Do Nice Guys Really Finish Last? Why Women Love Bad Boys

Bad boys—they pos­sess that cer­tain al­lure. Wo­m­en want them, pine for them even. While good guys are busy mak­ing home­made va­lentines, bad boys are busy not calling back. And by some mys­te­ri­ous alche­my, not calling back makes some wo­m­en pine for them all the more.

Or per­haps it’s not so mys­te­ri­ous. Per­haps the al­lure of the bad boy can be defined. I be­lieve wo­m­en are at­tract­ed to bad boys by two main caus­es; one is cul­tu­r­al, the other chem­i­cal.

The Cul­tu­r­al Al­lure
It be­gins with sex. Sex is a pow­er­ful, pri­mal force. In or­der to form civ­i­l­ized so­ci­eties, we’ve cre­at­ed rules around sex; we’ve desig­nat­ed places we can have it and desig­nat­ed peo­ple we can have it with. While ne­ces­sary, th­ese rules give the im­pres­sion that sex is a neg­a­tive force. Sex is seen as some­thing un­bri­dled, a wild beast that needs to be tamed. It’s dan­ger­ous.

Yet our de­sire for sex is al­ways there. We want to have it. And if the thing we want is dan­ger­ous, well, who bet­ter to have it with than some­one who is dan­ger­ous? Who bet­ter to en­gage with in the un­tamed pri­mal force of sex than the un­tamed bad boy?

Ev­ery time he be­haves bad­ly, does­n’t call back, or drives too fast, he’s say­ing he does­n’t care for civ­il so­ci­e­ty’s rules. He’s say­ing he’s willing to be wild and pri­mal. He’s say­ing he’s com­fort­able be­ing sex­u­al. And that’s at­trac­tive.

The Chem­i­cal Cause
Wo­m­en’s love of bad boys al­so has a lot to do with one word: tes­tos­terone. Of course, it’s more com­pli­cat­ed than that.

Evo­lu­tio­nary bi­ol­o­gy tells us that all of our be­havior evolved to help us at­tract a mate. In essence, men are pranc­ing around try­ing to prove to wo­m­en that they will pro­duce strong chil­dren and pro­tect them. Mean­while, wo­m­en are busy try­ing to at­tract men who will—you guessed it—pro­duce strong chil­dren and be pro­tec­tive.

So, how does a wo­m­an make this de­ter­mi­na­tion? Of­ten it’s by un­con­s­cious­ly reg­is­ter­ing dis­plays of high tes­tos­terone.

In a study con­duct­ed by the Kinsey In­sti­tute on mas­culini­ty and at­trac­tive­ness, wo­m­en’s brains showed a high­er re­sponse to pho­tos of mas­cu­line men (defined as men with high tes­tos­terone lev­els). And if wo­m­en were at their most fer­tile, just be­fore ovu­la­tion, their re­spons­es were even high­er.



Phys­i­cal traits like a strong, wide jaw and a promi­nent brow are in­dica­tive of high tes­tos­terone lev­els in a man. Risk tak­ing al­so in­di­cates high tes­tos­terone lev­els. In fact, 80 per­cent of sky­divers are men. Tak­ing risks is some­thing men do to show am­bi­tion to pos­si­ble mates. One study on risks con­duct­ed by so­cial psy­chol­o­gists at Flori­da State Uni­ver­si­ty found that if you show a man with high tes­tos­terone even just a pic­ture of an at­trac­tive wo­m­an, he’s more like­ly to take risks.

Com­pet­i­tive­ness is al­so in­dica­tive of high tes­tos­terone. When men with high tes­tos­terone lose a game, their tes­tos­terone lev­el ac­tu­al­ly gets high­er. If a man with high tes­tos­terone los­es a wo­m­an, his lev­els go up; he gets more com­pet­i­tive and he wants her more.

Thus, that high-tes­tos­terone man might take the risk to do some­thing “bad,” like bust in­to a par­ty he was­n’t in­vit­ed to and de­spite all so­cial con­ven­tions, tell a wo­m­an that he wants her. All of his be­havior will tell her that he has high tes­tos­terone, that he will pro­duce strong chil­dren, and a lit­tle pri­mal sen­sor in her brain will go “ding.” Sud­den­ly, she wants the bad boy.

But there is a sil­ver lin­ing for the nice, low-tes­tos­terone male. In the Kinsey study, it was shown that ovu­lat­ing wo­m­en tend to choose the high-tes­tos­terone man in hopes of pro­duc­ing stronger off­spring. But at other times in their cy­cle, wo­m­en ac­tu­al­ly pre­fer the more femi­nine fea­tures of the low­er tes­tos­terone men.

When wo­m­en were shown pho­to­graphs of men in the Kinsey study, the part of their brains that lit up was the part in­volved in de­ci­sion-mak­ing. Wo­m­en were weigh­ing the pros and cons of high and low tes­tos­terone. High-tes­tos­terone men may pro­duce stronger chil­dren, but they’re al­so more prone to cheat and take less care of them. And when wo­m­en are not in the throes of their fer­til­i­ty, they can more clear­ly see that the low-tes­tos­terone man’s ten­den­cy to be kind and gen­tle makes him an ide­al part­n­er for the long term.

So while the high-tes­tos­terone man might be trig­ger­ing a pri­mal part of a wo­m­an’s brain and mak­ing her sex drive go “zing,” the low-tes­tos­terone man will trig­ger her more evolved brain for se­cu­ri­ty and trust.

It could in­deed be said that nice guys don’t fin­ish last; they just have to wait for wo­m­en to fol­low their rea­son rather than their in­st­inct.

First pub­lished March 2009