LAS CRUCES, NM — Jesse James, James Dean, Kid Rock, Tommy Lee, Mick Jagger, Snoop Dog, Tupac – all Bad Boys with a special way with the ladies. What Nice Guy hasn’t wondered where a woman’s good sense goes when she falls for a Bad Boy, leaving him convinced that Nice Guys really do finish last? Although Science Explains will provide reassurance tomorrow, today it admits: Yes, Bad Boys really do get more chicks.According to two recent studies, a triumvirate of antisocial tendencies called “the dark triad” not only continue to thrive in humanity – but get chicks hot.
Self-absorbed, impulsive, and deceitful, the insensitive and opportunistic Bad Boys of history have long lived by their own largely self-serving rules, often putting themselves and those around them in emotional, psychological, and/or physical peril, especially when their bad habits have been taken to the extreme. Although many never successfully partner for long, most experience a run of sexual good luck that their more stable and caring, but lonely, competitors can only envy from afar.
Alas for the nice guys, Peter Jonason of the New Mexico State University in Las Cruces assures that, “We have some evidence that the three traits are really the same thing and may represent a successful evolutionary strategy.”
In order to test the theory, Jonason’s team ran personality tests on 200 college students, learning their views about sexual relationships, how many they had been in, their experiences within them, and whether they sought occasional flings. The team then ranked the respondents by their various “dark triad” traits.
Jonason explained during the Human Behavior and Evolution Society meeting in Kyoto, Japan, that males who ranked higher in “dark triad” traits tended to have more partners. Unsurprisingly, they were also the least interested in long-term relationships.
New Scientist quotes David Schmitt of Bradley University in Peoria, IL, as having uncovered similar results in his own survey of more than 35,000 people in 57 countries. “It is universal across cultures for high dark triad scores to be more active in short-term mating. They are more likely to try and poach other people’s partners for a brief affair.”
The question, of course, is why such behaviors are not more common. As Matthew Keller of the University of Colorado in Bolder points out, “There must be some cost of the traits.”
Keller and Jonason speculate that the success of “dark triad” personalities likely resides in the fact that they are less common, making them more exotic and less in need of constant vigilance.
Tomorrow, Science Explains will address how Nice Guys can get the last laugh.
