It's interesting that the numbers are diverging from those in the SAS thread. They're substantially less extreme. :thinking:
Your Relationship Status. - Social Anxiety Forum
Both samples are very small. It's no surprise they deviate this much from one another.
The results don't surprise me either. It would be interesting to compare these results with a sample of people without SA. I expect that both groups of women (with and without SA) are more likely to be in a relationship than men, though the difference would be more noticeable in the SA group.
It could also be interesting to see how much time both genders spent on relationships, or maybe the number of relationships they had. I expect the currently single males to have had less relationships than currently single females.
As for why, there could be some reasons such as:
-considering our society, men are usually expected to initiate interaction with the opposite sex;
-women might have an easier time connecting to other people (specially potential partners) due to evolutionary reasons;
-considering the evolution of our species, a "weak" female is more "acceptable" than a "weak" male; females are genetically programmed to look for strong and brave men, capable of protecting and providing for their family, leaving those with SA out; from the perspective of a male, a "weak" woman may be more desirable or just as desirable as any other, as long as she seems capable of bearing children.
The last two reasons may be completely off because I never studied anything related to it. Feel free to prove me wrong.