Psychology of Seduction

by Jesse James

  Bars and nightclubs are teeming with beautiful young women fresh out of high school. Bursting with sexual energy, these females feel an instinctual desire to translate their sex appeal into high status. Why not help them?

  Since female partygoers compete amongst themselves for the best males, a man’s status and physical appearance trumps his words. Women who go clubbing on Saturday night seek high-status, good looking males to impress their friends. Clubs are noisy places; like children, men are seen but not heard. This is not the time to show off your knowledge of Eastern European geography.

  Nightclubs resemble grocery stores; women cruise the isles looking for tender steaks. Some men are filet mignon, others Kraft Dinner.

  Recall domain specificity. In the domain of a bar or nightclub, women notice flagrant displays of status and wealth, such as impeccable dress, dominant body language, conspicuous jewelry. The music is too loud and the scene too hectic for a man to demonstrate his superior intelligence, witty personality, or talk about his best-selling novel. Women judge by visual cues alone on Saturday night.

  Particularly vulnerable to flagrant visual status cues, women jockeying for social position amongst their friends pay particular attention to a man’s appearance. Careful grooming, fine clothes, a confident swagger and ostentatious displays of status and good genes determine a man’s success in a club environment.

  The bad news is that female rivalry increases a woman’s choosiness at a bar or nightclub because she seeks a ‘prize’ to show off to her friends. The good news is that you can exploit such rivalry by showering attention on a woman’s companions. Since women use sex to gain status, seducing a woman’s friend stirs feelings of rivalry and jealousy between the two females. Exploit it.

  Consider the ‘reverse approach.’ Suppose you observe a gorgeous blond named Sarah sitting at the bar. Surrounded by her girlfriends, the situation appears so intimidating that most men would pick the ‘low hanging fruit’ elsewhere in the bar. Instead, you approach the group boldly. Rather than flirting with Sarah, you shake up a conversation with one of her friends, occasionally tossing a mischievous glance towards the beautiful blond to communicate your interest. Ninety percent of the time Sarah will make some overture towards you, either verbal or physical, to attract your attention away from her friend. Seizing your chance, you engage both women, gradually transferring your energies more and more toward your real target. Technically Sarah approached you, so in her mind you have the power in the interaction. She wants you, not the other way around. Winning you away from her best friend represents a small social coup d’etat. The ‘reverse approach’ works best on beautiful women surrounded by slightly less attractive friends in a social environment conducive to female sexual competition.

  Women have sex to raise their social status within their circle of female friends. What girl would prefer to be Bozo the Clown’s first wife than John F. Kennedy’s third? Be JFK, not Bozo the Clown. Capiche?

  Knocked Up

  A woman consciously attempts to become pregnant when she has discussed the prospect of starting a family with a husband or long-term lover.

  The key word here is ‘consciously.’ We have already observed how women unconsciously cuckold their husbands through extramarital affairs. If the evolutionary purpose of sex is reproduction, then it makes sense that female sexual behavior will be unconsciously tuned toward the most fertile mating opportunities.

  A woman can only become pregnant when she is ovulating, a brief window of opportunity which occurs halfway throughout a woman’s cycle, approximately fourteen days after menstruation.

  Ovulating women are more sexually overt, more prone to peacocking and more receptive to casual sex than non-ovulating women. One study by Karl Grammer and Maryanne Fisher found that ovulating women are twenty-five percent more likely to initiate sex and enjoy twice as many orgasms.

