hypergamy

The Hypergamy Conspiracy

Rollo Tomassi:

“Hypergamy is a selected-for survival mechanism.”

Aunt Sue:

“Hypergamy states that a woman seeks a man of higher status than herself for marriage. Nothing less, nothing more.”

Escoffier:

“I don’t think that’s right.

The theory is more like this, from what I have read. Hypergamy is a woman’s natural (which is to say, genetically wired) preference for a higher status male–that is, higher status than herself and also higher status than the other men in her field of vision and also perhaps higher status than men she has known in the past and even (at the extremes) higher status than most men she can personally imagine meeting. That cuts across a range of possible relationships, all the way from a ONS to marriage. In all cases, women naturally prefer the highest status man they can get. And sometimes they want so much status that they won’t settle on ANY man they could actually get.

“Status” has a varied meaning in this definition. Certain things correllate with high status, for intance money, prestige, social standing, etc. However a man can have all of that and still be low status because of low status intrapersonal behavior (i.e., needy schlumpitude). The highest possible status male would be rich, good looking, fit, well dressed, high social cache, high prestige job (preferably one which involves risk, physical risk being better than mere monetary risk), and also extroverted, dominant, the leader of his group of friends, able to command any social situation, and so on. However, women are wired to be turned on more by the latter BEHAVORIAL traits than by be the former SUBSTANTIVE traits. So, if you have have to choose one or the other, to get women, be socially dominant and a broke societal loser rather than socially awkward and a rich societal winner. But best to be both, if possible.

As to marriage, sure women want to marry up. But this does not exhaust the effects of hypergamy. Women can marry up–both intrinsically and in their own mind–and still ditch their catch because someone “better” comes along. That is hypergamy at work.

Also, when women are pursuing short and medium term mating, hypergamy has no less force. They always prefer the most socially dominant male they can get. This is often relative (A&B are both a little dweeby but A is more alpha than B and since I want someone NOW I choose A) but sometimes it is more intrinsic (A&B are both a little dweeby and even though A is a little more alpha, since I don’t have to have someone NOW, I am going to hold out for the Real Deal).

It’s not all about marriage. It’s about mate selection accross the range of circumstances.

That, at any rate, is how I believe the manosphere understands “hypergamy.”

Aunt Sue:

“Yes, because they made it up. Researchers do not recognize that definition. It’s pure Game.”

The main reason I only sporadically participate in the comment threads at Aunt Sue’s echo chamber Blog is because conversational gems like this have a marked tendency to get buried under, sometimes, thousands of other comments. I think it’s a shame really. I wanted to draw particular attention to the difference in interpretation of terms with regards to the dynamic of Hypergamy here.

Escoffier makes an astute analysis of Hypergamy in a much broader perspective than Susan’s definition-approved “researchers” are willing to recognize. On the fem-centric side we have Sue casually dismiss “Hypergamy” (twice) in this context as some fabrication of the Game-set and therefor not a legitimate analysis. A rose is a rose, and as I’ve stated in prior threads, Hypergamy is a term that should have a much broader definition when considered in context with the feminine imperative and the eminently observable feminine behaviors that manifest as a result of Hypergamy’s influence.

That the term Hypergamy should be so wantonly limited in its definition, and in such a way that it serves to deliberately confuse a better understanding of it as an evolutionary impulse on the feminine psyche, speaks volumes about the importance of maintaining its misunderstanding to the feminine imperative.

It’s almost ironic that the collective feminine ego should even need to deign to recognize Hypergamy in the terms that it is cast as in Susan’s default response. “Hypergamy states that a woman seeks a man of higher status than herself for marriage. Nothing less, nothing more.” forces the feminine to at least begrudgingly accept that women are in fact basing their long-term commitment prospects on status (as defined by researchers), and not some ephemeral soul-mate, emotional precept. God forbid men (PhDs or otherwise) should have the temerity to extrapolate any further social, psychological or evolutionary implications that could’ve influenced that Hypergamy dynamic into existence.

While I wont argue the credentials of the researchers Sue will undoubtedly quote – I often acknowledge all of the same in other posts and comments – I will however make the point that her interpretation (as is everyone’s) is subject to bias. And in this case, that bias serves the feminine imperative in keeping the definition of Hypergamy in as closed a way as possible to benefit the feminine. In the evolving understanding of the motivators that influence intergender relations there are going to be terms that describe concepts.

