Introduction
Hookup culture is widely known throughout the American population. And in modern day hookup culture, both men and women are participating, and with less “stigma” attached. Yet there still is a stigma attached, “Young women talk about bad sex and a lack of intimacy, about the scarcity of relationships, and the persistent double standard in which women who hook up are judged while men who do the same have scored” (Sales, 234)
As Nancy Jo Sales explains in her book, American Girls, “’hookup culture’ is not a phrase that’s used to describe a blissful state of free love in which men and women enjoy each other sexually in an atmosphere of mutual respect. It’s not free love as envisioned by utopians and feminists of the past. The term has acquired a negative connotation” (234)
I am only going to be speaking of the relationship of male to female. And so while there are also much research and data about attraction to same sex, no sex, of trans, the purpose of this article is to shine light on the biological reasons (biological reasons of attraction to the opposite gender) of why the hookup culture is so prominent in the American culture.
I separate into two sections: physical captivation and the emotional & neurological trend.
Physical Captivation
I am first going to look at the first thing a person generally sees in another person, their physical appearance. I do not mean, in any way, that this is the most important, but yes that this is generally the first thing we see. And so, I am going to present some of each sex’s attraction to the opposite sex.
What Men are Attracted to
It is a trend today for women to want a more curvy body - take Kim Kardashian, Ashley Graham, Marilyn Monroe – and there might be a biological reason to why this trend is so popular. I did some research on the biological differences between men and women and this is what I found: healthy, in terms of reproductive health, is generally seen as very positive. Shocking, right? According to Nigel Barber, “women compete with each other, all in the name of higher mating results, for the most qualified and high-quality husband” (Barber, 399). Thus, they have to advertise their health, and reproductive health for women is seen in the distribution of fat reserves, mainly on the hips and thighs and the breasts. Exaggerating these features would mean a woman is the most “prime mate” for a man to pass on his offspring.
Also, the desire to look younger is in demand. This is because women have a limited reproductive lifespan, and so looking younger gives off the healthier reproductive “look” that is desired. It is all a “façade” game. Thus, the growth of Botox and plastic surgery, is somewhat explained. And have you ever wondered why shaving and waxing everything has grown so much over the years (LINK). Again, it is to enhance that youthful look that men’s primal instincts desire, of having the ripest fruit.
Now that we have examined what makes women attractive to men, I’m going to flip the position.
What Women are Attracted to
The following is what makes a man attractive to a woman, biologically. Unfortunately, the stereotype that men who expose higher dominance is based on women’s biological preferences and needs.
But first, this attraction is changing because of our evolution and social expectations, and there are many amazing articles stating how the role of the man is changing, and how we, as a society are expected to treat them. Such as:
“Consider the following scenario: two men are becoming friends on the basis of a shared interest and frequent social contact. After a while, each man may have the desire to expand and deepen the friendship, which would involve communicating information that is more personal. Of course, neither one knows that the other has the same desire, and both may believe that men should not talk about their families, feelings, or fears. Therefore, each man continues to play a stereotypical masculine role by talking only about sports or work and maintaining emotional distance whenever he sees the other man. A rigid behavioral pattern is established, and the stereotypical view that men are only interested in sports and work becomes a self-fulfilling reality for these men and for people who observe them. Each man has behaved in a way that confirms the other's expectations. This example illustrates that there is a significant component of social performance in gender; outward behavior does not necessarily correspond with inner reality” (Kilmartin, 32)
Innately, women wish for a man that will give long-term stability and advantages to them. A man’s physical appearance tends to communicate social dominance because they need to attract their mate, and to compete with rivalry reproductive opponents. It is not necessarily that a woman is attracted to the social dominance aspect of the look, but that a man built strongly ultimately gives off the impression of power. And this can be a positive aspect because it shows that the man is healthy enough to sustain muscles and assurance, and as Nigel Barber states, “in addition to their attractiveness and intimadatory effects, human secondary sexual characters also provide cues to hormonal status and phenotypic quality consistent with the good genes model of sexual selection (which includes parasite resistance) (395). Part of the look that is attractive to women is the wide shoulders, built chest, and a squared, but of course defined, lower body. This favors the masculine reproductive function. Attractiveness, ultimately, comes down to how reproductively composed a person is.
