May 25, 2008

Why you attract bad girls

I'm sure lots of guys can empathize, even those low in empathy. It may be because you have a babyface. From an article I'm reading:

Indeed, research has shown that highly assertive men and women, who tend to dominate others, prefer to date babyfaced rather than maturefaced people (Hadden & Brownlow, 1991).

The citation is:

Hadden, S. B., & Brownlow, S. (1991, March). The impact of facial structure and assertiveness on dating choice. Poster presented at the annual meeting of the Southeastern Psychological Association, New Orleans, LA.

Now, I googled to find this paper, but nothing came up other than citations. This means that in 17 years, it has yet to be published, and therefore may not have been a sound piece of research. Or it could mean the authors thought it was neat but not worth writing up, that the peer reviewers thought it was sound but uninteresting, etc. So I emphasize, this may be why you attract bad girls.

Surprisingly, research shows that babyfaced guys are not actually submissive like others believe (search PubMed for Zebrowitz). So the guy's babyface baits the bad girl into attempting to dominate him socially, perhaps to amuse herself and feed her sense of assertiveness, only for her to discover that he's much stronger-willed than she had assumed. (Whether or not he's tougher than a typical normalfaced guy is irrelevant: he seems exceptional to her because it's easier to exceed low expectations than high ones.) Mystery, intrigue, and being exceptional are of course powerfully attractive to females.

This may also explain why you've attracted all the Persian girls who've ever seen you, and so few Nordic girls.


4 comments:

  1. Jesus H. Freaking Christ, this explains so much about me and my father it hurts. Oh well, at least I've learned from his mistakes. I'm as disagreeable as he is agreeable.

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  2. Indeed, this may explain certain things.

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  3. wait a sec... is brad pitt considered to have a baby face? i always thought he had a clooney-esque masculinely chiseled face, from a straight man's perspective, of course. no 'mo fo sho.

    anyhow, this theory is intriguing. i want to know more about it.

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  4. Babyface means having large eyes, high eyebrows, a smaller-than-average chin and nose, short and roundish face, and a more rounded than sloping forehead.

    Brad Pitt may not be the best example, but if you google image search him, you can see that he fits the profile pretty well.

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