Why boasting online gives you same boost as sex

Boasting about yourself, particulary on social networking sites such as Facebook or Twitter, really does make you feel better, a study has suggested.

Experts said the findings might explain why many people disclose personal, and sometimes intimate, details about themselves online Photo: ALAMY

11:45AM BST 10 May 2012

Neuroscientists found that those who frequently spoke about themselves receive similar pleasures sparked by food, chocolate money or even sex.

Harvard University researchers concluded these actions light up the same areas of the brain which react to rewards.

The study, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), found that sharing your thoughts had “intrinsic value”.

Participants in the research were also so intent on documenting achievements they would rather forgo money than give up their ability to boast about their successes.

The findings also apply to those people who talk about their successes in person as well as on social networks

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Experts said the findings might explain why many people disclose personal, and sometimes intimate, details about themselves online.
Previous studies have found that 30 to 40 per cent of human speech is used to relay information about private experiences or personal relationships.
This compared to four in five posts on social media sites were found to be about a person's immediate experience.
"The Internet has drastically expanded the number of mediums through which we can talk about ourselves to other people," said Diana Tamir, a graduate student who led the study.
"We were interested in why people engage in self-disclosure so seemingly excessively.
“The hypothesis we wanted to test was whether or not this behaviour provided people with intrinsic or subjective value - did it feel good to do it."
She added: “This helps to explain why people so obsessively engage in this behaviour. It's because it provides them with some sort of subjective value. It feels good, basically.”
The team conducted five experiments on almost 300 people most of them from in and around the university.
The researchers used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scanners to monitor brain activity in subjects as they were asked to discuss their own beliefs and thoughts as well as their peers.
They discovered that when they spoke about themselves, there was greater activity in the meso-limbic dopamine system of the brain than when they spoke about someone else.
The results showed that by talking about themselves, it linked to the brain that sparks rewards from sex, winning money or enjoying a good meal.
"Self-disclosure is a behaviour that we do all of the time, day in and day out. When you talk to people, they'll often talk about themselves," Miss Tamir said.
"On Twitter and Facebook, people are primarily posting about what they're thinking and feeling in the moment. This is one piece of evidence about why we may do that.
“You might think that gregarious people are more highly rewarded but shy people also like to share their thoughts.”
In a separate test the Harvard team offered the test subjects small amounts of money if they answered questions about somebody other than themselves, such as US President Barack Obama.
But they regularly opted to relinquish between 17 per cent and 25 per cent of their potential earnings just to boast about their own lives.

In blink of an eye, our 'gaydar' clicks into action

Most people possess an automatic ability to assess sexual orientation in less time than it takes to blink, research has shown.

Joshua Tabak, of the University of Washington, said: 'the ability to spontaneously assess sexual orientation based on observation or instinct conflicts with the notion that if people kept their sexuality quiet discrimination would not be an issue' Photo: Rex

7:22AM BST 16 May 2012

In tests, scientists found that the ability – popularly known as a person's "gaydar" – works on a subconscious level and is more accurate when directed at women.

Volunteers asked to distinguish between photos of heterosexual and homosexual faces were able to do so in just 50 milliseconds – a third of the time it takes to blink. Their accuracy remained greater than chance even when the photos were upside down.

For women's faces, participants were 65 per cent accurate in guessing sexual orientation when the photos were briefly flashed on a computer screen.

Differentiating between homosexual and heterosexual men proved harder: participants got the answer right only 57 per cent of the time.

The research, published in the online journal Public Library of Science ONE, involved 129 students.

