The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters - PREVIEW： Brokenomics ｜ Female Mating Behaviour

00:00:00.000 Hello and welcome to Brokonomics. Now in this episode I'm very lucky to be joined by Dr.

00:00:04.400 Dani Sulakoski who is an expert in evolutionary psychology and looks a lot at sort of female

00:00:11.600 mating strategies and all that sort of stuff which of course is going to be quite fascinating. So

00:00:16.800 Dr. Dani thank you very much for joining us. You're very welcome, very happy to be here.

00:00:22.480 I think I'll start with this. There is something that I've been pondering that you know perhaps

00:00:28.080 individually makes sense but when you put the thoughts together makes less sense and that is

00:00:33.280 if you ask the typical woman what she's looking for in society you'll often get an answer something 0.98

00:00:40.800 like I want women to have the same status and earning as men. Okay fair enough and then if you 0.97

00:00:48.160 ask what a woman wants for herself individually you'll often hear well I want a man who has more 0.94

00:00:54.240 status and earnings than I do and as long as you keep those thoughts disconnected that's fine

00:01:01.120 but when you put them together you've got a bit of a bit of a problem at the societal level.

00:01:07.680 Do you think that observation is right and what do you think that tells us? Is that a problem?

00:01:13.680 Yes it's mostly right and it's definitely a problem. I don't know how many women would 1.00

00:01:20.640 consciously tell you that what they want is a man that earns more than they do or that has higher

00:01:26.320 social status than they do um but we know that this necessarily is what women want whether it's 1.00

00:01:31.600 what they would say consciously or not I think a lot of women probably would not say that consciously 0.98

00:01:35.920 much the same way people will often profess that looks don't matter they find the person attractive

00:01:41.200 that's a lovely thing to say but we know it's not true um and I suspect yeah I suspect that that

00:01:47.600 if you ask a lot of women they probably wouldn't tell you that that they want someone that is 1.00

00:01:52.080 wealthier than them but we know that they do um so the basic observation that what women profess to 1.00

00:01:58.640 want in terms of societal gender equality does not marry well with women's mate choice preferences it 0.96

00:02:06.960 it just doesn't um and that's obviously that's that's obviously a problem um and it creates

00:02:12.800 it creates a whole bunch of flow on effects but one of those is the the sort of perpetual singledom

00:02:21.360 of a lot of professional career women who because of their own earnings social status financial 0.99

00:02:28.720 position and because of their preferences whether they're aware of them or not for a man that is going

00:02:34.560 to exceed that um they are really shrinking their perspective partner pool um and that makes it very

00:02:42.720 difficult to find a partner that they're willing to accept yes and what and and how does this get

00:02:49.760 measured because I mean the other phenomena that I've seen and you know anecdotally on on social media

00:02:53.680 and stuff is you know you'll have um um um you know somebody who works as a as a barista but has a

00:03:00.160 liberal arts degree will be rejecting somebody who works as a as a plumber earning four times as much

00:03:06.240 as she does so it's not even necessarily earnings it's it's this status thing yeah that's right

00:03:13.680 earnings and status tend to go together but they don't always go together and when they separate

00:03:19.440 status is more seems to be more important than than earnings so um I'm trying to think if there's

00:03:28.720 a specific study I can think of that has tried to separate those two out and I can't think of one

00:03:33.040 that has tried to actually put those two in direct competition with with each other to tell you

00:03:37.840 whether we have any formal data um but certainly informally and not my impression from you know

00:03:44.880 the collective reading of the literature is that status wins out over resources primarily because

00:03:50.960 status is an indicator of potential resources so if you have resources but you don't have status

00:03:57.680 then you don't necessarily have the means to increase the resources that you have if you have

00:04:04.480 status but you don't have resources you're potentially quite young and are yet to build up

00:04:10.320 the wealth and the assets but if you have the status then you have the potential to do so so certainly

00:04:16.400 for younger women and you know partnering up partnering up with younger men who don't yet have a lifetime of

00:04:22.640 wealth to show for their for their toils status is very important because very few younger men actually

00:04:28.240 have any accrued wealth some come from wealth obviously there's obviously implications that come

00:04:32.240 with familial wealth in terms of how much wealth a young person might have but most young people just

00:04:37.760 starting out in adulthood don't don't have wealth and so status becomes the cue that women use to 1.00

00:04:42.880 judge whether or not a man will acquire wealth for the time he's older when they're making quite young

00:04:49.360 mate choice decisions so in the sort of i guess unusual circumstances where wealth and status become

