TRIGGERnometry - What Science Actually Says About Men and Women — Evolutionary Psychologist David Buss

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00:00:30.000 humans are unique in their mating system in at least three respects one is the evolution

00:00:39.600 of concealed ovulation i did have one male graduate student who claimed he could detect

00:00:45.360 when women were ovulating but he turned out to make many false claims and we had to kick him out

00:00:50.880 of graduate school then you have the evolution of long-term peer bonds and then the third is

00:00:58.560 male parental investment why do people cheat on average for men it's desire for sexual variety

00:01:07.520 the women who cheat tend to be very unhappy with their primary relationship the first thing

00:01:14.320 men want to know is did you him first thing women want to know of their husbands is are you in love

00:01:21.360 with her. Professor David Buss, welcome to Trigonometry. Thank you. Delighted to be talking

00:01:29.120 to you. Oh, it's great to have you on. We've had one of your students on in the past, Anna Fleischmann,

00:01:33.520 who we were talking about before we started. You are, of course, widely regarded as one of

00:01:38.640 the founders of the field of evolutionary psychology. First of all, we're going to have

00:01:43.920 a great conversation about men, women, and all the rest of it. What is evolutionary psychology?

00:01:49.360 Well, there are many ways to answer that question.

00:01:52.700 It's a great question.

00:01:54.700 One level is that it's simply psychology looked at through the lens of evolutionary theory.

00:02:03.360 A slightly deeper explanation would be that just as our body evolved and we have many

00:02:11.320 components of our body, a liver, lungs, heart, larynx, etc. And we analyze the body by what

00:02:20.580 their functions are. That's a key critical point. You know, you couldn't understand what

00:02:25.360 the liver is all about if you didn't understand its functions, you know, which includes detoxifying

00:02:31.320 toxins. And similarly, evolutionary psychologists argue that the mind housed in our brain, which

00:02:40.440 of physical structure evolve through the same process of evolution by selection sexual and

00:02:46.920 natural selection and that we have to analyze the brain and the component parts of the brain

00:02:54.920 as a suite of evolved psychological mechanisms and we have to understand what their purposes

00:03:01.800 are what their functions are what were they designed to do just as as analogously we were

00:03:07.400 We're trying to understand what the liver, the hearts, or the lungs are designed to do.

00:03:15.240 And then we have to do the hard work of saying, well, what are these psychological mechanisms?

00:03:24.740 How are they designed?

00:03:26.920 And what is their function?

00:03:28.140 And how does input from the environment influence their activation or deactivation?

00:03:36.460 How do they interact with other psychological mechanisms and eventually produce output which,

00:03:44.340 on average, is directed towards solving adaptive challenges of survival or mating?

00:03:52.700 And I know that scientists don't really deal in truth claims, they deal in theories

00:03:57.320 of how things are.

00:03:58.320 But from a layman perspective, a kind of obvious question might be, how do we know that what

00:04:03.380 evolutionary psychologists say or claim or believe is true or accurate?

00:04:08.480 Well, so that all rests with the specificity of the hypotheses. So you develop a hypothesis.

00:04:16.860 So let's say I've developed hypotheses around sexual jealousy, you know, that sexual jealousy

00:04:23.360 is an evolved emotion, contrary to what most psychologists have argued over the history

00:04:30.660 of psychology, that it's a pathology, it's a sign of immaturity, it's a neurosis, it's

00:04:36.280 a psychosis, it's a delusion, but that jealousy, sexual jealousy evolved for a mate guarding

00:04:43.340 function, you know, and that it gets activated under specific circumstances.

00:04:49.000 And so we can develop specific empirical predictions from the hypothesis, and then you test those

00:04:56.640 and see whether they are confirmed or disconfirmed.

00:04:59.140 And then the hypothesis is either supported

00:05:03.440 or disconfirmed by the empirical evidence.

00:05:06.660 And so there's this, you know,

00:05:11.660 ultimately it all boils down to probability statements

00:05:16.020 that it is improbable that it's not designed

00:05:20.660 because we've identified these 13 design features

00:05:24.220 of sexual jealousy.