They were each shown 96 photos of young men and women who identified themselves as homosexual or heterosexual. Joshua Tabak, a psychologist at the University of Washington who led the study, said: "It may be similar to how we don't have to think about whether someone is a man or a woman or black or white. This information confronts us in everyday life."
Only photos of people without "give away" clues such as facial hair, make–up or piercings were used. The photos were also cropped so that only faces, not hairstyles, were visible. When the faces were flipped upside down, the accuracy of the guesses slipped a little but remained statistically above chance.
The researchers said there were more "false alarm" errors involving photos of men, meaning participants were more likely to make the mistake of thinking a heterosexual man was homosexual.
Mr Tabak said he suspected this may be because people were more familiar with the concept of homosexual men than with lesbians.
Volunteers may therefore have taken a more liberal, pro–homosexual, view of men's faces.
Not everyone possesses the ability, the research suggested. The tests showed there were "always a small number of people with no ability to distinguish gay and straight faces", said MrTabak. People from older generations, or cultures where homosexuality is not openly recognised, may have more difficulty making judgments of sexual orientation, he said

'A glance may show if someone is gay'

The Daily Telegraph boldly and erroneously reports that “women really do have a 'gaydar' which allows them to tell someone's sexuality 'in the blink of an eye'”, while the Sun informs us that “most people have a ‘gaydar’”.
This story is based on a study that looked at how accurately people can judge someone’s sexual orientation from their face. In two experiments, researchers investigated how accurately US college students judged whether someone was ‘gay’ or ‘straight’ after quickly glancing at a photo. The research found that students were able correctly to determine sexual orientation slightly more often than could be put down to chance. It found that students were able to identify a woman’s sexuality correctly 65% of the time, and a man’s sexuality correctly 57% of the time. The research suggests that people may unconsciously make judgements about sexual orientation when seeing a face for the first time.
Based on this study, the headline that "most people have a gaydar" is misleading. Limited conclusions can be drawn from this small and highly artificial study as accuracy was only just better than chance. In order to draw firm conclusions, larger studies that include people of different ages and from different backgrounds are required. The type of study used does not consider the influence of other factors that could contribute to how a person makes quick decisions about another person’s sexuality and it is not clear whether quick judgements about a person’s sexuality occur in real life.
It is important to note that guessing another person’s sexuality may be a sensitive area. This study does not explore the consequences of making quick judgements about another person’s sexuality. It does show that a subjective snap judgement of someone’s sexuality based on their appearance has a good chance of being wrong. Making decisions on such snap judgements is ill advised, even if you think you have a great ‘gaydar’.

Where did the story come from?

The study was carried out by researchers from the University of Washington and Cornell University, US. It was funded by grants from the US Association for Psychological Science, Cornell University’s Einhorn Family Charitable Trust Endowment, the Cognitive Science Program, and the College of Arts and Sciences. The study was published in the peer-reviewed online journal Public Library of Science (PLoS) ONE.
This study was picked up by a variety of papers and online media and most had attention-grabbing headlines like “gaydar exists”. Apart from the overblown headlines, the Daily Mirror and the Sun reported the details of the study accurately. However, both The Daily Telegraph and Metro misleadingly suggest that the research showed women could judge another person’s sexuality better than men. In fact, the research showed that people were better able to judge whether women were gay or straight, not that women were better able to judge sexuality.

What kind of research was this?

This was an observational study that aimed to investigate how people make a judgement about someone’s sexuality based on their face. This was a relatively small study that only investigated the judgements of college students from one US university.
Previous research has indicated that there are two ways in which a person perceives a human face – “featural processing” and “configural processing”:

• featural processing involves looking at facial features such as the nose or eyes
• configural processing involves looking at the relationship between facial features, such as the distance between the eyes

What did the research involve?

