The Art of Manliness - #474： The Surprises of Romantic Attraction

00:00:00.000 brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast according to the

00:00:19.040 popular evolutionary theory of human attraction people select romantic partners based on objective

00:00:23.500 assessments of what's called their mate value the extent to which an individual possesses traits

00:00:27.920 like good looks and status but is that really all that's behind the way people pair up well my guest

00:00:32.800 day has done a series of studies which add greater nuance to the mysteries of romantic attraction

00:00:36.940 his name is paul eastwick he's professor of psychology at uc davis we begin our conversation

00:00:40.840 unpacking the fact that there's sometimes a gap between the sexual romantic partners people say

00:00:44.980 they prefer in the abstract and the partners they actually choose in real life we then turn to

00:00:48.960 whether or not the popular idea that men value physical attractiveness more than women and that

00:00:52.980 women value status and resources more than men is really true we also talk about how people's

00:00:57.360 consensus over who is and isn't attractive changes over time and whether it's true that people of

00:01:01.800 equal attractiveness generally end up together we enter a conversation discussing how these research

00:01:06.100 based insights can be applied to the real world of dating and why if you're not brad pitt tom cruise

00:01:11.780 carrie grant 1980s tom sellick and whatever famous handsome man you want if you're not any of those guys

00:01:17.220 you may have better luck meeting people offline than online in an app some interesting insights in

00:01:22.080 the show that lend credence the old adage that there's someone for everyone after the show's over

00:01:26.780 check out our show notes at aom.is slash eastwick paul joins me now via clearcast.io

00:01:33.120 paul eastwick welcome to the show thanks so much for having me so you are a professor of psychology

00:01:47.600 and you've spent your career researching human attraction and what i think is interesting about

00:01:52.620 your research is that it it goes a different direction from what the sort of the popular and

00:01:57.000 accepted ideas that are out there about what makes humans attracted to one another so before we get to

00:02:02.940 your research and how it adds to that theory what is he walk us through like what the popular and

00:02:07.660 accepted theory of what make men and women attractive each other is but i guess it's based in evolutionary

00:02:12.740 theory yeah so there's a lot of work out there that takes what i would call a trait based approach to

00:02:22.340 understanding what makes men and women attractive and this is a very simple idea it's that we possess

00:02:30.300 particular desirable qualities or we don't and the extent to which you have those desirable qualities

00:02:37.540 is what makes you appealing in a mate and we can talk about things that you can see on the surface

00:02:42.900 like physical attractiveness we can talk about status and resources we can also talk about traits like

00:02:49.460 intelligence but the presumption here is that there is some sort of objective reality about a person and

00:02:58.920 the extent to which they have those desirable traits and that a person's desirability as a mate or their

00:03:05.400 mate value that's sort of often the term that's used can be sort of calculated based on the extent

00:03:12.020 to which they possess those sorts of traits and and also the research has shown there's differences

00:03:16.800 between the sexes on what's attractive and not attractive like men find certain things attractive

00:03:21.840 in women but women find other traits attractive in men that's right so the the the calculus for mate 0.99

00:03:28.320 value classically differs between men and women you know intelligence is very appealing to both men and

00:03:35.200 women and a partner but when you ask men and women how much do you care about traits like attractiveness

00:03:39.260 men will tend to rate it higher than women although women like it too you see the reverse for traits like

00:03:44.960 resources right with women rating it higher than men but in general these findings sort of fit into this

00:03:51.280 what i would call this trait based mate value sort of approach where the idea is that there's

00:03:56.820 some sort of reality about the traits that you possess and your job if you're looking for a mate from this

00:04:03.860 perspective is to size up whether or not somebody has these qualities and then to make your choice

00:04:09.780 accordingly and it's also a very like market driven right approach to relationships right you have

00:04:15.400 certain values and you kind of make trade-offs on what you have and what right other person has

00:04:20.160 exactly exactly it is it and that's why it's you know evolutionary theory touches on these ideas but

00:04:26.780 yeah it's based on these very classic market-based ideas about marriage this pervades sociology going

00:04:33.880 you know back 70 years or more these these are very influential important ideas that have long

00:04:42.100 pervaded how people think about the way relationships form and are maintained and how have evolutionary