00:04:55.920 decoupled if even though wealth is perhaps what what women want if you like that's what's what is 1.00

00:05:01.760 being sought those access to those resources to support successful reproduction but if the queue that

00:05:07.280 we've been selected to rely upon is status and it's going to trump wealth in the unusual situations

00:05:11.840 where those two things become decoupled okay another thing big thing that i've been thinking about is um

00:05:17.920 i mean i totally get that women uh are hypergamous and they they seek um you know better quality men

00:05:26.640 and i think from an evolutionary perspective you must want that to be the case because

00:05:31.760 if women selected the lowest quality men what that would do to the species over a period of time would 0.99

00:05:35.760 be disastrous so so i completely get that that is a necessary function in all um sexually selected

00:05:41.840 species so i get that the the issue is is that 500 years ago that meant selecting the best guy in the

00:05:48.800 village that you could get hold of with the dating app market that means selecting the best guy from

00:05:56.400 his best photos within 20 miles who might actually be asleep at the time that you're looking and we've

00:06:02.560 got this weird phenomena with dating apps where you know 10 of the men are sharing disproportionately

00:06:08.240 basically any of the women they want i mean i've i know a guy fabulously good looking nice chap

00:06:14.080 um he looks like he's been ai generated and if you ask him about tinder he says yeah i completed it

00:06:18.960 you know you know he went through something like 600 dates over the space of a two-year period and then

00:06:24.960 just eventually one day decided on board of this and he basically just settled down with the next one

00:06:29.840 which is which is random and funny but that is how this sexual market works today um and women seem 1.00

00:06:38.000 okay with this arrangement which to my mind seems a bit odd so what's going on there okay so okay so a

00:06:46.240 couple of things um first of all it's i will pick you up that it's not about what's good for the species so the

00:06:53.920 way evolution works it works on the currency of reproduction and that's actually really important

00:06:59.360 so it can produce a social system a mating system that can be ghastly by any you know but by any um

00:07:10.080 moral evaluation what what will be selected for is what makes individuals reproduce at the level of

00:07:18.480 the individual regardless of what is then the sort of emergent social system that comes from all of

00:07:24.480 these different individuals behaving the way they've been selected to behave the system you get

00:07:28.960 then emerges from that and then creates its own system within which these individuals behave and

00:07:34.000 that determines what is reproductively favorable and what is not and therefore that determines what

00:07:39.440 gets selected so it's definitely not about you know women prefer men because this is going to 0.99

00:07:45.680 increase the overall quality of the population of humans women prefer particular men and men prefer

00:07:51.600 particular women because that will improve the overall quality of their own offspring that's how 1.00

00:07:57.600 that's how that works and that's important to keep in mind because that it's not a trivial

00:08:03.440 distinction there are situations when you're thinking about what are the selection pressures on

00:08:07.280 mate choice and mainly behavior we're distinguishing between what's good for the individual what what will

00:08:12.000 promote an individual's reproductive success versus what is good for the reproductive success of the

00:08:17.840 entire population those two things can become decoupled and in fact with birth rates declining as they

00:08:23.040 are they're decoupled right now in our society so that's an important distinction um the second question

00:08:29.120 about which we'll come back to i'm sure but the second question about the dating apps i i'm not quite sure

00:08:35.120 that that a couple of things that you said are exactly quite right so i'm not sure that women being 0.99

00:08:40.640 happy about you know being happy about the situation on the dating apps is necessarily quite true to some

00:08:46.800 extent they are because there are far more men on these dating apps than there are women on these

00:08:53.360 dating apps so your your friend mr ai generated um perfect is not representative of the male experience on

00:09:01.520 on dating apps no certainly not yeah that's right the representative male experience is that

00:09:07.200 they can't get a date in spite of swiping i will admit now that i don't know which direction you have

00:09:13.280 to swipe to accept or reject but in spite of swiping in the right direction a large number of women they

00:09:18.160 won't actually go on any dates whereas women have the opposite um experience in a lot of senses in that 1.00

00:09:25.120 uh women because they're in very short supply so there's a huge skewed operational sex ratio in these 1.00

00:09:32.000 dating apps women are in very short supply that makes them in high demand so of course women can go 1.00

00:09:36.560 on as many dates as they want but um a few people including a colleague of mine have done some

00:09:42.400 research looking at the types of people that tend to be on dating apps and the types of women that tend

00:09:48.960 to be on dating apps are highly neurotic um women with poor self-esteem and the men that tend to be on 0.98

00:09:58.640 these dating apps your friend excluded um the men that tend to be on these dating apps are also