Yet there is also an interesting point on how women react to when a man comes off as “too strong” too fast. Biologically, a woman would be attracted to a man who has extravagant signals, because it means he is healthy in other aspects, so he can expand resources in creating grandiose sexual spectacles. This notion is based on Zahavi’s handicap principle, “that exaggerated sexual signals, such as the antlers of male deer, reduce the probability of survival. The antlers are an indirect advertisement of physiological and behavioral traits supporting survival and the good genotype responsible for these traits. (Barber, 400)
And using a social construct example to build on this point, we see that extremes, in our generation, are not always the most sought. Thus, to bring back biology, symmetry is a desired trait, above that of exaggerated sexual signals, and so in the choice of one over the other, women generally choose symmetry. Simple perfection wins over exaggerated ugliness, right? Nigel Barber quotes from Thornhill & Gangestad and Watson & Thornhill that
“traits that approximate population means should generally be more attractive than extremes. If an exaggerated sexual trait is asymmetrical, it could even prove to be more negative than one who does not have such an exaggerated epigamic trait, but who is perfectly symmetrical, as ‘The size of epigamic traits will be positively correlated with their symmetry’” (Barber, 400).
It is also interesting to note that just because a man has developed the ability to have a greater epigamic trait, does not mean that he is perfectly symmetrical in other features, as “it has been found that the size of secondary sexual traits is positively correlated with their symmetry while for other bodily traits the correlation is zero or negative” (400).
Thus, the perfect man is that one who has exaggerated epigamic traits, and who is perfectly symmetrical.
Selectivity of Women towards Men
Women are known to be more selective and less present in hookup culture. (Though this is changing!) And it is common knowledge that women are less present because of the “biological” risks it carries (unwanted pregnancy). Daly and Wilson describe the two major consequences of having greater female investment, “First, having many mates does not increase a female's reproductive success. Second, the number of offspring produced by a female is rather predictable […] while male reproductive success varies considerably because it is a function of the number of mates copulated with and some males mate with several females while others fail to mate at all and leave no offspring. The latter finding indicates that there is intense selection pressure for males with respect to frequency of insemination (Barber, 396)
The point of a woman, biologically, to engage with a partner sexually, is to produce an offspring. An offspring that is strongest and healthiest is most desired (yes, Darwin’s natural selection theory). And so the focus for a woman is to acquire a mate with the best genotype, and that can give most paternal investment.
This is an interesting point Nigel Barber brings up:
Moreover, there is evidence that women are not passive in mate selection. Study of dating behavior in bars indicates that they (1) tend to be the initiators and terminators of interactions, (2) arc skilled in, and aware of, their use of body language, and (3) successfully mislead men into thinking that they have controlled the encounter (Grammer 1989). This behavioral evidence indicates that natural selection has favored women who were successful in the control of courtship and has equipped them with an effective nonverbal communication system that facilitates this. Contrary to the prevailing pattern in the animal world, the ground rules of human mating evidently involve a mixture of eagerness and discrimination on the part of both sexes. (398)
And this weaves in beautifully to our modern hookup culture, and relationships in general. These are fun little pieces to read about a woman’s perspective on being controlling and a man’s perspective on being controlled.
Modern day views of relationships and hooking up are that the women are the ones who have the power to maintain a relationship or break it. It is all in the woman’s hand. This article is an alluring read of a man’s perceptive on the “power struggle” of man vs. woman. And in doing some research I found this very interesting find, “that women are not passive in mate selection” (Barber, 398).
Study of dating behavior in bars indicates that they (1) tend to be the initiators and terminators of interactions, (2) are skilled in, and aware of, their use of body language, and (3) successfully mislead men into thinking that they have controlled the encounter (Grammer 1989).