00:05:25.880 It's activated, for example, when there's a threat to the valued relationship, an interloper,

00:05:34.060 we call them mate poachers in the jargon, or when they're accused of infidelity given

00:05:44.500 by your regular committed partner, or even when there are things where there's no infidelity

00:05:52.160 and no mate poachers but there's a what we call a mate value discrepancy so let's say you know

00:05:59.700 normally people hook up they may they mate assortatively so with the eights with the eights

00:06:06.020 sixes with the sixes and so forth but let's say someone a man or a woman gets a an enormous

00:06:13.240 uh pay jump or they become a star an actress or an actor and their status rises dramatically

00:06:22.760 it can create a mate value discrepancy where none previously existed and that can trigger

00:06:28.360 sexual jealousy as well because we know and this is another empirical prediction that's been

00:06:34.920 supported that when there's a mate value discrepancy there's a higher probability

00:06:42.120 that the higher mate value person will uh will cheat uh or uh dump the their partner and trade

00:06:51.240 up to a higher mate value person and so and so what we the the game is is simply normal science

00:07:00.360 you know do do this does this suite of predictions pan out empirically when we do the studies and so

00:07:08.040 to the degree that they do and then we increase our support for the probability the hypothesis

00:07:17.640 being correct and the onus on evolutionary psychologists is often somewhat greater than

00:07:29.720 that on non-evolutionary psychologists in the sense that we assume or hypothesize universality

00:07:38.760 of design so just as like if you were to go to an entirely different culture you wouldn't expect

00:07:46.040 the body to be differently designed you know some people have a heart other people don't have a

00:07:50.920 heart you know some people have a liver other people don't so we assume that there's just as

00:07:56.280 there's universality of our body design, we hypothesize that there should be universality

00:08:03.000 of our psychological design as well. And David, I can't believe I'm asking you this question,

00:08:09.940 but I think it needs to be asked. If we look at the two genders through the lens of evolutionary

00:08:18.500 psychology. What are the fundamental differences between the two genders? Well, so I 0.87

00:08:25.580 distinguish between sex and gender. Okay, the two sexes. To start with, yeah. I'm very well. 0.97

00:08:32.040 So yeah, so biologists define sex simply by the size of the gametes. So males are the ones with

00:08:40.700 the small ones, small gametes, females with the large ones. So sperm are basically small packets

00:08:48.140 of DNA with an outboard motor and basically nothing else. Eggs are large, many times the

00:08:56.220 size of sperm and nutrient rich. And so that's the definition of sex, according to biologists,

00:09:03.820 99.9% of all biologists. And so your question is, what is the difference between them?

00:09:12.780 So from this small beginning of an asymmetry in gamete size flows a tremendous avalanche

00:09:25.500 of other biological differences, differences in our reproductive anatomy and our reproductive

00:09:32.460 physiology. So fertilization occurs internally within women, not within men. And that nine-month

00:09:41.420 period of gestation is is obligatory it's an obligatory parental investment and so one act 0.99

00:09:49.740 of sex can result in that nine month period of investment by women and at a minimum and zero 0.91

00:09:58.860 investment by the man at a minimum now fortunately men often do more than the minimum and so

00:10:05.900 sometimes they make up for that gap but so from the the get-go there's this asymmetry in obligatory

00:10:13.740 investment uh and that that cascades to a bunch of other things so another component of human

00:10:24.540 reproductive physiology is lactation so men don't lactate women do lactate over 99 of human

00:10:33.340 evolutionary history uh a an infant would die without that breast milk uh and uh and so that's

00:10:42.780 uh so so now of course we have formulas and you know you can buy uh you can even buy um breast

00:10:51.180 milk that was produced by other women there are breast milk banks you can go to but ancestrally 0.81

00:10:56.700 there weren't. And so that's another, at least historically over human evolutionary history,

00:11:04.220 an obligatory investment that women put in. So what you have is a suite of adaptive problems 1.00

00:11:12.200 that follow from these sex differences in our reproductive biology. So one of them, for example,

00:11:20.300 is, I just kind of alluded to, is sexual jealousy, where because fertilization occurs internally

00:11:29.840 within women, women are 100% certain they are the mothers of their children. So no woman ever gave

00:11:38.880 birth, and as the child is emerging from her body, wondered, gee, is this kid really my own?

00:11:44.600 They know it's their own 100% certainty, maternal certainty.