00:04:48.360 psychologists come to this conclusion that you know men find you know physical attractiveness

00:04:53.560 more important than women find you know physical attractiveness in men like what are the what do

00:04:58.480 the studies look like where they've come to this conclusion well it's interesting because humans can do this

00:05:04.140 really funny thing which is you can put rating scales in front of us and we can fill them out with

00:05:10.980 a pen or a pencil and what that means is that instead of you know if you were studying animals in the

00:05:17.500 wild you'd have to set up these really complex designs and sort of oh see which of the mates you know

00:05:23.320 the the females would pursue or you know see which mates the males would pursue but in humans you can

00:05:28.580 sort of throw a scale in front of them and be done in 30 seconds and so much of the research supporting

00:05:34.280 these sex differences tends to use that latter approach that is you ask men and women to rate

00:05:40.200 physical attractiveness on a rating scale from you know one to ten how much do you like this trait

00:05:46.120 and that's where you see men say they care about it more than women you see the reverse with things

00:05:51.300 like status and resources so a lot of the research is pretty straightforward and questionnaire based

00:05:57.380 along those lines it's sort of this you know neat thing you can get humans to do that you can't get

00:06:02.780 other non-human animals to do so basically what these surveys ask is like what you would want in a

00:06:07.800 like hypothetical potential mate not an actual mate correct right i mean you know they're asking people

00:06:14.960 to think about what would you want an ideal mate to have and and people people can do this people you know

00:06:23.380 when you give people questionnaires like that they're like they're not thinking i have never pondered such a

00:06:28.020 thing before like people are definitely uh you know they can call to mind what their ideal partner looks

00:06:34.180 like right but i i'd also argue that that requires a level of self-insight that is underappreciated that is

00:06:45.060 we can we can ask whether or not people really know the extent to which attractiveness appeals to them

00:06:53.320 and is that captured by a rating on a rating scale it's one of the questions that we've tried to pursue in our

00:07:01.140 research so in addition to what this idea of you know trait based attraction there's this idea of a

00:07:08.820 sort of mating that comes up that you know attractive people end up with other attractive people

00:07:13.100 stat high status people end up with other high status people so there's that aspect to this trait

00:07:17.980 based theory as well yes that's right and it is certainly true that you see assortative mating on

00:07:24.460 many qualities qualities like attractiveness you know traits that people generally say they really like

00:07:30.980 in a partner both men and women you know rate attractiveness quite highly and indeed the

00:07:35.760 attractive men and the attractive women tend to pair up now that that association is far from perfect

00:07:42.860 right so there are plenty of matched couples and plenty of mismatched couples out there too

00:07:48.500 and so it's you know we need our explanations to be able to account for the existence of both the

00:07:55.780 matches and the mismatches if you will so there's been mountains of research for the past 20 30 years

00:08:02.540 that reinforce this idea that you know you they've done this across cultures too it doesn't matter

00:08:06.580 whether you're in japan or america or england men tend to rate physical attractive attractiveness

00:08:12.340 more important on the on their like list of wanted traits and women than women do and women put an emphasis 1.00

00:08:18.140 on resources and status right so despite this this mountains of research that have that have shown this over

00:08:24.520 and over again what led you to think that there was you know something else going on and how people

00:08:29.140 decide who they pair up with so the you know we noticed that much of this research had sort of used

00:08:38.160 these questionnaire type approaches where you're asking people what they're looking for the better

00:08:43.480 studies would do something a little bit more clever they would say introduce you usually in the form of an

00:08:53.080 online dating profile or something like that to a series of people who vary in attractiveness

00:08:59.260 and then you could ask the question well does the attractiveness of you know these various people

00:09:05.300 that you're looking at predict who you like who you choose and there were a few studies that that

00:09:12.760 had conceptualized the appeal of attractiveness that way not my theory about how much attractiveness

00:09:19.740 appeals to me but sort of this enacted preference something we actually call a functional preference

00:09:25.740 right if you present me with a series of mates that vary in attractiveness to what extent am i likely to

00:09:32.260 take the attractive ones relative to the unattractive ones that's like a more like live in the moment way 0.68

