This article from New Scientist discusses the tendency of single women to go after married men, presumably because they have already shown themselves to be capable of marriage!
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I strongly disagree with this article. First they used a sample size of 184, only from one age group on one US college campus. take out the men, take out the attached women and they had 46 single women students at Oklahoma state, with a student female body of roughly 12k with 15 sororities active on campus. A highly unrepresentative sample of the overall female population to draw such broad conclusions. The article should instead be called: some OSU female students tend to prefer taken men. For me specifically, once I identify a married man he’s automatically taken out of my potential dating pool, he becomes a gray washed out spot in my social life. If a coupled man approaches me, or let’s say a coupled guy responds to my advances it indicates the opposite: that he’s not a suitable mate because he’s not loyal and will eventually stray away potentially at the worst time. It’s disappointing that this site endorses this “study” and further spreads its erroneous conclusions.
I would agree this is a good example of junk science, not presented as “proof” of the hypothesis but as a jumping-off point to discuss the common observation among men that they are hit on more when they wear their wedding ring. Now it may well be that it’s a tendency for men to project more confidence when they are already happily married, and confidence is itself attractive. This not very definitive study is, unfortunately, the best I saw on that topic.