AFC’s, Alpha, Beta, Hypergamy, etc. are all defined by the concepts they represent.

‘Hypergamy’ serves well in a much broader capacity, but should the feminine imperative find that broader definition threatening to its purpose it will casually dismiss it as illegitimate. The real question then is, why would that concept be threatening to the feminine? You can delegitimize the term, but the concept is still the operative issue. Why is the concept of that larger scope of the term so offensive to a fem-centric society?

The Conspiracy that Wasn’t

One issue many of my critics have is that in exposing these inconsistencies, these operative social conventions and the latent purposes behind them, my writing (really most of the manosphere) seems to take on a conspiratorial tone. I can fully appreciate this, and it might shock a few readers to know that I  reject much of the popularized MRA perspective in this respect. I agree with an MRA perspective in a rational analysis to a certain degree, but there is no grand conspiracy, no secret mysterious cabal pushing a negative perception of masculinity – and this is exactly why what I outline on this blog is so pervasive. There doesn’t need to be a unitary group of ‘anti-men’ bent on some melodramatic goal of world domination; because this feminized ideal is already embedded in our socialization. Fem-centrism IS our collective social consciousness.

It doesn’t need a centralized directorship because the mindset is already so installed and perpetuated by society at large it’s now normalized, taken for granted and self-perpetuating. AFCs raising AFCs leads to still more AFCs. This generation doesn’t realize their own bias because it’s been standardized, encouraged and reinforced in them, and society, over the course of several generations now.

What’s to question, especially when calling attention to the feminization dynamic leads to ridicule and ostricization?

So to answer the conspiracy question; no, there is no illuminati shadow conspiracy and that’s exactly what makes feminization the normalized and overlooked default.

The Disposables

Martyrdom is the ultimate expression of social proof.

After I finished my Chivalry vs. Altruism post, I had to kind of pause for a moment to consider the impact of ‘women & children first’ as an operative social convention. Even before the overt rise of the feminine imperative, this female protectionism was in effect, and I’m fairly certain that this was a result of our primal hind-brain wiring to protect our families. Most higher order animals have evolved this instinct so I don’t see that as much of a stretch. However, human’s being a much more complex species, I think that the social convention of WaCF goes a bit deeper than a simplistic protectionism. In fact, I’d argue that ‘familial protectionism’ is more of a convenient foil for women (and sympathetic men) who’d rather see men’s mortal sacrifice in honorific terms than the much uglier truth.

Tits for Tat

In its rawest form, the sexual marketplace of our early ancestors would’ve been one where feminine hypergamy and Alpha dominance would’ve been more or less in balance. Obviously men being the stronger sex would’ve forcibly put women into a weaker position in the earliest incarnations of the SMP, but also consider that men fought and killed each other for access to those breeding rights – short version; men were disposable. As our species began to socialize, collectivize and cooperate, our earliest social conventions would’ve revolved around the environmental prompts and biological stimuli that were essential to the survival of their more feral ancestors.

The earliest form of proto-Game would’ve been a sexual quid pro quo. Can’t figure out how to seduce that hot, hunter-gatherer woman in the tribe? Save her ass from being torn limb from limb by a sabre tooth tiger and she’ll reciprocate her gratitude with open legs. In other words, risk your life and women will reward you with sex in gratitude. Today that may not be a reality in practice, but it’s the A+B=C  logic that’s led to the psychological internalization and the social doctrines that follow it. It’s such a primal, male-deductive-logic principle that’s worked so successfully, for so long, that social contingencies were evolved to both mitigate it and exploit it. Don’t believe me? Promise a young middle eastern girl 70 virgins in heaven and see if she’ll strap explosives to herself. The downside to this is that men often do “die trying.”

All of this kind of brought me around to thinking about the psychological ‘software’ that’s been evolved into our species as a result of environmental adaptations of the past. In War Brides I went into detail about the Stockholm Syndrome women seem to have an inborn propensity for, which logically makes them predisposed to abandoning emotional investments more readily than men. Considering the brutality of our feral past, evolving a capacity for quick emotional abandonment and reinvestment would’ve been a valuable survival trait for women (thus insuring a perpetuation of the species), however, in the present it serves to complicate newly developed social dynamics in terms of parental and ethical considerations.

