Online Dating - Why Beautiful Women Are Dating Ugly Men

Ever noticed a gorgeous woman on the arm of an ugly duckling of a guy (who has no chance of turning into a swan) and wondered why?

Well recent research has found that women are attracted by the sound of a man's voice whereas men are attracted by a woman's pretty face. Research conducted by Coren Apicella of Harvard University, with David Feinberg of McMaster University and Frank Marlowe of Florida State University, may have found why this is so. Their research published in the journal Biology Letters is the first to work out whether a sexy voice affects what researchers call "Darwinian fitness".

In previous studies, they have shown that women find deeper male voices to be more attractive, judging them to be more dominant, older, healthier and more masculine sounding. And they are particularly drawn to a booming drawl when they are at the peak of fertility.

Men, on the other hand, find higher-pitch voices in women more attractive, subordinate, feminine, healthier and younger sounding.

"While we find in this new study that voice pitch is not related to offspring mortality rates," says Feinberg, "We find that men with low voice pitch have higher reproductive success and more children born to them." While a deep voice was a kind of mating call that made women more frisky, the pitch of a woman's voice did not seem to matter much.

The subjects for this study were the Hadza of Tanzania, one of the last true hunter-gatherer cultures. "Their lifestyle reflects how humans lived during much of their evolutionary history, they provide a window to our past", says Apicella. Because the Hadza have no modern birth control, the researchers were able to determine from studies of around 100 men and women in nine different camps that men who have lower pitched voices have more children than men with higher pitched voices. During the research men were asked to speak into a microphone the word 'hujambo' which loosely translates to 'hello' in English.

"While we don't know the exact reason that these men with deeper voices have fathered more children, it may be that they have increased access to mates, begin reproducing at an earlier age or their wives have shorter inter-birth intervals because they provide more food to them," says Apicella.

At one time, men and women's voices may have been closer in pitch. Over the course of human history, men's voices may have become deeper as baritones won out over tenors in the gene pool. It is no accident that boys voices don't get deeper until puberty, when testosterone kicks in and makes the vocal chords grow longer and thicker to impress the ladies.

And according to another group of researchers from Harvard University a beautiful woman's face is like chocolate, cash or cocaine to a young man's brain.

Their brain-imaging study revealed that while young heterosexual males are indeed capable of finding beauty in another man's face, only a lovely female visage can set off the "reward centers" in their brains. When men in the study were shown pictures of various faces, only the female faces deemed beautiful triggered activity in brain regions previously associated with food, drugs and money, according to findings published in the November 8th issue of Neuron. The unique effect of the comely female face occurred despite the fact that the men also rated some male faces as "beautiful." "It looks like there can be a difference between what the brain 'likes,' an image that is judged to be attractive, and what the brain 'wants,' something that is regarded as a reward in and of itself," study author Dr. Hans Breiter, of Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, said in a statement. In their experiments, the researchers first asked a group of men to rate how attractive they found the faces--which, unbeknownst to the participants, had already been placed into the categories "beautiful" or "average." The men's ratings, it turned out, fell in line with the categories, and attractive male faces garnered ratings similar to attractive female faces. But in the next phase of the study, men in another group were allowed to control how long they viewed a particular face by pressing a key. Breiter's team found that they "expended effort" to see the beautiful female faces for a longer time, but for all other faces they tried only to "make the faces disappear faster." Finally, in a third group of men studied with brain imaging known as functional MRI, the investigators found that only the attractive female faces set off the brain's "reward circuitry." "It's particularly interesting that the attractive male faces actually produced what could be considered an aversion response, even though they had been recognized as attractive," Breiter said. His co-author, Dr. Nancy Etcoff, noted that this research echoes previous work suggesting the human perception of beauty may be "in-born." "While we know that experience, learning and personal idiosyncrasies all have an impact on attraction between particular individuals, these results show that this basic reward response is deeply seated in human nature," she said in a statement. SOURCE: Neuron 2001;32:537-551.

According to Derek Collinson, founder of the worlds leading dating site for dog lovers, this can be a problem for dating site owners because many women do not add pictures to their profiles and the majority of men don't add a recording of their voice or for example add a video To make matters worse many women deliberately don't add their picture believing that if a man is only interested in the way they look then he's not worth bothering with!

Derek adds Unfortunately some women assume that a mans attraction to a woman's face is superficial and that all men are looking for is some kind of perfect face but this is not the case.!

Someone once said that the eyes are the mirror of the soul and I believe that most men can read or sense what a woman is all about just by looking at her face - whether that face is one seen in a picture, a video or on the street so men are not as superficial as some women might think!

As to how you persuade more women to add pictures and men to add video to their profiles Derek's still searching for an answer to that one but he will not give up adding We have many features to ensure that compatible members are matched up including image, audio and even video upload but all of these are no use unless members use them. If members are serious about finding their soul mate they need to add their picture or a video to their profiles. And if they don't have an image on their computer but just a photo we will scan it and add the image to their profile free of charge!

The fact is that none of our members needs to go on a blind date because all members can one way or another add a picture or a video to their profile. Studies have shown that members who add a picture to their profile get twenty times more response than those who don't. And by adding a video to their profile they will get an even greater response!

So the message is clear when it comes to finding a soul mate online  for single women one picture is worth a thousand word profile and single men need to upload a video or sound recording so that women can hear the sound of their voice!

Born and brought up in Scotland but now living in the Yorkshire Wolds. Derek Collinson now shares Findlay (A Spinone) and Florence and Serena(a Pointer and a cross breed from Limerick Animal Rescue) with his wife Jan.

Derek looks forward to welcoming all dog lovers to www.doglover.biz. "All dog lovers are invited to join us here and you don't have to own a dog just love them."