It's long been stereotyped that women prefer dating assholes instead of nice guys but I have yet to ever hear any learned discussion on the topic. No quotes from research papers. No citations of accepted psychological facts. No real deep analysis.

First, a link to three studies.Each with come to the same conclusion. That men who are more agreeable have fewer sexual partners and casual dating success.

And then another, which states that men who have the traits associated with the dark triad have more sex with more partners than men that don't.

For those that don't know, The Dark Triad To quote wikipedia: is a group of three personality traits: narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy.

Having established that; I have personally noticed that, society and women have (either consciously or unconsciously) used language to romanticize what would otherwise be considered psychopathic traits.

confidence can mean one of two things. A sense of certainty in one's abilities, or a lack of emotional investment in the outcome of a situation.

So it's understandable that a woman would be attracted to a man that's certain in his abilities isn't it? It would be, if confidence was an accurate metric for someone's actual competence.

And what about a lack of emotional investment in the outcome of a situation? It's a good thing not to get rattled in the face of rejection or failure isn't it? Maybe.

The problem is that people are social animals, and the only way to cope with failure/rejection is to emotionally distance yourself form the situation. And when you emotionally distance yourself from someone or something, you stop caring about them as people or what happens to them. So any degree of "confidence" is going to involve some kind of emotional distance.

So if a sense of certainty in ones abilities actually means the opposite and a lack of emotional investment means a lack of empathy, then what are women actually selecting for when they talk about confidence?

narcissism and psychopathy.

Another good example is spontaneity. spontaneity (which women sometimes say they like) could be caused by poor impulse control or an inability to tolerate boredom. signs of a hypo-active amygdala and/or hypo-active prefrontal cortex.

The main problem is the language. We have words that describe the same basic action or trait. The words are then assigned based on the context of the situation and the opinion of the person doing the assessing.

If a guy walks up to a woman he see's walking down the street, casually mentions his accomplishments and asks her out, he's "confident". But when he nails her and never calls her again, he's a subclinical psychopath.

Anyway I'm done ranting. This video got a million views and made me insane so I had to get this off my chest.

whether you agree or disagree, let me know.

edit: It also needs mentioning that a lack of emotional investment is also a sign of preselection. A man isn't going to be emotionally invested if he has options.