Why strong women like to be dominated

They don't mind a woman taking charge. In fact, they love it. They look for women who will "wear the trousers" in the home. Ndlela says these men are attracted to strong and confident women, who likewise enjoy holding the reins. Would you like to comment on this article or view other readers' comments? Register Sign in. Good Life. Women are hard-wired to want dominant men. Ndlela says human beings are by nature not attracted to someone who conveys powerlessness.

Research supporting this argument has found that women with a higher fear of crime are more likely to prefer physically formidable and dominant males. In addition, women who score lower on dominance show a stronger preference for taller men.

Unfortunately, the preference for larger and more dominant men comes with a cost. Such men, while they might protect their partners from other men, also present the risk of turning their aggression onto their partners. By choosing larger and more dominant men, women potentially become more vulnerable to physical and sexual domination by their partner.

Crime statistics show that the majority of intimate partner murder victims are female. It simply describes how physical and psychological characteristics become more common if they help an organism pass on its genes. The desire in females for tall, dominant males is just likely to have been a successful way of propagating genes, even before Homo sapiens evolved.

Although we are not blind to the benefits of size, these sexual and romantic preferences are not determined by conscious choice, nor are they always rational or desirable. So the fact that women prefer male partners who can — and often do — dominate them does not mean that women want to be dominated. Attraction of some high-ranking women towards low-ranking men represents a puzzle.

Methods: Young urban adults men, women filled out a questionnaire focused on their sexual preference for higher or lower ranking partners, their future in-pair hierarchy, and hierarchy between their parents. Results: Human pairs with a hierarchic disparity between partners conceive more offspring than pairs of equally-ranking individuals, who, in turn, conceive more offspring than pairs of two dominating partners.

Read: Fastest-growing health risk for teens is not obesity, but unsafe sex. The team led by Karen Wu turned to speed-dating to test their predictions in a real-life scenario. In such meet-ups, participants only had a few minutes to assess the short- and long-term potential of their speed-dating partners, and to decide whether or not to offer their partners a second date. The team recruited single Asian Americans to have three-minute dates with members of the opposite sex. After each speed-date, participants were asked whether or not they wanted to offer their partner a second date, and how desirable they found the person as a romantic partner.

When examining the DNA samples collected from participants, the researchers focused on two polymorphisms on two different genes that were previously linked to social dynamics. Read: Long-acting testosterone promises a great sex life for diabetic men.