00:11:53.000 Men can never be sure because the woman could have had sex with another man

00:11:59.900 and it could be another man's child.

00:12:04.380 And so this creates a fundamental problem.

00:12:07.500 So humans are, if I could back up one step here,

00:12:11.360 humans are unique in their mating system in at least three respects three pivotal

00:12:22.220 pivotal respects okay one is the evolution of concealed ovulation so if

00:12:29.240 you compare humans with our chimpanzee primate relatives and chimpanzees are

00:12:34.640 with whom we are genetically related more than 98 percent they have the female has a very visible

00:12:44.000 estrus she gets the large red genital swellings uh she emits olfactory cues and the males basically

00:12:52.080 go wild uh when um into a kind of sexual frenzy of attraction to her during that estrus phase

00:13:00.480 um and women humans women don't have anything remotely like that i mean i did

00:13:07.300 have one male graduate student who claimed he could detect when women were ovulating

00:13:12.400 but he turned out to make many false claims and we had to kick him out of graduate school

00:13:17.900 but but but but you can't you can't you can't walk down the street or walk into a party and say oh 0.91

00:13:28.980 this woman's ovulating. She's not. She's ovulating. She's not. We don't. We don't have 1.00

00:13:32.960 anything. Whereas male chimps easily detect it, and humans can detect it as well. So you have

00:13:40.020 concealed ovulation. Then you have the evolution of long-term pair bonds, which is also somewhat

00:13:48.320 unique. So there's no other primate species that's like humans in forming long-term committed

00:13:55.200 relationships where they're with one mate for long committed periods of time pair bonding

00:14:02.440 we have the the attachment system that comes into play there and then you have the emotion of love

00:14:09.060 which when i was an undergraduate i was taught it was a a western an invention by some european

00:14:15.400 poets a few hundred years ago but love i think is an evolved emotion that in in the context of

00:14:23.420 romantic relationships evolved specifically for long-term committed romantic relationships

00:14:30.060 so so you have that and then the third um element in the um in the big the three big pillars of how

00:14:39.720 we are at least somewhat unique is male parental investment so even though women have the obligatory

00:14:46.680 investment men do a tremendous amount not home and a lot of men don't do anything so uh and

00:14:56.120 abandonment is a real thing but um some men invest tremendously in protecting provisioning caring for

00:15:06.360 uh their their offspring so uh so this is uh so these three things really change the ground rules

00:15:15.400 of human mating and um and make us somewhat unique so uh but getting back to your question 0.99

00:15:24.200 um sorry for rambling here uh but um that because the fertilization occurs internally within women

00:15:32.600 not within men men can never be sure so paternity certainty is always less than 100 percent at

00:15:39.560 least prior to now i mean now we can do dna fingerprinting and you can verify with certainty

00:15:45.080 whether this kid is actually yours uh but historically you couldn't um so um uh so men had

00:15:54.920 to uh in order for heavy male parental investment to have evolved men had to evolve adaptations

00:16:04.200 to increase the probability that that kid is their own because if they didn't then they're

00:16:11.480 spending a decade two decades of their investment in a rival's offspring and just from a purely

00:16:19.880 reproductive standpoint that's a road to reproductive disaster you know you're helping

00:16:25.160 the reproductive success of your rivals or the rival who inseminated your partner at your expense

00:16:32.280 so um and so and so i think sexual jealousy is one of those um one of those adaptations

00:16:41.960 psychological adaptations so you have pre-mate selection where uh what one of the things that's

00:16:49.720 valued by men is is cues to uh sexual fidelity is this is this potential partner going to be

00:16:59.060 sexually faithful to me um and uh these are all probabilistic cues because you you can't know i

00:17:05.880 mean you can have um i don't know um a woman who's a virgin and seems totally honest and then

00:17:14.720 three years into the marriage uh she has an affair and we know that infidelities do occur

00:17:20.860 but so you have a premarital uh selection uh and that and that gets down to mate choice

00:17:29.680 preferential mate choice and people men do look for cues to uh promiscuity for example because

00:17:36.720 it's a law of psychology best predictor of future behaviors past behavior so if she's had a huge 0.63

00:17:44.540 I guess they call them, nowadays, body count.

00:17:48.040 Where's your body count?

