Bad guys really do get the most girls

[Libertine]

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg19826614.100

NICE guys knew it, now two studies have confirmed it: bad boys get the most girls. The finding may help explain why a nasty suite of antisocial personality traits known as the "dark triad" persists in the human population, despite their potentially grave cultural costs.

The traits are the self-obsession of narcissism; the impulsive, thrill-seeking and callous behaviour of psychopaths; and the deceitful and exploitative nature of Machiavellianism. At their extreme, these traits would be highly detrimental for life in traditional human societies. People with these personalities risk being shunned by others and shut out of relationships, leaving them without a mate, hungry and vulnerable to predators.

But being just slightly evil could have an upside: a prolific sex life, says Peter Jonason at New Mexico State University in Las Cruces. "We have some evidence that the three traits are really the same thing and may represent a successful evolutionary strategy."

Jonason and his colleagues subjected 200 college students to personality tests designed to rank them for each of the dark triad traits. They also asked about their attitudes to sexual relationships and about their sex lives, including how many partners they'd had and whether they were seeking brief affairs.

The study found that those who scored higher on the dark triad personality traits tended to have more partners and more desire for short-term relationships, Jonason reported at the Human Behavior and Evolution Society meeting in Kyoto, Japan, earlier this month. But the correlation only held in males.

James Bond epitomises this set of traits, Jonason says. "He's clearly disagreeable, very extroverted and likes trying new things - killing people, new women." Just as Bond seduces woman after woman, people with dark triad traits may be more successful with a quantity-style or shotgun approach to reproduction, even if they don't stick around for parenting. "The strategy seems to have worked. We still have these traits," Jonason says.

This observation seems to hold across cultures. David Schmitt of Bradley University in Peoria, Illinois, presented preliminary results at the same meeting from a survey of more than 35,000 people in 57 countries. He found a similar link between the dark triad and reproductive success in men. "It is universal across cultures for high dark triad scorers to be more active in short-term mating," Schmitt says. "They are more likely to try and poach other people's partners for a brief affair."

Barbara Oakley of Oakland University in Rochester, Michigan, says that the studies "verify something a lot of people have conjectured about".

Christopher von Rueden of the University of California at Santa Barbara says that the studies are important because they confirm that personality variation has direct fitness consequences.

"They still have to explain why it hasn't spread to everyone," says Matthew Keller of the University of Colorado in Boulder. "There must be some cost of the traits." One possibility, both Keller and Jonason suggest, is that the strategy is most successful when dark triad personalities are rare. Otherwise, others would become more wary and guarded.

[Persius]

nice guys finish in a tissue

[CaptainHowdy]

Originally Posted by Persius

nice guys finish in a tissue

... Can I borrow that line?

[tranza]

Rich guys have more girs!

[jakethedog]

Originally Posted by tranza

Rich guys have more girs!

you can have all the girs you want .. us bad guys have always fared well with the GIRLS...

[eightmotives]

Its really not that hard, whether you are good or bad. Women want someone to fuck so turn into that fucking machine for them.

[CDSmith]

Originally Posted by Libertine

The traits are the self-obsession of narcissism; the impulsive, thrill-seeking and callous behaviour of psychopaths; and the deceitful and exploitative nature of Machiavellianism. At their extreme, these traits would be highly detrimental for life in traditional human societies. People with these personalities risk being shunned by others and shut out of relationships, leaving them without a mate, hungry and vulnerable to predators..

How many on this very board can we think of that that describes to a tee?

Every anon fake nick having troll, definitely. :D

[CarlosTheGaucho]

crazy works too

[AZSarah]

Seems to me that a lot of chicks like trying to take the bad boy & make him a good boy... taming the stallion if you will.

This rarely happens of course. Very rarely.

[Violetta]

Im very far from a badboy

[uno]

I can't believe people actually paid for studies to figure that out.

[crockett]

Originally Posted by AZ_Sarah_Maxcash

Seems to me that a lot of chicks like trying to take the bad boy & make him a good boy... taming the stallion if you will.

This rarely happens of course. Very rarely.

Yea I think that's more what it's about. They should have done a test asking the girls what they expected out of the relationship.

[sniperwolf]

Originally Posted by uno

I can't believe people actually paid for studies to figure that out.

that's no longer surprising. man have done the weirdest things on earth!

[payd2purv]

Bad boys are more confident, agrressive and outgoing.

So they end up having more experience, friends, money, etc... It benefits every area of their life...

That is all.