00:09:39.540 of capturing the extent to which attractiveness appeals to me so there'd been a few studies out there that

00:09:44.380 had used that sort of approach but almost none that had used that kind of approach with people actually

00:09:50.640 meeting face to face and we thought well gee ancestrally certainly and even in the modern day

00:09:57.040 for the lord you know for the most part people meet face to face before they start seeing you know where

00:10:03.820 this thing is going and so we wanted to see what did people's functional preferences look like

00:10:10.000 once these face to face meetings had taken place so tell me about a study that you did to look into

00:10:16.140 that idea a bit more so one of the first studies that we conducted along these lines was a study with

00:10:23.980 speed daters so we brought a number of men and women together who were single and looking to potentially

00:10:30.320 date new people but these folks hadn't met each other before and these were heterosexual speed dating

00:10:37.760 events so all of the men have a chance to meet all of the women and so you're meeting this array of people

00:10:42.080 who are varying in attractiveness and then we look to see how much does attractiveness appeal to me as I go

00:10:49.780 about selecting these people saying oh I'd like to meet you again and not you you know when rating how much I

00:10:55.700 like these various people and sure enough physical attractiveness was a very strong predictor of the

00:11:01.880 extent to which people liked their speed dating partners but that association the power of

00:11:08.400 attractiveness was identical for men and women physical attractiveness as instantiated in these

00:11:14.740 real people was just as powerful a predictor of initial attraction for men as it was for women there was no

00:11:22.880 sex difference there whatsoever interesting so what do you think that says about the the theory that's out

00:11:28.880 there that women prefer you know status and resources more you know that they look rate that higher than 1.00

00:11:34.460 men do right is that's what's going on there then so it's interesting I mean you know one thing we've

00:11:40.760 been trying to figure out is that it looks like there is some sort of self-insight gap that is plaguing

00:11:48.120 people right people aren't totally off when you ask them sort of the kinds of qualities and attributes

00:11:54.700 they like in general there's there's often a little bit of an association there especially when people

00:12:00.600 are in very simple environments right so if I ask you how much do you like sweetness when it comes to

00:12:08.460 your breakfast cereals you will actually give me an answer that reflects pretty good self-insight

00:12:14.320 but as the domain gets more and more complicated and we when we get into the really complicated domain

00:12:20.000 of romantic attraction people's insight just seems to fade and the kinds of qualities they think are

00:12:27.920 really appealing to them when you ask them in the abstract end up having very little relation to what

00:12:34.160 actually appeals to them in the moment so we we do think there is this self-insight gap there that and

00:12:41.500 what that means is that when you ask people about the kinds of qualities that they care about in a

00:12:45.660 partner you're getting a lot of other stuff in those reports that don't necessarily reflect

00:12:52.740 strong self-insight right people might be reporting their sense of what desirable members of the opposite

00:12:58.740 sex generally are like right as opposed to you know what are the traits that are really going to appeal to

00:13:04.720 me specifically well another interesting thing about speed dating is that it's very like it's all about

00:13:09.980 initial attraction it's like the idea in evolutionary theory is that women put emphasis on 1.00

00:13:13.940 resources more than men because they're looking for a long-term companion is like does the the short 1.00

00:13:19.900 duration of speed dating does that change things like how women evaluate or do you think just like

00:13:24.340 no women actually put an emphasis on attraction more than they think they do that's a great question i 1.00

00:13:29.720 think that you know and when we ran those first studies that was sort of the next question for us was

00:13:35.640 okay is this limited to initial attraction maybe some of these sex differences start to emerge later

00:13:41.900 and we actually conducted a very large-scale study a few years later it's called a meta-analysis and

00:13:49.520 then a meta-analysis you just bring many different data sets together that can all address a similar

00:13:54.860 question and so we had data from tens of thousands of participants that look across the full span of

00:14:03.440 people's relationships so not just initial attraction but also what happens in dating relationships what

00:14:09.060 happens in you know in in married relationships do you see these sex differences playing out now we can

00:14:17.340 look at these same kinds of associations in these data sets so generally when women are married to

00:14:25.280 men who have more versus fewer resources do they tend to be happier in those relationships and importantly

00:14:33.200 if we ask the same question of men are men happier when they're in relationships with women who have 0.78

