sex-obsessed
Feb. 15th, 2011 09:52 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dragonlady7So I'm trying cross-posting this to Tumblr. I'm still not sure what should go on over there. (Mostly what I'm doing is posting my outfits of the day. Yesterday featured a black dress and red legwarmers. Yes, I'm a style maven, what can I say.)
Yesterday at work a coworker was talking about some study he'd seen about sexual attraction or something. (I apologize in advance: this post would be more interesting with a link and a direct response, but all I have is this somewhat-eccentric coworker's disorganized summary of something he saw on TV or a DVD maybe somewhere sometime. This is what I get for never watching TV.) He described a scenario where a bunch of women were told they'd been selected for an audition, put into a waiting room for a long time, then sent singly to another address just down the street for the "audition". While walking down the street, they each passed an actress pretending to struggle with loading a car with many boxes. Almost none of the women stopped to help the woman with the boxes.
Then they put several attractive young men into the room, to flirt with the women before they were singly sent down the street. They encountered the same scenario; this time, almost all of them stopped to help the woman struggling with the boxes. The conclusion the study reached was that women "primed" by flirting are in a mode to be attractive to men, and one of the ways that women appear attractive to men is by being helpful and caring. Somehow, the study concluded, the women were thinking about how potential sexual partners would see them, and so were nicer to the other woman.
... Or maybe if you put someone into a quiet room with others they're possibly competing against, and by waiting and isolation build them up into a state of deep nervous focus, then send them through an unfamiliar neighborhood to perform a task they don't know they'll succeed at, they're less likely to notice their surroundings or be interested in making a social contact with a random passer-by. While if you instead put them into a room with pleasant company to chat about this and that, before sending them off to do something else, they're a lot more likely to be looking around at other people and noticing the needs of others, and interested in making a new friend, since they just made a new friend and had a nice time doing so.
It's not always about sex. It's not always about gender roles. It's not always about attempting to mate. Sometimes it's just about being a person living a complicated life. Did the study select beforehand that all these women would be straight? How did it define straight? What if the women were involved elsewhere in a monogamous relationship? A correlation with these things might suggest that sex was involved. But I bet it wasn't. I bet it really was just about feeling sociable or not.
Yesterday at work a coworker was talking about some study he'd seen about sexual attraction or something. (I apologize in advance: this post would be more interesting with a link and a direct response, but all I have is this somewhat-eccentric coworker's disorganized summary of something he saw on TV or a DVD maybe somewhere sometime. This is what I get for never watching TV.) He described a scenario where a bunch of women were told they'd been selected for an audition, put into a waiting room for a long time, then sent singly to another address just down the street for the "audition". While walking down the street, they each passed an actress pretending to struggle with loading a car with many boxes. Almost none of the women stopped to help the woman with the boxes.
Then they put several attractive young men into the room, to flirt with the women before they were singly sent down the street. They encountered the same scenario; this time, almost all of them stopped to help the woman struggling with the boxes. The conclusion the study reached was that women "primed" by flirting are in a mode to be attractive to men, and one of the ways that women appear attractive to men is by being helpful and caring. Somehow, the study concluded, the women were thinking about how potential sexual partners would see them, and so were nicer to the other woman.
... Or maybe if you put someone into a quiet room with others they're possibly competing against, and by waiting and isolation build them up into a state of deep nervous focus, then send them through an unfamiliar neighborhood to perform a task they don't know they'll succeed at, they're less likely to notice their surroundings or be interested in making a social contact with a random passer-by. While if you instead put them into a room with pleasant company to chat about this and that, before sending them off to do something else, they're a lot more likely to be looking around at other people and noticing the needs of others, and interested in making a new friend, since they just made a new friend and had a nice time doing so.
It's not always about sex. It's not always about gender roles. It's not always about attempting to mate. Sometimes it's just about being a person living a complicated life. Did the study select beforehand that all these women would be straight? How did it define straight? What if the women were involved elsewhere in a monogamous relationship? A correlation with these things might suggest that sex was involved. But I bet it wasn't. I bet it really was just about feeling sociable or not.
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no subject
Date: 2011-02-16 08:17 pm (UTC)I don't know of any gender role here that suggests we women shouldn't help each other, except in a case where we're rivals (which isn't a gender role, so to speak, but whatever).
I think you're right -- they were nervous and focused. Not only might they not notice people, but they're not going to take the risk of helping anyone. What if they get slip and get dirty? What if it takes too long and then they get lost and get there late? (Maybe I'm the only one who gets lost everywhere, but if I'm going somewhere new, I go early and don't stop for anything til I'm sure I can get there. Then I go away to buy coffee or whatever.)
no subject
Date: 2011-02-17 03:49 am (UTC)