Do you have a cell phone?...
>Whereas the women in the pub generally kept their phones in their purses and retrieved them only as needed, the men would take their phones out of their jacket pockets or briefcases upon sitting down and place them on the bar counter or table for all to see.
Lest they be overlooked, the men fiddled with them often, picking them up, moving them here or there, checking to be sure the battery was charged.
As the researchers see it, the men are using their mobile phones as peacocks use their immobilizing feathers and male bullfrogs use their immoderate croaks: To advertise to females their worth, status and desirability.
The study, which appears in the current issue of the journal Human Nature, shows how new technology subserves primal impulses -- specifically, the impulse to strut.<
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>Lycett said the new study was inspired by newspaper accounts of how, when night clubs in South America began requiring patrons to check their cell phones at the door, it was discovered that a huge percentage of the phones were fake.
``At the same time, stores in the U.K. were selling fake mobile phones, and some were quite sophisticated -- they even would ring and light up,'' said Lycett, in an interview on a conventional telephone. ``We wondered, `Why would anybody buy a fake phone?' '' The researchers also had casually noticed that men seemed to play around with their phones more than women did, prompting them to wonder if there were sex differences in cell phone behavior.<
Gottfried |