Likewise, men have evolved into the disposable sex as a result of that same feral past. In today’s environment it’s very easy for men to draw upon ethical indignation about our disposable status, but it’s not primarily due to social influences. To be sure, social influence has definitely exploited men’s disposability, but the root of that devaluation (in contrast to women’s) really lies in our evolutionary past and our biological make up. Men have always been disposable – so much so that women evolved psychological contingencies (War Brides) to cope with that disposability.

As socialization and acculturation progressed, so too did the social rationales for men’s disposability. It became honorable to sacrifice oneself, ostensibly for a greater cause, but subversively as a means to recognition.

Martyrdom is the ultimate expression of social proof.

Appreciating the Sacrifice

Unfortunately, as is women’s biological imperative, once a man’s martyred himself women seek a suitable substitute within the week. I’m still getting a lot of response on my Appreciation post, and predictably most of the criticism is rooted in assuming my intent was to illustrate women being inferior to men in terms of sincerely appreciating the sacrifices he must make to facilitate her reality. The inability of women appreciating men’s sacrifices isn’t an issue of who’s better than who, it’s merely an observation of facts and corollaries. What I think critics fail to recognize is that I’m simply relating the observed mechanics; any conditionality they choose to apply to those mechanics are their own opinions and biases.

“Yeah Rollo, it’s pretty fucked up that women have some inborn ability to ‘switch off’ their emotions for you in favor of a higher SMV male…”

You’re right it’s pretty messed up. It’s also unethical, insincere and duplicitous when you also consider the planning involved in dissociating her emotional investment in favor of a new investment; but all of these are social conditions we apply to the underlying mechanic. It’s also pretty fucked up that men’s lives intrinsically have less value than women’s – but we can apply esoteric principles of honor, duty and courage to men killing themselves and engaging in the dynamic of their own disposability. We can also apply principles of cowardice and betrayal to men who refuse that sacrifice in favor of self-preservation, but these are qualification of social conventions that we establish as a culture.

The biomechanics are what they are, irrespective of the social paint we color them with. It’s not that women lack an intellectual capacity to appreciate men’s sacrifices, it’s that this isn’t their evolved psychological predisposition. The social constructs which tells her to expect a man’s sacrifice, which normalizes his martyrdom, have evolved to better dissociate her own investment in her biological imperatives (i.e. Hypergamy). In English this means evolution has prepared her socially and psychologically for his sacrifice, and readies her to move to a better provisioning should one present itself in her surroundings. Likewise, men putting themselves in harms way is rooted in our competing for resources – in this case breeding rights.

Ravenous wolves tearing apart a moose aren’t evil; they’re doing what nature has prepared them to do in order to survive. This isn’t to give anyone, male or female, some biologically determined free pass for bad behavior, it’s just to understand where this behavior originates and how it came to be what we make of it today.

A League of Your Own

“Rollo, I’m newly Game-aware, red pill guy and I’ve been meeting girls with more and more success since my conversion, but I can’t help the feeling that the really hot girls I want to get with a so out of my league. 

Any suggestions?”

Iron Rule of Tomassi #8

Always let a woman figure out why she wont ƒuck you, never do it for her.

An integral part of maintaining the feminine imperative as the societal imperative involves keeping women as the primary sexual selectors. As I’ve detailed in many prior comments and posts, this means that a woman’s sexual strategy necessitates that she be in as optimized a condition as her capacity (attractiveness) allows for her to choose from the best males available to satisfy that strategy.

This is really the definition of hypergamy, and on an individual level, I believe only the most plugged in of men don’t realize this to some degree of consciousness. However, what I think escapes a lot of men is the complex nature of hypergamy on a social scale. For hypergamy to sustain it’s dominant position as the default sexual strategy for our society, it’s necessary for the feminine imperative to maintain existing, foster new, and normalize complex social conventions that serve it. The scope of these conventions range from the individualized psychological conditioning early in life to the grand scale of social engineering (e.g. Feminism, Religion, Government, etc.)

One of these social conventions that operates in the spectrum of the personal to the societal is the idea of ‘leagues’. The fundamental idea that Social Matching Theory details is that “All things being equal, an individual will tend to be attracted to, and are more likely to pair off with, another individual who is of the same or like degree of physical attractiveness as themselves.” In a vacuum, this is the germ of the idea behind the ‘leagues’. The social convention of ‘leagues’ mentality is where ‘all things are not equal’ and used to support the feminine imperative, while conveniently still supporting the principle of social matching theory.

The latent function of ‘leagues’ is to encourage men to filter themselves out for women’s intimate approval.