  TIP: Girls Gone Fertile: How to Tell If a Woman is Ovulating

  Since ovulating women make ripe targets for seduction (especially casual sex), the aspiring seducer should keenly observe the behavioral signals of fertility. Keep an eye out for:

  Exaggerated swaying of the hips while dancing

  Excessive makeup

  Skimpy clothing with exposed skin

  Sexualized body language

  Extended eye contact

  According to sex researchers Geoffrey Miller and Brent Jordan, men can actually detect when a woman is ovulating, although the mechanism is unknown and the detection may occur unconsciously. Miller and Jordan conducted a study on tip earnings by strippers. They discovered that strippers earned $70 per hour when ovulating, while only collecting $35 an hour while menstruating and $50 in between. The researchers speculated that men were subconsciously tuned to human estrus, finding the women sexier when they were most fertile, thus giving them bigger tips.79

  Ovulating women dress for sexual success. Using digital cameras to photograph what women wore to singles bars and interviewing them afterward, German researchers found that ovulating women wear nicer and more fashionable clothes and show more skin than non-ovulating women.80 Other studies suggest that women wear more jewelry and makeup when visiting singles bars in the fertile phase of their cycle. In the Moral Animal, Robert Wright observes that ‘These adornments … have the advertising value of a chimpanzee’s pink genital swelling, attracting a number of men for the woman to choose from.’81 Flattering? Not so much.

  Women in the fertile phase of their ovulation cycle are much more likely to find heightened masculinity attractive; deeper voice, more masculine facial features, displays of dominance. Studies indicate that women prefer men with facial hair when ovulating, whereas they prefer clean-cut men in the non-fertile phase of their cycle. Ovulating women are clearly pursuing a ‘he-man’ strategy.

  TIP: Grow That Beard - Just a Little

  Facial hair signals masculinity. Women find two to three days of facial growth sexiest; perfectly clean-shaven men convey conformity and low status – perhaps your boss requires you to show up neat and tidy for work each day? Grow a big, masculine beard and you’ll look like a caveman. Several days of growth is ideal, communicating independence and self-assuredness.

  Apparently, all is fair in love and war, and women get downright mean when it comes to making babies. According to evolutionary psychologist Maryanne Fisher, women are more likely to rate other women as rivals during the fertile phase of their cycle, apparently viewing them in a more competitive context. Fisher explains, ‘There can be more catty behavior, there will be more gossiping, nit-picking and spreading of nasty stories.’82 Whereas a man might compete by physically abusing a rival, a woman will impugn her competitor’s sexual fidelity or attractiveness. ‘Look how fat her ankles are!’ said the ovulating lady.

  Women pursue increased male interaction on high-fertility days. Maryanne Fisher reports that women display more desire to attend parties and clubs where they can meet men when ovulating. Boyfriends and husbands beware; ovulating women tend to flirt with men other than their primary partners. These ladies want to cuckold with a capital C.

  Looking for an easy target for seduction? Find an ovulating female. She’s the one with a little too much makeup showing a little too much skin. Go talk to her.

  I Never Touched a Fig Leaf …

  ‘I remember the first time I had sex - I kept the receipt.’

  -Groucho Marx

  The threat of starvation – hunger - has been a persistent human concern for millions of years. The Irish potato famine killed millions. Almost twenty million Ukrainian peasants starved to death under Stalin. How many more perished during the famines of unrecorded history? The twenty-four-hour McDonald’s drive-through window is less than a century old. Not surprisingly, food and courtship go together like rice and beans.

  Women know that the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach, but food is also the path to a woman’s heart. No grocery stores, 7-11s, or Pizza Huts dotted the African Savannah during the Pleistocene Era when we
lived in hunter-gatherer tribes. Today, we take food for granted – it’s everywhere, easy to obtain, and relatively cheap. But during the human ancestral period, we spent most of our waking hours scouring the African plains for edible food. Men spent weeks on hunting expeditions for big game – fresh meat packed with calories – while women coaxed berries and nuts from the brush around camp. Hunger, or the threat of it, loomed over every tribe.

  Little wonder, then, that ancestral women associated food with sex. Berries and nuts offered too few calories to sustain an adult female and her children; she relied on men to provide the meat. What could the female offer in return for a Woolly Mammoth steak? Sex, of course. For the past two hundred thousand years, women have been trading sexual favors for meat, in one way or another. As Saul Bellow observes, ‘I never yet touched a fig leaf that didn’t turn into a price tag.’

