In Scarface, Tony Montana famously advised, “In this country, you gotta make the money first. Then when you get the money, you get the power. Then when you get the power, you get the women.”
Tony wasn’t wrong. (Piles of) money and power will buy a lot of pussy. But ♥♥science♥♥ disagrees about where men’s priorities actually lie, and what is the most efficient path, as implied by neuronal feedback, for men to pursue to increase their reproductive fitness.
An unusual but very illuminating study concluded that, given a choice between viewing a hot babe and making some dough, men will choose the babe almost every time.
An ERP study on decisions between attractive females and money.
To investigate the neural processes of decision-makings between attractive females and money, we recorded 18 male participants’ brain event-related potentials (ERPs) when they performed a novel task of deciding between viewing an attractive female’s fuzzy picture in clear and gaining a certain amount of money. Two types of attractive females were included: sexy females and beautiful females. Several new electrophysiological discoveries were obtained as following. First, the beautiful females vs. money task (task B) elicited a larger positive ERP deflection (P2) than the sexy females vs. money task (task S) between 290 and 340 ms, and this probably related to the perception matching process between a visual input and an internal representation or expectation. Second, task S evoked greater negative ERP waves (N2) than task B during the time window of 340-390 ms, and this might relate to response conflict and cognitive monitoring for impulsive tendency. Third, the ERP positivity in task S was larger than task B in the time interval of 550-1000 ms, reflecting that sexy female images may have higher decision value for males than beautiful female images. Fourth, compared with choosing to gain money, choosing to view an attractive female evoked a larger late positive component (LPC) during the same time window, possibly because attractive females are more direct and evolutionarily earlier rewards for males than money amounts.
See the accompanying graphs at the link posted to get a better handle on the study results. There’s a lot of dense scientific jargon to wade through here, but the gist of it is this:
Based on neural imaging results (“brain event related potentials”, or ERPs), men will choose to view a sexy woman (read: a slut signaling her availability for sex) over making a bit of coin. Men will choose to view a beautiful woman (read: a modestly posed looker you would take home to mom) about the same amount as they will choose to make coin when viewing the slutty sexy woman, but they will choose to view the beautiful woman more often than they will choose to make money while deciding directly between those two choices.
In even lazier shorthand, men are hard-wired by evolution to choose a shot at the ultimate reward of sex with hot, sexually available women over choosing a shot at sex through a proxy fitness signaler like making money. Or: yes, it really is all about the nookie.
Call it the theory of path of least resistance to sex (a concept elucidated here at CH many times, and THANK YOU science, for once again validating core Chateau Heartiste concepts about the workings of the sexual market). Those MGTOWs and tradcons who argue that the best feeling of reward men get is from making money and being one’s own man, are simply wrong. The best feeling men get is from sex, or even a promise of sex, with attractive, young women. The Christmas tree lights of neural imaging results don’t lie.
Not to say that making money or earning power doesn’t feel great on its own. Certainly each of those do. But if the choice is between the great feeling from a DIRECT evolutionary reward and the feeling from an INDIRECT evolutionary reward… well, it shouldn’t take a scientific study to figure the bleeding obvious. Men will go for the sex directly and skip the hard slog to make themselves more attractive as sex partners if they have the option to do so. There’s a lesson there for women who ride the cock carousel with aloof, low investment cads.
One interesting part of the study was the result that men will be somewhat more likely to concern themselves about making money if an attractive but chaste woman is within view. This suggests that men, justifiably, perceive less slutty women as better investment vehicles. It also implies that beautiful women who don’t need or want to use their sexuality to curry favor with men will be more aggressive about screening for men who can provide for them, or who signal potential that they can provide for them.
Do women have their own sexual market theory of path of least resistance? Yes. Except it’s not a path of least resistance to sex; it’s a path of least resistance to commitment. Women will go for a man’s emotional commitment EVERY TIME if said man makes it easy for them. “Easy” means, in this context, sexually undemanding. Anhedonic. Effectively neutered. LJBFed. BETA. A woman gives up nothing to get a beta orbiter’s loyalty, support and, in some tragic cases, hard-earned provisions. There’s a lesson there for supplicating betas. Make the ho say no? How about “make the slut pay up front”.