As social conditions progress and become more complex, so too do men’s ability to mimic the personal attributes of providership and security. In other words, lesser men become intelligent enough to circumvent women’s existing sexual filters and thus thwart their sexual strategy. These ever increasing complexities made it hard to identify optimally suitable men from the pretenders, and women, being the primary sexual selector, needed various social constructs to sort the wheat from the chaff. With each subsequent generation they couldn’t be expected to do all of this detective work on their own so the feminine imperative enlisted the aid of the men themselves and created self-perpetuated, self-internalized social doctrines for men to comply with in order to exist in a feminine defined society.

The concept of leagues is just one of these doctrines. Your self-doubt about your worthiness of a woman’s intimacy stems from a preconditioned idea that ‘you’re out of her league’. The booster club optimist idea that “if you think you can’t, you’re right” is true, and boundless enthusiasm may overcome some obstacles, but to address the source of the disease it’s more important to ask yourself why you’ve been taught to think you can’t. A lot of approach anxiety comes from your own self-impression – Am I smooth, hot, affluent, funny, confident, interesting, decisive, well-dressed enough to earn an HB 9’s attention? How about an HB 6? Our great danger is not that we aim too high and fail, but that we aim too low and succeed.

I’m not debating the legitimacy of the evaluative standards of the sexual market place – it’s a harsh, often cruel reality – what I’m really trying to do is open your eyes as to why you believe you’re only meritorious of an HB 7. Looks count for a lot, as does Game, affluence, personality, talent, etc. but is your self-estimation accurate, or are you a voluntary participant in your own self-devaluation in the SMP courtesy of the leagues mentality the feminine imperative would have you believe?

The Economy of the League

As I stated above the purpose of fomenting a stratified League mentality in men serves to autonomously filter the lesser from the greater men for women to chose from, however, it also functions to increase the valuation of the feminine as a commodity. Like any great economic entity, the feminine imperative lives and dies by its ability to inflate its value in the marketplace. Essentially the feminine imperative is a marketeer. One of the sad ironies of this, and the last, century is that the feminine imperative has attempted to base women’s SMP valuation on a collective importance to the detriment of the individual woman’s SMV. For men this is inverted; a man’s sexual valuation is primarily individualized, while men as a collective gender are devaluated in the SMP.

What I mean by this is that, as a collective entity women’s sexuality cannot afford to be perceived as anything less than the more valued prize. If all vaginas are considered the gold standard then men’s sexual default value will always be lower. By this definition men, on whole, are out of women’s league.

For further consideration lets assume that average men, most being varying degrees of beta, are blessed with the ‘miraculous gift’ of an average woman’s sexual attentions. The power dynamic is already pre-established to defer to a feminine frame, so it’s small wonder that men would be prone to ONEitis even with an objectively average woman. This is the intent of the League schema – to unobjectively predispose men to commitment with women who under objective condition couldn’t enjoy the same selectivity. Roissy once postulated that for a healthy relationship to exist the Man must be recognized by the woman to be 1-2 points above her own SMV. This is a pretty tall order considering the feminine imperative’s emphasis on women’s sexuality being the more valued as default. And this is  to say nothing of contemporary women’s overinflated self-evaluations due to the rise of social media.

Gaming the League

All of the above isn’t to say that there isn’t a kernel of truth to the notion of leagues; it’s just not the “truth” men have been led to believe. For as much as the feminine imperative would have men subscribe to Leagues, it equally seeks to exempt women from the same League hierarchy by evaluating women as a whole. Needless to say men have their own rating systems – most popularly the ubiquitously physical HB 10 scale. I should add that it’s a foregone conclusion that any rating system men would establish for women in the feminine reality would necessarily need to be ridiculed, shamed and demonized, but you knew that already.

Irrational self-confidence is a good start to circumventing and unlearning the concept of Leagues; unlearning this conditioning being the operative goal. The Game-aware Man can actually use the concept of Leagues to his advantage with enough guile. When you approach a woman without regard to a League mentality or even a Zen-like obliviousness to it, you send the message that there’s more to you than a feminine reality can control. It’s exactly this disregard for the influence of the feminine imperative that makes the Alpha attractive; he’s unaware of, or indifferent to the rules his conditioning should’ve taught him earlier. Just in the attempt of Gaming a woman obviously “out of your league” you flip the feminine script by planting a seed of doubt (and prompting imagination) about your perceived value. Doubt is a very powerful tool, in fact the very concept of Leagues is founded upon men’s self-doubt. Turn that tool to your advantage by disregarding women’s social convention of Leagues.