Researchers undertook two experiments. In the first experiment, they recruited 24 University of Washington students (19 women) in exchange for extra course credits. The students viewed 96 photos of young adult men and women who identified themselves as gay or straight. The participants categorised each face as either straight or gay as quickly and accurately as possible. The photographs were of “white-looking” faces of people reportedly aged 18–29 gathered from Facebook. They included individuals living in 11 major US cities. Photographs were digitally altered to remove hairstyles so that only faces were visible. Faces with facial hair, make-up, glasses and piercings were excluded so as to limit any potential prejudice. Photos were flashed up on a screen for 50 milliseconds (approximately a third of the time it takes to blink the eye).
In the second experiment, comprising 129 students (92 women and 37 men), participants were randomly assigned to judge faces that were either upright or upside down. This experiment was designed to judge whether ability to read sexual orientation depends on configural processing (the relationship between features).
Results were analysed using statistical methods to determine whether the results were achieved by accurate judgement or whether similar results could have occurred by chance.

What were the basic results?

The main finding of this small study was that students were able to determine sexual orientation from glancing at a photo more often than could be put down to chance. (By chance alone it is assumed that people would be correct 50% of the time, like the toss of a coin.) It found that, in the first experiment students were able to identify the sexuality of women’s faces 65% of the time, while they were correct 57% of the time when viewing men’s faces. In the second experiment, the researchers found that when the picture was glanced at upside down, the success rate was less accurate (61% for women and 53% for men).
The researchers report that the increase in accuracy for judging upright faces suggests that the ability to read sexual orientation from men’s and women’s faces relies on configural face processing (relationships of facial features) as well as featural face processing (facial features). They say the results also indicate that reading sexual orientation from faces of women is easier than from faces of men.

How did the researchers interpret the results?

The researchers conclude that configural face processing significantly affects a person’s perception of sexual orientation and that sexual orientation is easier to detect in women’s faces than men’s faces.
The lead researcher, Joshua Tabak, is reported as having said that "we were surprised that participants were above-chance judging sexual orientation based on upside down photos flashed for just 50 milliseconds, about a third the time of an eyeblink". He went on to say that “people of older generations or cultures where homosexuality is not recognised may find it harder to make ‘gaydar’ judgments”.

Conclusion

This small study, carried out in highly artificial conditions, shows that students were able to judge sexuality with greater accuracy than could be put down to chance, and that women’s sexuality was judged more accurately than men’s sexuality. Despite these findings, the study should not be misinterpreted to mean that women are better at accurately judging a person's sexuality than men.
The participants' judgement was only just better than the results that could have been expected to have been achieved by chance and larger studies that include people of different ages and backgrounds are required to verify these results.
It is important to note that, in this study, students were instructed to make forced decisions about a person’s sexuality. It is unclear whether these quick decisions are made in real life situations. In addition, this study does not explore the consequences of making quick judgements about another person’s sexuality.
Guessing another person’s sexuality can be a sensitive area. This study highlights the importance of not making snap decisions based on your own subjective judgement of someone else’s sexuality because of the high chance that you may be wrong.
It is also worth noting the inaccurate reporting in both The Telegraph’s and Metro’s stories on this research. While the Mirror and the Sun also featured exaggerated headlines, their reporters did a better job of presenting the research.

The Science of Love and Betrayal by Robin Dunbar – review

Most like humans … a family of golden lion marmosets. Photograph: Juergen and Christine Sohns/Getty Images/Picture Press RM

I'm an expert. Many of us are. My first wife never said the word "love" without a sneer; my present wife is a true believer. So I've looked at love from both sides now. But if Robin Dunbar is to be believed, I really don't know love at all.

1. The Science of Love and Betrayal
2. by Robin Dunbar
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1. Tell us what you think: Star-rate and review this book

