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When I was seven years old I remember listening to some country western song on the radio and asking my mom, "Why do people always sing about love?"(At that age, I would have rather listened to songs about video games instead of how some guy misses his ex-wife).My mom answered, "Because love is important and complicated."It turns out mom was right.How we relate to other humans in love and friendship basically makes or breaks the quality of our life.Jonathan Haidt, a social psychologist at New York University’s Stern School of Business at concluded:"Conflicts in relationships - having an annoying office mate or roommate, or having chronic conflict with your spouse is one of the surest ways to reduce your happiness. You never adapt to interpersonal conflict. It damages every day, even days when you don't see the other person but ruminate about the conflict nonetheless."That's why 25% of all the books I read are about social life: romance, love, friendship, and family.Today's book of the day is "Why Beautiful People Have More Daughters" by Alan S. Miller and Satoshi KanazawaYesterday I was talking about it on my Book-Of-The-Day TV show check out at new episode everyday a 11:30 am PST on www.tailopez.com/tv) ( I had to divide this into two emails so you will see part 2 tomorrow) This book will mesmerize you.It's full of some of the most profound truths about life of any book I have read in years.But first let me say:"WARNING: THIS BOOK WILL BE TOO INTENSE FOR MOST PEOPLE!"Don't email me complaining that I didn't warn you...Just remember, if you read the book and still disagree, despite the mountain of evidence the authors have collected along with their appeal to plain common sense, then go ahead and leave me a comment stating your case. Just make sure you provide some real proof for your argument.[make sure to check out my Book-Of-The-Day deal to get your own copy of “Why Beautiful People have More Daughters” and my own personal notes]...The chapters are divided up into controversial subjects like:-Why do beautiful parents have more daughters and wealthy parents have more sons?-Why do men like blonde bombshells (and why do women want to look like them)?-Why is beauty NOT in the eye of the beholder or merely skin deep?-Why do girls of divorced parents experience puberty earlier than girls whose parents remain married?-Why is prostitution the world’s oldest profession and pornography a billion dollar industry?-Why are there virtually no polyandrous societies (where one woman is married to multiple husbands)?-Why does having sons reduce the likelihood of divorce?-Why might handsome men make bad husbands?-Why are there so many deadbeat dads but so few deadbeat moms?-Why are almost all violent criminals men?-Why do politicians risk everything by having an affair (but only if they are male)?-Why do men so often earn more money and attain higher status than women?-Why are most neurosurgeons male and most kindergarten teachers female?-Why are most suicide bombers Muslim?-Why is ethnic conflict so persistent throughout the world?-Why are single women more likely to travel abroad?Now you might think you know the answers to these questions. But, I guarantee you this book will have you second guessing basically everything you have ever heard on life, love and how humans get along with each other.Every time I dive into any books on evolutionary psychology I realize that literally 95% of what we have been taught about life is absolute nonsense. And what is being taught about love and human attraction is probably the subject most full of error.I don’t know why the heck we never learn any of this in school.It's a crime. But it’s understandable because most of what is written about love, friendship, romance and social life comes from a view of what people would LIKE to be true, NOT what is actually true. I think love is too painful a subject for most people. It’s "too true" for the average person.Just like Jack Nicholson said in A Few Good Men, "You can't handle the truth!"This book covers many of those "too true" subjects.The authors say the problem starts because the standard social science model says we are a blank slate, that our behaviour is environmental and comes through socialization.We have been taught that our personality is based on our environment and what we have learned from our parents, teachers and culture.For example, you may have heard that society created the traditional male and female gender roles.But the authors of this book quote a Cambridge University study that proves that baby boys stare more at mechanical toys and baby girls stare at toys with faces - even babies only 24 hours old.They say:"In summary, we have demonstrated that at 1 day old, human neonates (babies) demonstrate sexual dimorphism (differences) in both social and mechanical perception. Male infants show a stronger interest in mechanical objects, while female infants show a stronger interest in the face.”In this image below you can see the results of a study where scientists put different toys out for male and female vervet monkeys. When they came back in the room the male monkeys were playing with the toy cars and the female