Mating Intelligence Unleashed
The Role of the Mind in Sex, Dating, and Love
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- $30.99
Publisher Description
Psychologists often paint a picture of human mating as visceral, instinctual. But that's not the whole story. In courtship and display, sexual competition and rivalry, we are also guided by what Glenn Geher and Scott Barry Kaufman call Mating Intelligence--a range of mental abilities that have evolved to help us find the right partner. Mating Intelligence is at work in our efforts to form, maintain, and end relationships. It guides us in flirtation, foreplay, copulation, finding and choosing a mate, and many other behaviors.
In Mating Intelligence Unleashed, psychologists Geher and Kaufman take readers on a fascinating tour of the crossroads of mating and intelligence, drawing on cutting-edge research on evolutionary psychology, intelligence, creativity, personality, social psychology, neuroscience, and more. The authors show that despite what you may read in the latest issue of Maxim, Playboy, Vogue, or GQ, physical attractiveness isn't the whole story. Human mating draws on a range of mental skills and attributes--from the creative use of pick-up lines, to displays of charisma, intelligence, humor, personality, and compassion. Along the way, the authors shed new light on age-old questions, such as: What role does personality play in mating? Which traits are attractive--and which traits repulse? How do people really choose mates? How do men and women deceive each other? How important is emotional intelligence? Why do people create art--and does it have anything to do with sex? Do nice guys really finish last?
Since Glenn Geher coined the term Mating Intelligence in 2006, it has drawn a great deal of media attention, ranging from a Psychology Today cover story to articles in the New Scientist, the Washington Times, the Huffington Post, and elsewhere. Now, in Mating Intelligence Unleashed, readers will have the first full account of this revolutionary new approach to dating, mating, and love.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
A cross between self-help manual and scientific study, this discourse on the factors that influence decision making in mate selection both long- and short-term disappoints on both fronts. Geher and Kaufman, both psychologists, coined the term "mating intelligence" and published a supplemental self-assessment in Psychology Today intended to measure readers' ability to accurately assess their "mating success," read cues delivered by the opposite sex, and more. Building off this quick test, the authors explore numerous aspects of dating and mating, including adaptive biases, whether nice guys really finish last (they argue that "a prestigious man, not a dominant man, is a woman's dream" and that "assholes may finish first, but prestigious men stay there"), "the relevance of IQ," as well as tenets of evolutionary psychology. Most compellingly (and pragmatically), the duo contend that sex education programs might be greatly enhanced and rendered more efficacious by shifting the focus to "mating education" and including psychological as well as physiological and anatomical material. Unfortunately, the bulk of the advice they offer is too simplistic to be convincing, and their scientific forays offer little that hasn't been done better elsewhere. Exclamation point-riddled prose doesn't help the authors, who come across as eager but inept.