  It may shock you that your great-great grandmother sold her virtue for a slab of buffalo meat, but women in hunter-gatherer societies demand meat for sex. Among the Siriono of Bolivia, strong hunters regularly obtain sexual benefits unavailable to weaker, meeker men. Cindy Meston writes, ‘Siriono women’s sexual attraction to men who provide meat is dramatically illustrated by the case of a man who was an unsuccessful hunter. He suffered low status, experienced ‘hunting anxiety,’ and had lost a previous wife to a man who was a better hunter. The anthropologist Allan R. Holmberg felt sorry for him, so he gave him meat, and taught him how to hunt game using a shotgun. Before long, the man’s status had risen considerably and he attracted a wife and several new sex partners. He also gained confidence and began to insult other men rather than being the butt of their insults.’83

  Male chimpanzees recognize fertile females by their pink genital swelling. In humans, ovulation is (mostly) concealed from males and even from the females themselves. Some researchers speculate that human concealed ovulation evolved as a mechanism for women to obtain a constant supply of meat. During times of food scarcity, men would reap no reproductive benefit from offering food to unfertile females. Since human males never know when females are ovulating, they must continually access the sexual resource through food procurement, guaranteeing a consistent supply of meat for both fertile and unfertile women. Jared Diamond speculates that human females might have evolved a constant state of estrus to ensure a consistent supply of meat (the edible kind) from male hunters by rewarding them with sex.84

  I do not recommend you drag a skewered pig into your favorite nightclub and present it – triumphantly, of course – to the beautiful blonde at the bar. The way to a woman’s heart is not necessarily a sizzling angus, but a nice romantic dinner makes a good impression, especially for a man seeking long-term commitment. Women universally associate ‘feed me’ with ‘fuck me.’ The dinner date often leads to copulation as the woman unconsciously feels that a filet mignon and glass of merlot earns the man some access to her sexual resource. Should you avoid the vegetarian option? Who knows.

  Men purchase sex with a slab of buffalo meat or dinner at Milo’s, a cheap investment in genetic eternity compared to the price paid by the male preying mantis. Instead of buying the meal, he becomes the meal; the female preying mantis devours her mate after sex. Emma Bovary would certainly approve. Why not have your cake and eat it too?

  The male preying mantis offers a quick source of nutrition for the expectant mother. In the insect world, if you look around the dinner table and you don’t see the main course, you might be it.

  Other animals tone down the cannibalism by offering morsels of food – other than their own bodies – to hungry females in return for sex. Consider the female hanging fly, which demands a dead insect to munch on during sex. If the male finishes his work before the female finishes her meal, he may repossess the leftovers for future romance.

  Our closest relatives, chimpanzees, apparently also exchange meat for sex on a regular basis. A recent study found that ‘Wild male chimps that share meat with females double their chances of having sex with those females.’85

  Even penguins are turning to prostitution. Penguins tend to be monogamous, but that doesn’t stop females, including those involved in committed relationships, from exchanging sexual favors with strange males for pebbles required to build their nests.86

  Female human beings are experts at having their cake and eating it too, often coming back for second helpings. A woman secures long-term support from a husband while enjoying material excess from a lover or multiple lovers who are forced to ‘bid’ for access to her sexual resource. Female fertility is a commodity bought and sold like oil, gold, or soybeans.

  Men’s raging desire for sexual variety means that women are always in short supply. Men’s short-term sexual psychology increases the value of female sexual services in the mating market. Beautiful women are always a hot commodity relative to willing men. Women exploit the high value of the female sexual resource through prostitution, sexual barter, sugar daddy dating and long-term relationships with wealthy males. SeekingArrangement, here we come.