monkeys were examining the dolls. “Psychology Today” concludes:"It is becoming less and less likely that ‘gender socialization’ is the reason why boys and girls prefer different toys, and more and more likely that there are some genetic, hormonal, and other biological reasons for the observed sex differences in toy preference."Society doesn't create, gender creates society. Now this book doesn't say that one gender is superior to another, just that they are intrinsically different.And it gets deeper, this book challenges more than just gender roles.The authors start by saying:"Every time we fall in love, everytime we fight with our spouse, ever time we enjoy watching our favorite TV show, every time we get scared walking at night in bad neighborhoods where tough young men loiter, every time we get upset about the influx of immigrants in our country, every time we go to church, we are - in part - behaving as a human animal with its own unique evolved nature - human nature.This means two things. First, our thoughts, our feelings, and behaviors are produced not only by our individual experiences and environment in our own lifetime, but also by what happened to our ancestors... Our human nature is the cumulative product of the experiences of our ancestors in the past, and it affects how we think, feel, and behave today.Second, because human nature is universal - sometimes shared by all humans, sometimes only shared by members of our own sex - our thoughts, feelings, and behavior are shared, to a large extent, by all other humans beings on earth (or all other men or women).Despite the seemingly large cultural differences in various societies, our daily experiences are essentially the same as those of people from Aberdeen, Bombay, and Cairo, to Xian, Yukon, and Zanzibar."The authors are basically saying that much of our behavior doesn't come from free choice but is ingrained in us from birth.Emotions like anger, rage, jealousy, racism, fear, depression, and envy are all part of the evolved human experience (of course it's important we learn to control some of these, but it's still important to know they are natural and there is nothing wrong with us for having them). This concept of instinct reminds me of what Steven Hawking says in "The Grand Design" about free will:“Do people have free will? If we have free will, where in the evolutionary tree did it develop? Do blue-green algae or bacteria have free will, or is their behavior automatic and within the realm of scientific law? Is it only multicelled organisms that have free will, or only mammals?"We might think that a chimpanzee is exercising free will when it chooses to chomp on a banana, or a cat when it rips up your sofa, but what about the roundworm called Caenorhabditis elegans—a simple creature made of only 959 cells?It probably never thinks, “That was damn tasty bacteria I got to dine on back there,” yet it too has a definite preference in food and will either settle for an unattractive meal or go foraging for something better, depending on recent experience. Is that the exercise of free will?Though we feel that we can choose what we do, our understanding of the molecular basis of biology shows that biological processes are governed by the laws of physics and chemistry and therefore are as determined as the orbits of the planets.Recent experiments in neuroscience support the view that it is our physical brain, following the known laws of science, that determines our actions, and not some agency that exists outside those laws. For example, a study of patients undergoing awake brain surgery found that by electrically stimulating the appropriate regions of the brain, one could create in the patient the desire to move the hand, arm, or foot, or to move the lips and talk.It is hard to imagine how free will can operate if our behavior is determined by physical law, so it seems that we are no more than biological machines and that free will is just an illusion."You might not agree with Dr. Hawking. But I've learned that when super smart people disagree with me that I am better off reexamining my position versus instantly concluding they are wrong.After all, Stephen Hawking may be the smartest person to have lived in the last 500 years (He is solving the worlds hardest physics problems while sitting paralyzed in a wheelchair for God's sakes).But whether the universe has free choice or not is not the main point of today's article. We can argue about that another day.When it comes to love we know that our desires are mostly hard - coded.We have been falsely taught that beauty is only skin deep, or that what is considered attractive is different in different cultures.Turns out beauty is not really in the eye of the beholder, cross culturally humans agree on what's attractive, from East Asians, Hispanics, Brazilians, Russians, the Ache of Paraguay, the Hiwi of Venezuela, Cruzans in Saint Croix, Chinese, Indian and English all alike.For example, take this picture of Brad Pitt in Fight Club:and this picture of Danny Devito:and show it to any woman in ANY country, Tanzania, Nepal, Austria, or New Zealand and ask who is the most attractive.Want to make a friendly wager on who they will all choose? You could go back