The Guardian looked, to me, a reasonably respectable newspaper. They have such a column, too?

Because bad boys do not appear to them as losers ;)

Gah! That's not what psychopathy means, damn it!

Prof. Faust wrote:Gah! That's not what psychopathy means, damn it!

On a related note, they're not exactly doing Machiavelli a favour here either.

"Bad boys exhibit dark triad traits and their behaviour, according to one theory, is genetic, meaning they are unlikely to change their ways. guardian.co.uk"

A little correction here.
Behavioral genetics are fluid, meaning that they do in fact change. A simple example of this; when we first learned to drive we would behave nervous when entering the freeway and experience a higher amount of stress. After a short while when we become more familiar with the environmental circumstance our behavior changes, (for most, or not ) we no longer are nervous and our stress levels are lower. This example may seem to imply that a behavioral change just sort of happens, but that is not the case. We have a choice to behave any way we choose.
Why do women keep becoming involved with "bad boys"? There is an emotional connection that attracts women, and men for that matter, that is addictive. It is like a thrill seeker desiring to live on the edge. Life can seem more exciting being involved with someone who runs against societal norms, and the "thrill" is an emotion. Emotions are chemical reactions in our body that we can become addictied to. When we see someone repeatedly experiencing the same behaviors, even if it appears to result in a bad experience, that is an addiction to the emotion of the experience. How often do we see women, for example, that go from one abusive relationship to another? Much like the "bad boy" experience, some women keep attaching themselves to abusive partners, which always seems to end the same. Anyone who is in these relationships will only come out of them when they decide to change "their" behavior, and in doing so will break the chemical addiction of the emotion. By changing their behavior they change the emotional chemistry of the body. The initiator of our behaviors lay in our conscious perceptions of events in our lives. How we perceive ourselves and the experience. If we can view/perceive any experience we are in without feeling an emotional reaction, we can then see the experience clearly. If we react emotionally then we are acting according to the chemical process and the emotions can cloud our decisions.
This is not to say that we shouldn't be emotional, in fact we most definetly should, it is just to say that we should become aware of how we may act and make our choices accordingly.

Good input Templeton.

Templeton, Do you think that could be one of the underlying causes for "serial infidelity" as well? Addiction to the rush more than any actual sexual attraction.

TBH, I haven't even thought of it in the way you write about it in your post, would love to see some studies done with this in mind.

Firetail wrote:Templeton, Do you think that could be one of the underlying causes for "serial infidelity" as well? Addiction to the rush more than any actual sexual attraction.

TBH, I haven't even thought of it in the way you write about it in your post, would love to see some studies done with this in mind.

I do believe that emotional chemical addiction is contributory to many dis-eases, not only physiologically, but mentally as well. I was thrashing about looking for a study I read a couple of years ago (haven't found it yet) that correlated an increase in cases of breast cancer in women in Africa with the introduction of Western advertisement (from around the 1960's to aprox 2004.
Western advertising floods the media of pictures of how women’s breast should look as well as women in general, subsequently many African women do not believe their breast are adequate. Now does this cause cancer? Hopefully research will tell us, but the potential is truly exciting.
So in reply I do believe there is a connection, but you can take that with a grain of salt as I also believe that J.B. Lamarck wasn't as far off as many people believe.

I know lots of women who DETEST "bad boys". Not all are the same.

What's any more dark about human behaviour than any other creature? :S

(including callous, impulsive, thrill-seeking, risk-taking behaviour) and Machiavellianism (exploitative, manipulative and deceitful behaviour)

I see absolutely nothing wrong with those types of behavior as long as the person who has them is e.g.: impulsive, exploitative and deceitful with people who deserve it. Being callous and not letting emotions get in the way can be beneficial and is necessary. Thrill-seeking and risk-taking can be someone's drug, if they know their own limits and where to draw the line.

It's certainly doesn't make for a boring life-style.

jparada wrote:I know lots of women who DETEST "bad boys". Not all are the same.

That is true. Tastes are very different. During the first season of Idols in Holland, i watched the program with my sister. In the finals there were two boys. One masculine and macho, the bad boy type. The other was more feminine and came out of the closet as a gay later on. The majority voted for the last boy, though he was less handsome. My sister didn't like it at all, because she likes macho men, and couldn't understand why women would choose for the latter type.

But, i find several women amazing in their support for psychopaths. Take the example of Josef Fritzl, the Austrian guy that locked up and abused his daughter for a few decades. 200 women send him love letters in prison.

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/top-storie ... -20594199/

Well, it's the topic of the OP. My theory why some women fall for bad boys is that bad boys have an evolutionary advantage, and so you need women who want to make babies with the bad boys, so the procreate. Most women don't like bad boys, because altruism is also important for the maintenance of a society. Though there is also devolution and decadence. Our modern society has nothing to do with the enivronment in which human behaviour evolved.

Well, lets rephrase into a species evolving into something that will get obsolete in the future.