This behavioral evidence indicates that natural selection has favored women who were successful in the control of courtship and has equipped them with an effective nonverbal communication system that facilitates this. Contrary to the prevailing pattern in the animal world, the ground rules of human mating evidently involve a mixture of eagerness and discrimination on the part of both sexes. (398)
A compelling read, if you ever get the chance, is Aziz Ansari’s, Love, Online Dating, Modern Romance, and the Internet. It talks about the modern age relationships and hooking up, and how we define it and how it happens, all through on line sites. An example I want to take is one in which a man’s attitude towards approaching women changes after receiving many negative responses. It shows the different tactics two Indian men approach women– one (Arpan) got exhausted in putting effort without getting the reward. It causes him to change perspective and manners:
“Arpan then described his descent into darkness. He said that initially he would spend a lot of time crafting enticing personal notes to women, his logic being that women receive so many messages that he had to do something to stand out from the crowd in their inboxes. Eventually, though, the return on investment was too low to justify all that time and energy. He would spend all this time being thoughtful but then felt like the women would just dismiss him based on looks or some other variable” (92).
And the other guy, Dinesh, had a different approach to dating, not doing the online version. And he has a stable relationship. He was comfortable and relaxed as opposed to the men who were “viciously” using dating apps. This shows a point of the impact of media in our lives, but I want to look at the responses of the women in these cases. Firstly, in a study women get more messages than men, women tend to get 50 new messages per day. Ansari states: “In online dating women get a ton more attention than men” (88). This continues the idea that women truly are more selective. They need to find the “perfect” man to go out and make contact.
Finally, women have to put on another lens to choose a partner, and that is in the long-term capability to invest in children, and as which Nigel Barber puts, “which manifests itself in social dominance behavior, social status indicators, and material or economic resources of the man. (Buss 1994; Symons 1979)” (398). This selectivity influences their hookup culture because they do have to think of this. Of course, protection against unwanted pregnancy is on a rise, and is giving women much more chances to engage in this area, but this idea is still innately present in women’s minds.
Selectivity of Men towards Women
Now, for a man, hooking up is something fun and easy to do. This quote, “it allows for minimal time commitment, minimal emotional attachment (meaning less chance of getting heartbroken), and lots of physical pleasure” is what I feel most men believe about hookup culture, that it is all positives for the time they are living (thought catalog). This article is very interesting to get an idea of how socially constructed our society is. Looking at just the biological standpoint, this easy interaction is kind of true. Unlike women, men want to have as much sexual partners to spread their genes. And in our monogamist culture, that makes it hard for men to express their “primal instincts”.
Thus, as Barber quoted, “Behaviorally, this manifests itself as "undiscriminatory eagerness in the males and a discriminatory passivity in the females" (397).
It is easier for a man to find a woman in hooking up because that is all they are searching for, for a hot, beautiful woman who will give them pleasure. This finding shows that because men do not have the need, biologically, to take care of a baby, they only focus on economics, thus becoming more independent in that area, and as a result have to focus more on good genes to spread on their own genes.
While men are also sensitive to the social status and economic prospects of a potential spouse, economics is less important than physical attractiveness. A variety of evidence from personals columns to patterns of marriage up the social scale indicates a cross-assortment between wealthy men and physically attractive women, indicating that these are the most desirable as mates (Buss 1994; Symons 1979)” (398).
The “problem” with hookup culture is that we tend to look only at the physical aspect. Hook up culture has not the first priority of building long-term relationships, but rather to get simple and easy pleasure. So naturally appearances matter, at least if you ask a bunch of men looking for some girls to pick up (and naturally the other way around too, we are in the 21st century!). And I did find some biological evidence for this:
“While both sexes say that personality attributes such as kindness, a sense of humor, and intelligence are of primary importance (Buss1989), study of dating behavior of college students found that dating desirability for both sexes was independent of personality traits and was strongly predicted by physical attractiveness (Walster et al. 1966). The apparent discrepancy between the self-report data, which was obtained in 37 different cultures, and the behavioral data can be reconciled if it is assumed that physically attractive people are perceived as having desirable personality traits, a halo effect that is well established in the social psychological literature” (Jackson 1992). (Nigel, 398)
Of course, do not get discouraged because for every person there is a beautiful other. That’s the beauty about beauty, it is very subjective.
Emotional & Neurological Trend
In this section, I am going to look more at behaviors and internal differences between the sexes.
Emotional + Behavioral Responses in Men
This article is an emotional testimony of three men towards hooking up. It gives a more socially constructed example of how they behave, but nevertheless some of their behaviors are innate to their biology.
