My friend thinks I'd do better in dating if I went on those sites that match people according to "similarities." Most of the couples I know aren't that similar. Could those sites be wrong? How much does similarity matter for being a good match with somebody and the chances of a relationship working out long-term?
--Single Woman
There are points of difference that are simply a bridge too far -- like if one partner enjoys shooting dinner with a crossbow and the other bursts into tears every time a short-order cook cracks an egg into a frying pan.
However, there are three areas in which partner harmony seems essential to happy coupledom. If couples have clashing religious beliefs, political orientations, or values, "it's found to cause tremendous problems in a marriage," explained psychologist David Buss at a recent evolutionary psychology conference. Sure, there are couples with differences in these areas who make a go of it, but in general, the committed Catholic and the aggressive atheist go together like peanut butter and a leaf blower.
Beyond the big three -- shared religion, political orientation, and values -- the notion that you and your partner need to be all matchy-matchy to be happy together just isn't supported by science. In fact, a whole lot of science finds otherwise.
Admittedly, the notion that partners should match like a pair of nightstands has powerful intuitive appeal -- hitting us in our craving for consistency and order. This, perhaps, leads many people -- including many psychologists -- to buy into the bliss-of-the-clones myth, the notion that we'll be happiest if we find somebody just like us.
Not surprisingly, dating sites take advantage of this widely believed myth, hawking features like the "billion points of similarity" compatibility test. (Obviously, they can't sell memberships with "Hey, it's a crapshoot!")
Dating sites advertising themselves with a meaningless test might not seem like a big deal. But it reinforces the myth that partner similarity equals romantic happiness, and this belief has a real downside, according to research by psychologist Michael I. Norton and his colleagues.
Consider that when we first meet a person, we get excited about all of our apparent similarities: "You like sticking up banks! I like sticking up banks!" At this point, and in the early days of a relationship, we're prone to identify similarities where none exist, spinning ambiguities -- vague or missing details about a person -- into support for their being just like us. But Norton explains that as partners get to know each other, dissimilarities begin to surface. And this leads partners who were initially stoked about how alike they seemed to be to become less satisfied with each other and the relationship.
Interestingly, it seems that dissimilarity between partners actually gets an undeserved bad rap. Discovering this took more sophisticated methodology than used in previous research, in which scientists basically tallied up ways partners were alike and different and then looked at how satisfied they were with their relationship.
Psychologist Manon van Scheppingen and her colleagues instead explored interactions between romantic partners' personality traits over an eight-year period. Their findings suggest that partners don't have to match perfectly on traits; in fact, sometimes, their having differences is ideal.
Take conscientiousness, a personality trait reflecting self-control and a sense of responsibility to others. According to the team's research, if one partner was low in conscientiousness, their relationship worked better and they were happier when they were with somebody higher in conscientiousness. Likewise, relationships worked better when partners had varying levels of extraversion, rather than being two outgoing peas in a pod.
The one distinct exception -- where the researchers found similarity was consistently best -- was for women only, regarding "agreeableness." This personality trait plays out in kindness, cooperativeness, warmth, and concern for others. When a woman's partner had a similar level of agreeableness, it was associated with the woman finding her partner more supportive.
The upshot of this stew of findings is that happy coupledom seems to depend on an interplay of factors. This in turn suggests that what makes for happy relationships is largely "process" -- how two people communicate, foster each other's growth, solve problems, and manage the intractable ones.
Beyond this and beyond the three vital areas where partners need to be in tune -- religion, politics, and values -- what seems important is for partners to not be sharply different in ways that will make them unhappy together. To avoid that, you need to dig into yourself and figure out what your deal breakers are. For example, if you're an urban girl like me, no amount of love would change your belief that there's only one reason to spend a month in a cabin in the wilderness without indoor plumbing, and it's because you've been kidnapped and are tied to a chair.
For pages and pages of "science-help" from me, buy my latest book, "Unf*ckology: A Field Guide to Living with Guts and Confidence." It lays out the PROCESS of transforming to live w/confidence.
