Why Girls Like Bad Boys | Bad Boy or Nice Guy: What Women Want? | Women Don't Like Nice Guys (TAMIL)

Why Girls Like Bad Boys | Bad Boy or Nice Guy: What Women Want? | Women Don't Like Nice Guys (TAMIL)

“Women always go for the bad boys.” “Nice guys finish last.” “Treat ‘em mean, keep ‘em keen.”
There are so many variations on the idea that women brush off advances from lovely men and instead deliberately chase guys who are tall, dark and horrible. If it’s true, why is the crime rate not significantly higher, as straight guys compete with each other to look “badder” than their friends? In fact what do we mean by “bad” anyway? Are we talking bank robbers, or just your mate Clive who once dumped a girl via text?
Broadly published an article this week entitled Why Women Want To F**k Bad Boys, in which writer Diana Tourjee claimed that: “Everyone knows men like these … (so-called ‘bad boys,’ or risk-taking men) … are desirable. Thanks to a recent study, this is now scientifically verifiable
Wow. If science really has confirmed that every woman on the planet will make an identical sexual choice, then surely someone’s in line for a Marie-Claire-sponsored Nobel Prize. But is it true? Well ... like that guy in the club who “guarantees” you the best night of your life, you should familiarise yourself with the detail before making any decisions.
The research Tourjee is referring to is The Young Male Cigarette and Alcohol Syndrome - Smoking and Drinking as a Short-Term Mating Strategy. It was published earlier this year in the Journal of Evolutionary Psychology. Already a few alarm bells are ringing, because evolutionary psychology is notoriously controversial. It’s common for mainstream press articles to sex up their science reporting, but implying that “science has verified” something based on an evolutionary psychology paper is as accurate as claiming that scientists have verified the deliciousness of Marmite.
The second issue with the article is its conflation of “bad” with drinking and smoking. Sure, a twenty-a-day habit is unhealthy, not to mention it makes you smell like the bins outside Wetherspoons, but is it really the criteria by which we judge “bad boys”? In my experience, and relating to those phrases we hear so often (“Nice guys finish last!”), “badness” encompasses more than just unhealthy behaviour. A bad boy might ride a motorcycle (risky), but he may be “bad” in other ways too. When “nice guys” complain that they’re always finishing last, usually what they mean is that other men (the ones their female friends are sleeping with) are simply not good enough. This could mean anything from not buying his girlfriend flowers on Valentine’s Day to cheating on her, cadging money or saying rude things about her Mum.
As ever, the way this has been reported probably isn’t the fault of the researcher who published it, Eveline Vincke, who was pretty clear about her aims: “We aim to explore the hypothesis that male smoking and drinking behavior—being risky physical consumption behaviors—are used as a male short-term mating strategy.”

Let’s look at the key questions as they relate to the “bad boy” theory. Firstly, do risky behaviours like smoking and drinking in young males correlate with more short-term sexual activity (one night stands and the like)? Secondly, does adopting a “risk-taking” strategy – i.e. smoking and drinking more – work to secure the approval of female peers? In layman’s terms: do you actually get more action if you’re a smokin’, drinkin’ bad boy?

Vincke’s answer to both of these questions is “yes”. But any layperson can spot that they don’t support the grand assumptions made by Tourjee that “women prefer bad boys”, because there are complicating factors. Given that casual sex is often considered (or at least presented as) “risky behaviour”, it’s unsurprising that men who are risky in other ways might also be risky in this one. What’s more, my mother tells me alcohol has a slight impact on one’s impulsive decision-making, so the addition of “drinking” to the risk factors could simply imply that drunk people have more casual sex. We’ve gone from Why Women Want To F**k A Bad Boy to Young Males Who Smoke And Drink More Likely To Also Have Casual Sex.

When it comes to the conclusions on mating strategy, again the research says that, yes, men may be using this as a deliberate tactic to tempt women into bed. But Vincke touched on another key factor, which is absent from the Broadly article: women’s agency. If young male “bad boys” have more casual sex, then a woman seeking casual sex should reasonably adopt a “shag a bad boy” mating strategy.

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