I recently read about a psychological study performed by researchers at Indiana University. The study tested …

“The ability to judge another individual’s romantic interest level”

The participants observed videos of men and women speed dating and attempted to gage the level of interest of each person based mostly on non-verbal clues.

The study participants included 28 women and 26 men and not surprisingly both the men and the women were equally adept at predicting male interest. What was interesting was that both sexes didn’t fare as well when it came to predicting female interest with predictions just above chance.

Personally, I found it reassuring to know that men are not alone in their inability to read women without getting to know them better. At least we are in good company. However what intrigued me were the evolutionary reasons behind this, which basically boil down to choosing the best mate. In my previous blog post, I wrote about how women can be attracted by perspiration, yet another evolutionary influence.

While this kind of information is interesting one has to wonder what possible use this kind of information could have. Then I considered how close we are to being able to manipulate our DNA and I began to understand. There is still so much about why we behave the way we do that we don’t understand. It is a sobering thought to contemplate that a small genetic change could dramatically affect the way men and women interact with one another, especially when we consider how many things affect how and why we are attracted to each other.

It is exciting to think that we can improve the lives of our children by eliminating hereditary diseases or other potential problems before they are even born but we need to tread cautiously to ensure that their children have a future too.