Do Women Prefer Men Who Are “Taken”?
Most single women prefer men who are already in a committed relationship, a new study published in the current issue of the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology shows. Great: another study that makes sweeping, negative statements about women.
The details 184 undergraduate college students (97 of whom were young women) answered questions about their likes and dislikes in a partner, then were paired with a "match" of the opposite sex (little did they know, every participant was paired with either the same woman or the same man). Half the people surveyed were told their match was single; the other half was told s/he was in a relationship.
The results 59 percent of the single women surveyed said they’d pursue the man when he was described as single—and 90 percent said they’d pursue him when he was described as taken. The male participants didn’t seem affected by relationship status.
Feeling a little peeved by what these findings imply—um, that women are man-stealers—we called one of the researchers behind the study, Melissa Burkley, Ph.D., of Oklahoma State University (worth noting: a 25-year-old grad student, Jessica Parker, M.S., was her partner). What Dr. Burkley concluded:
“I think there are a couple of plausible explanations [for the findings]. One would be that women have evolved to seek out partners that have resources. A man who is already in a relationship obviously has demonstrated that he has resources; he’s shown that he’s desirable to somebody else. In some ways, he’s been pre-screened.” The other explanation, which she says she's going to explore further: “Women, at least in our culture, are often socialized to compete with each other in terms of wanting to be the most attractive, the most desirable, the most sexy. And so maybe in some ways women gain their self-esteem from this feeling of being the most attractive.”
So, does she think her findings make huge generalizations and can therefore be dangerous to women (because, frankly, we do)? “That’s an argument that can be made about most research,” she says. “You’re taking a small sample and trying to generalize to an entire population.”
Damsel ©August 2009
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