00:17:49.180 I study murders, and when I think of body count,

00:17:52.940 I think of serial killers, not number of sex partners,

00:17:56.720 but the younger generation refers to body count

00:17:59.780 as how many people you've had sex with.

00:18:03.860 And so if a woman has had sex with a large number

00:18:10.300 of partners prior to marriage 0.64

00:18:13.960 prior to commitment, then there's a higher probability that she's going to be having sex

00:18:19.560 with someone else after you've committed. Is that why they say that men always exaggerate

00:18:25.920 their body count and women always downplay their body count? The news doesn't just tell you what's

00:18:32.400 happening. It often tells you what to think is happening. And these days, the biggest red flag

00:18:37.220 isn't what's said, it's what gets left out. That's why I use Ground News. It's the only app that

00:18:42.860 compares how the same story is covered across the political spectrum and show you what whole

00:18:47.440 audiences are not being told. The blind spot feed is one of my favorite features. Every day it flags

00:18:52.860 upwards of 20 stories that are being ignored either by the left or the right. Follow along

00:18:57.200 at ground.news slash trigonometry. Like this, a new study from UC San Diego found that climate change

00:19:03.380 cost almost twice as much as we thought because earlier estimates left out damage to the oceans.

00:19:08.120 That's a pretty big update and yet no coverage, literally zero, came from right-leaning outlets.

00:19:12.860 All this, a recent Gallup poll found trust in the media has hit a record low,

00:19:16.940 with just 28% of Americans saying they trust newspapers, radio, and TV

00:19:21.080 to report the news accurately and fairly.

00:19:23.820 That's a staggering result, but if you only read left-leaning news,

00:19:27.020 you likely never saw it at all.

00:19:28.900 Go to ground.news slash trigonometry to get 40% off their unlimited vantage plan,

00:19:33.900 the same one we use, and stop being managed by the media.

00:19:38.240 Well, that's an interesting question, and that is true. 0.99

00:19:41.940 So all the surveys show men report a higher number of sex partners than women, which can't 0.92

00:19:50.540 be correct mathematically, because the averages, the means have to be identical, assuming an

00:19:56.460 equal sex ratio in the population.

00:19:58.740 So what's going on here?

00:20:00.440 So what's going on, I think, is at least three things.

00:20:05.960 So one is, yes, men tend to exaggerate.

00:20:11.380 So oh yeah, I touched her arm, that's one, you know. 0.95

00:20:17.800 But on the flip side, women tend to downplay, you know, so or underestimate their number 1.00

00:20:24.760 of sex. 0.97

00:20:25.760 Well, that really didn't count.

00:20:27.040 We were just fooling around and, you know, it wasn't serious.

00:20:31.420 And so you get sort of a reporting bias on both sides.

00:20:36.400 But there's a third factor that's involved, and that is that almost all the studies that

00:20:44.640 have been done on these body count numbers don't include prostitutes. 0.65

00:20:51.200 So if you include prostitutes, so let's say a prostitute can have sex with hundreds and

00:20:55.780 hundreds and hundreds of guys, then there's one study that included prostitutes and did

00:21:05.580 the statistical calculations and found that the numbers of men and women reporting sex

00:21:11.480 partners were almost identical. And that is because prostitution is 99% plus a male consumer

00:21:21.940 activity. Yes, thank you. I was looking for a word. Thank you. Activity. And so if men 0.67

00:21:34.320 including, yeah, I had sex with this prostitute and that prostitute and that prostitute, that's 1.00

00:21:40.280 three or four right there, then their body count is going to be higher. But I think all three 1.00

00:21:47.380 variables are at work. Males exaggerating, women under-reporting, and then inclusion of prostitutes

00:21:53.940 is another issue. David, I was wondering as you were speaking about paternal uncertainty,

00:21:59.160 Is that the reason that almost every society, or I don't know, maybe I'm wrong, correct me on this if I am,

00:22:05.300 but societies have evolved mechanisms for restricting and controlling female sexuality 0.97

00:22:11.540 to sort of prevent women from sleeping around a lot. Is that why? 0.93

00:22:17.600 Yes. But the way I'd phrase it is it's typically the families of the women 0.96

00:22:26.120 that are, that have developed means of trying to restrict and cloister the females. They do 0.99