in a time machine a thousand years and women in any country would still always prefer Brad Pitt over Danny Devito.Some people get depressed thinking about life this way - that some people are born with much better genes.But knowing the world has a natural order should make us excited. Because then we can know that all we have to do is line ourselves up with the laws of nature and we will be alright.For example, when it comes to love it's a good thing that women are attracted to the looks of Brad Pitt over Danny Devito.The fact that your great great grandma was picky about who she had kids with is the reason you are here today.Choosy women are the whole reason humans have evolved so successfully! So the next time you get turned down for a date with someone you were really attracted to just think, "Thank God humans are so picky!" Easier said than done I know, haha...And remember there is a good reason women find Brad Pitt attractive. This book says it’s not just some arbitrary thing. Brad has what's called "Bilateral Symmetry" - a fancy word for an attractive face.Bilateral symmetry decreases with exposure to parasites, pathogens, toxins, genetic issues, and inbreeding.The authors conclude: "Far from being merely in the eye of the beholder or skin-deep, beauty appears to be an indicator of genetic and developmental health and therefore of mate quality; beauty is a 'health certificate."This is why all cultures must have similar standards of beauty.Now you might say that it’s Hollywood or Cosmopolitan magazine that has been imposing their distorted version of beauty on the world.That's a load of BS. Here is how we know it's wrong: research shows that newborn babies less than 7 days old prefer to look at beautiful faces.Scientists found:"Placed before photos of a fashion model and a plain-looking woman, a newborn will be drawn to the prettier face.The finding undermines the theory that people develop an idea of attractiveness from the experience of mixing with different individuals.Instead, it appears that everyone is born with a pre-programmed understanding of what makes a person attractive. Newborns were shown two images side by side, one showing an attractive face and the other a less attractive one.The researchers say the infants spent more time looking at the attractive face than the less attractive one."Attractiveness is not simply in the eye of the beholder. It's in the eye of the infant right from the moment of birth, and possibly before birth," said Dr Alan Slater, a psychologist at Exeter.You can show them pair after pair of faces that are matched for everything other than attractiveness.This leads to the conclusion that babies are born with a very detailed representation of the human face.It helps them to recognise familiar faces - particularly that of the mother - and it helps them in learning about the social world.Newborns manage to do this despite their comparatively blurred vision."This is just the tip of the iceberg. Patterns of human attraction are everywhere.Men find women with a BMI (body mass index) of 18.5 most attractive. This is a female ‘certificate' that signals health. If you are a woman that means you don’t want to be too skinny or too fat. You want to be on the low end of what’s classed ‘normal weight.’ You can calculate your BMI here.It’s no coincidence this weight is also the weight that his healthiest for most women. It’s not just about impressing men.Women find men with stronger jawlines more attractive (this is again a 'health certificate' that a man has passed the testosterone test).And let me quote: "Women, on average, tend to be attracted to men who are taller than they are, display a high degree of facial symmetry, masculine facial dimorphism, and who have broad shoulders, a relatively narrow waist, and a V-shaped torso."Again the good news is that for men working on creating your V-shaped torso by cutting your belly fat also translates into living longer as well as being attractive to women.Some of this is not fair (like how tall you are or how pretty you were born), or even that fun to think about sometimes. But I think that life's answers begin by not being afraid of looking directly at the hard truths of life. In a way that's what today's book is all about.The good news is that you can still have an amazing life even if you aren't born a supermodel or if you don't have the jawline of Tom Brady.You should never for a second just give up and say "Oh well, life didn't deal me good cards." If you feel yourself feeling any self pity watch this amazing guy's video over and over I never want this article twisted into anything that makes people give up. This knowledge when used correctly should EMPOWER you - not discourage you.We must use the truth about love as fuel for us to do the things that are in our power.To stay healthy, to work out, to eat right, to learn more social skills, to become more interesting, to be more altruistic, and find a strong sense of life purpose - this is all within our control even if some thing’s aren’t.As the great basketball coach John Wooden says, "Success comes from knowing that you did your best to become the best that you are capab…
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