00:14:39.660 status and resources are they happier so when we look at all of those effects and all of those

00:14:45.920 associations across all of these data sets we end up seeing again no evidence for these sex differences

00:14:52.440 so to go back to the status and resources example there's a small effect that people tend to be happier in

00:15:00.480 their relationships when their partner has you know more status and more more resources it's not nearly

00:15:06.360 as large as physical attractiveness and initial attraction but that effect is just as strong for

00:15:12.580 men as it is for women which frankly we found a little mind-blowing right the idea that that men are a 0.95

00:15:20.020 little bit happier in their relationships when their women have status and resources that was not intuitive to 0.99

00:15:25.580 us going into this study but this was a pretty large swath of evidence that seemed to suggest that

00:15:31.280 you know what there you know the the status resources effect when you look at at across data sets in this

00:15:38.180 aggregated way you don't see much of a sex difference there okay so meta-analysis shows that you know men

00:15:43.920 and women are actually there's not that much of a difference when you look at things at a broad broad view 1.00

00:15:49.060 you also done some interesting research too that show that whether we find someone attractive or not

00:15:54.680 depends on a lot on how long we've known them can you talk about that walk us through that research

00:15:59.040 yes definitely so this goes back to this sort of classic trait based approach right i mean the reason

00:16:06.300 we're asking questions about why we think physical attractiveness is more appealing to men or women

00:16:10.900 same thing with status and resources is because classically the field has treated mating and mate

00:16:17.980 selection in this trait based way right there's a reality that you possess that's determined by your traits

00:16:24.160 and again my job as a mate selector is to assess those traits and then make my selections accordingly

00:16:32.780 i think what that perspective misses at least with respect to humans is that part of the mate selection

00:16:43.240 process in humans ancestrally wouldn't have been about finding the objectively best mate or even the

00:16:51.820 objectively best mate that you could get given your own mate value it would be about this ephemeral

00:16:59.420 thing called compatibility and that's because a lot of what mate selection was about in our ancestral past was

00:17:07.080 about coordination and interdependence right so in order to raise these very costly offspring i have to

00:17:15.840 essentially set up an effective coordinated system with you and not just you but also your family members

00:17:23.480 and my family members right but the the pair bonding process and then what it takes to raise these costly

00:17:30.360 offspring is not something that's just about your traits and my traits it's all it's also about how

00:17:38.000 well we fit together and how well we work together and so another of the main mate selection tasks that

00:17:45.600 people have to solve is this assessment of compatibility and that's a lot trickier than assessing whether or not

00:17:51.760 somebody has desirable traits gotcha so this is you'd call it i guess you'd call it relational attributes

00:17:57.240 yes right it's it's a way of thinking about the concept of mate value but in a relational way

00:18:04.740 right the idea is simply that you know somebody might not have the most desirable traits in the

00:18:10.880 world but because of the way we fit together this person has tremendous mate value for me specifically

00:18:18.220 and i think that's a useful way of thinking about the compatibility concept now what it suggests

00:18:24.360 is that you know when we all get together and rate each other's traits sure there's bound to be some

00:18:31.460 agreement we're going to agree on who is attractive and who isn't but what's going on with the

00:18:36.700 disagreements that we have is it just random error are we guessing or is there something systematic and

00:18:41.960 important about those disagreements that also tell us something about the way mate selection works

00:18:47.400 we're going to take a quick break for your word from our sponsors and now back to the show well walk

00:18:53.120 us through the study you did with uh college students where they had you know you had them

00:18:56.840 rate each other's attractiveness when they the first day of class and then done the same thing three

00:19:01.260 months later right so that's exactly what we did so we had these students in a class they had just met

00:19:07.000 each other and all of the opposite sex pairs in the class are rating each other in terms of their

00:19:13.240 attractiveness but other you know traits classically related to mate selection things like intelligence

00:19:19.000 things like status and what you see at the beginning of the academic semester is that there's pretty

00:19:26.420 strong agreement there about who is attractive and who isn't now there's also a lot of idiosyncratic

00:19:34.040 variants as well and in fact you can compare these things to each other mathematically and you see about

