"Women find smiling men less attractive than brooding men" Vancouver Sun column

[janus]

"Women find smiling men less attractive than brooding men" Vancouver Sun column

I came across this article in Tuesday's paper.
Results of a new study suggest that women are less sexually attracted to men who smile, further cementing the axiom that nice guys finish last.
The study found that women were least attracted to smiling, happy men, preferring those who looked proud and powerful or moody and ashamed. On the other hand, men were most sexually attracted to women who looked happy, and least attracted to women who appeared proud and confident.
The study, published Tuesday in the journal Emotion, is the first to show that women are sexually attracted to a brooding hulk, while men are sexually attracted to a smiling beauty.
"We know that women like the bad boy. The James Dean, Edward the vampire — all these guys who are very broody, we know that women find them attractive," said Jessica Tracy, the study's lead researcher.
Tracy said there was no clear explanation why the bad boy is more attractive, only that he stokes a woman's carnal instincts more than the nice guy with the smile.

Anyone care to comment on this?

 

[muftungr]

Interesting and good to know. I'll never smile at the fairer sex again...

 

[Devils_Advocate]

I believe it. I could make some sexist generalization here about how the only time women want to see a man smile is when they are the reason, but I won't.

 

[luvsdaty]

Just what i always thought 'women can't stand to see a man happy,& the only way to change that is to marry him!' Al Bundy is my hero

 

[laurel love]

Never trust a study published in a newspaper, seriously.

Facts and stats are manipulated to generate readership: they will tell you what they think you want to hear, but, shy away from hard facts.

I am with you Mikey: bullshit

I like men who smile! All those teeth! mmmmmm.....maybe a nibble here or there?

 

[deathreborn]

hell i hardly ever smile and i don't have women flocking to me. and i'm brooding and decent looking. get told i should smile more so i think the study is retarded.

 

[J.O. Henson]

i'd wonder from this study who the test subjects married. Yes the ladies were attracted to the brooding males but I would be willing to bet that they didn't marry the same person. they probably married the smiling guy.

 

[aznboi9]

To be fair, the researchers were looking at first impressions only and not anything regarding the women's thoughts on whether the men were nice or made good mates; it was only sexual attraction and was not meant to comment on intellectual or emotional attraction. You have to be careful of the conclusions that are implied, or hyped up, by a newspaper headline or summary vs the actual conclusions of the study itself. Generally, researchers are pretty careful about not making conclusions that are inappropriate to their data or study.

Also, I'm speculating, but I wouldn't surprised if they followed the exact same, or extremely similar, methodology of the previous study that found men to be more attracted to smiling women. If that's true, then that does make an interesting statement about the nature of physical attraction and how it relates to gender.

Finally, how many of us have said that we prefer xyz when the reality is far different? There's a reason why the stereotype of the girls going for the bad boy exists.