I know some men refuse to use emojis because they think they're silly or cheesy. But I have to say, when men use emojis, they make me feel good. Is it crazy that a heart or a rose emoji makes me feel like a man's more interested?
--Wondering
It's easy to misinterpret tone in texts. However, emojis are basically the cartoon cousins of commas, which can make the difference between a quiet evening at home and an evening spent handcuffed facedown while the forensics team digs up your backyard for skeletal remains. (If only you'd tucked the commas into the appropriate places when you texted, "I love cooking my dogs and my grandma.")
Emojis in courtship were the subject of two studies from the Kinsey Institute. In the more recent one, social psychologist Amanda Gesselman and her colleagues found a link between emoji use and maintaining a connection beyond the first date, as well as more romantic interactions and more sex (over the year that participants were surveyed about).
I suspect emojis are an especially helpful tool for men to use in dating. Research by psychologist Simon Baron-Cohen suggests that men, in general, don't have women's emotional fluency -- that is, women's ease in identifying and expressing emotion. Emojis help men communicate warmth and interest in a woman easily and comfortably. This in turn keeps women from getting mad that men don't show their feelings -- or mistaking a lack of expressiveness for a lack of feeling.
So it's no surprise you appreciate the emojis. Still, there's much that remains unexplored in these studies. For example, do people who use more emojis get more dates and sex, or do people who get more dates and sex use more emojis? And do emojis play well with everybody, or do they sometimes kill a developing connection? "Wait...a 55-year-old man just sent me an entire screen of cartoon eggplants?"
Of course, emojis could more charitably be viewed as a classic form of communication. The medium was just different back around 2000 B.C., when the pharaoh would dispatch the eunuch with stone tablets covered in pictures of dogs, beetles, and mummies. Message: "Dinner is at 6, unless there's a plague of locusts."
For pages and pages of "science-help" from me, buy my latest book, "Unf*ckology: A Field Guide to Living with Guts and Confidence." It lays out the PROCESS of transforming to live w/confidence.
A senior colleague was consistently rotten to me -- demeaning, abusive, passive-aggressive. I tried to get him to behave more respectfully, but nothing changed. I now try to avoid him as much as possible. His mom just died, and a co-worker suggested I send him my condolences. But this would feel really insincere. Isn't it important to be authentic?
--Mistreated
If you always expressed your true feelings, you'd probably get arrested a lot -- like if a cop pulls you over and asks, "Do you know why I stopped you?" and you answer, "You have a small penis, and you've yet to hit your ticket quota?"
Authenticity is overrated. Sure, it's seriously important when you're bidding $3 million for a Picasso. But in humans, authenticity basically means having the outer you -- your behavior -- match the inner you: your thoughts, desires, feelings, and values.
Revealing your hopes, fears, and desires to another person is essential to having real intimacy -- allowing them to really know and understand you. But as with the Officer Cocktail Sausage example, telling the whole truth isn't always ideal.
Technically, by not letting rip whatever feeling comes to mind, you're being "inauthentic," "phony," "insincere." However, this view comes out of neuroscientific ignorance. Though we have personality traits that are consistent across time and situations, research by neuroscientists Roger Wolcott Sperry, Michael Gazzaniga, and Joseph LeDoux suggests there is no singular, consistent "real you" -- or "real" anyone, for that matter. Instead, we each appear to be a set of shifting standards, preferences, and practices based on the priorities that a particular situation triggers in our evolved psychology: whether, say, it's survival ("Run for your life!") or mating ("Wanna have coffee? Naked?").
Not having a singular self means we can choose the sort of person we want to be. We do this by coming up with a set of values and acting in line with them. (For more on the practical steps involved, see the "Be Inauthentic!" chapter in my book "Unf*ckology.") In your case, for example, if kindness is one of your values, you might set aside your grievances with your colleague and decide, "You're a fellow human who's suffering, and I'm gonna reach out to say I'm sorry about that." Being kind to a guy you loathe is actually an act of sincerity when your behavior aligns with your values. If only "killing 'em with kindness" were more than a figure of speech...then you could call dibs on this meanie's swanky office as they wheeled him out in a body bag.
