What is the strongest correlation I've ever estimated?

Everyone who does social research knows that correlations about people are typically weak. You suspect that IQ predicts criminality, but then the data tell you the association is a mere .2. This is the rule rather than the exception. People are complicated. You can't reduce their behavior to a single factor. Plus, measurements are far from precise.

But on rare occasion, connections can be strong. The correlation between your education and your spouse's is .6 or .7.  The link between number of delinquent friends and one's own involvement in delinquency--about .6. Pretty good.

The largest individual-level correlate I've ever calculated (macrolevel correlations tend to be bigger) deals with sexual attraction: Using data I collected myself on 330 people, the point biserial correlation between being male and level of attraction to females is .82. For women being attracted to men, it's .84. Those are huge numbers.

Another way of describing it is in terms of standard deviations: the gap between male and female attraction toward females is 3.6 standard deviations. The difference between the two sexes on liking males is just as big--3.6 sds. You've probably heard that the black-white IQ gap is big. It is, at ONE standard deviation. The attraction gap is enormous.

Now you might be saying, duh, we would expect men to like women and women to like men.

Well, you might expect that, but then again you don't have a PhD in Gender Studies. Many years after the idiot Kinsey claimed that sexual attraction is a continuum, not categorical, researchers are still making similar claims.

With a continuum, one assumes that males will range from being strongly attracted to females to being strongly attracted to males, but most men will be somewhere in the middle with various levels of attraction for both sexes. The same for women. Most of them will have a mix of attractions. If this were the case, being male would not be a strong predictor of level of attraction to females. But common sense and my data predict the outcome very well: what do you know, men like women! And women like men!

I'm afraid a great deal of social research makes us dumber, not smarter. I'd love to see a great deal of it scrapped.

UPDATE: The latest sex theory I've come across claims that our ancestors were indiscriminate copulators: They would hump anything that moves. So males and females being attracted to each other was not the original system. With its de-privileging heterosexual sex, I predict the theory will be wildly popular.

Housework and sex frequency

Roissy has claimed that husbands who do more chores at home have sex less often because it is a turn-off to their wives.

The GSS asked respondents how often they have sex, and how many hours of houeswork they do in a typical week. Sex frequency is influenced a great deal by age, so I include it as a control:

Standardized OLS regression coefficients (sample size = 218, married men)

Hours of housework -.05
Age -.45*

*statistically significant

While age exerts a powerful effect on frequency of sexual intercourse, housework is unrelated. (It might have a small negative effect if the sample size were larger).

Wives are less likely to want sex if they are tired or if they are in a bad mood. They are more likely to be in a bad mood if they feel that their husband is not pulling his load. (I'm skeptical of the view that what a woman finds attractive in her man is his exploitation of her). The chance of her wanting sex will be higher if she gets manly vibes from her husband. So the best plan for a husband is to show his wife that he is doing his fair share, but to focus on manly types of work. That means work that is physical or technical. Much of it will be outside. If you don't know how to fix stuff, like a car--you're smart--learn. Avoid any type of work, except for barbecuing, that requires an apron.

The goal for a good marriage is to be traditional but to be just. In Bruce Charlton's words, be a patriarch.

Fearful women love tough men

A new research article in Evolution and Human Behavior found that women who are fearful of crime are more likely to prefer men who are aggressively dominant and physically formidable for long-term partners. They argue that aggressiveness is not an unalloyed good in a partner since these types of men are more likely to be abusive, unreliable, and unfaithful. Perceived payoff is greater if the woman inhabits a dangerous environment and lacks the resources to protect herself.

Using a sample of mostly white female Internet respondents, the authors reported that greater fear of crime, higher levels of neighborhood violent crime during childhood, and lower levels of education predicted preference for a "manlier" man. The childhood effect suggests that some of the preference becomes established perhaps during the sociosexually important teen years. 

The authors should have considered individual differences (e.g., neuroticism) as well as differences in circumstances. (Their approach seems typical for cowardly evolutionary psychologists. Race, of course, is smoothed over in the study.)

To all you betas out there looking for a partner: the lesson is to associate with more educated women; to live in places where women are safe; and to advocate for the type of society where social order is a top priority.

Gay men are disgusted by lesbian sex

I didn't know that gay men are not necessarily disgusted by depictions of heterosexual sex but are disgusted by lesbian sex (check out the study here). It makes sense though: If there is at least one actor whom you find sexually attractive, you will focus on him or her and be able to find the scene arousing; otherwise, it will disgust you.    

Marilyn Monroe knew what she was doing: Feminine voices are sexy

In this new study, researchers found that men find feminine female voices more sexually attractive, especially for short-term mating.  Women also perceive femininity in other female voices to be more flirtatious and attractive to men. The authors conclude that women use vocal femininity to track the threat potential of competitors.   

Racial difference in female preference for men with masculine faces

Here's a study that finds that, compared to British women, Jamaican women prefer men with more masculine faces:

In the UK and Japan, both men and women prefer somewhat feminised opposite-sex faces, especially when choosing a long-term partner. Such faces are perceived as more honest, caring, and sensitive; traits that may be associated with successful male parental investment. By contrast, women prefer less feminised faces for short-term relationships and when they are near ovulation. As genetic quality may be associated with facial masculinity, women may trade-off cues between genetic quality and paternal investment in potential partners. No analogous trade-off has been suggested to influence men’s preferences, as both attributions of prosociality and potential cues to biological quality are associated with facial femininity in female faces.

Ecological and cultural factors may influence the balance of trade-offs leading to populational differences in preferences. We predicted that Jamaican women would prefer more masculine faces than British women do because parasite load is higher in Jamaica, medical care less common (historically and currently), and male parental investment less pronounced. Male preferences, however, were predicted to vary less cross-culturally, as no trade-off has been identified in female facial characteristics. We constructed masculinised and feminised digital male and female face stimuli of three populations (Jamaican, Japanese, and British) and presented them to men and women in Jamaica and in Britain. The results demonstrated that Jamaican women preferred more masculine male faces than their British counterparts did. Jamaican men tended to prefer more masculine female faces than did British men did, but this effect was complicated by an interaction suggesting that more feminised faces were preferred within culture.

And from the discussion section:

Cultures will evolve differently in different ecological environments, and preferences for cues to good genes or paternal investment may become selected for at a cultural level following increases in reproductive success that they offer in varying environments, current or historical. In addition, differences in parasite load and/or male parental investment have existed for ample time to generate some genetic differences between populations.

(Populational differences in attractiveness judgements of male and female faces: Comparing British and Jamaican samples. 2004. Evolution and Human Behavior, Volume 25, Issue 6, Pages 355-370 I. Penton-Voak, A. Jacobson, R. Trivers.)