New research reveals that guitar skills in extreme metal music are more linked to male competition and status than to attracting mates. The study, focusing on heterosexual male guitarists, suggests that technical proficiency in guitar playing serves more as a display of dominance among peers.
Or the online survey is shit. Or there’s an insane sample bias. Or, those are actually devoted guitar players and since they have a fulfilling hobby occupying most of their life, they’re more motivated to have casual sex as they don’t require a mating partner to also fullfil them. Who the heck knows.
But my bet is on “the sample is shit, and you can’t trust psychologists with not cheating on their regressions anyway”. I bet they ran 100 online studies and picked the one where they found some effect on one of the 100 regressions they ran.
Now, since we published, let’s write an article filled with bogus sexist theories completely unrelated to the study. And make it sound like they are a direct conclusion from the paper.
Ladies and gentlemen, state of the psychological research.
p.s. I’m not Andrew Gelman.