For pages and pages of "science-help" from me, buy my latest book, "Unf*ckology: A Field Guide to Living with Guts and Confidence." It lays out the PROCESS of transforming to live w/confidence.
October 18, 2019I have to go visit my mom, who's in the hospital in another state. She's really ill. Her boyfriend told me she's lost a lot of weight and it might be shocking to see her initially. I want to be strong for her, but I'm a big crier. I cry on every phone call, and it's awful. How do I show up for her and not let my feelings overwhelm me so she is not sad or worried about me and can concentrate on getting better?
--Emotional
When you're visiting a friend or loved one who's seriously ill, it's nice to show up bearing gifts -- like flowers, magazines, and a paper bag you can hyperventilate into.
It's scary seeing someone you care about all small and frail in a hospital bed. And this is your mom who's really ill. If something happens to her, it's not like you can just run out and pick up another one at Costco.
Even so, the level of fear you experience when you see her is something you could have some control over. Neuroscience studies find that novel experiences are the most emotionally powerful, having the most intense effect on us. Additionally, psychology research finds that people quickly become acclimated to both positive and negative changes in their lives. Accordingly, seeing your mom for the first time will have the most gut-punchability.
To dial down the intensity of your reaction when you first see her, you could ask her boyfriend to take some video of her and send it to you. He should ask your mom first, of course, so it won't violate her privacy, and perhaps cast what he's doing as sending you a hello. If she balks at letting him, he could then tell her the real deal: that it's to emotionally prepare you for seeing her.
The other major player in how you react to your mom's condition is empathy. Neuroscientists Olga Klimecki and Tania Singer note that empathy involves our observing or even just imagining what another person is feeling and having that trigger the same sort of feeling in us. They give the example of hearing that a friend is sad because her grandmother is dying: "Our first reaction would be empathy, which means we would share the feeling of sadness and thereby know what our friend is going through."
This initial bolt of empathy rises up automatically. But once you experience it, Klimecki and Singer explain, there's a fork in the road, which is to say you can go one of two ways with your empathy: into unhealthy empathic distress or healthy empathic concern.
Empathic distress is a me-focused response -- empathy that turns into emotional quicksand when we just keep "feeling with" a person (feeling and feeling and feeling) without doing anything to try to change their situation. In time, we get overwhelmed by the distress we're experiencing at their distress. This often leads to what Klimecki and Singer call "withdrawal behavior": our trying to escape our uncomfortable emotions by ducking out and leaving the other person alone with their suffering.
Empathic concern, on the other hand, is an other-focused response. It starts with our experiencing that initial bolt of "feeling with" a person who's suffering, but then we shift into "feeling for" -- as in "What can I do FOR you?" Empathic concern is basically empathy with an action plan, motivating us to try to make things better for another person.
The important takeaway for you is that you don't have to let your feelings run the show, dragging you boohooingly along behind them. You can instead control your feelings by shifting from me-driven empathy, empathic distress, to mom-centered empathic concern. In practice, this simply takes redirecting your focus from how sad you are to how helpful you can be -- emotionally and practically. Think Warrior Nurse instead of Drama Queen.
One of the kindest things you can do for a very sick person is make their life boringly normal. Distract them from their illness by watching their favorite streamed show with them, playing Scrabble, losing $6 million to them in gin rummy, telling them the latest gossip about the slutty neighbor.
Really, your just being there is huge. And once you leave, you can start sending her cards a few days a week. This will help keep you from falling into the swamp of me-focused pointless distress, and it'll be comforting for her. Ultimately, it's feeling loved -- not laughter -- that's "the best medicine." I'm guessing that's why hospitals instituted visiting hours instead of replacing the IV bag on the pole with a foul-mouthed parrot in a tiny bandanna squawking insults at passerby.
For pages and pages of "science-help" from me, buy my latest book, "Unf*ckology: A Field Guide to Living with Guts and Confidence." It lays out the PROCESS of transforming to live w/confidence.