00:22:34.700 mention, this is actually a study that Diana Fleischman and I did with another graduate

00:22:41.340 student. We call it the daughter guarding hypothesis, where, and we showed it even in

00:22:48.560 America parents devote more effort to monitoring and restricting their 0.90

00:22:54.980 daughters sexual activity than their sons so and that's the more modest dress

00:23:01.460 setting curfews or when the child has to be back home and in bed etc and so but

00:23:09.380 it's typically the families of the daughters that do this sort of thing and

00:23:15.060 And it ranges all the way to genital mutilation, to clitoridectomy and fibrillation where it's 0.99

00:23:24.960 the women within the family that inflict these genital wounds on their daughters, on the 0.99

00:23:34.880 young females, because it increases their mate value on the mating market. 0.95

00:23:41.340 And so families are very concerned about their daughter's sexual reputation because mating

00:23:49.640 and marriage historically have not been just one man, one woman.

00:23:54.700 It's been that the family's gotten involved and influences it.

00:23:58.280 And it's often a political alliance or economic alliance between two families.

00:24:04.940 And so they want to ensure, or they strive to ensure, the highest mate value, which is sexual reputation of the girls in their family, the daughters and women in their family.

00:24:20.280 And you mentioned mate value and you talked about, you know, one person's pay going up or whatever.

00:24:26.920 I imagine what makes up male mate value is very different than what makes female mate value on a number of things.

00:24:37.820 Yeah. So, well, we have to distinguish between male and female mate value.

00:24:44.060 We also have to distinguish between long-term mate mate value and short-term sexual value, if you will.

00:24:52.460 And where this, so I assume we're talking about long-term mate value.

00:24:58.700 And yes, there's, if you look at the components that make up for mate value,

00:25:06.580 many of them are actually shared by the sexes.

00:25:09.760 So intelligence, dependability, kindness, good health, et cetera.

00:25:17.460 There are many shared components, but there are basically two clusters of sex differentiated contributors to mate value.

00:25:26.560 So on the male side, it is his economic or financial provisioning, as well as his willingness to channel those resources to a specific woman and her offspring.

00:25:43.860 And that's an important distinction because it's not just the number of digits in his bank account or stock portfolio.

00:25:52.400 I mean, he can be Elon Musk, but if he's unwilling to channel those resources to a particular woman, then his mate value is correspondingly lower.

00:26:03.360 And so those are more important components to a man's mate value than to a woman's, as well as a slightly older age.

00:26:12.880 so women universally prefer partners who are a few years older than they are not not ancient

00:26:19.540 um but uh typically a few years older you do you do get um in some cases very large age

00:26:27.060 discrepancies but uh but those are rare so like a modern example would be bill belichick the

00:26:32.980 football uh coach who is his girlfriend is apparently i guess in her mid-20s or so and

00:26:39.620 He's in his, I think, 70s, but typically it's more women prefer guys who are a few years older but not ancient. 0.94

00:26:50.100 On the female side, you get youth and beauty.

00:26:55.140 So physical attractiveness looms much larger in a woman's mate value than a man's.

00:27:02.540 and and it's people don't like this finding you know it goes against you know because again when

00:27:25.420 I what I was taught when I was undergraduate and I'm sure you've all heard these phrases like

00:27:31.340 beauty is only skin deep beauty is in the eyes of the beholder you can't judge a book by its cover

00:27:39.740 but in fact physical appearance provides a wealth of information about a woman's health

00:27:49.500 status and her fertility most important her fertility and so and so we know for example that

00:27:57.900 um uh while it used to be believed that um beauty standards were infinitely cross-culturally

00:28:07.280 variable we know now that they're not there are some at least some components that contribute to

00:28:14.840 physical attractiveness that are universal so clear skin clear eyes smooth smooth skin lustrous

00:28:22.800 hair, full lips, a waist-tip ratio of roughly 0.7, low waist-tip ratio, basically cues to youth

00:28:33.860 and cues to health. Cues to youth because youth is very highly correlated with fertility.

