What is male confession bias? Paradise by the Dashboard light?…or I’m Confessin’ that I love you?
September 28, 2023.
Evolutionary psychologists advise us of a salient fact; while it’s virtually a null set for men, women have a preference for a sign of commitment before agreeing to have sex, in a courting or dating situation.
Recent research claims that this male confession bias explains why “men around the world” may be more likely than women to utter these portentous three words… I love you,… first.
This research reminds me of the cult classic by Meatloaf… “Paradise by the Dashboard Light.”
Why does a profession of love serve to escalate sexual intimacy? Is it because men are usually more highly sexed, and over-eager to engage in carnal knowledge?
What’s it gonna be boy? I can wait all night…
I gotta know right now… before we go any further… do you love me?… Will you love forever?
Will you love me forever?..
LOL.. RIP Meatloaf.
What is “Male Confession Bias?”
In 2011, a team of behavioral scientists led by Joshua Ackerman at mighty MIT reported the results of six studies that considered the on-the-ground reality of who says “I love you” to who first, in straight relationships.
One fascinating study discovered a cognitive bias held by humans of both genders, that concludes that women are the ones who say “I love you” first. But research clearly refutes that bias.
Another piece of research focused on what actually happened in prior relationships, and yet another survey attempted to unpack what actually happened in their current relationship.
Once again the research question, explored by a half dozen discreet approaches, led to the same conclusion; men were more likely than women to be first to utter the words… “I love you.”
Yet another study found that men first thought about saying “I love you”, on average, about six weeks before their partner did.
In other words, as a rule, men were not only the first to declare “I love you” but also the first to consider saying it in the first place!
The shared conclusion of these six studies is that “men will often take the initiative in promoting romantic relationships so that they do not incur the costs of missing a potential low-cost mating opportunity” (Ackerman, Griskevicius, & Li, 2011).
From the lens of evolutionary psychology, men lower their reproductive fitness when they fail to make the most of a casual mating opportunity. So I guess this explains the existence of cads and bounders.
How the studies were conducted
The studies by Ackerman and his colleagues examined the beliefs and self-reported behaviors of university students and community members based in the United States. Unfortunately, college students are the lab rats of social science, and the use of American college students was not an auspicious start to this study, IMHO.
But, you can see that MIT students as a sample would be highly problematic. Not exactly a representative sample of humanity.
To get a fuller picture, psychologist Christopher Watkins at Abertay University formed an international team of researchers to investigate confessions of love in seven different nations—Australia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, France, Poland, and the United Kingdom (Watkins et al., 2022).
Watkins and his team recruited a total of 970 participants—251 men and 719 women, with an average age of 34 years—to complete a love confessions questionnaire online. This, from my perspective, was a more diverse population of subjects, but still an incredibly modest undertaking for pursuit of a “universal” truth.
The study subjects were required to identify as heterosexual, be age 18 or older, and also be ready be to discuss a current or past relationship in which both humans have said “I love you” on at least one occasion.
Here’s what the researchers were so excited about; in all seven countries, men and women both reported that men were more likely to say “I love you” first.
However, French men were slackers. Only 59% of French participants said it was the man who had confessed love first in their current or most recent relationship.
As compared with Chile on the other end of the spectrum, where a whopping 81% of the subjects concurred that men say “I love you” first.
BTW, the percentages in the other 5 countries fell between 62% and 79%. France and Chile were the outliers on the low and high end.
Is “Male Confession Bias” a universal cultural phenomena?
Well, at least you’re starting to convince me. The existence of some sort of a “male confession bias” does seem likely.
However, I’m by no means convinced that this inclination is a universal male trait. Once again, we must remember that this was an empirical studies, and these studies have inherent methodological limitations.
As a published researcher, I also have a quibble with the population size of the study subjects.
My first concern was how small the studies were. First, the number of subjects was small (70 or fewer) in 5 of the 7 countries in the study.
If you’re gonna make an argument about the universality of a male tendency to say “I love you first,” I’m gonna want a much larger set of samples.
But what I find particularly amusing is that the researchers are forgetting about half the world while discussing universality.
It’s important to remember that the 7 countries (Australia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, France, Poland, and the United Kingdom) are card-carrying members of the Western World.
Lacking any data from Africa or Asia, I can tell you that in China, for example, intimate relationships unfold unfettered by any Judeo-Christian sensibilities.
These are interesting studies, but with tiny populations chasing a huge universal.
As far as I’m concerned, they suggest that, perhaps, Western men might be more likely to say “I love you” first. But if we’re looking to nail a universal behavior, I’d be more persuaded with a bigger study including African and Asian data.
It’s also important to remember that these initial professions of romantic love are probably genuine. Most men are not lying sociopaths, despite what you’ve seen on Youtube, or read in evolutionary psychology.
Are the best men optimistic risk-takers by nature?
Do men tend to confess their love because the best men are optimistic risk-takers?
Saying “I love you” is indeed, a risk — if it is not reciprocated, it can be soul crushing, and complicate the relationship.
Another obvious hurdle, is that women tend to reject more men than they choose.
This explanation is supported by the evolutionary view that women have more to lose in a relationship because the notion of having children requires a degree of security and predictability.
Dr. Christopher Watkins, the study’s first author, said:
“We know that romantic love and passion are cultural universals, and both feeling and expressing love is important in a good quality relationship.
At the same time, people differ, but in a predictable way, in their proclivity toward romantic love, which would partly be expressed by speech acts such as saying ‘I love you’.
Across the cultures we surveyed, our research suggests that men tend to say I love you before women, and both men and women are less happy to hear “I love you” if they tend to avoid romantic intimacy or closeness.
This develops prior research, which observed the same ‘male confession bias’ when studying just one country – the USA.”
I think these researchers are on to something, but I’d like a better sense of how we are measuring “love and passion” through a cross-cultural lens.
Another thing. Why do Western cultures promote the notion that women tend to say I love you first… when the truth is the exact opposite? …More research please!
Final thoughts on “Male Confession Bias”…
As an answer to Meatloaf, and his red-pilled regrets, I’ll give the last word to the great jazz standard, “I’m Confessin’ That I Love You.”, (performed by the incomparably original Louis Armstrong)
I'm confessin' that I love you
Tell me, do you love me too?
I'm confessin' that I need you
Honest I do, need you every moment…
In your eyes I read such strange things
But your lips deny they're true
Will your answer really change things
Making me blue?
I'm afraid some day you'll leave me
Saying, "Can't we still be friends?"
If you go, you know you'll grieve me
All in life on you depends
Am I guessin' that you love me
Dreaming dreams of you in vain
I'm confessin' that I love you, over again
Chris Smith & Al J. Nieburg, 1930.
Be well, stay kind, confess your love, and Godspeed.
RESEARCH:
Ackerman, J. M., Griskevicius, V. & Li, N. P. (2011). Let’s get serious: Communicating commitment in romantic relationships. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 100(6), 1079–1094.
Watkins, C. D., Bovet, J., Fernandez, A. M., and 4 others. (2022). Men say “I love you” before women do: Robust across several countries. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 39(7), 2134-2153.