David C. Geary made a fascinating find about the different emotional responses between sexes. Men tend to make less direct face contact, have less a shorter duration of the contact, and in an experiment of sex differences in nonverbal behavior, Haviland and Malatesta noted that “the earliest age for which this is reported is one day” (189). Besides that, boys tend to report fewer expressions than women (2 against 4, on average), and the two are expressions of “knit brow and enjoyment” (Malatesta, 994). This shows that ever since a young age, men tend to have fewer expressions, thus less internal confusion. Along these lines, they tend to be more direct. I am going to relate this directness with how they tend to behave in hookup culture, that they see something they like, they are going to show enjoyment, and go for it; something that confuses them or they do not necessarily like, they drop it. Most times it is a question of yes or no, go for it or not. This is an interesting modern article on what the average modern man says he is attracted to.
Another surprising find is that “boys and men gaze-avert much more frequently than girls and women, a sex difference that has been found as early as 6 months of age” (Malatesta). Does this not give a reason as to why most men tend to look and “check out” a girl most often? They have done it since the age of 6 months!
Emotional + Behavioral Responses in Women
Girls have a higher distribution of expression, with four categories: knit brow, interest, anger, and enjoyment. Thus they display since an early age, a higher tolerance and distinguishability for emotional responses that justifies their commonly known indecisiveness and contemplative behavior in participating in hookup culture.
In a review of sex differences in nonverbal behavior, Haviland and Malatesta (1981) noted that “there is no doubt that girls and women establish and maintain eye contact more than boys and men. The earliest age for which this is reported is one day” (p. 189). This exemplifies the larger need for contact and response. This can also explain why women tend to talk more while men usually get frustrated.
Girls also tend to “react with greater empathy to the distress of other people than infant boys do” (Hoffman, 218).
“In both studies, girls responded to the distress of other people with greater empathic concern than boys did, which is defined as “emotional arousal that appears to reflect sympathetic concern for the victim . . . manifested in facial or vocal expressions (e.g., sad looks, sympathetic statements . . .) or gestures” (Zahn-Waxler, Radke-Yarrow, et al., 129). In one of the studies, girls also responded to the distressed individual with more prosocial behavior (e.g., comforting) and engaged in more information-seeking behaviors (e.g., “What’s wrong?”) than boys did. Boys, in contrast, were unresponsive or affectively indifferent to the victim’s distress more frequently than girls were.” (219)
In relating to hooking up, this can explain why women also tend to overthink more. It is innate and common for a woman to think about the effects her actions will have.
Behavioral Influences of Genetics, Hormones and Neurons
This is an intriguing article on the neurological differences occurring in men and women’s brains. It discerns the reasons why women give more detailed stories, why men are more aggressive and action oriented, why women are more sensitive to their surroundings. It is an interesting article to read to gain primary knowledge on how each sexes brain differs.
Arthur Arnold’s thesis on Genetically Triggered Sexual Differentiation of the Brain and Behavior explores that some differences between sexes is determined by a genetic factor, not only hormonal. Thus to explain the findings of The Genetics of Sex Differences in Brain and Behavior (Ngun et al), I want to explain Arnold’s findings: because of the need to find a mate, evolution made it so some aspects of the male and female brains would adapt to their specific needs. For example,
“inmost Passerine birds, males of the species sing more complex songs and/or more frequently than females, and the brain regions controlling song are larger in males. However, this neural dimorphism is not found in some Passerine species in which male and female song is roughly equivalent (Brenowitz, Arnold, and Levin, 1985). During the course of evolution, then, different brain regions evolve (gain or lose) sensitivity to the molecular mechanisms that initiate dimorphic development. Since the initiating molecular signal is usually thought to be gonadal steroid or steroids, we envision that to become sexually differentiated, a brain region must evolve sensitivity to a steroid that is secreted at different levels in males and females. If, for example, conditions exists that favor dimorphic parental behavior in the course of evolution, then the neural circuits responsible for parental behavior may become sexually dimorphic if they evolve the ability to express the appropriate steroid receptors that enable the growth of these brain regions to respond to a steroid hormone present in one sex, so that growth of these regions is greater in that sex. (Arnold, 497)
They also tested the idea of hormonal effects on sex differentiation by exposing “female guinea pig fetuses to testosterone, and found that as adults the females were permanently more masculine (showed more masculine copulatory behaviors) and less feminine (showed less lordosis behavior)” (495).