00:10:04.320 disproportionately manipulative and narcissistic so dating apps are not necessarily well yeah

00:10:11.520 they're not necessarily a happy place and the people on them are not necessarily happy people

00:10:16.240 and they're not necessarily there because they're having a good time so yeah so and they're not

00:10:21.920 representative as much as we often bemoan with some justification the you know sort of

00:10:27.680 electronification of our social lives and the sort of the loss of that organic social interaction

00:10:34.080 i don't think dating apps actually necessarily encapsulate a nice representative sort of snapshot

00:10:40.640 of the human mating market as it currently stands i think it's it's skewed in a lot of ways okay so

00:10:45.520 i think the role of dating apps is overstated then because i mean i'm very old now but when i kind of

00:10:51.120 look at what these zoomers are doing you kind of get the impression it's all dating apps 1.00

00:10:55.200 you do and i don't i wish i had more concrete up-to-date data to be able to say with more

00:11:03.680 certainty but i don't think that that is the case i think it you know much like lots of things like you

00:11:11.520 say that we see on the the influences on instagram and the people that do it there they they do create

00:11:16.480 this impression of the world but it's important to remember especially for probably i suspect you're a

00:11:23.040 a bit like me spend a little bit too much time in this online world that it is something of a bubble

00:11:29.280 we we who live in this online world quite a lot us also not a representative sample of the broader

00:11:35.840 human population and i think sometimes it's a little bit easy to get caught up in what we're

00:11:41.520 perceiving and assume that that is a pretty good representation of what's going on i think

00:11:46.560 i think it's probably not i still think that you know physical interactions are the you know the

00:11:54.880 fundamental basis of relationship formation and people might meet each other through dating apps

00:11:59.840 but as you know even the story of your friend goes he finished tinder right so he he went through every

00:12:04.560 single person on there and eventually settled down um with one of them so even his story is that you know

00:12:10.320 what of 599 of his 600 experiences do not result in a successful relationship so i think online

00:12:17.760 well well depends on your measure of success um but it's not how i think the majority of healthy

00:12:23.840 functioning long-term relationships actually get started no i don't think it is but i still i still

00:12:30.320 think there is something about this uh for one of the women seem more willing to share high quality men 0.97

00:12:37.600 than i think men would be the other way around you know um my 20s were a long time ago now but you

00:12:42.960 know i knew lots of guys who um was sort of maintain a rota and i think the women on it must have known

00:12:51.120 that they were on a rota because you know they you know one of them would only be seen on a tuesday

00:12:56.560 for example and basically get ignored all the other time and and it was kind of amazing to me i always

00:13:01.840 thought what why don't they challenge this why don't they push back they must know but but they just

00:13:06.480 seem to accept this and i could never get my head around it what why so i think what's happening

00:13:13.440 there is maybe they know maybe they don't um however that's kind of a little bit beside the point

00:13:20.720 so there's this um when when you've got short-term mating going on you've got the male interests and

00:13:29.920 you've got the female interests now both of them could potentially be interested in using this short-term 0.72

00:13:35.760 mating arrangement as a springboard to a long-term mating arrangement because both men and women 0.98

00:13:40.000 benefit from long-term pair bonding raising of children benefit reproductively however men also

00:13:47.680 benefit in ways that women do not from short-term matings while they're single so once a woman is 0.98

00:13:54.960 partnered up she can benefit from short-term affairs effectively being unfaithful if she can get better 0.95

00:14:00.160 genes and what her partner has to offer but that's a separate situation if we're talking about people who are

00:14:04.400 single and ostensibly seeking partners um men can benefit from reproductive success just by getting

00:14:13.120 some random woman they're not invested in pregnant it would be less than ideal pregnancy but if it 0.77

00:14:18.560 um bears a child that's obviously some reproductive success that doesn't cost him anything it's just a net

00:14:24.400 bonus a net gain obviously for the woman involved that could be detrimental to her lifetime reproductive

00:14:30.640 success if she now has offspring that she is obligated biologically obligated to invest in and to rear 0.99

00:14:36.320 and it's going to impact her future prospects of securing a partner and rearing children together 1.00

00:14:41.280 so there are big sex differences in that trade-off so men are interested in short-term casual sex when

00:14:48.400 they're single women are interested in that to some extent but it's a tug-of-war game men want sex so you give 1.00

00:14:58.000 them a little bit of sex but then you attach a little bit of commitment to that sex you try to 0.68

00:15:03.040 attach a bit of a price then you give a little bit more and you take a little bit away and it's a 0.69