Case Study – Creative Intelligence

Below I have posted descriptions of 4 men from a case study I was involved with as part of a graduate study for personality psychology. Before you ask, no, this wasn’t an original study, however it was a measures experiment we performed to see how the results matched with our own university.These descriptions are excerpts from that case study comparing female mate selection. They were presented individually to 101 university women between the ages of 18 and 36. All were single/unmarried and none were aware of the intent of the experiment. I’ll present more details of the experiment after you have chance to respond so as not to spoil your genuine responses. Here are the descriptions:

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M is an art student. M has always had a passion for painting and plans to pursue a career in art. He creates paintings of people and complex landscapes. His paintings are so lifelike that they are often mistaken for photographs. The consensus amongst his art professors is that he is, by far, the most talented student they have seen. One professor, an expert on lifelike paintings, says he believes M is one of the most talented artists ever to produce these paintings. To make extra money to support his schooling, M has sold a few of his best paintings. They have sold for between 100 and 200 dollars. One professor lamented that M’s paintings are worth far more, but like so many other artists, he will probably never make very much money selling them.

L is an art student. He paints abstract paintings. L came into art by chance. He took an art class as an elective because it fit well in his schedule. For his midterm project, he produced an abstract painting after an hour of “fooling around” with the paint and canvas. The majority of the painting actually consisted of paint he accidentally spilled onto the canvas. A very wealthy man who was looking for art for his home discovered L’s painting in the student art studio. He paid L $5,000 dollars for the painting. Some of the man’s other wealthy friends liked L’s painting and commissioned a total of $100,000 in paintings from him. L and his art professors were shocked at the success of L’s paintings, because, in the words of one professor, “he has no real talent, just some good luck.” L continues to capitalize on his success by selling his abstract art.

L and M are considered highly desirable by other women on campus and very attractive. Friends of L and M say that they are dependable, kind, and generous friends.

J is an entrepreneur who had great success in his first business venture. He started a small software business in a friend’s garage. His product was a new kind of software for improving factory designs to radically increase the profitability of manufacturing. Within his first year, J secured contracts with Ford, General Electric, and Boeing. In the next three years, J sold his software to most of the top manufacturing companies in the United States and several of the top companies in Asia. After 5 years in business, J’s company was valued at 120 million dollars and had 250 employees. The Wall Street Journal credited the success of J’s company to the “brilliance and novelty” of J’s product and to J’s “sheer genius as a businessman.” However, J’s company fell victim to misfortune the next year. After J rejected a take-over bid from Microsoft, Microsoft filed a lawsuit claiming that J’s software infringed on some of their patents. Although most experts agreed that the suit had no merit, the cost of defending himself against the lawsuit created huge cash flow problems for J, which drove the company into bankruptcy. Although J has very little money left, he has recently begun a new business venture to sell another of the software products he has invented.

R recently inherited 20 million dollars from the couple who had adopted him when he was a year old. They died in a car crash, having made their fortune in commercial real estate. Before they died, R worked as a sales person at a computer company. Although R worked at the company for several years, he had not advanced past his starting salary or rank within the company. He went to a community college, but after graduation he didn’t feel sure what to do with his life. A friend who was working at the computer company suggested that R join him and work there. In R’s words, “I guess I’m just not very good at this job. At least now I won’t have to worry about money any more.” R and his adoptive parents were very close, and he was deeply saddened by their deaths.

J and R are both attractive and in their mid-twenties. They were recently nominated as two of the most eligible bachelors in Los Angeles.
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Bear in mind, these guys a theoretical archetypes, how they relate to women is irrelevant. How the subject women percieved them is what’s being assessed. Of these 4 men, which do you suppose was rated the highest in desirability with which to have a short-term sexual affair with by these women? And which man was rated the highest in desirability to enter into a long-term relationship with?

This study was done to determine comparative priorities in women with regards to male ‘creative intelligence’ vs.‘provisioning ability’ in female mate selection. I would’ve titled this thread as such, but I wanted to get some unbiased and impulse responses from readers here to see what the perceptions of these archetypes were from men and the reactions guys expected from women to these archetypes.

