Source: http://www.askmen.com
For the typical hot-blooded male, looking at attractive female
shapes and body parts is as natural as breathing. And it’s perhaps just as
necessary when it comes to keeping the human race going. Remember, the men who
are alive today have been biologically selected over hundreds of thousands of
years to be good at focusing on fertile females.
The
biology behind the man
When a man’s visual cortex spots a woman’s hourglass figure or plunging
neckline, his eyes zoom in on her breasts, legs or derriere
for a better look. As I explain in the “Love and Lust” chapter of The Male
Brain, men have evolved to focus on certain features that indicate
reproductive health. Researchers have found that the attraction to an hourglass
figure — large breasts, small waist, flat stomach, and full hips — is ingrained
in men across all cultures. This shape tells the male brain that a prospective
mate is young, healthy and probably not pregnant by another male.
When research studies revealed that a man’s No. 1 mate detector is
visual, men all over the world were probably saying: “They had to do research
to know that?” But what most men, or women, don’t know is just how fast that iver sity of California found that
it takes the male brain only 1/5th of a second to classify a woman as sexually
hot or not. This verdict is made long before a man’s conscious thought
processes s, his pu pils dilate, his
testosterone surges, his heart rate accelerates, and he gets that glazed look
in his eyes that means the rest of the world has temporarily disappeared. This
is the male brain in “man trance.”
Designed
for sexual pursuit
The male brain is structured to push sexual pursuit to the top of his
priority list. With the area for sexual pursuit in the
male brain being 2.5 times larger than in the female and the testosterone fuel
that runs these male brain circuits being 10 to 15 times higher, it’s clear
that males have evolved to be always at-the-ready when a sexual opportunity
arises. In Mother Nature’s terms, a man’s primary job is to successfully
procreate.
Research shows that men report wanting an average of 14 sexual
partners in their lifetime, while most women in the study said they wanted an
average of 1 or 2. Researchers these
numbe rs can be chalked up to men’s interest in one-night stands. Since Mother
Nature designed men to be mating Maseratis, they come equipped with the
capacity to learn and use the mating styles that work best for them.
Why do men cheat? Sex, mating and the male brain provides some
possible answers…
For example, human males a nd females may use the dinner date in a similar fashion to their primate
cousins’ use of the “meat for sex” principle. Biologists have discovered that
in primates, females have more sex with males who bring them meat.
Primatologists have dubbed this the “meat for sex” principle. Th e males who
showed they were willing and able to provide food got more sexual access to the
females, increasing their chances of paternity.
Colorful mating styles
Of course, humans and animals have differences in their
mating strategies, but scientists have observed some curious similarities. One
of the most colorful examples of animal tactics is provided by the
side-blotched lizard (Uta stansburiana). Conveniently, the males come with
three different colored throats that match their mating styles. Males with
orange throats use the alpha-male harem strategy. They guard a group of females
and mate with all of them. The males with yellow throats are called “sneakers”
because they slip into the harem of the orange throat and mate with his females
whenever they can get away with it. The males with brilliant blue throats use
the one-and-only-strategy; they mate with one female and guard her 24/7. From a
biological perspective, the approaches of all three of these types are
successful mating strategies for lizards and have been known to work for human
males too.
In the basest way, to a male brain, winning the mating game
means getting his DNA and genes into the next generation. Even though he
isn’t consciously thinking this, the instinctual part of his brain knows that
the more women he has sex with, the more offspring he’s likely to have.
On the other hand, biology is not destiny. So even though
the male brain is geared for sexual pursuit and mating, human males possess the
power to override their primal instincts with logical reasoning courtesy of a
very large frontal cortex.
Why do men cheat?
So why do so many men cheat? Nobody
knows for sure, but we may have gleaned some clues from furry little animals
called voles. The prairie voles, which have a long version of a gene in their
brains for vasopressin receptors, are faithful stay-at-home dads. The montane essin r eceptor gene are the
philanderers. When scientists took the gene from the faithful dads and put it into
the Casanova voles, these became devoted to one mate. In a study of human males
in Sweden, those with the longer vasopressin receptor genes tended to get
married more often and stay married longer. And for reasons that we still don’t
know, married men live 1.7 years longer. But as my patient Tom says in the
“Mature Male Brain” chapter: “Those extra years better be damned good!”
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