00:15:06.800 little bit like it's a little bit like a dance so it's a game it's it's game theory men are trying to

00:15:11.920 get one thing women are trying to get another and if the woman can keep him around for for long enough 0.95

00:15:17.120 and have sex with him just often enough to keep him interested but to hopefully not fall pregnant 0.65

00:15:22.880 um if he's not invested that maybe an emotional bond will form and maybe she can actually nab him

00:15:28.320 so it's less about these women being happy that they're on a rota and only get to see him on

00:15:34.400 tuesdays and it's even less about whether or not they're necessarily consciously aware of these

00:15:38.800 arrangements but it's more about a little bit of a give and take how much can i give how much can i

00:15:43.920 ask in return and can i get what i want out of this arrangement and the two men consciously aware of

00:15:50.400 this or is this all running an autopilot in the background so people ask me this question a lot

00:15:55.280 when i explain mating stuff and i i don't know but i also don't think it really matters very much so i

00:16:03.280 think to some extent women like just you know some women are very naive just i mean it's not women 1.00

00:16:07.680 right this is true of people some people are very naive some people are very savvy some women are well

00:16:12.000 aware that on a rota and are very well aware that they're playing a game but they want him and they're

00:16:16.240 going to play that game and they believe they can win and they believe they can now compete the other

00:16:19.600 women some women are completely utterly naive and i'm sure they believe everything he says about 1.00

00:16:24.400 working late on every night except tuesdays it's largely beside the point whether what women 1.00

00:16:29.280 consciously believe or think is going on they will nevertheless still engage in these types of

00:16:35.440 behaviors and you know pursue these men if they think the men are high quality enough and are

00:16:40.800 potentially worth pursuing and they think they have a chance and they will pick up on whatever cues

00:16:44.720 they can from him of well that looks like a cue of commitment or that looks like it's not a cue of

00:16:48.480 commitment and at some point if they decide it's ultimately they're not going to get what they

00:16:52.800 want then then they will ultimately walk so it's not about them being happy with the current arrangement

00:16:57.680 or even him necessarily being happy with the current arrangement either um consciously or unconsciously

00:17:02.720 it's about what either partner thinks they can get ultimately out of this arrangement and as long as

00:17:09.040 they think there's a chance they can get what they want then they'll stay in it in order to get that

00:17:13.600 whether how consciously people are aware of this stuff is varies i think from person to person and

00:17:20.560 a lot of it is just post-hoc rationalization of behavior anyway it doesn't necessarily mean people

00:17:28.000 are conscious of the actual reasons why they're doing this and why they're motivated to do this and

00:17:34.240 why after a certain point in time they become less motivated to do this and less motivated to put up

00:17:38.480 with it okay so following on that thing so following on that theme with conscious versus

00:17:43.600 unconscious behavior and another question that i've had lurking in the back of my mind since my 0.89

00:17:48.480 20s as well is is i don't know if you looked at this but the phenomena of the shit test and i would 0.79

00:17:54.240 often notice that in a new relationship around about the one to two month mark she would feel compelled 0.71

00:18:00.960 to pick an enormous fight over something utterly trivial and after this happened a few times i then spoke to

00:18:08.240 some mates and said are you seeing this like yeah yeah we see that and and and i i pondered on it

00:18:14.320 and and the best amateur evolutionary psychology bit of work that i could come up with

00:18:20.000 is that and there was this phrase that came up a lot will you fight for me stuff like that you know

00:18:25.120 some some variation of that and i thought well if if you're a woman who's just gone through the

00:18:31.280 last four million years of human evolution it is a lot better to find out if this man has staying 0.78

00:18:37.360 power now than when you're nine months pregnant and you've got a cyber tooth tiger up your bum 0.98

00:18:42.640 yeah am i did did i get it broadly right i mean have you looked at shit tests i mean what what is 0.96

00:18:48.160 going on with this whole phenomena um so broadly i would say yes so both partners certainly spend early 0.75

00:18:58.240 parts of the relationship signaling they're effectively trying to lure the other partner in

00:19:04.080 so signaling their own commitment their own interest right the first month is all sweetness

00:19:08.880 and light is after that yeah exactly you got to get this thing off the ground once you've effectively

00:19:13.840 established without necessarily consciously speaking about this with each other once you've effectively

00:19:18.880 established i'm interested you're interested i know that you're interested you know that i'm

00:19:22.480 interested okay we've got this thing now you need to establish just how interested now you need to test

00:19:27.920 levels of commitment because women more so than men men to some extent because men do have resources at