00:19:40.080 as much consensus as you do idiosyncratic variability so there's a healthy amount of agreement about who's

00:19:47.740 attractive and who isn't but also important real disagreement right i think this person is more

00:19:54.000 attractive than you do right that doesn't mean that i'm right and you're wrong or vice versa that's

00:19:59.380 legitimate disagreement there on top of the existing consensus but then we followed them up at the end of

00:20:08.100 the semester and what we found at that point was that things had started to shift but it shifted in

00:20:15.900 a way that's a little bit counterintuitive people's consensus about who was attractive in the class

00:20:22.640 actually went down relative to the beginning of the semester and that idiosyncratic variability the

00:20:30.540 disagreements you know sort of in parallel increased so in other words as i get to know you better we start agreeing

00:20:40.440 less about whether or not you're attractive right the people who you know especially well start to agree less

00:20:48.440 and less about how desirable you are and we think this is reflective of this idiosyncratic nature of the way mate value

00:20:58.040 works as i get to know you better and better you make a joke that i think is particularly unfunny but

00:21:06.580 somebody else thinks is quite funny that feeds into your attractiveness judgments of the person you know

00:21:13.980 you you know make other remarks in class i i witness you doing something really nice for somebody but

00:21:19.440 somebody else doesn't witness that that feeds into your attractiveness judgment so because when we form

00:21:25.000 impressions of each other over time the meaning of those different behavioral nuggets can be interpreted

00:21:31.900 so differently by the people who are observing you and sort of judging you and considering you as a

00:21:37.220 potential mate that's what causes that consensus to decline and what causes this increase in idiosyncratic

00:21:44.620 judgments of who's desirable and who's not that's really interesting so let's let's uh unpack some things

00:21:49.240 here so when you when you did the initial evaluation there was there was a consensus not only on physical

00:21:54.480 attractiveness but also things like you know character you know humor there was a consensus there as well

00:21:59.740 right so we also ask people questions like if you were in a relationship with this person how good would

00:22:07.500 the relationship be right again these people have not met for all that long and yet they're still reaching

00:22:14.920 some consensus about judgments like that too it's not nearly as high as the consensus they reach when

00:22:20.180 it comes to judgments of physical attractiveness but you know they are sort of looking at these folks

00:22:25.260 around them saying like oh maybe being in a relationship with this person would be good uh you know this

00:22:29.120 person they seem to have good character but you know people at the beginning they're drawing from

00:22:35.180 stereotypes they're drawing from snap judgments as they sort of make these determinations i imagine like the

00:22:41.140 halo effect is also going on like you know typically attractive if people are seen as you know more

00:22:46.020 honest trustworthy high status etc etc exactly exactly i mean it's just you know some people at the

00:22:53.240 beginning of the semester they've got this glow about them and that's what's sort of yeah producing

00:22:58.060 the consensus on all of these sorts of judgments certainly okay and then as you went on you get to know

00:23:03.680 people more and more that's when things started the consensus just basically went away completely

00:23:08.340 yeah i mean for judgments of things like this person is going to be a good relationship partner

00:23:13.720 i'd like to be in a relationship with this person the consensus went down on those measures

00:23:18.700 substantially there's still a little bit there but it it definitely goes down over time

00:23:24.840 we also ran a similar study among people who had known each other for a few years on average right so

00:23:33.120 this is as if we're tapping into your network right if you're a heterosexual man we're tapping into your

00:23:39.880 network of female friends and acquaintances right so if you think about those women in your life 0.99

00:23:47.280 that your friends your acquaintances you know maybe there's an x in there what do these women think of 1.00

00:23:54.360 you did they agree about how desirable you are as a partner about how attractive you are

00:24:00.980 and those folks exhibited the least consensus out of anybody so the people who know you the best

00:24:08.420 are the people who agree the least on what you are like when it comes to these romantic sorts of

00:24:15.000 judgments and and that's another important caveat too because usually we think like well the longer

00:24:21.360 the more somebody gets to know me the right people should agree on what i am really like there's a

00:24:26.380 reality to who i am as a person and you know that's true for things like you know what your

00:24:32.360 personality is like but when it comes to these romantic judgments the fact that we see this

00:24:38.140 increasing disagreement as people get to know each other suggests to us that you know whatever the mate

