Why Beautiful People Have Daughters

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 capable of becoming. The best competition I have is against myself to become better."Now back to that strange question, why the heck do beautiful people have more daughters and rich parents more sons???Studies show that when the parents have above average attractiveness the odds of having daughters increases by 36%.Mother Nature works behind the scenes in a pretty powerful way.Back in 1973, Dr. Robert Trivers published a ground breaking article in Science magazine. He came up with the the Trivers–Willard hypothesis which showed that even though humans generally have close to 50-50% male/female babies, under certain stressful circumstances that ratio will change - sometimes a lot.In people groups living in poverty, let's say the Gypsies in Hungary or the Mukogodo of Kenya researchers found that those poor groups "had a female-biased sex ratio at birth, were more likely to abort a child after having had one or more daughters, nursed their daughters longer, and sent their daughters to school for longer."So why would poor parents have more daughters and wealthier parents have more sons?It’s because God/Universe/Nature is on our side and works to our advantage and sometimes having a different gender is more advantageous to a family.Let's illustrate with a hypothetical situation where there are 2 families each with 2 children. The rich family has Bob and Mary. The poor family has John and Susie.Rich Family:Bob is 25 and not very attractive but his family has given him the best business education and let him work in the family business.Mary is 25 and is successful financially but not very attractive.Poor Family:John is 25 and has no financial support from his family to get an education or start a business but he is super good looking.Susie is 25 and doesn't have much money but is gorgeous.Which out of these four will probably have the easiest time getting married.If you guessed Bob and Susie you would be right. The ugly man from the rich family with money and resources and the pretty woman from the poor family.What about the other two kids?Well Mary has financial success but since not many potential husbands care much about a woman's bank balance she's at a disadvantage (just think of the billionaire Oprah Winfrey - teenage boys don't exactly have posters of her up on their wall).John has good looks but most women don't only look for looks in a long term mate/husband so he's at a disadvantage.The research doesn't say only rich and beautiful people get married. Of course regular people get married every day. The point is that over 10,000 generations of humans there is a general trend of some people having more advantages than others. Remember over long periods of time even a 5% difference in advantage can change the whole end result.Dr. Robert Trivers correctly guessed that nature will give rich parents more sons because those parents would have extra money to invest in their sons to help them be successful enough to attract a high quality wife.The generalized theory by Dr. Trivers and Williams accurately predicts that any parents with a trait advantageous for boys will give birth to more boys and parents with any trait advantageous for women in the parents will give birth to more daughters.He also theorized that poorer parents would have an advantage by having more daughters because the daughters could make up for their parents lack of resources by using their beauty to find a high quality husband.Money and beauty weren’t the only predictor of gender. Tall parents have more sons and small parents have more daughters since height is more of a mating advantage for boys than girls.Over the last 30 years study after study has shown this gender birth rate difference to be the reality.Nature and biology is alive.Now as I read this book the main takeaway that I got was how amazing the human body really is.It adapts so that we can thrive.More importantly it continues to reinforce a principle that I think most people never understand about life.There are patterns.Take happiness from the pattern.If you use them right, those patterns will change your life because you can organize them into your plan.When I teach in my mentoring program I explain it this way.If you want an amazing life with massive rewards like a passionate romance, a long healthy life, wealth and financial abundance, love and admiration from your peers, and happiness and fulfillment, then your best bet is to start by investing in a good plan for yourself.The happiness you want is the end result. The end result comes from an effective strategy. A good strategy is controlled by your philosophy; you put your strategy into practice through goals; and goals comprise your PLAN.It's all about the quality of your plan. This is what separates my bank account from Bill Gates. He had a better plan. He got a better end result than me because his strategy came from a stronger philosophy and this strategy was put into action with a solid plan. And that's why he has billions and I don't.This article is about love, not business or money but the same principles apply.Ask yourself, "Do I want to wander through life and just take whatever relationship I can get, or do I want an amazing well designed love life?" Because it's extremely easy to get trapped.Jim Rohn says, "One day, early in my walk, my mentor said let me see your list of goals. I was a bit surprised as I didn't have a list of goals. Mr. Shoaff said, really? I can tell you right now that if you don't have list of goals, I can guess your bank account balance within a few hundred dollars and he did. I said you mean my bank balance would change if I had a list of goals? Earl said, drastically. That changed everything for me."After that Jim decided to make a plan.There are 3 plans you can have for your life:1. You can follow some other persons plan2. You can follow your own plan3. You can follow Natures plan (or call it God or the Universe's plan):Most people do #1 - they follow someone else's plan. That's why TV commercials exist. They slowly change your behavior until you are living your life to benefit someone elses plan.Think about it:- What's McDonald’s plan for you? To buy their burgers and give them your money.