00:28:42.320 So we know what the fertility curves are for women and for men. And for women, they tend to

00:28:51.560 peak in their, say, early to mid-20s, where women are most fertile. And then it declines

00:29:02.200 with time. So much more steeply for women than for men. Now, fertility also declines

00:29:10.860 for men, but much more gradually. So you do have men who are in their 60s, 70s, and occasionally

00:29:19.080 older that actually do reproduce so i think of two recent examples would be um uh mick jagger

00:29:26.760 uh well mick jagger would be would be one but i was thinking of al pacino and uh i think it's uh

00:29:34.220 robert de niro uh also in their in their they're pretty old at this point uh but they've had

00:29:42.580 children of course obviously with much younger women who are still fertile so

00:29:50.460 so this this is a fundamental sex difference and one that people don't

00:29:55.580 like and it's but you know I don't make these things up you know you have to go

00:30:01.000 with the data and so these are fundamental differences in our

00:30:06.700 reproductive biology it wasn't it wasn't sexist male scientists who invented the

00:30:12.480 fact that fertility declines more rapidly in women than in men. It's just a biological fact.

00:30:20.000 So getting back to your question, so you have, those are the two big clusters

00:30:25.460 of sex-differentiated components of mate value. Resources and the ability to contribute those

00:30:35.260 resources, and then youth and physical attractiveness. And people don't like either

00:30:41.300 either of those actually so because people say well so you're saying women are gold diggers

00:30:46.660 well no i'm not saying women are gold diggers you have this fundamental asymmetry in parental

00:30:52.840 investment where uh you think of our ancestral mothers and their mothers and their mothers and 1.00

00:31:01.100 their mothers what would have aided a woman and her children's survival and their reproductive 0.83

00:31:08.840 of success? Well, an investing male who offered protection and provision and resources and who

00:31:17.140 could ensure or increase probability the survival of the woman and the children. And so it's

00:31:25.920 perfectly reasonable why women universally have evolved this standard of their mate preferences

00:31:33.840 and what contributes to male mate value and from a man's point of view every one of us

00:31:40.960 we are all the descendants of fathers and grandfathers and great-grandfathers all of whom

00:31:47.440 have preferred to mate with fertile women so if if they preferred to mate with infertile women 0.97

00:31:54.800 we wouldn't be here it would have broken this inviolate chain of um of reproduction 0.87

00:32:01.440 So we are all, I mean, we could pat ourselves on the back. We're all evolutionary success stories

00:32:06.960 in that sense. We've all come from this long, unbroken chain of successful males and females,

00:32:15.760 all of whom have made wise mate choices and gotten through these tremendous slings and

00:32:24.720 arrows of outrageous fortune to give rise to who we are here today.

00:32:30.000 and it's a when you were saying we're all evolutionary success stories i was thinking

00:32:33.680 back to my teaching career i've taught a few kids who want evolutionary success stories david but

00:32:37.600 let's let's not focus on that now that is very interesting what you were talking about because

00:32:44.240 as you were well aware over the last few years there has been a revolution

00:32:48.240 in mating which has been the internet and apps and everything else so how has that kind of changed

00:32:55.200 our predilections what we look for and how has that changed the relationships between the sexes

00:33:02.860 more broadly yeah well that's a it's a great question and a complex question and there isn't

00:33:08.760 one simple answer so what i can offer is some thoughts on the question and without um attaching

00:33:18.320 uh an undue amount of certainty to those thoughts um so uh so one thing is so ancestrally

00:33:26.320 we would have encountered perhaps a few dozen potential mates in our entire lifespan

00:33:32.640 because we didn't have cars airplanes internet or anything else so you're geographically limited

00:33:40.400 and now we live in large urban settings and then the internet with with dating sites they 0.97

00:33:47.040 provide us access to thousands or potentially millions of potential mates who live thousands

00:33:55.920 of miles away. They can be in another country and sometimes are. So this is one huge, what

00:34:04.880 we call an evolutionary mismatch. And sometimes this produces, and I think this is a speculation,

00:34:14.400 but a reasonable one a decision paralysis so they've shown this in studies of you go to a

00:34:22.080 high-end supermarket and they have these um six jams you can taste and then you taste several

00:34:29.440 and then say oh i like the peach or whatever and you buy one but they've shown if you give people

00:34:34.720 24 they taste some and they just can't decide there's too many too many to decide decision

00:34:41.840 paralysis and i think some of that goes on in the mating world so you get you know wow there's so

