- Obesity Genes Mean Some Folks Must Exercise More for Same Results
- SCOTUS Appears Skeptical of Arguments to Curb Abortion Pill Access
- Sleep Troubles Can Raise Your Blood Pressure: Study
- ADHD Meds Tied to Heart Damage in Young Adult Users
- Could Regular Exercise Cure Your Insomnia? New Research Says Yes
- Black Men Less Likely to Receive Heart Transplants Than White Men or Women
- Could Deep Frying Foods Harm the Brain? Rat Study Suggests It Might
- Human Brains Are Getting Larger With Each Generation
- Animals Catch More Viruses From Us Than We Do From Them
- Young Adults With Migraine May Face Higher Stroke Risk
Who’s a Hunk Depends on Time of the Month
So, when you’re in between menstrual periods, that shy, sensitive guy may make your heart flutter, but the burly man with the deep voice looks inexplicably irresistible when you’re ovulating.
There’s a biological reason for that, new research suggests.
It’s likely that this shift in sexual preferences during ovulation is an evolutionary holdover for humans, scientists report.
In the past, highly masculine characteristics in men likely indicated high genetic quality, and mating with them increased women’s odds of having children who would survive and reproduce.
“Women sometimes get a bad rap for being fickle, but the changes they experience are not arbitrary. Women experience intricately patterned preference shifts even though they might not serve any function in the present,” study senior author Martie Haselton, a professor of psychology and communication studies at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), said in a university news release.
She and lead author Kelly Gildersleeve, a doctoral candidate in psychology at UCLA, analyzed data from dozens of published and unpublished studies. Their review was published online in the February issue of the journal Psychological Bulletin.
The researchers noted that female mammals have shifting sexual preferences and behaviors meant to improve their offspring’s chances of survival.
“Until the past decade, we all accepted this notion that human female sexuality was radically different from sexuality in all of these other animal species — that, unlike other species, human female sexuality was somehow walled off from reproductive hormones,” Haselton said. “Then a set of studies emerged that challenged conventional wisdom.”
More information
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention offers an overview of sexual health.
Source: HealthDay
Copyright © 2024 HealthDay. All rights reserved.