Yes, women like bad boys
THE question of why women, particularly good girls, always seem to be more attracted to bad boys has been examined time and again. And now a recent joint Polish and Finnish study is confirming the age-old ideology.
The study, ‘Women’s reproductive success and the preference for Dark Triad in men’s faces’, concluded that women are more attracted to dark, brooding men and that this unconscious preference could be related to reproductive success.
It was published in the journal Evolution and Human Behavior.
The research focused on women’s attraction to narcissistic, Machiavellian and psychopathic men by analysing their attraction to facial features associated with these personality traits.
The team was interested in three traits in particular — known as the “Dark Triad”. These are narcissism, characterised by egotism, pride and a lack of empathy; Machiavellianism, likened to a disregard for morality, manipulation of others and self-interest; and psychopathy, characterised by callousness, remorselessness, impulsiveness and antisocial behaviour.
The researchers asked 2,370 adult women to look at photos of two men’s faces side by side, with one face having more or less of these three key features than the other. They were then asked to pick which of the faces they found most attractive.
The results showed that most of the participants were attracted to men with strong features associated with psychopathy, Machiavellianism and narcissism, while a smaller minority was not.
With regards to why women seemed more attracted to men who looked dominant, aggressive and dishonest, the research team, led by Dr Minna Lyons, examined the women’s personal lives and linked a preference for narcissistic men to reproductive success, as women attracted to narcissistic men’s faces gave birth to more children.
Dr Lyons said: “We predicted that women’s preference for narcissism could be most strongly related to their reproductive success. In line with this, we found that women with preference for high narcissistic men’s faces gave birth to more offspring. Moreover, women with strong preference for Machiavellian male faces reported fewer offspring than their same-aged peers with weak preference.”
Reverend Dr Carla Dunbar, marriage, sex and family therapist, told All Woman that the situation locally is no different.
“Certainly in our society we do have girls who fall for the bad guys or subtytpes of persons, and I do believe our society still contains a lot of the plantation society concepts where men are studs and women are breeders, plus there is the concept that women should be dominated by men, and not in a loving way.”
Dr Dunbar added that some Jamaican women choose these types of men mainly because of how they view themselves.
“Depending on how they see themselves and view themselves, they would want guys like that who would probably be able to protect them,” she said.
“Some of them are very disrespectful to them and beat down on them, and that again is dependent on how the women feel about themselves, and you have a lot of women who don’t think very highly of themselves and take guys who disrespect and beat down on them. This is the type of behaviour that these narcissistic persons and psychopathic persons present.”
Dr Dunbar said she has seen women in her counselling sessions who share that if they are not abused or disrespected they don’t feel loved.
“It’s puzzling why they would feel this way, but some of them came out of homes where they saw this as the ‘done thing’ with their parents,” she said.
“I’ve had young girls coming out of relationships — sexually abusive relationships where the stepfathers or fathers would prey on the youngsters and the mothers defended the men. When I do my psychoanalysis with some of these mothers you find that they themselves grew up in abusive relationships, so they kind of see it as a norm and the cycle continues, which is really sad.”
Additionally, she said the economic challenges many women face play a part in why they stay in some of these relationships.
“For instance, your man is a don and he provides for you so you don’t leave because of fear for life and fear to lose everything — your blanket of security. Wives that are beaten or disrespected, cheated on, remain in relationships because it provides them with the only sense of security they know.”
To resolve the issue, she maintained that empowering women to understand that they are supposed to be valued, esteem themselves highly, and not settle for less is very important.
“Oftentimes women rise above this. If you can change a person’s mindset you can change a person. We need to take young girls and empower them with knowledge of who they can be so they become independent and move on to be better young ladies who can stand their ground on their own two feet,” she said.
