Various studies explicitly try to elucidate the success, or lack thereof, of "nice guys" with women (Jensen-Campbell et. al. 1995,
[10] Herold & Milhausen 1998, Urbaniak 2003, McDaniel 2005).
- Jensen-Campbell et. al. (1995) operationalized "niceness" as prosocial behavior, which included agreeableness and altruism. They found that female attraction was a result of an interaction of both dominance and prosocial tendency. They suggest that altruism may be attractive to women when it is perceived as a form of agentic behavior.
- Herold & Milhausen (1998) asked a sample of undergraduate women "You meet two men. One, John, is nice but somewhat shy. He has not had any sexual experience. The other, Mike, is attractive, a lot of fun, and has had intercourse with 10 women. Both wish to date you. Whom do you choose?" 54% reported a preference for "John," 18% preferred "Mike," and the rest had no preference.
- Urbaniak & Killman (2003) constructed vignettes of four hypothetical dating show contestants: "Nice Todd" vs. "Neutral Todd" vs. "Jerk Todd" vs. "Michael", who was created to be a control. "Nice Todd" described a "real man" as "in touch with his feelings", kind and attentive, non-macho, and interested in putting his partner's pleasure first. "Neutral Todd" described a "real man" as someone who "knows what he wants and knows how to get it", and who is good to the woman he loves. "Jerk Todd" described a "real man" as someone "knows what he wants and knows how to get it", who keeps everyone else on their toes, and avoids "touch-feely" stuff. "Michael" described a "real man" as relaxed and positive. In two studies, Urbaniak & Kilmann found that women claimed to prefer "Nice Todd" over "Neutral" over "Jerk Todd", relative to "Michael" even at differing levels of physical attractiveness. They also found that for purely sexual relationships, "niceness appeared relatively less influential than physical attractiveness." After acknowledging that women's preference for "niceness" could be inflated by the social desirability bias, especially due to their use of verbal scripts, they conclude that "our overall results did not favor the nice guy stereotype."
- McDaniel (2005) constructed vignettes of dates with a stereotypical "nice guy" vs. a stereotypical "fun/sexy guy", and attempted to make them both sound positive. Participants reported a greater likelihood of wanting a second date with the "nice guy" rather than with the "fun/sexy guy."
- A study at New Mexico State University in Las Cruces (2008) showed that nice guys claim to have significantly less sexual partners than bad boys.[11][12]
These studies also cite other research on heterosexual attraction that doesn't mention the "nice guy" term. They interpret various studies on female attraction to various traits in men (e.g.
dominance,
agreeableness, physical attractiveness,
wealth, etc.), and on the sexual success of men with different personality traits, to shed light on the "nice guy" phenomenon.
- Sadalla, Kenrick, & Vershure (1985)[13] found that women were sexually attracted to dominance in men (though dominance did not make men likable to women), and that dominance in women had no effect on men.
- Bogaert & Fisher (1995)[14] studied the relationships between the personalities of university men and their number of sexual partners. They found a correlation between a man's number of sexual partners, and the traits of sensation-seeking, hypermasculinity, physical attractiveness, and testosterone levels. They also discovered a correlation between maximum monthly number of partners, and the traits of dominance and psychoticism. Bogaert & Fisher suggest that an underlying construct labelled "disinhibition" could be used to explain most of these differences. They suggest that disinhibition would correlate negatively with "agreeableness" and "conscientiousness" from the Big Five personality model.
- Botwin, Buss & Shackelford (1997)[15] found that women had a higher preference for surgency and dominance in their mates than men did, in a study of dating couples and newlyweds. Shackelford has been criticized for this with some mockingly referring to him as "Todd the Texas sharpshooter fallacy."
