Actually if you bothered to critically read the article you would have noticed the study was not about men liking hot women. The study was about how women have an innate sense of their "league" if you will and that it subconsciously effects their choices. Namely the most honest and kind woman in the world would still prefer say Bruce Willis to Quasimodo. That is to say even if this hypothetical woman and Bruce Willis had a grand total of 1 common interest and Quasimodo exemplified every non-physical quality that she wanted in a mate she'd still go for Willis given the choice.

That is unless she subconsciously knew herself to be out of Bruce Willis' "league". In which case given the choice between them and some other mildly compatible mate in who's "league" she fits squarely into she'd choose the 3rd option. Basically put women seem to have this innate sense of their value and the value of them men around them and choose in such away as to end up with someone of exactly equal value.

This would explain for instance why the vast majority of gold-diggers are female. Simply put a man will go for anything with the right bits as long as it looks good. This makes old men very susceptible to young women. However, older women seem to extinctively know something is wrong when a man far to handsome for them expresses interest. Rather they have an instinctive distrust and aversion when placed in that situation.

Its a complex observation that is not really obvious when one just examines human relationships in a more natural way. This is certainly as news worthy as probably 75% of the crap that gets reported anyway. Now the reporter that wrote the story did a horrible job of presenting his facts but that's not the fault of the people behind the study.

Well for starters, here's the most important part of the study a person should read.
This is a preliminary study at best. Secondly, the activity assigned was speed dating, an activity where men are most likely looking only for hot women and not a lasting relationship

Thirdly, while this particular study was in Germany, a similar study of American women would likely find that their self-rated attractiveness is very negative in comparison with how they were rated by the men. American society is screwy like that.

Dear CNN,

I am a Canadian Citizen who doesn't want to know the inner workings of relationships at this point in time. What I want to know is what's going on in the area outlined below:

http://i165.photobucket.com/albums/u...untitled-1.jpg

However, if our world was a bit more like this, feel free to write anything, and I'll read it in the local tavern while enjoying a nice glass of Dragons Breath.

Oh c'mon.. you know that this map is a total fake.... a bunch of those countries dont even exist...

What the hell is "US"? And why is it attached to the Imaginary Country? And where the hell did they put the north freakin pole?

yes it is. I have to fervently agree that this 'survey/study' of men and women is utterly useless, degenerative, and completely unnecessary. Did you really need a study to prove that men and women want physical attractions in the opposite sex (how bored are you)? Ridiculous, purely.

All I got from this article is simply the point proven that women & mens standards for what they want vis-a-vis to what they're physically and 'naturally' after is almost a one-way battle. Women and men will write down and say what they really want from their opposite sex and what they truly wish in a companion in love; however when faced aginst what is in the natural urges (i.e. a VERY physically attractive mate) those said and written wishes simply fade away in the form of "he/she's hot!"

Then you did in fact miss the main point of the study. It showed a preliminary tendency in the "natural urges" of women to go for a mate very closely matched in physical appearance. Which is actually almost the exact opposite of what you said but not quite. Sure women still have that natural urge to go for the most attractive mate but it appears to be limited by a nearly equally powerful natural urge to find someone that can't trade up. I mean sure you could conclude that from a preponderance of circumstantial evidence but its another thing entirely to actually prove in quantitatively. Namely instead of psychologists arguing over the qualitative interpretation of random observations they now have a modicum of proof. This allows them to move past deciding what drives human relationships and move into more specialized ways of fixing them based on this new evidence. Scientifically speaking you can't really do this without first having proof of you founding concepts. (Which are provided by this and studies like this.) Of course it also helps dating sites pick better matches.

Edit: For example, when one founds an experiment on a qualitative conclusion based on circumstantial evidence and it fails its almost universally attributed to the conclusion it was founded on. At the very least the cause of failure can't be disambiguated from the shady foundation of the founding assumption. However, if that assumption has some evidence supporting it and the experiment fails then it is more clearly the result of a failure in the procedure.

Basically in the past psychologists that based treatments on a theory of relationships based about the conclusion supported by this study had no way of telling if their treatments failed because they were flawed or failed because the underlying theory was flawed. This study and others conducted like it allow the psychologists to revisit past failures and analyze why they failed and perhaps gain new and/or greater insights into human relationships.

Heh, now I understand something else from this study, why the girls with poor self-image end up with the crappy guys, and that the guys will jump at anything above a base-line tolerance of good looks.

So really, the entire matchmaking process is pretty much up to girls, eh?

You know what? CNN is great! I did a bit of improv comedy because of them. They gave me a talent to do tonight at the talent show. So stop pickin on them.

I think this thread is getting more attention than it needs.

I would actually say that this doesn't prove anything of the like, or even offer any proof. Speed dating heavily skews this study toward physical attractiveness.

Ok, I spend five minutes with someone? Yeah, the only thing I'm going to know is how attractive they are and whether I'd want to spend more time with them/whether or not I'm in the same 'league' based purely on their appearances.

Give me an hour with someone and those mental and emotional qualities begin to get more and more important. Give me three dates? Maybe five? The physical qualities are now less important than the emotional/mental. Give me a month? The physical qualities now hardly matter.

All they've done is prove that in five minutes all you know about someone is whether you'd be willing to 'tap that ass', which, really, is pretty obvious. You can't really learn anything about someone in five to ten minutes.