00:34:48.320 many potential mates to choose from and i got matched with this person now that person and

00:34:54.160 maybe there's someone just a little bit better you know on the next match and so i think there's this

00:35:02.320 reluctance to commit uh to one choice you know whereas in ancestral environments you have just

00:35:09.280 a few to choose from and you choose one and make the commitment so that's one another thing that

00:35:18.000 i think that really skews things is that what you get on the internet dating profiles is you get

00:35:24.080 photographs and then written descriptions so uh i like fishing or um i'm into

00:35:32.800 rugby or whatever you know i like uh you know heavy metal rock whatever the case

00:35:38.080 an interesting woman you're describing she likes fishing rugby and heavy metal 1.00

00:35:45.440 she doesn't sound straight is like what we're saying hey there there's uh assortative matings 1.00

00:35:54.560 mates for all sorts of interests so but but i think that what you have is um what happens is

00:36:01.200 the photograph is a visual image that tends to overwhelm all other sources of information

00:36:08.080 And so people make their decisions heavily based on the photographs.

00:36:14.360 And so physical appearance takes on a much larger share of people's attention than it would be as contrasted with meeting people in real life.

00:36:27.160 There's the thing called in real life.

00:36:29.260 You've probably heard of it.

00:36:30.580 IRL.

00:36:31.440 Yeah, it used to happen.

00:36:33.480 so but when so when you meet someone in real life there's a whole host of other 1.00

00:36:42.000 information I mean you get olfactory cues which are women are very sensitive to 0.97

00:36:47.040 and most people don't know this but women have a greater olfactory acuity 0.64

00:36:54.680 than men do and so they can smell things that men can't smell which is why you

00:37:00.360 You know, men have, like, a woman walks into a guy's apartment and he thinks it stinks or whatever, and he doesn't notice anything.

00:37:07.820 But one of the things that we, it's another sex difference, that visual information is much more important to men than to women.

00:37:20.000 It's important to women, but women tend to use all sorts of other senses.

00:37:24.860 So olfaction, how does the guy sound, vocal qualities, you know, intonation and so forth.

00:37:32.900 So none of those can you get from a pallid written description and then an overwhelming photograph.

00:37:42.200 Now, of course, we know the photographs are somewhat deceptive.

00:37:45.480 Some people post photographs that are not truly representative of what they actually look like.

00:37:50.440 they might be old or they might be filtered or photoshopped or you know

00:37:56.020 they're even like websites where you can go to take the best selfie possible to

00:38:01.620 post and then that you meet the person in real life that's not what they look

00:38:04.680 like so so I think that this but but all this other information that you can

00:38:14.180 glean from meeting in real life and not just one-time meeting because that even

00:38:19.320 provides a very restricted informational window um meeting someone over time so when people are

00:38:27.720 thinking about getting serious i i i'm not in the advice business but i give them this piece of

00:38:33.160 advice they say go on a vacation together to a place that neither of you have been and you're

00:38:39.720 unfamiliar with and so you have to grapple with novel challenges different culture different

00:38:46.840 you know ways of getting around different food and so forth and so and so you can see how people

00:38:54.120 react to the novel information to stresses and strains you know do they get thrown out of whack

00:39:02.200 by a minor a pebble of a strain or you know can they do they are they resilient do they cope well

00:39:09.160 and adapt well to these different circumstances you go for a week or two with someone then you

00:39:14.200 find out a lot of information about someone so uh so uh so in short it's a long-winded answer

00:39:23.640 to your question which is a really good one is that i think there are a number of mismatches

00:39:29.240 between the way we selected mates ancestrally and the way we do through internet dating i think it's

00:39:35.720 something like 40 percent of all people now meet through internet through internet in one form or

00:39:42.040 another um and so uh and the other piece of advice i give is to stop messaging just meet the person

00:39:50.120 start out with having coffee together or lunch together and then go from there and if there's

00:39:56.280 some connection that's the other thing is a connection or romantic spark or a sexual spark

00:40:04.120 is there chemistry that you have with each other and and that's hugely important well that is the

00:40:09.960 the most important thing. And it's really interesting when you see these apps because

00:40:14.660 they over-index for pictures and particularly looks. Well, you know, some people may not be

00:40:21.920 photogenic. Some people may be incredibly charismatic. Some people may be witty, funny,

00:40:25.960 whatever it may be. So I guess my question is this. Is it true about the apps that it's 20%

00:40:35.440 or 15% of the guys who look great in their pictures, who take all the goals, and everybody

00:40:40.680 else is left with nothing? Or is that kind of a misrepresentation of what's actually happening?