Remember those PG Tips ads where they dressed chimpanzees as human beings and made them drink tea? This book is rather like those ads in that it confuses the animal and the specifically human. Why do we kiss, it asks. To taste our potential partner's saliva and decide if they are healthy enough to breed with, a bit like dogs sniffing at each other. A bad taste, a bad smell and off we go with someone else. Sometimes the truth is disturbing, but is this really why my wife and I are still kissing after all these years? It seems to me more like a way of having sex with our mouths – which is wonderful if you like sex, and disgusting if you don't. It certainly isn't something a dog would do.
Dunbar believes emotions such as love and social institutions such as marriage are strategies to maximise the reproduction of our genes. In biological terms, the most successful of all humans has been Genghis Khan – around 0.5% of all males alive today are descended from him and his brothers. But the Great Khan's reproductive strategy of mass rape is something of an aberration.
Modern societies derive from communities of hunter-gatherers who practised serial monogamy. Love and marriage are the emotional and social expressions of a reproductive strategy that goes back 200,000 years or so. Why do we pair up? Not so that men can help feed and raise children – women would do this better on their own (the time men spent hunting was largely time wasted, unlike the time women spent gathering). Dunbar runs through a range of biological comparisons – wolves ("resolutely monogamous", but male wolves vomit up food for the mother and pups; unlike many human males they really are good dads), goats, baboons, gorillas – and concludes that we are like marmosets. Women need husbands to protect them from being attacked by other men. Men don't get much out of love and marriage (except, of course, the reproduction of their genes); women get security.
But women don't just want security. According to Dunbar (who doesn't see that this is a major hole in his argument), all women would have needed to do is gang together into large groups in order to defend themselves. If only they had kicked out the worthless hunters, who didn't catch enough to feed themselves, let alone anyone else, and only chased big game to show off, they could have managed perfectly well. Why are there no societies of vegetarian Amazons? Presumably because big-game hunting was a useful way of testing men's fitness for reproduction. So love and marriage are the result of a complicated trade off between safe sex and exciting sex. We are marmosets who dream of being gorillas.
Dunbar thinks dreams and fantasies only get in the way. He discusses them in the contexts of women being ripped off by gigolos, of mystics who believe they have been ravished by God, of de Clérambault's syndrome (erotomania). In other words, he's a cynic, even though he knows that the most successful marriages are the ones where the partners idealise each other. He discovers that our sexual partners tend to resemble our parent of the opposite sex and he describes this as a curiosity – it never occurs to him the Oedipus complex might be at work.
The idea that we are different from marmosets because we idealise and fantasise, because we kiss and laugh, read poetry and sing songs, because we are wonderfully good at displacing our reproductive drives into all sorts of other activities, is beyond him. American generals, Dunbar tells us, have had fewer children than middle-ranking officers. "It was as though they overdid themselves and went too far", is all he can say, because naturally their real goal was not status but the replication of their genes. They had failed the only test that counts.
"From a strictly biological point of view," says Dunbar, "relationships exist to facilitate reproduction." Until the 1960s the French-speaking population of Québec was very good at reproduction, with each woman producing an average of four children. Then along came contraception – they stopped going to church and each woman had on average only 1.5 children. Relationships no longer existed primarily to facilitate reproduction. Biology had been trumped by the desire for an improved standard of living. Instead of having children, the Québecois had cars, central heating and holidays in Florida.
Dunbar has nothing helpful to say about non-reproductive sex – about contraception, or homosexuality, or even masturbation. He has little to say about happiness, and nothing at all to say about pleasure. He prefers to talk about the relative length of our second and fourth fingers: a high 2D:4D ratio implies high levels of testosterone and so polygamy or promiscuity, while a low 2D:4D ratio implies marmoset love. Hence we can determine the family structure of Neanderthals by measuring their finger lengths. Maybe.
This basic confusion between humans and animals isn't the only problem with Dunbar's work. He loves neuro-imaging. If you give psychopaths various simple tests, different bits of their brains light up from those that light up in the rest of the population. Consequently "psychopaths are born and not made by circumstance." But Dunbar also tells us about London taxi drivers. They have large hippocampuses – the bit of the brain that deals with orientation. At first it seemed that people with big hippocampuses become taxi drivers; but further research established that doing "the knowledge" (studying to become a London taxi driver) causes your hippocampus to grow. Mind/body interactions go both ways: the fact that psychopaths' brains are different doesn't prove that psychopaths are born and not made – it would seem perfectly plausible that some are born, some are made, and often it's a bit of both.
In the end, what Dunbar offers is a Darwinian reworking of traditional sexual stereotypes. We would have to put up with this if the arguments were robust, but they aren't. Where he is good, surprisingly, is on intimacy, friendship and family. Lovers who touch each other a lot have lower cortisol levels – they are less stressed. People in loving relationships have a higher pain threshold. Laughter shared between friends is so powerful that three letters in a text message – LOL – can make us happy. Experimental evidence really does seem to show that people trust their family more than they trust their friends, and that they will make sacrifices for their family that they would not make for their friends – since this is often a terrible mistake it is hard not to think that this has something to do with sharing genes in common. Dogs can count as people where friendships are concerned. We aren't wired up to have lots of friends (Facebook notwithstanding), and one lover is worth two friends – so people who fall in love drop two of their close friends. Women like talking while men like doing things together – the average phone call involving a male lasts 7.3 seconds.
When Dunbar is talking about friendship he doesn't feel the need to look for comparisons with other species – voles (nearly all promiscuous) and the bee-eater bird (like marmosets, they have "an almost identical social arrangement to humans") disappear from the story. For what makes friendship possible is the development of "theory of mind" – "the capacity to understand what another person is thinking" – and this is unique to humans. Indeed we only begin to develop it after the age of five, and go on developing it until the mid-20s. Without it we would be unable to engage in pretend play or lying. Even our laughter is different from that of the apes.
Strangely, he doesn't say that without empathy there would be neither love nor betrayal. So here's the puzzle: Dunbar understands there is something uniquely human about friendship, but not about love. Because lovers make babies he thinks they are just like marmosets. What Dunbar needs is a better theory of mind. Don't misunderstand me: of course we are naked apes. Evolution made us – up to a point. Evolution gave us a capacity for loving and lying, for sympathy and cruelty, for displacement. But, like the taxi drivers with the enlarged hippocampuses, we have, for better or worse, remade ourselves. One thing is clear: love is never natural. Just as we learn language from those around us, so we learn love – if we are lucky, that is.
• David Wootton's Galileo is published by Yale.

