of School Health found that physically fit kids scored better on standardized math and English tests than their less fit peers.

Researchers examined the relationship between physical fitness and academic achievement in a racially and economically diverse urban public school district of children enrolled in grades 4 – 8 during the 2004 – 2005 academic year.

Results of their study show that there is a significant relationship between students’ academic achievement and physical fitness. The odds of passing both standardized math and english tests increased as the number of fitness tests passed increased, even when controlling for gender, race/ethnicity, and socio-economic status.

School time and resources are often diverted from Physical Education and opportunities for physical activity such as recess. However, this study shows that students who do well on fitness tests also do well on math and English standardized tests.

“For families and schools, these results suggest investments of time and resources in physical activity and fitness training may not detract from academic achievement in core subjects, and, may even be beneficial,” the authors conclude.

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