The other theme is personality, which expresses itself as "is intelligent," "has a good sense of humor," and "is kind". When women look for long term partners, they tend to focus on this theme. In other words, potentially good partners and fathers. If you rephrase this theme as "has empathy and sensitivity" then it reads as code for "not Mallory."
Male power is a trigger to women, at least some of the time, just as female fertility and youth are triggers to men.
The evolutionary rationale is simple. The partners of powerful men have more grandchildren than the wives of weaker men. Good genes are a good starting point. To push those down the generations against never-ending competition takes force. In human terms, that means power.
Let’s fix Clark and Hatfield’s study. The actors were young, attractive men and women. That already introduces a huge bias. A better study would provide a range of actors, both male and female. The actors would show different levels of age, attractiveness, and power. We’d then measure their relative success on a mix of subjects.
Here’s my guess of what would happen. We’d find men responding most to youth, then looks, then availability, and then character. Availability is critical though. Male-on-male violence over women is significant enough that "is not available" should be a turn-off for most men. We’d find women responding to power, then character, then availability, and then looks. During peak fertility, women would respond mainly to power and looks.
The question is, how does a man project the "I am powerful" trigger? How can women tell when a man is lying about their own importance? How do psychopaths exaggerate these triggers?
Again, the answer lies there in plain sight. If you ask a solitary man about his status, most will lie outright. Men will exaggerate their earnings. They will lie about achievements. They will hide their failures. And so on. We assume this, and treat whatever a man says about himself as harmless fantasy.
Males display power in their body language, and behavior towards others. That could be to the observing female, to one or more other men, or to another woman.
Instinctively, when we meet strangers, even crossing in the street, we assess them. Watch how one person gives way to another. A roomful of strangers will self-sort. The men move into most-to-least dominant clusters, each with one man in charge. The women move into various patterns around the men, or apart from them. Men may cluster around individual women. The men check out the women. The women check out the men. The group forms an opinion. It all takes only minutes.
Male power means ability to dominate other men (and women, yet mainly men). This can be subtle and indirect, going far beyond physical dominance. As a writer I can dominate simply by typing. Yet body language and face-to-face dominance is a good place to start looking.
We understand dominant body language well. It is partly about appearing larger. This comes from our ape ancestry, where dominance meant being strongest. The largest, strongest male ruled the group. It is also partly about acting superior to others.
To appear larger, a man stands straight and lifts his chin. He stands with his feet further apart. He takes more space than necessary. He uses hand gestures and pushes his elbows out.
To act superior, a man controls the conversation. He maintains eye contact without blinking. He ignores those he is not interested in. He smiles less and moves his head less. He speaks less, at a lower pitch, and a lower volume. In general he ignores social cues. He will be late, will interrupt, and be severe to others without being rude.
We have a paradox here. These traits both attract women, and repel them. They show a man as capable of dominating other men, and yet as insensitive and potentially brutal. There is a way out of the paradox. Women just assume men are liars, until proven honest. Dominance displays need a secondary trigger to work. Without that secondary trigger, the woman sees a bully’s act.
The secondary triggers come from other males. Like all the triggers we’ve examined, these are minimalistic and elegant. I see two specific triggers. The first is other men who accept the dominance, and act in the right way. That is, they show submissive body language. They are quiet when he talks. They accept his pushy attitude as if they agree he has earned the right.
The second trigger is more dramatic. It takes a male challenger, from outside the group. The dominant male either asserts himself, or loses the game. Women find such winner-takes-all dramas compelling, in real life, in sports, and in entertainment. It gives the same dopamine kick men get from watching a pretty woman undress.
Appeal is all relative, for sure. Yet while female attractiveness is an individual thing, male power flows from other males. No matter how large or rich or confident, a man alone is nothing. Male dominance is all about other men.
There is a similar effect with female-to-male triggering. A woman’s display both attracts and repels men. A woman who wears too much perfume and makeup, who flirts too aggressively, and who shows too much skin turns off most men. Yet if she is with other women, and they appear to like her, this acts as a secondary trigger. And then most men will be comfortable again.
These secondary triggers seem to boil down to "is not a psychopath." Empathy and sensitivity are relatively easy to fake, so superficial displays of empathy are not triggers. I’ll come to empathy tests later.
Now we’ve pinned down the signals, let’s see how to fake them. A wandering male psychopath is solitary. He has no real friends. He cannot just show his "I am important" narcissist mask to women. Rather, he must convince other men he is important. He must find or build a group to dominate, he must display the results.
The underlying mechanisms are subtle. I do not know any research in this area except my own. So this is speculation and hypothesis based on long observation and analysis.
I said men and women differ in key ways. One of those differences is how we communicate. It goes deeper than what we talk about. It goes to the heart of why we evolved the language instinct in the first place.
Men and women both trade power and knowledge, and build structures. Yet there is a distinct gender split. Men talk to exchange technical knowledge and organize with other men into power structures. Women talk to trade social knowledge and organize with other women into rather different structures. Our language reflects these two models.
I’ve called these ways of talking the "human protocols"[31]. There are two main protocols, the male and the female. There are other smaller protocols such as adult-to-child. Most men can at least imitate the female protocol, and vice-versa. Yet it is hard work.
Mallory is an expert in the male protocol. He can dominate groups of men with a mix of lies, promises, and confidence. A large predatory business is indistinguishable from a cult. While Alice tends to distrust solitary males, Bob and his friends do not. This is especially true when a lone male approaches a group. So Mallory likes to work his magic first on Bob and his friends. This gives him status and power he can project towards women.
This can happen in minutes. The male protocol allows for instant relationships based only on future possibilities. "Follow me! I promise you gold!" Yet the female protocol is cynical and careful. Relationships between women often take years to develop. Women must invest in their relationships. Men need to just keep the future open.
This is a huge difference. Both genders project their own values and measurements on the other. Alice assumes relationships take time to build. She assumes relationships express the cynical accounting of past facts. So she over-values the relationship she sees between Bob and Mallory. And in the same vein, Bob discounts Alice’s relationships.