October 8, 2019If a guy is trying to amp up his attractiveness by working out, what areas of the body should he focus on? What do women notice and want? And how much of that can I get without any kind of surgery or dangerous potions?
--Office Bod
If a woman says to you, "You're like family to me," it shouldn't be because you have arms like her sister.
Women seem to go for the body shape that evolutionary psychologists Rebecca Burch and Laura Johnsen refer to as "Captain Dorito." This describes the golden triangle seen in cartoonishly masculinized male superhero bodies: broad shoulders leading down into a small tight waist and butt.
As for why women might have evolved to prefer this body type, evolutionary psychologist David Buss explains in "Evolutionary Psychology: The New Science of the Mind" that ancestral women were obviously better off with a "physically formidable" partner, able to protect them and their children. The inner biochemical landscape of physical formidability is high testosterone. Accordingly, Buss notes that, in men, high testosterone is associated with a very masculine body and facial features (like a square jaw and more pronounced cheekbones).
Noting that high levels of testosterone compromise the immune system, Buss cites psychologist Victor S. Johnston's observation that only males who are very healthy can "afford" to produce high levels of testosterone during their development. The bodies of less healthy males need to suppress T production so they can hang on to the limited immune resources they have.
"If Johnston's argument is correct," Buss adds, women's preference for masculine features is "a preference for a healthy male." And interestingly, in nations where overall health is poor, women show an especially strong preference for more masculine faces. The same goes for women who are more easily yucked out by cues to pathogen-causing diseases -- substances and things that could contain infectious microorganisms, like poo, sexual fluids, and dead bodies.
As for you, when you hit the gym, your areas of focus should be your shoulders, arms, and butt. However, you should do whole-body workouts, too, lest you end up pairing superhero pecs with broomstick thighs and calves.
Even if you're built like a paper cut and can't bulk up a lot, just looking strong, especially in the essential areas, is a step in the right direction. And unfortunately, yes...the formidability thing has to result from physical workouts -- tempted as you might be to skip the gym and, like somebody toting an umbrella on a cloudy day, go into the grocery store whistling and swinging a machete.
For pages and pages of "science-help" from me, buy my latest book, "Unf*ckology: A Field Guide to Living with Guts and Confidence." It lays out the PROCESS of transforming to live w/confidence.
My girlfriends and I have had this experience numerous times: A guy who's interested in one of us will suddenly stop texting us but then reappear a few months later liking our social media posts. This just happened to me. It's about three months since he vanished, and he's suddenly all up in my Instagram. Why do guys do this?
--Annoyed
You almost wish the guy would greet you honestly: "'Sup, Plan B?!"
This guy might've initially been interested in you. However, chances are you eventually became what evolutionary psychologists like Joshua Duntley call a "backup mate" (basically the dating-and-mating version of a spare tire or the vice president).
Duntley's work suggests humans evolved to identify and cultivate backup mates so we wouldn't be left high and dry for long if our main boo died or ran off with the hot neighbor.
I know...so romantic. That said, it isn't wrong to have backup mates. Research by Duntley and his colleagues points to many or most of us having them, though we're often not aware of it.
The thing is, this guy's disappearing and then sliding back into your life with likes on some of your Instagram posts, is a big red flag -- a big red sequined flag with cop flashers on top. Character is revealed in how people behave when they feel they have nothing to gain from someone. Maybe this guy got the hots for some other woman and the lukewarms for you. Or maybe he just got busy. Whatever the reason, it takes minimal effort to make a kind exit -- even saying, "I've got a lot going on right now, and I need to take a break from talking."
When someone shows themselves to be a jerk, you may want to broom them out of even the edges of your life. This is clickably easy on Instagram, thanks to the block function. Blocking a guy like this should be a wise preemptive measure, considering his idea of good manners is probably prefacing the 2 a.m. "I'm horny!" text with a few likes on photos of your kitten in a tinfoil conspiracy hat.
For pages and pages of "science-help" from me, buy my latest book, "Unf*ckology: A Field Guide to Living with Guts and Confidence." It lays out the PROCESS of transforming to live w/confidence.