00:24:45.200 value truth is about a person seems to be quite ephemeral it seems to disappear the better you get to know

00:24:53.340 somebody and you're left with these very idiosyncratic impressions that some person is really great for me

00:25:00.060 and this person is really not so great for me so this can go back to uh we were talking about a sort

00:25:05.100 of mating right so there's this idea that attractive people end up with attractive people but what this

00:25:09.960 research suggests that the longer someone knows you you know they might initially not have found you

00:25:15.760 physically attractive or attractive but they got to know you and you end up in a relationship with them

00:25:20.900 right and so like you know you're less attractive than she is right so i guess that can sort of put

00:25:26.560 a i don't know uh a wrench in this idea that you know equally attractive people always end up with each

00:25:32.160 other right exactly and so that was you know as we conducted this research the assortative mating

00:25:39.020 question loomed large because it suggested well okay if we all disagree about who's attractive and who's

00:25:47.020 not then why is it that you see assortative mating out there in the world and so the way we resolve

00:25:53.860 this is by thinking well okay when some relationships form they form relatively quickly after two people

00:26:01.920 initially meet each other but other relationships people know each other for months or even years before

00:26:08.860 they ultimately get together and what if that distinction that dimension explains where some of the

00:26:16.620 variability on assortative mating comes from that is what if the people who get together quickly

00:26:23.600 that's where you see the matches right because these people are largely operating based on consensus

00:26:30.300 but the mismatches come as people get to know each other better over time that opens up the opportunity

00:26:38.320 for you know maybe he or she is not the most attractive person on the planet but as you get to know

00:26:46.040 him or her you start to see this person as being quite attractive that can then start to create

00:26:53.300 some of those mismatches so there's a stereotype of like the more attractive women you know end up 1.00

00:26:58.340 with the less attractive guy like the guy you know dates up whatever they talk about does it also work

00:27:03.000 the other way around too like sometimes really attractive guys end up with women who would be objectively

00:27:07.700 rated not as attractive yes so the the the the flip side of that definitely does happen but the the caveat

00:27:16.260 that would what my guess is that if most of your listeners try to call to mind one example or the other it is

00:27:22.980 going to be easier for them to call to mind the schlubby guy with the attractive woman but part of that is

00:27:30.660 caused by the fact that on average women are more attractive than men so that's that's and that's 1.00

00:27:38.660 that's a little wrinkle in there that that produces this and usually when we talk about assortative mating

00:27:43.720 what we miss is that well actually in all of these relationships on average the woman is more 1.00

00:27:48.740 attractive than the guy by about uh you know as a half of a standard deviation that's a pretty

00:27:54.980 reasonably sized effect and so that's an important component of this as well that women generally 1.00

00:28:03.700 tend to be rated as more attractive than men on average when you look at you know reasonably sized

00:28:09.920 swaths of of real life men and women well how do you think your research complements or doesn't

00:28:17.080 complement you know this evolutionary approach of human may be because like i mean a lot of people

00:28:21.840 have there's you know whole industries you know the pickup artist stuff that are based around

00:28:26.240 this evolutionary approach to human mating where you have to like you know they tell guys how to

00:28:31.220 increase their mate value on these specific traits what do you think your research does to that idea

00:28:37.520 out that that's out there yeah i mean you know i only know a little bit about sort of the the pickup

00:28:44.660 artist techniques and the pickup artist scene and certainly a lot of those techniques and tactics are

00:28:51.180 designed to be effective in initial attraction settings right where you're meeting people for

00:28:56.660 the first time and those are certainly settings where you know you're going to cue into these traits

00:29:03.780 that are very easy to pick up very quickly it takes some time to really get a sense of whether or not

00:29:10.080 you know there's something about like unique fit between us and often that's sort of not exactly what

00:29:15.540 the pickup artists are going for necessarily so sort of looking for the idiosync what makes you

00:29:21.540 idiosyncratically desirable to somebody else is you know probably some a technique that's going to be

00:29:27.860 more useful to people who are you know cultivating the possibility of forming relationships over a longer

00:29:34.180 period of time that being said i think it would be really interesting to sort of clearly hone and define

