1) Does this explain the fashion phenomenon of the red “power tie”?
Headline: Women Attracted to Men in Red, Research Shows
Some of the all-important details:
To quantify the red effect, the paper analyzed responses from 288 female and 25 male undergraduates to photographs of men in seven different experiments. Participants were all self-identified as heterosexual or bisexual. In one color presentation, participants looked at a man’s photo framed by a border of either red or white and answered a series of questions, such as: “How attractive do you think this person is?” . . . .
In several experiments, the shirt of the man in the photographs was digitally colored either red or another color. Participants rated the pictured man’s status and attractiveness, and reported on their willingness to date, kiss, and engage in other sexual activity with the person. They also rated the man’s general likability, kindess, and extraversion. [all emphases added]
The results:
The researchers found that the red effect was limited to status and romance: red made the man seem more powerful, attractive, and sexually desirable, but did not make the man seem more likable, kind, or sociable. The effect was consistent across cultures: undergraduates in the United States, England, Germany, and China all found men more attractive when wearing or bordered by red.
Very interesting. I like the cross-cultural component. Gives it greater credence.
Questions: Shouldn’t the title have included the word more between women and attracted? Would the results be similar for men wearing crimson? Scarlet? Magenta? What colors influence whether or not a woman is perceived as more attractive? We’ve all heard about the “little red dress.” Would light shades of blue make a woman appear more innocent and agreeable — and the marrying kind?
2) It seems male spiders of any color don’t sumo wrestle for access to females.
Headline: Why Are Male Spiders Small While Females Are Giant?
Some of the all-important details:
The researchers investigated 204 spiders from 13 different species. They suggest that females do not feel the same pressure to be smaller as, for them, a larger body size confers and advantage in generating offspring.
The results:
“In species where bridging is a very common mode of locomotion, small males, by being more efficient bridgers, will enjoy more mating opportunities and thus will be better at competition to reach receptive females. This may lead to a selective pressure for smaller size.”
Bridging, FYI, is arachnid behavior “in which spiders use the wind to carry a strand of web to their destination and then clamber upside down along the resulting bridge.” More results: “small size was associated with a greater ability to carry out the maneuver.”
Questions: So evolution simply didn’t exert a pressure for females to get larger and thus be able to “make more babies,” and males remained at the default size? Is this evidence of the alleged truism that it’s not the size that matters (of the organ-ism), but how it performs?
3) Mind ‘transcends’ matter, but does it transcend energy?
The headline: Mind over matter? The psychology of healing
Some of the all-important details:
During the five-year study 93 patients (68 men and 25 women) with diabetic foot ulcers were recruited from specialist podiatry clinics across the UK. Clinical and demographic determinants of healing; psychological distress, coping style and levels of cortisol (a stress hormone) in saliva were assessed and recorded at the start of a 24 week monitoring period. The size of each patient’s ulcer was also measured at the start, and then at 6, 12 and 24 weeks to record the extent of healing or otherwise of the ulcer.
The results:
The results of the research showed that the likelihood of the ulcer healing over a 24 week period was predicted by how individual’s coped. Surprisingly perhaps, patients who showed a ‘confrontational’ way of coping (a style characterised by a desire to take control) with the ulcer and its treatment were less likely to have a healed ulcer at the end of the 24 week period.
Questions: If the extremely outdated phrase (IMO) “mind over matter” is valid, how can psychology be a science? Could I likewise say this about my HP inkjet printer, It’s bytes over hardware? In the above case, is “mind” merely a slapdash way of describing such dynamic things as “a ‘confrontational’ way of coping”?
To wrap up and put a bow on all the above — Maybe fat male spiders ought to truly exercise ‘mind over their hefty matter’ and attempt to bridge great distances to access females. But first they might want don a red scarf. “Here I come, baby!”
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Tags: sexuality, the human animal, wildlife
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