My father just got diagnosed with cancer. Most people have been extremely supportive, but two girlfriends I texted about this haven't responded at all. Is it really that hard to say "I'm so sorry"? Should I use this opportunity to do a little friend house cleaning and demote certain "friends" to acquaintance status, knowing now that I can't count on them?
--Too Harsh?
At least when you yell into the Grand Canyon, you get back more than the blinking cursor of nothingness.
Ideally, your friends' responsiveness should not compare unfavorably to a giant hole -- especially not when you're all "Yoohoo...I'm kinda devastated about my dad!" But before you decide to "demote" friends, there are a couple of things to consider: "evolutionary mismatch" and our reliance on technology to get messages across flawlessly.
Evolutionary mismatch, a theory originated by evolutionary biologist Ernst Mayr, refers to how we modern humans are driven by an antique psychological operating system largely calibrated for the world of our human ancestors 2 1/2 million to 10,000 years ago. This means, for example, that important triggers for others to take action that were there in the ancestral environment aren't always present in our modern one.
Take expressions of sadness: Bodily expressions of sadness like tears or having all the spring in your step of a curbside couch are basically street corner sign spinners advertising our psychological state. When people see those behaviors, feelings of empathy automatically arise, motivating them to reach out with a hug or, at the very least, a mumbled kind word.
Expressions of sadness via smartphone text -- in words on a tiny screen -- lack the visual elements, the bodily signals, that evolved to trigger empathy. Also consider that many people think not knowing what to say is reason to say nothing. What they don't realize is that saying nothing in a crisis is usually a bigger blunder -- more hurtful -- than saying the wrong thing would ever be.
It's also possible they missed your text. We rely on technology to keep us informed, and we forget how busy we are and that texts sometimes don't go through or somebody hits their phone funny and a new text turns into an already read one (meaning the notification dot goes away).
This sounds like an excuse, and it may not be what happened. However, it's possible. So it probably pays to check -- ask, "Hey, did you see the text about my dad?" and keep the snarky ending silent: "...or do I need to tweet an orange tabby cat in scrubs giving a man chemotherapy?"
For pages and pages of "science-help" from me, buy my latest book, "Unf*ckology: A Field Guide to Living with Guts and Confidence." It lays out the PROCESS of transforming to live w/confidence.
One of my best male friends is in a super toxic relationship. I've told him to end it many times, and he does, but then he gets roped back in. At this point, I don't want to listen anymore, and I'm tired of saying the same thing. How do I convey that without blowing the friendship?
--Earache
If you wanted to repeat yourself constantly, you'd get a side hustle as a parrot. Let's be honest. When a friend puts their relationship issues on endless repeat, it's tempting to put the phone down while they're talking and go prune your ivy. It's tempting for anyone but probably more so for you because you're a woman. Women, in general, have a tendency to be indirect -- to hint at what they want rather than coming right out and stating it. Women's hintishness is often viewed as a flaw, but as I wrote recently, the late psychologist Anne Campbell, who researched female psychology and behavior, viewed it as an evolutionary feature. Campbell believed this indirectness evolved as a way for women -- the baby carriers and primary child carers of the species -- to avoid physical confrontation that could leave them hurt or dead. (If you don't quite say something, somebody won't quite have the ammunition to clobber you for it.) But a tendency is not a mandate. You can understand why you, as a woman, might feel uncomfortable being direct -- stating exactly what works for you -- but you can decide to be direct despite that. To help keep the guy from seeing you as mean, unkind, or a crappy friend for saying "no mas" on hearing the sameoldsameold, explain, "I care about you, and it's really painful to hear about you continuing to let yourself be abused." Follow this up with something like: "My advice has not changed, and I hope you'll eventually take it. Until then, I'm sorry. I just can't hear about this situation anymore." Difficult as this might be, it's less invasive than the next-best option: having a string installed in the back of your head that you pull and out comes "So sorry to hear that" over and over and over again.For pages and pages of "science-help" from me, buy my latest book, "Unf*ckology: A Field Guide to Living with Guts and Confidence." It lays out the PROCESS of transforming to live w/confidence.
