Women's love for jerks

Chateau Heartiste looks again to science this week in trying to explain why some women prefer jerkboys to niceguys.

Male chimpanzees that wage a campaign of sustained aggression against females sire more offspring than their less violent counterparts, new research finds.

The results suggest that such nasty behavior from males evolved because it gave the meanest males a reproductive advantage, said study co-author Ian Gilby, a primatologist at Arizona State University in Phoenix.

This chimpanzee behavior could also provide some insight into the roots of sexual aggression in men.

“It is possible that in our early ancestors there may have been an adaptive value to male aggression against females,” Gilby said.

Obviously, this isn’t the whole human story, as niceguys are still with us, and women don’t fall for jerks all the time every time. But there is clearly an observable female preference for jerkboys that has no parallel in a male preference for jerkgirls. Think of a jerkboy bell curve, and place women on it. At the far left, you find good girls who never go for men with even a hint of jerkish characteristics, in the middle are the majority of women who like their men best when they exhibit some jerkboy flair, and at the far right of the bell curve are your women who fall in love with serial killers and prisoners.

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