Hey guys and girls! I'm finishing up my master's and will be doing a research experiment/survey on attraction/dating. There are so many things that I am interested in that I'm having trouble deciding what I want to study, so I pose this question to you: if i could create a study to find out the answers, what would you
guys want to know about attraction, dating, relationships, etc...

Don't worry about how feasible it would be to research the topic, I will work on that part. I appreciate your suggestions guys...and let's keep this on topic. Thanks in advance guys!

~B

could be either hobbit. it all depends on what i intend to study. i'm open to suggestions from both

I have a pretty fun idea for a study, similar to a famous one I'm sure you'll have heard of before.

Go in the lab and have female volunteers answer a questionnaire about what qualities they want in their ideal man, and rate descriptions and photos of men on various scales. Chances are, they'll self-report things like having a stable job, being nice to them, buying them flowers, giving them compliments, not pushing for sex, all that crap we know isn't true. The questionnaire should also specifically ask how well she would respond to things like: a man having other women in his life and not treating you as any different or special, a man who gives you a compliment that is also somewhat of a backhanded insult, a man who thinks that you should be chasing him and trying to win his affection, etc. They'll probably report that they would respond overwhelmingly negatively to these things.

Then, when they leave the lab, you cunningly have placed a PUA outside to intercept them and strike up a conversation. You can have him either mimick the traits she described positively (e.g. give her a compliment, ask her out on a date or something gay like that), or those that she described negatively (neg her, don't give her compliments, sexually escalate quickly, etc.) He can then report how well she responded to those elements of his game.

It would be a good idea to have a second group where the PUA opens them before they arrive in the lab, rather than after, in case their answers in the lab might affect their response to the PUA, and vice versa.

This would be an excellent way to reinforce the point that what women actually respond to is more often than not totally different to what they say they would respond to, which is based on what they've been told by society they should want.

I was thinking something similar to your idea of having women list the attributes they look for in a guy. Previous studies have shown that the 5 most important things women look for in a partner (in order of importance) are physical attractiveness, honesty, sense of humor, dependability, and intelligence.

So I could start off with something like that. However I don't think the whole pua idea would work. Every convo can be different due to individual experiences and characteristics.

So I'm trying to think of a more unique way to apply the info women give about what they want.

Another idea was to explore the true importance of physical attractiveness of men. Everyone says that men are more visual and value looks in girls. Women value looks too but less so than guys because they place a higher weight on other attributes.

So I could do a study where women would look at two profiles of guys, one pre-screened and tested to be highly attractive and one pre-screened and tested to be less attractive. There will be a write up about both guys and the less attractive guy will be described with a bunch of positive characteristic (one's that women say they value highly). The very attractive guy will be described in a less favorable light (not horrible, but not possessing the traits women say they want).

Then women will have to pick which guy they would rather
1. have sex with
2. date
3. marry

And they will do this with about 10-15 sets of profiles. Hopefully it will either show that women generally pick more attractive men despite the lack of other desirable traits which shows they value looks over personality (debunking the current thought process) OR they will generally pick the less attractive guy which supports the notion that women value looks less than other attributes (which means they value personality more).

What do you guys think?

Personally, I would find that very interesting. But I think what would be even better is expanding it even more to the point where you have different degree's of each.
I will try to explain what I mean, but I have no background in this type of research
A few different guys selected purely for their physical attractiveness (for the sake of explaining, it will be from 3-10, 10 being the most attractive).
Then, you write a short profile of the guys (not very good, average, very good) and then mix and match the physical and personality something like this:
(physical first, then personality)
3:not good
3:average
3:very good
7:not good
7:average
7:very good
10:not good
10:average
10:very good

That set up would require 3 variants of each profile (so that each attractive level has a semi unique story) and you would also need 3 variants of each level of physical attractiveness.
Then you simply expose the tests to as many women (and homosexual men if you wanted to look into that for comparison).
Tests i would want to see is things like (all on a 1-10 depending on how strongly they feel about it):
I would want to have sex with this person
I would want to date this person
I would want to marry a person like this
I would feel this person is out of my league
I feel I am too good for this person
I feel it is likely this person is better than they seem
I feel this person is worse than they seem
etc etc

Is this over ambitious or not a large enough scope for your project bonita?

Hey Madals, thanks for the input. I like your ideas! And I totally see what you mean with the 3,7,10 part. I'll look into incorporating your suggestions into my study. Thanks a bunch!

~B

I liked the idea about trying to predict what guy a girl will be attracted to...forgot who said that.

Personally I'd be interested in hearing girl's stories about how they ended up in crazy sexual situations like fucking in the bathroom, threesomes, ect... and with a guy who isn't their boyfriend or FB. Create some sort of blueprint for this.

I was talking to my sthocastic calculus prof about how is hard to get some stuff on statistics. Attraction is particullary hard because there are a lot of different behaviors and variables that can dramaticly change the outcome. Even with a really big data set, like the one that the Kynsey Institute people has, you cant make strong conclusions.

I read something here about predicting whats attractive for a person. I would aproach it with some regression analisys, but that would be terribly bad, you'll need to speculate a lot on causality, and you would have to control for a gazillion things. I dont recommend you to do anything like that, unless if your teachers and whoever evaluates your work dont know shit about statistics.

I think that the couple ideas for the survey are kind of good, but they could be easly be misleading. You need to limit the extent of any experiment on this subject.

For example if you are studying attraction, you need to be more specific, like on first impression non verbal traits. You show pics and vids of men to a representative sample of women, and you use a defined set of trait (for example the alpha male traits) and get a pick with every possible combination of the traits and the lack of them. Then you make them rate the pics, I recommed you to use a scale from 0 to 4 to keep is statistically simple.

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