I'm posting this after looking over the thread "why women are attracted to creeps." What I'm hoping people might brainstorm on is why then are we (I use this rather than women because I believe both sexes are attracted to dirtballs) NOT attracted to good people?

I'm curious as I consider myself to be a good person and yet have never been in a situation in which a women shows any interest. Now, I think people here could focus on variable specific to your person (In my case I've always felt that it's height. I'm short, and as the number one thing looked for in sperm doners is height, I've always believed it to be the major reason I'm overlooked). What I would prefer to focus on is general characteristics. Something that could affect all of us, good-people-in-hiding.

My first guess is that I believe good people put themselves "out there" less often than do creeps. I believe this translates to dirtbags hooking up more simply through chance alone.

A second thing, which is related to the first, is that because good people don't put themselves out there as much, they are more likely to misinterpret situational problems as personal ones. Take, for instance, an example of a person that goes out with some friends to a club or pub. A person with less experience in that situation is likely not to know the norms and roles of that situation, which would probably translate into them not talking with other people around them. But when it comes time to make an attribution as to why that may have occurred, they are likely to make internal attributions (I'm stupid/unattractive) when an external, situational attribution which would have clearly been more accurate. This phenomena is robust enough that social psychologists have coined a term for it: the Fundamental Attribution Error (the tendency for people to overestimate dispositional influences while underestimating situational influences).

The problem with that second point is that once we've made a decision that we're stupid or incapable, we're also likely to stick with that interpretation, even when presented with disconfirming evidence. Then in the end, the most likely outcome would be a learned helplessness situation (which of course, just feeds back into the original problem).

Okay, just a couple of ideas from me.