  Sex and money go together like bees and honey. Despite modern feminism and legal efforts to curb prostitution, the association between food and sex, or money and sex, is not likely to disappear anytime soon. Programmed somewhere deep in the female psyche lingers a desire to trade sex for resources, such as food and shelter. To effectively reproduce during the Pleistocene era, a woman required more than just a load of sperm; she needed adequate nutrition for herself and her offspring. A pregnant woman or nursing mother lacked time and energy to gather berries, requiring a man to provision the food. A man’s willingness and ability to provide sustenance, measured by his generosity and hunting skill, suggested his suitability as a long-term mate. Men who demonstrate a willingness to invest in the female – by picking up the dinner tab, for example – appear more desirable as long-term mates than those who are stingy or just plain poor.

  Beautiful women expect free food. A recent study published in the Journal of Evolutionary Psychology found that good-looking women are less likely than plain women to contribute towards the bill on a first date. Researchers at St. Andrews University asked 416 men and women to rate themselves for attractiveness, then imagine going on a series of hypothetical dates. In each case, the psychologist showed the subject a picture of his ‘date,’ asking him to imagine that they had just enjoyed a meal together. ‘Who should pay?’ asked the scientist. Subjects could decide to pick up the entire tab, nominate their date to pay, or split the bill. Attractive women were less inclined to split the bill. ‘They quite literally bring more to the table, so they expect the other person to pick up the tab or expect to pay for the bill,’ explained researcher Michael Stirrat.87

  A man seeking a long-term relationship should advertise economic status and generosity by treating his potential lover to a romantic dinner at a high-end restaurant. No romantic dinner is complete without the chocolate and red wine, both of which are scientifically proven to increase female libido.

  Caveat emptor. Men interested only in casual sex should avoid the dinner date (or at least demand to split the bill!). In the St. Andrews study above, a handsome man was just as likely as an attractive woman to ask his partner to pick up the tab. Paying for dinner immediately slots you into the category of ‘provider’ rather than ‘casual sex partner.’ Especially good-looking men presumably do not need to pay for sex, relying on their good genes to attract multiple sexual liaisons for short-term affairs.

  Approaching a woman by offering to buy her something makes a man look desperate, earning him a bar tab instead of an invitation to the bedroom.

  A man should never appear cheap, stingy or poor. Poverty reeks of failure. Avoid discussing financial problems with a potential partner. Never haggle about price in front of a woman.

  We should clarify domain specificity in meat-for-sex arrangements. Long-term partners signify their parental investment qualities through lavish gifts, increasing their desirability as mates. Short-term partners offer less, but don’t put the credi
t card away just yet. In the ancestral environment, women survived by collecting food from both husbands and lovers. In the modern world, the husband buys his wife a BMW, while her lover donates a box of chocolates along with his sperm.

  Food can be used to increase attraction beyond blatant bribery for sex. Psychologists discovered that we become fonder of the people and things we experience while eating.

  During the 1930s, Gregory Razran realized that humans display a more sophisticated response to food than mere salivation, like Pavlov’s dogs. Men and women respond to a good meal with positive feelings and a sense of happiness. A TV dinner might not trigger an endorphin rush, but a rich piece of chocolate often will. By the law of association, according to Razran, we attach our pleasant feelings during a meal to virtually any stimulus we experience while eating, including other people at the table. In one experiment, Razran showed people some political statements before, during, and after a meal. His subjects approved of only the statements presented while eating. Razran realized that there are many responses to food beyond mere salivation, such as the good and favorable feeling caused by dopamine release after eating a delicious meal. Razran explained that it is possible to attach this positive feeling to anything that is closely associated with good food, from political statements to romantic lovers.88

  Even politics becomes palatable while chewing Filet Mignon, so we should hardly be surprised to learn that those positive feelings also transfer to the person sitting across from you (or next to you, or on your lap). Indeed, the romantic dinner heightens attraction, preparing couples for the main event later in the evening. The link between food and sex goes deeper than exchanging fellatio for filet mignon. Consuming good food and enjoying good sex produce similar emotional responses in the limbic system of the brain – the ancient part of the brain that hasn’t changed much in the past million years.