00:19:34.880 stake however um it's easier i think for a man to extract his resources from a burgeoning relationship

00:19:42.800 than it is for a woman to extract her reproductive potential from a burgeoning relationship if she 1.00

00:19:47.600 already pregnant and has a baby and that reproductive potential has become realized so the the risk

00:19:52.800 the risk benefit trade-off is not is not symmetrical between the sexes and so um yes it would be uh again

00:20:01.600 i've seen theory papers on similar types of things i've not seen empirical data someone actually trying

00:20:07.440 to test this but i've certainly seen people mount this basic argument um that yes picking fights early

00:20:13.760 on is a test of it's a test of commitment but it's not just that it's also a test of how dangerous you

00:20:20.080 are as uh as a mate so women have you know women want well women should want to be motivated to pair 1.00

00:20:28.240 up with formidable men right you want a man who is going to be strong who can protect you and what's

00:20:33.600 often not spoken um but is absolutely true is can protect your offspring as well so um one of the more

00:20:41.920 lesser known and more interesting observations is that um it turns out that one of the if you ask a

00:20:49.760 child sex offender what determines which children they choose as victims they'll tell you it's the

00:20:55.440 father if the father is weak or absent that's a that's a vulnerable child if the father is strong

00:21:03.200 they won't go near that child so you need a formidable man however formidable masculine aggressive men might also

00:21:12.720 represent a threat to you so you you need a man who can who who can turn that on but obviously not

00:21:19.520 towards you so part of picking focus is not just testing whether you go man she's hard work i'm out

00:21:26.160 although that is obviously useful information to know um but a big part of it is testing what happens

00:21:31.760 if i upset him not not and again this doesn't have to be conscious but women need to know before they 1.00

00:21:36.320 invest too much in a man what happens if i get him angry what happens if i'm unreasonable and i upset

00:21:41.360 him and he's got a reason to be upset does he control that does he you know what's he like

00:21:45.360 you need to know how he's going to fight and whether and whether you're going to be safe so

00:21:50.480 it certainly makes sense for women to see what happens when you know when a new partner gets 1.00

00:21:56.240 upset you need to know what he's going to be like so ideally she wants a man that can easily kill her 0.99

00:22:00.480 but won't as simple as that well i mean yes a tad crudely but yes ideally you want a man who could

00:22:07.920 kill others not necessarily you which i guess by extension means he could but yes so that that's

00:22:12.960 an important that is a very important bit of information for women to have when they're 1.00

00:22:19.040 navigating these early parts of relationships and thinking about making long-term commitments

00:22:23.120 it's especially important for women who are paired up with quite masculine alpha males if you like so it

00:22:30.400 may well be that women paired up with men that are more prone to that behavior are going to be more likely to

00:22:35.200 poke the bear a few times just to check what happens before before they over commit yes um

00:22:42.160 i mean this must make sense and i kind of go to the point it must be you know running an autopilot in

00:22:48.240 the background because of you know obviously millions of years of evolution and obviously for much of

00:22:52.880 that life was a lot cheaper than it is now but that stuff has all been ingrained in for a very long time

00:22:58.960 but and that kind of makes me wonder do you find it sometimes difficult to do what you do

00:23:05.120 when so many people have this sort of implicit assumption that 500 years ago we became detached from

00:23:10.240 evolutionary influences and everything is just determined by culture and law these days

00:23:15.280 i find that i i do find that to be a really intellectually lazy um position and i forgive people that don't

00:23:22.880 have you know you aren't schooled in evolutionary theory i forgive people for having that um i get

00:23:29.840 quite frustrated when i hear that perspective coming from people who ought to know better so i wrote a

00:23:38.080 little a little post about this once um i should dig it out somewhere and put it back on my website or

00:23:42.960 something because this question comes up a lot and i call it like the the escalator fallacy that that

00:23:49.520 people sort of have this assumption that we somehow worked our way up the evolutionary escalator and

00:23:55.120 when we reached the top our prize was this great wonderful complex culture that miraculously emerged

00:24:02.960 completely divorced and unrelated to our own biology that we then just stepped into and had to start to

00:24:10.160 contend with which of course is is nonsense everything cultural is biological it's all part of our extended

00:24:17.440 phenotype it's much more complicated than the extended phenotype of any other species but that's what

00:24:23.200 it is and only by looking at it through that lens do i think you can even hope to start to say sensible

00:24:28.960 things about the interplay between biology and culture otherwise i think you're lost if you would

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The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters - July 15, 2025

PREVIEW： Brokenomics ｜ Female Mating Behaviour

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