Why Women Are More Likely To Cheat On Their Husbands (Particularly When It's Raining)

You can blame promiscuity on the weather (but not the men), according to findings from surveys by extra-marital affairs websites undercoverlovers.com and illicitencounters.com.
According to illicitencounters.com, as Britons battled against the wind and rain of the coldest April since 1989, they naturally found warmth and solace in the arms of partners. Just not necessarily their own.
The site, which has over 670,000 members, has seen a huge surge in activity over the past six weeks, with a 300% increase in traffic. And since the beginning of April an extra 5,600 new members have flocked to the site (on top of the average 20,000 expected new profiles).
Rosie Freeman-Jones, spokesperson for Illicit Encounters, said: “Like the weather, our membership levels have also been unexpected, but unlike the temperature, the number of members has been soaring.
“The activity of our regular members is also up. Clearly people are taking this opportunity to enjoy themselves online because they’re stuck indoors due to recent downpours.”
Yet, before you start checking your husband’s activities online, take note.
According to another new study by undercoverlovers.com, Britain’s female adulterers are apparently more promiscuous than their male counterparts, having had on average 2.3 affair partners compared to the mere 1.8 of male members.
Figures given to Huffpo Lifestyle by illicitencounters.com mirrored this trend, with 1.2 women to every man joining up during their recent rainy boom time.
The UK Adultery Survey 2012 by undercoverlovers.com also uncovered dramatically different reasons between men and women for playing away - among the 4,000 members who took part.
While men cited the pursuit of sexual excitement, boredom with their marriages and the need of an ego boost as their main reasons for cheating, women were more likely to be seeking emotional fulfilment, an improvement to their self esteem and romance when they strayed.
Female adulterers are also far more prone to falling in love with their affair partner than their male equivalents, says the results of the site's survey.