00:29:42.940 what these effective pickup tactics are and then train both male and female confederates to use these 1.00

00:29:52.600 tactics in initial attraction settings and see how effective they are now maybe they'll only be

00:29:57.560 effective for the men using these tactics and women who you know sort of you know dress with the fancy 0.97

00:30:03.980 hats and sort of use these clever lines maybe they won't be appealing but i don't know i'd like to see

00:30:10.380 the data i wonder if those sorts of tactics if women use them would also be pretty appealing and how 1.00

00:30:16.700 do you think your research complements the you know the more classic evolutionary approach to human

00:30:21.600 mating um you know i think in some ways it's very complementary right we aren't saying that people

00:30:29.240 don't care about traits like physical attractiveness of course they do but we're saying that the relative

00:30:35.800 amount of sort of consensus going for the popular person that there's a truth to how desirable you

00:30:42.240 are that that's true in some settings but not all settings relative to mate selection right in settings

00:30:49.160 where people get to know each other better you know people start whether they know it or not

00:30:54.520 making judgments that have this more idiosyncratic compatibility element to it i think with respect to some of

00:31:02.140 the sex differences in the appeal of attractiveness or the appeal of status resources you know i do think

00:31:08.520 our perspective is harder to reconcile with the evolutionary perspective on that front in the sense

00:31:14.680 that you know i i think when we look at people's impressions of real people when we look at how people

00:31:20.520 are actually acting in their relationships i think those sorts of studies get closer to tapping

00:31:26.180 the kinds of judgments that really would have mattered in a functional way when people were evolving

00:31:31.560 as opposed to what people circle on rating scales so you know i think some elements are that we

00:31:37.420 that we present are very complementary some are are more challenging and what do you think are some

00:31:42.120 like practical takeaways from this research from people who are in the dating game that's a good

00:31:47.120 question so i do think that there is a tendency to think about the the mating and dating as being about a game of

00:32:01.780 first impressions a game of you know how does it go when you meet somebody else do you sufficiently

00:32:08.320 impress them that they want to hook up with you or they want to give you their number etc

00:32:13.700 and another really important thing that we find in some of our research is that the vast majority of

00:32:22.120 relationships whether short-term or long-term do not form this way people's hookups and long-term

00:32:31.340 relationships are usually come out of their networks of friends and acquaintances that these you know as i

00:32:41.120 talked about before right people have networks of their heterosexual opposite sex individuals that

00:32:47.440 sort of float in and out of their lives and that's where most of these romantic experiences come from

00:32:54.360 so i think you know what's often hard for people let's say they move to a new city and their social

00:33:00.240 network is pretty thin it can get very frustrating to be out there dating and trying to meet new people and

00:33:07.120 not having a lot of success but in some ways the problem is that getting out there and meeting people on you know

00:33:13.520 with initial impressions is always a very tough way to go regardless of what kind of relationship you're looking

00:33:19.120 for it's the thinness of your social network that is often the real problem so if i were to give anybody advice

00:33:25.840 who's struggling with dating it's the the more efforts you can put into just sort of building your network

00:33:33.120 gradually building the people that you know and spend time with getting to meet new people without

00:33:38.560 immediate expectations of something becoming romantic or sexual right away that's ultimately

00:33:44.240 going to be a more fulfilling process right it's like diversify your portfolio and give it time to grow

00:33:50.860 and expand rather than you know like keep hitting the same bars over and over again i think it's likely to be a much more

00:33:58.320 fulfilling experience to do the former rather than the latter and what do you think your research says

00:34:03.200 about dating apps because these things like tinder they're all based on initial physical attraction

00:34:09.520 right you swipe right because you just see a picture of someone who's attractive or not right exactly and

00:34:14.640 and it is interesting how online dating has in some ways upended this sort of traditional way of forming

00:34:23.200 relationships where relationships where relationships again sexual hookups or long-term grow out of the

00:34:30.080 networks that people have and with online dating sites and with apps give certainly the sense that

00:34:38.080 there are all these options out there right as you're sort of looking at all the various possibilities

00:34:42.960 in front of you and you're swiping right and swiping left you get the sense that there are many possibilities

00:34:48.720 out there and people are often effective at leveraging these sorts of encounters into immediate

