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Do women’s mate preferences change across the ovulatory cycle? (2014) [pdf]

https://www.martiehaselton.com/_files/ugd/3ae410_aeb76edab75f457aae0c14c4c68d93c0.pdf
32•rzk•2h ago

Comments

sameersri2004•2h ago
Yes, it does from follicular to ovulation...
mike_hock•1h ago
Do women keep changing their settings in that Gnome 2 fork over the course of their ovulatory cycle?

Oh, that kind of mate.

bombcar•1h ago
I was hoping for chess moves, myself.
warumdarum•1h ago
The ovulatory cycle where a peasant becomes a queen.
Hnrobert42•1h ago
It's 2026, and I still can't read a PDF on mobile.

I must be doing something wrong. I'm using FF Focus. Is that it? I tried Safari. Either they moved the reader button, or it's not present for PDFs. Help me Obi-Wan.

bestouff•56m ago
Under Firefox Focus I can read it if I manually zoom and scroll. Not ideal.
leoncos•1h ago
Many behaviors are determined by hormones. Men are no exception. When calm, men tend to prefer intellectual women, but when they're impulsive after drinking in a bar, they prefer sexy women.
dnnddidiej•1h ago
It is OK! Don't forget we are animals first. Obviously we need that neocortex to keep decisions in check!
rusk•44m ago
In my experience it’s usually the other way around
iberator•42m ago
Women with higher testosterone levels prefer more risks.

For example: when women are starting dating and fell in love: their testosterone level go up for 2 months

Scroll_Swe•20m ago
>determined by hormones

>but when they're impulsive after drinking in a bar

Is alcohol hormones?

What is an "intellectual women"?

What is a "sexy women"?

Also, where are you from? Getting a very thirdy worldy "ESL" vibe from your post. Europe? USA? Canada? Australia? No?

I can assure you, where I am in Sweden, there are plenty of women who are intellectual and sexy.

Also, I have never ever in my life been attracted to some kind of bimbo "sexy" woman as often stereotyped. Especially the Kim Kardashian type, I feel it is a very african american style of woman.

Just like how some women like skinny men and some like burly ones.

block_dagger•1h ago
Findings of TFA: Yes.

Women show a robust increase in attraction to cues of ancestral genetic quality (body masculinity, behavioral dominance) on high-fertility days, but only when evaluating men as short-term/unspecified sexual partners, not long-term partners.

andyferris•37m ago
Can we summarize this as "people get horny sometimes" and "ovulating people get horny"? Or is that too reductive?
corwinxpro•16m ago
"ovulating people"? I wonder...
acters•12m ago
I am guessing they are trying to make a distinction from mental horny vs physical horny
usrnm•25m ago
Which only supports my belief that with the proliferation of contraception tying sex and long-term partnership together is becoming a useless anachronism
Nzen•1h ago
I don't know what an ovulatory cycle feels like; but, I trust Lindsay Doe's account [0] of how she feels across a given period.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uLXxxHVOeec 11 minutes

Jensson•34m ago
It probably feels a bit like before and after ejaculation for a man, just it happens way quicker for men. Pretty sure if you studied that you'd find mens preferences in women changes a lot as well.
zug_zug•50m ago
This research is one of the important studies in my own understanding of the world. I think it's the type of thing people are cautious to talk about too much because it might drive a certain type of person crazy and lead them to overcompensate in weird/destructive ways.

I also remember there's a study on how hormonal birth control (which causes the body to perceive itself as pregnant) affects these preferences too. In some ways we really are "experimenting on production." I also think there's some hesitation to talk about that a lot and come-across as anti-choice.

But beliefs must come from the research, not vice-versa.

K0balt•18m ago
In the end we’re just improvements on the worm/tube plan, and we run things based on chemical soup that is mostly inside our bodies these days, but whose composition has a significant influence on our behavior. Thats why it’s great to have a neocortex, so we con at least be marginally in control of our decisions if we maintain a consistent effort to do so.

But yeah, in my empirical experience, moon phases, ovolatory cycles, hormone manipulation therapies… all have a gigantic impact on our base physiological and psychological state. I live in a place where the insects operate on a lunar phase, and the plants proactively change their operations in that rhythm to match. You can taste and see the difference in tree sap here based on the lunar phase, it becomes thicker, darker, and more bitter days in advance of the insect hatching.

Why would we think we are somehow a special exception from the web of life that created us?

arowthway•14m ago
I love evolutionary psychology trivia but for me it's kind of hard to meaningfully fit 0.13 standard deviation shift in preferences into my world model.
hambes•31m ago
I am not scientist enough to judge this, so please someone enlighten me: most categories i've read through that find a shift do so with an increase of about 0.1-0.2 standard deviations. that does not sound significant to me. is that enough to make the claims this study makes?

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Do women’s mate preferences change across the ovulatory cycle? (2014) [pdf]

https://www.martiehaselton.com/_files/ugd/3ae410_aeb76edab75f457aae0c14c4c68d93c0.pdf
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