You’ll notice that care was taken in these archetype descriptions to balance out the physical attractiveness of each man (i.e. both artists were considered equally attractive by peers and both businessmen were ‘eligible’ bachelors). What was at issue wasn’t their extrinsic characteristics – comparative physiques or obvious Alpha presence – but what women chose in regards to these men’s intrinsic characteristics. The theory being that Creative Intelligence is of a higher mating value in the short term while a better Provisioning ability is more desirable in the long term. Bear in mind that hypergamy influences the decision making process for both of these sexual strategies. Also added was the caveat that legitimacy of provisioning ability, and the potential for future provisioning in it’s absence (i.e. the down on their luck men), played a factor in this mate selection.

Creative Intelligence

So what exactly is “Creative Intelligence”? Although there is no firm consensus on how to define it, we often know it when we see it. We also know a bit about it from a century of creativity research. Within humans, creative intelligence is closely associated with the highly heritable general intelligence, and creative intelligence seems to rely on the generation, selective elaboration, and skillful implementation of ideas and strategies. In other words, creativity represents a strong capacity for successful improvisation, thus it became a desirable, selected-for species survival trait.

The problem is that creativity sounds desirable, as does intelligence, so “creative intelligence” can become a vague term that seems useful for solving any behavioral problem, whether technological, ecological, social, sexual, or cultural. Many plausible adaptive functions explain the origins of human creative intelligence. These include: tool-making and tool-using, hunting, foraging, and food preparation methods, social strategizing within and between groups and sexual courtship dynamics (i.e. hunter-gatherer proto-Game).

Sorry for the psych lesson, but we had to be specific.

Trade Offs

As I elaborated in Schedules of Mating, most women face trade-offs in mating. In selecting a long-term mate, it makes hypergamic sense for women to put greater weight on traits that advertise ability and willingness to invest in protection, provisioning, and care of the woman and her offspring. This will favor the evolution of ‘good dad’ indicators – reliable cues of paternal investment ability and willingness to participate in those responsibilities. In our past, women of very high mate value (HB 8 and above) had the luxury of attracting a long-term mate who has both good dad potential and good genes. Fast forward through the ages and women have progressively had to settle for a committed partner who is not ideal either paternally or genetically. Then add to this the increasing complexity of men adapting to mimic these cues in order to facilitate their own breeding strategy. Consequently women are, by order of degree, incentivized to secure better genes or better paternal care from short-term or extra-pair partners, while simultaneously seeking long term provider males. Either would help at any time.

In this study, the idea was that, issues of relative attraction and arousal being satisfied, women will prefer a male possessing a higher capacity for Creative Intelligence in short-term sexual encounters to ensure the best possible future options for her offspring, while choosing a mate with better Provisioning ability for long term parental investment.

Art and business were chosen as two contrasting domains of work. Each requires distinct styles of creative intelligence, but both demand combinations of practical and theoretical skills, individual effort and social interaction. Hence, merit-based success in either domain may function as a mental fitness indicator. In each domain (art or business), one vignette described a man who showed high creative intelligence in his work, but who was poor due to bad luck and adverse circumstances. The other vignette in each set described a man who was average on creative intelligence, but who was wealthy due to good luck and beneficial circumstances. All vignettes made clear that each man’s creativity level was largely endogenous, reflecting natural (and presumably heritable) talent, but that his wealth level was largely accidental, gained through no merit or fault of his own.

Results

Each woman completed two forced-choice questions: (1) “Based on these descriptions, who do you think you might find more desirable for a short-term sexual affair?”; (2) “Based on these descriptions, who do you think you might find more desirable for a long-term committed relationship?” (L or M in the artist vignettes, and R or J in the entrepreneur vignettes). Next, participants rated the desirability of each man as a short-term mate and as a long-term mate on two 9-point scales (where ‘1’ = not at all desirable, ‘5’ = average; ‘9’ = extremely desirable). The rating questions were as follows: “Overall, how desirable would you find L [M, R, or J] as a long-term partner?” “Overall, how desirable would you find L [M, R, or J] as a short-term partner?

In this study M was overwhelmingly chosen as the short term partner. 89% of the participants chose the naturally talented, but out of luck artist for a short term sexual encounter. 7% chose L the rich artist, 3% chose J the poor/talented businessman and 1% opted for R the wealthy/untalented businessman.

J was also rated highest for long term relationship, but not as significantly as M in the short term. 67% of our subjects chose J, and surprisingly 17% chose L (rich artist). R was rated at 12% and M took 4% for the long term choice.