00:34:55.680 sexual hookups and things like that so there's nothing wrong with that and that's often a very

00:35:00.000 good way to go for people i think for people who get who are starting to get a little burned out

00:35:06.320 on the apps or feeling like oh my god i'm spending a lot of time in these again thinking about these apps as

00:35:12.800 ways of expanding your social network not you know solely a means of immediate sexual gratification

00:35:21.120 could also be very very useful that you know that is you might go on a tinder date with somebody and

00:35:28.080 it might just be okay but you did have this one interest in common and you start spending time with

00:35:33.920 the person and get to know some of their friends and your friends meet their friends and that starts to

00:35:38.880 snowball and expand that way so i think if we if we don't you know dichotomize our relationship so

00:35:47.520 much into you know that these are these are the people i have sex with these are my friends but we

00:35:51.920 sort of again think about a network of people that we know and we allow that network to grow and change

00:35:57.840 over time i think that ends up sort of giving people the the best possible options so yeah you

00:36:03.600 use the apps as a tool to increase your network not necessarily to get a romantic relationship

00:36:09.840 right i mean you can use it for that too but but again my sense from people that use these apps and

00:36:14.640 and i confess i have not done online dating in a very long time to well before there were the apps

00:36:21.440 but you know my sense is that people start to burn out right because they go on a lot of coffee dates

00:36:28.320 before they find somebody that they even remotely like and sometimes it's useful to find ways of

00:36:34.720 even turning those meh coffee dates into a win and again if we don't think about tinder and other apps

00:36:42.160 as a an immediate road just to to to a hookup that it's really more about expanding your social network

00:36:50.160 that i think tends to go better for people yeah we had uh kate julian the atlantic writer she wrote

00:36:56.160 that article about the sex recession on the and she yeah she talked about yeah people getting burnt

00:36:59.680 out and then also people just um not having any luck with the apps so you say you're a guy you're

00:37:04.000 not you know you know super physically attractive so they never they never get a match because you know 1.00

00:37:09.680 women just like swipe left on them and they found that okay if i just start dating in person i actually 1.00

00:37:14.640 have better luck there because i can people get to know that i'm funny and i'm charming and i'm kind

00:37:19.840 etc etc right right exactly i mean the the the apps do put many people at us as

00:37:25.840 at a substantial disadvantage all right so i mean so it sounds like the big takeaway here is

00:37:30.720 you know physical attractiveness those those play a role but there's much more nuance to

00:37:35.680 human relationships than what we think there is yeah i think that's i think that's right and that

00:37:43.040 the you know humans evolved in relatively small groups where we got to know each other over long

00:37:50.800 stretches of time and the possible mates that you were going to have over the course of your life

00:37:56.240 as a pretty small group and it's probably a group of people that you tended to know pretty well

00:38:01.360 and that's that is an evolved reality that's tough to reconcile with you know the fact that many young

00:38:09.440 people today are very mobile they move from place to place and they also uh you know often live in large

00:38:16.480 cities where there's vast swaths of people out there so i think to to create a community of people

00:38:24.800 is often the thing that that helps people as they negotiate the romantic landscape well paul it's been

00:38:30.320 a great conversation where can people go to learn more about your work they can go to my my website

00:38:35.680 it's paul eastwick.com very straightforward and there we have uh you know our publications and and links to

00:38:41.920 videos and things that explain the kind of work that we do yeah i love it you have all your like

00:38:46.240 pdfs your research and pdfs there which i really appreciate yeah uh so so thanks for being available

00:38:51.200 paul eastwick thanks so much your time it's been a pleasure yes thank you i've really enjoyed this

00:38:54.800 my guest there was paul eastwick he's a professor of psychology at uc davis you can find out all the

00:38:59.440 research he's done he's got them all in pdfs for free at his website paul eastwick.com go check that

00:39:04.800 out and also check out our show notes at aom.is eastwick where you can find links to resources

00:39:09.360 where you can delve deeper into this topic well that wraps up another edition of the aom podcast

00:39:25.680 check out our website artofmanliness.com where you find thousands of well-researched thorough

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The Art of Manliness - January 16, 2019

#474： The Surprises of Romantic Attraction

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