Sublime

social scripts favor men's sexual pleasure over women's sexual pleasure.

In 2010, researchers at the University of Amsterdam found that the effects of oxytocin seem limited to one’s own group.2 The hormone not only enhances affection for friends, it can also intensify aversion to strangers. Turns out oxytocin doesn’t fuel universal fraternity. It powers feelings of ‘my people first’.

Readers acquainted with the recent literature on human sexuality will be familiar with what we call the standard narrative of human sexual evolution (hereafter shortened to “the standard narrative”). It goes something like this: 1. Boy meets girl. 2. Boy and girl assess one another’s mate value from perspectives based upon their differing reproduct

“The more you think happiness is a social thing, the better off you are,” Brett explained to me, summarizing

a little earlier we told you the truth but not the whole truth. (Jeff’s a lawyer—what did you expect?) On the survey question on Dreaming About Black Knights, we told you we asked, “What personality attributes might be attractive in a ‘bad boy’…?” But that wasn’t the whole question. Our reason for this cruel ploy was that we wanted you to notice th

In a study of the most successful words for men to put on an online profile, ‘physically fit’ upped response rate by a whopping 96 per cent;10 in another, the number-one word for men to use on a profile was – wait for it – ‘6ft’.

Men who are highly agreeable (which is not the same as “nice”) make less money and are less frequently considered for advancement than men of low agreeableness (Judge, Livingston, and Hurst 2012).

One of the first surprising findings was the universality of the components across different groups – men and women, young and old, LGBTQ and straight, monogamous and consensually non-monogamous, kinky and “vanilla” (that is, non-kinky).