Friday, October 14, 2011

Relationship Psychology - Men VS Women




Before I tell you about relationship psychology, you have to know that there are several social norms which people are raised with in today's society, and people have a general tendency to do as they are told and to live their lives similar to others around them so that they avoid being judged.

This became a benchmark for people ever since we started to grow as a being and to think more, rather than just follow our primary instincts. Looking back hundreds of years we can see that humans always tried to look and act like others around them or like others with the same social status.

This is exactly what's happening to society in our era. That's why we tend to keep certain values from the past and live our life following them, and those who choose to live it differently are considered outcasts of the society.

The most important norms for people who want to be accepted are the ones between men and women. In men's case parents always try to teach them that a woman should be treated with respect and with tenderness, and women are taught that they should always wait for men to make the first move when it comes to romance.

Today's topic: Women and their suspicions

And that's how we came up with today's topic that has to do with relationship psychology. Why do men usually make the first move and why do women seem a lot more selective than men do when it comes to a romantic partner? There is a great deal of research on the matter, and a lot of today's psychologists and researches are trying to find out why men usually find a much bigger number of women attractive than the other way around.

It's well known that before the invention of the condoms or other contraception methods women had to be much pickier in choosing a partner due to the nature of the situation. Back then a one night stand with a badly picked counterpart could have meant just a way to quickly get the need out of their system, but for a woman it meant in most cases having to raise a child all alone with no help from a father.

Since the condom was invented that was not the issue anymore for women, but despite the level playing field the norm still exists and women still reject much more men than the other way around. Specialists started to think that this has something to do with the fact that usually men are the ones who approach women and not the other way around.

If before the invention of the condom we could say that men tried their luck with women more frequently because they had nothing to lose, now-a-days it has become just a society norm very rarely crossed by any woman who is interested in a man. In the best cases women try to let men know subliminally about the way they are feeling, but if a certain guy is too shy or lacks interest in the girl, than it all goes to waste because the feminine sex is rarely going to take matters into their own hands when it comes to this and approach men.

That's why psychologists dealing with relationship psychology tried to address this issue and find out what makes males interested in a much wider area of women, while the females always try to be very picky. Is it a gene that was passed on the generations from our ancestors or is it only a society norm which must be respected in order to be a successful part of the society?

Outstanding study results.

Dr Achim Schtzwohl, from the Department of Psychology at Brunel University in the UK and his team published a study showing that men tend to report that they have had one night stands as opposed to women who don't even express the desire to engage into casual sex. Even more, women are the ones who have higher standards when it comes to picking a sex partner in this situation.

Dr Schtzwohl and his team of researchers tried proving that the requester's physical appearance is truly important when it comes to getting a positive answer for three different offers: go out, go to their apartment and go to bed with them.

The study conducted on a total of 427 men and 433 women from various countries consisted in answering some questionnaires regarding the level of attractiveness of the requester. For each offer men offered a positive answer even if the level was pretty low, while women were very strict when it came to the looks of the requester as they were more likely to go to bed with an exceptionally attractive partner.

The study concluded that women are pickier due to their higher standards and that men even though they don't set the bar too high are not insensitive to their partner's attractiveness.

For the less successful ones when it comes to dating and finding a match, somebody invented something called speed dating. For those of you who don't know what speed dating is, know that it's a very fast way to find a match.

Participants of this relationship psychology study gather in a room at a sponsored event where the number of women is exactly the same as the number of men, and they are all given sessions of 4 minutes in which a male can sit and talk with a female, and then go to the next one, so that in a few minutes all men meet all women and they get to rate the ones they spoke with and answer a simple question with yes or no. If two "yes" gather on the "would you go out on another date" the two exchange phone numbers and then they are supposed to handle the rest by themselves.

Psychological studies.

Psychologists saw that usually men offer a much larger number of "yes" answers than women do, so the same things happens as these events as in reality. The strange thing is that, just like in reality, men have to wonder around the room while woman are sitting still scattered all over the premises. It is a very interesting game in which the man becomes the hunter and the woman willingly becomes the prey. Even though most of the times it seems like women are acting in the name of "please don't get me out of my comfort zone", sometimes they engage in this passive game of cat and mouse knowing exactly that the man is the one falling into her trap at the end of the day.

But since women rarely step up to the game, specialists decided to take a deeper look into the mysterious and very relative world that women live in. Two renowned psychologists Eli Finkel and Paul Eastwick came up with an idea which can level the fields once again. The idea was to create a number of such events and to observe the way the candidates are doing on a more controlled basis.

There were 350 participants in a total of 15 relationship psychology related events. In 7 of them women were supposed to approach males, so that the number would be closer in together. Psychologists discovered that indeed approaching somebody makes you less picky because you are already starting to feel a connection when you have to walk to that person and look him in the eye.

When females approached the guys, the number of "yes"answers the men got was indeed larger than the number they had when the women were waiting to be approached, but it was not a turn of events. It was more like a level situation. Women responded positively to men the same number of times as the "yes" answers came through from the other side. So men were not pickier but women were more interested. The only thing is that people need some sort of an impulse coming from the subconscious to open their eyes and see the picture crystal clear.

Men and women are equal and that is why the gender should never be a subject of discrimination or intimidation. We are all born the same the only thing that differentiates us is our education and personality.

After a certain age we begin to self educate ourselves and define the finest lines of our personality and conception in relation to relationship psychology. That is the moment which makes the difference between going further or stumbling over the worse possible enemy, our very own limitations.

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