Promiscuous females can help save the human race

Washington, Feb. 26 (ANI): Women who sleep around could stop humans from becoming extinct, that's the conclusion of a new study.
 The new research by the Universities of Exeter and Liverpool has been published in Current Biology.
 The study could solve the mystery of why females of most species have multiple mates, despite this being more risky for the individual.
 Known as 'polyandry' among scientists, the phenomenon of females having multiple mates is shared across most animal species, from insects to mammals. This study suggests that polyandry reduces the risk of populations becoming extinct because of all-female broods being born. This can sometimes occur as a result of a sex-ratio distortion (SR) chromosome, which results in all of the Y chromosome 'male' sperm being killed before fertilisation. The all-female offspring will carry the SR chromosome, which will be passed on to their sons in turn resulting in more all-female broods. Eventually there will be no males and the population will die out.
 To reach the conclusion, the scientists worked with the fruitfly Drosophila pseudoobscura. They gave some populations the opportunity to mate naturally, meaning that the females had multiple partners. The others were restricted to having one mate each. They bred several generations of these populations, so they could see how each fared over time.
 Over fifteen generations, five of the twelve populations that had been monogamous became extinct as a result of males dying out. The SR chromosome was far less prevalent in the populations in which females had the opportunity to have multiple mates and none of these populations became extinct.
 The study shows how having multiple mates can suppress the spread of the SR chromosome, making all-female broods a rarity. This is because males that carry the SR chromosome produce only half as many sperm as normal males. When a female mates with multiple males, their sperm will compete to fertilise her eggs. The few sperm produced by males carrying the SR chromosome are out-competed by the sperm from normal males, and the SR chromosome cannot spread.
 Lead author Professor Nina Wedell of the University of Exeter said: "We were surprised by how quickly - within nine generations - a population could die out as a result of females only mating with one partner. Polyandry is such a widespread phenomenon in nature but it remains something of an enigma for scientists. This study is the first to suggest that it could actually save a population from extinction." (ANI)

Promiscuous married women 'have more secret lovers than men'

London, May 18 (ANI): Women are more promiscuous, having an average of 2.3 secret lovers compared to a mere 1.8 for men, it has been revealed.
The UK Adultery Survey 2012, which studied the behaviour of 4,000 cheats, found that once women decide to play away they are far more likely to play the field in search of love.
While men claim the pursuit of sexual excitement, boredom with their marriages and the need of an ego boost are the main reasons for cheating, women say they are looking for emotional fulfillment, an improvement to their self esteem and romance.
Female adulterers are also far more prone to falling in love with their illicit lovers than their male equivalents.
Emily Pope of Undercover Lovers, a dating site for married people seeking affairs with some 600,000 members, said the results of the survey challenged the commonly held view that men are more adulterous than women.
"Once they have made the huge decision to have an affair, women have far more opportunity to actually find someone to cheat with and are generally in control of deciding if and when to consummate the relationship once they do," the Daily Mail quoted her as saying.
The survey also found that women are likely to be the first to get itchy feet in a marriage.
While unfaithful men don't have their first affair until almost six years of married life the average female cheater strays just five years after exchanging wedding vows.
They are also usually younger than men when they stray with the average female adulterer starting at 37 compared to 42 for men.
"More and more neurological research is revealing that male and female brains are programmed differently when it comes to relationships.
"The results of our survey bear this out, with our adulteresses seemingly seeking something far more emotionally meaningful from their affairs than their male partners," she said.
Both sexes agree that monogamy is an unnatural state for humans even though 76 percent of women and 67 percent of men claim to still love the spouse they are cheating on and more than 80 percent of both sexes intend to stay married.
However, the research also found that many adulterers are hypocrites.
More than 40 percent of women and almost 30 percent of male would ask for a divorce if they discovered their spouse was having an affair. (ANI)