Vic, the crowd you speak of, (to which I tend to be sympathetic,) would say that the relevant correlation would be educational resources invested (and family environment) against life success. IQ does predict life success, (and according to this study, is not correlated to the family environment scale) but not strongly enough to justify your dismissal without other arguments.

I'm surprised that it's your experience that "many scientists [still believe dopamine] to be a kind of 'pleasure chemical'". While I'm certainly not a scientist, I've done quite a bit of cursory reading about the role of dopamine in habit forming, addiction, and learning. I've also read about it a little in a neurobiology textbook I own. And I never got the impression that any scientists think that it causes euphoric feelings, only that its presence was strongly correlated with those and related feelings. In fact, the explanation that there's another common cause to both raised dopamine levels and euphoric feelings seems to me, on the face of it, to be much more plausible, especially considering the role of dopamine in mundane habit forming and memory.

Well, one consideration is the relation between beauty and mental averaging. A previous post here talked about how the face with the most average metrics is the most beautiful. I bet that would apply to the rest of the figure, too. And thus the most attractive kind of female figure would be that which males see the most of (approximately). This *can* be affected by media portrayals, since Americans consume so much visual media.

Just to show y'all that we do actually agree on some things (besides atheism and futurism) I'll link to my post here where I make the same point pconroy made about child support. 
 
GC, I'm a guy. I'm curious--what made you question that? The avatar at my blog? And is there anything in particular in my writing style that strikes you as male? Or was it my defensiveness about the "bad boy" thing?

"the key point though is to look beyond our visceral identification with others of our own sex. if we couch it "man be gettin' screwed" we'll never really smoke out the real issues at work here." 
 
Amen. 
 
"The "bad boy" infatuation runs strong." 
 
I think the idea that this is a general attitude among women is sexist. I think the phenomenon is mainly limited to women who have problems with self esteem or verbal intimacy.

It's possible that people who have longstanding relationship problems with their parents are more likely to seek out partners that resemble their parents, especially in those pathological characteristics, in a subconscious desire to finally work out those problems. (You can substitute "subconscious" for something more straightforward, but more wordy.) I read a whole book with this thesis by some psychologist. 
 
Alternatively, one's relationships skills might have been developed so much to cope with the specific problems one's parents had, that one simply feels more comfortable in relationships where one re-enacts those dynamics than in a more healthy, but unfamiliar kind of relationship. 
 
I'm not sure a more technical explanation would be helpful. 
 
(I'm not married, so I can't say whether it would apply to me. I tend to be attracted to women who physical resemble my mother facially, but not to those who share many of her personal traits.)