Another Criticism on Joseph and Zulaikha Story: A Scientific Approach

by Lord Kavi

I wrote an article one year ago and claimed that the psychology used in the story of Joseph and Zulaikha is not true! I claimed that women in fest couldn’t fall in love with Joseph at the first glance and cut their hands. This claimes was based on many psychological books that I had had read but no experimental investigation addressed.
Many read the article (in my Persian weblog and here) and some said I’m right; some girls and women agreed and said they can’t fall in love instantly. And some (mostly men) disagreed and said it is written in Quran, so you’re wrong!

Six month ago I found an article in accordance with this subject, which title was “Adaptive attentional attunement: evidence for mating-related perceptual bias”. Evolution and Human Behavior 28 (2007) 28– 36.
The article assesses both sexes attention to both female and male subjects. Here is excerpt from article:

“Findings from the current study suggest that the attention of perceivers is captured at an early stage of visual processing by female physical attractiveness. Both male and female observers were relatively inefficient at disengaging their attention from attractive female targets. This bias emerged very quickly—within the first second of visual processing.”

“The current findings are consistent with the possibility that men and women have their attention captured by attractive women because such a bias could serve functions aimed at satisfying particular mating goals.”

“No attentional bias was observed for attractive male targets. The current findings are therefore consistent with evolutionary theories suggesting that physical attributes related to judgments of attractiveness play a relatively larger role in determining a woman’s value as a mate, compared with a man’s”