- What's your boss and employer’s plan for you? To make THEM a lot of money!- What's NBC and Warner Brothers’ plan for you? To use your time and cash watching their TV shows and movies and buying from their advertisers.- What's Drake and Rihanna's plan for you? To buy their music and make them rich or famous.-What's your credit cards’ plan for you? To keep you in debt and paying them interest!-What's American Apparel’s plan for you? To make sure you think of wearing the most fashionable clothes and buying from them.I'm not saying these are bad people or corporations but I am saying that if you are not careful, other people who don't have your best interests at heart will run your life for their benefit and not yours.This '"Follow some other person's plan" is the default. If you haven't consciously made a better plan for your life I can almost guarantee you are already living out someone else's plan.  I consider this the worst way to live life. I have been caught in it myself and every time I remember it I get angry at myself for having wasted years that I will never get back.Some people figure out that the #1 "Other person's plan" plan sucks and they evolve to #2 and follow their own plan.This sounds like a great strategy at first and it's usually better than following someone else. But if you look closer you will realize it's not a big improvement over plan #1.Why? Well can we be so cocky to think that we can, on our own, go out and figure out the world? This world is a pretty complex place. Doctors spend their whole lifetime just trying to understand the heart or the lungs. Engineers spend their whole life trying to make one specific type of airplane engine.Will you or I be able to master all areas of life on our own? Has your past proven you to be a genius planner? Be honest.Or are you like me and see that even my best laid plans often turned out to be idiotic in hindsight and that by the time I learn by experience I will be too old to enjoy the fruit of my wisdom.Like the Dutch proverb says, “Too soon old, too late smart.”Can you and I make 7 billion people and all the forces of nature bend to our own wishes and plan? It's one thing to make our own plan, it's another thing to get other's to play along.I mean I would love if I could just make a plan "The world should just deposit a billion dollars tomorrow into Tai Lopez's bank account." I actually love that plan. The problem is that no one else likes that idea. I haven't found anyone yet who would willingly just take money out of their account and wire it to me for no reason.Sounds obvious yet millions of people live with an ego centric mentality that says "I think the world should treat me a certain way". This is the "entitled" plan and it's a recipe for disaster.The natural state of most people is to be childlike and egocentric. Psychologists call this “the theory of the mind” which means that when we are young and immature we have a hard time understanding that anything outside of our own thoughts exists. Kids under five really think they are the center of the Universe (so do some adults I know). Unfortunately most of us never fully get this out of our lives. We grow up and stay egocentric instead of becoming an observer of truth.I think we should see ourselves like birdwatchers. We take our binoculars and we go out and see what's happening. We make ourselves quiet and less the center of attraction so we can observe clearly what is out there happening in the trees.So if #1 and #2 plans don't work then that leaves us with what I consider the only good plan:#3 - following Nature/God/Universe's plan. This is the non- egocentric way of the observer.This is not a religious or spiritual point I am making. That's why I used the word Nature, God, or the Universe. Take your choice on the word you use. I don't want to get distracted now with theology or philosophy.Joel Salatin used to tell me, "Tai, Nature always laughs last."He meant that in the end, despite our best laid intentions, there is something more powerful than us at work. And as the old saying goes, "If you can't beat em, then join em."And that’s just like in this book. We might not think it's fair that women are rewarded for their beauty, or that men are rewarded for their success in business, since not all women are born beautiful nor are  all men born with the ability to do well financially, but nature has set up something that we must respect and learn from.I think of life like a giant rolling ball and you have two choices on how to deal with that ball. You can run in front of the ball out on your own, but inevitably you will stumble and that huge ball will run you over and crush you to dust.Or you can jump inside the ball and run along with it and be safe inside.If you can set up the 4 main areas of your life, Health, Wealth, Love, and Higher Purpose INSIDE this ball of Nature/God/Universes plan you will not only survive but you will be happy and thrive along the way.