The Genetics of Sex Differenced in Brain and Behavior is an compelling experiment and investigation of why each sex acts in a different way based on “direct genetic effects” which are the “effects arisen from the expression of X and Y genes within non-gonadal cells and result in sex differences in the functions of those cells” (Ngun)
They experimented on rats and these were the findings:
Structure: Sexually dimorphic nucleus of the preoptic area (SDN-POA)
Effect: The POA is implicated in the regulation of male copulatory behavior. Lesions of the SDN alone slow acquisition of this behavior.
Difference: 2.6 times larger in males. Perinatal aromatized androgen decreases neuronal apoptotic rates in males.
Correlation with Hooking Up: The average man will tend to have more sexual impulses than the average woman.
Structure: Bed nucleus of stria terminalis (BNST)
Effect: Plays a role in the control of male sexual behavior, release of gonadotropin, and modulation of stress.
Difference: The principal nucleus (BNSTp) is larger in volume in males. The larger volume in males is due to sexually different apoptotic rates caused by testosterone.
Correlation with Hooking Up: If men have a larger volume, they will carry more of this effect, and relates to their stress regulation, and generally women are thought to be more stressed.
Structure: Amygdala
Effect: Strongly associated with emotion, decision-making and Pavlovian conditioning (LINK 4)
Difference: Treatment of females with estradiol masculinizes this nucleus
The posterodorsal aspect of the medial amygdala is 65% larger in males
Activational effects of circulating androgens (usually a steroid hormone that promotes male secondary sex characters, i.e. testosterone & androsterone) (thefreedictionary) Larger region in males
Correlation with Hooking Up: Promotes "male" sex characteristics that are proven to cause more aggression and impulsive behavior. Relating to hooking up, because that is the expected male role, to be the first one to make a move (though society and knowledge is changing these "roles"!)
(Ngun, 228)
*the correlation with hooking up are my references, not part of the findings of the experiment.
Conclusion
Ultimately I am not saying that we should follow our biological instincts. That would get us nowhere and completely undermine our evolution. But I do believe that our “innate” instincts and behaviors do give us an understanding, a reason, as to why some behaviors are so prominent across a sex. With the intelligence humans have today, we can medically and technologically create “anything” we want. We can even make a robot that behaves like a human being . So with this article I wanted to demonstrate biological determined behaviors that are specific to the basic binary sexes, male and female.
It is hookup culture, and this is not something that has to necessarily be long-term, so do what your gut tells you, literally (biological determinism), but do not forget about your brain (men and women as there can always be consequences). Hooking up preferences may have a biological viewpoint, but we also are in the 21st century, and so evolution has changed us a lot, so do what you feel is right for you.
Works Cited
Arnold, Arthur P. "Genetically Triggered Sexual Differentiation of Brain and Behavior. "Hormones and Behavior, vol. 30, no. 4, 1996, pp. 495-505.
Barber, Nigel. "The Evolutionary Psychology of Physical Attractiveness: Sexual Selection and Human Morphology." Ethology and Sociobiology, vol. 16, no. 5, 1995, pp. 395-424.
Daly, Martin and Margo Wilson, Sex, Evolution, and Behavior (Second edition). Boston PWS Publishers, 1983.
Geary, David C. Male, Female: The Evolution of Human Sex Differences. American Psychological Association, Washington, D.C, 2010;2009;, doi:10.1037/12072-000.
Kilmartin, Christopher. The Masculine Self. New York: Macmillan, 1994. Print.
Malatesta, Carol Zander, and Jeannette M. Haviland. “Learning Display Rules: The Socialization of Emotion Expression in Infancy.” Child Development, vol. 53, no. 4, 1982, pp. 991–1003. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/1129139.
Ngun, Tuck C., et al. "The Genetics of Sex Differences in Brain and Behavior." Frontiers in Neuroendocrinology, vol. 32, no. 2, 2011, pp. 227-246.
Sales, Nancy J. American Girls: Social Media and the Secret Lives of Teenagers. Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 2016.
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