[check out my free online seminar @ 12 pm PST on "How to Get One Million People Paying Attention to Your Idea: The New Rules of Marketing" >>CLICK HERE TO REGISTER>>]Maybe you are wondering what I mean practically.Well for example, if you want to be physically healthy do not impose your own made up plan on your diet. Don't say, "Well I like eating meat therefore meat must be good for me." or "I don't like the thought of eating meat so I will pretend that eating meat is bad for me."No, go out and see what Nature set you up to eat without any judgement or bias on your part.Jim Rohn talks about his father who lived a long, healthy life. He said he asked his Dad one night what his secret to health was. His dad said "I eat an apple every night before bed."That was a simple plan that lines up with what research tells us about fruit and how Nature built the human body. Jim says imagine what would have happened if his dad had had his own egocentric plan and had changed one word of that sentence to "I eat a candy bar every night before bed."  That one change in the plan would have probably cut his life short by a decade.The observer of God/Nature/Universe humbly accepts the diet plan with the apple not the candy bar. The immature egocentric person decides they like the taste of the candy bar more and ignores natural law and pays for it with an early death.Sounds obvious in the case of an apple versus a candy bar but I challenge you to examine your life. Can you think of anything that you are doing that is ignoring the obvious Natural Laws of life?If you want to make a lot of money do not think, "Well I think it's unfair that the top 1% have more money than me." Instead go out and figure out how the 1% think and what they do differently than you and line up your money making attempts with the Universe's plan for financial prosperity.If you want to date or marry someone amazing don't be egocentric and say, "Well I'm a great catch, I deserve the best." That might be what your mom thinks about you, but guess what, the world is full of people who don't take your mom's advice.So if you want to find love and romance with an amazing person than follow the Universe's plan - like attracts like. Go become amazing yourself and slowly but surely amazing people will start popping up all around you. People often ask me how I have been able to attract high level mentors. It’s because interesting people want to be around interesting people. As I improve myself by reading more and learning more and doing more I find that higher level people seek out my company.If you want to be happy and feel fulfilled each day you can't just decide, "I deserve to be happy."Nature, God, and the Universe don't play by those rules. They play by the rules of "To get what you want you have to deserve what you want."If you feel depressed and unhappy that's usually Nature telling you that you are living out a pretty crappy life and that you should make a change. So go out and quit the job you hate or get out of the horrible relationship you are in.This sounds tough. It is tough. But if there is one thing that's obvious, this world can be a pretty tough place. It's meant to be hard. To quote Tom Hanks, "It's supposed to be hard. If it wasn't hard, everyone would do it. The hard is what makes it great."Remember, take comfort in the fact that it's a little challenging to live a good life. Remember that there is a set plan for love and human attraction. You don't have to try to invent the formula for love and romance. It's been ingrained in your very DNA. You just have to read the obvious signs and go out and find the blueprint, the treasure map.It's a big world, a big rolling wheel, we can't change it easily.We can take out some of the unfairness. Somethings like racism, which is a byproduct of our fear of risk, can be eradicated with education, thank God.But some things that are not so cut and dry will never disappear and honestly don't need to. We don't need to change some natural things, WE need to change ourselves.It's ok that the man or women you love or want to fall in love with is attracted to healthy people like Brad Pitt or Angelina Jolie. We don't need to change that. You and I need to just get better at exercising and eating right.This book of the day I hope will be part of your search for #3 God/Nature/Universes plan.It's the reason I read so much. That's why I want you to start reading more and find more and better mentors. That's a sign you are being humble. The world rewards the humble. This is what I think the saying means, "Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth."Go out and become a seeker. Discover truth that's both easy to handle and that's hard to accept (like some of the concepts in this book).When it comes to love, family, friendships and your whole social life the reward is high so expect a little challenge along the way.Stay tuned tomorrow for part 2 of this email, I couldn't fit it all in one email - it was too long haha. Stay strong,TaiP.S. I got asked to do my free online seminar again so I'm doing it @ 12 pm PST on "How to get One Million People to Pay Attention to Your Idea: The New Rules of Marketing" >>CLICK HERE TO SIGN UP>>Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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