00:40:46.220 Yeah, I think it's a misrepresentation. I mean, there is a skew. I mean, some guys get more

00:40:51.620 hits than others get more attention. But one of the nice things about the modern environment

00:40:58.600 is that there are so many different niches or niches

00:41:06.960 or ways to improve your mate value for some people but not for others.

00:41:13.280 So as I mentioned, I don't know, the heavy metal.

00:41:17.220 But, you know, some people are into certain types of music.

00:41:22.160 So I know, I'll give an example.

00:41:23.520 So I know a woman, a friend of mine, who, she's trilingual.

00:41:28.600 and really values guys who know Russian literature

00:41:35.900 so that she can have in-depth conversations about Tolstoy.

00:41:41.420 Now, if you have those qualities,

00:41:44.760 that will be very high in mate value in her eyes,

00:41:48.560 but irrelevant in most other people's eyes.

00:41:52.360 But we have many, many of those kind of,

00:41:55.140 You know, what you can call idiosyncratic value systems that can elevate someone's mate value.

00:42:05.140 And so, and then the other aspect of it is that a good mating strategy is not to go where the heaviest competition is.

00:42:16.440 So if everybody is fighting over the same mate, then you're much better off going for someone who is not at the center of that attention.

00:42:28.860 So, you know, so now do people struggle on the mating market?

00:42:35.980 Absolutely.

00:42:36.520 You know, there's this phenomenon that the modern word for them is incels, guys that have difficulty attracting women. 0.99

00:42:46.840 But that's always been the case, hasn't it? 0.99

00:42:48.580 It's always been the case, yeah.

00:42:49.920 It has always been the case.

00:42:53.360 However, in the past, yeah, so we just didn't have a name for them.

00:43:01.080 Well, it's that, but also I don't think it was an identity.

00:43:04.440 That's, I think, a big difference within sales is it's not guys who struggle,

00:43:08.560 as I understand it, but do correct me.

00:43:10.420 It's not guys who struggle with women.

00:43:11.940 It's guys who struggle with women so much they give up.

00:43:16.440 trying to find a mate. Yeah, yeah, and some of them... And make an identity of

00:43:21.600 discussing it with other people who they found, who share that situation. Yeah,

00:43:25.200 right, which can result in, you know, a misogynistic echo chamber of, you know, 1.00

00:43:31.800 that, you know, Jim Morrison of The Doors had the quote of, women seem wicked when 0.91

00:43:37.540 you're unwanted, you know, and there's some truth to that, you know, that, you 1.00

00:43:41.400 know. But you're absolutely right that there have always been incels without that identity

00:43:49.640 or name. But the other thing is, so I have a graduate student now, William Costolo.

00:43:59.600 We've had him on the show.

00:44:00.600 Oh, yeah.

00:44:01.600 A couple of times, actually.

00:44:02.600 Oh, okay. Yeah.

00:44:03.600 He's studied incels and so he's probably the world's expert on incels right now, professionally,

00:44:10.040 not and but one of the things that he's found is that they tend to be a bit

00:44:18.280 spectrumy so they have difficulty with social mind reading and so that impairs

00:44:28.160 their ability to have interesting conversations with women and also some

00:44:35.700 anxiety about it so they get um you know a dating anxiety or mating anxiety when they when they talk

00:44:44.020 to women so uh but these are these are actually conditions that are um curable because you have

00:44:52.180 um and one of the things that i mean many psychological um abnormalities are not curable

00:45:01.380 so schizophrenia we can't do anything about but anxiety specific anxiety disorders are very very

00:45:10.180 curable it's one of the few things that we we know if if you have snake phobia flying anxiety

00:45:17.460 fear of flying or uh or and we're actually looking into mating anxiety and ways to reduce that

00:45:25.780 uh because you have these guys who are perfectly reasonable in their mate value but have this

00:45:33.300 anxiety which inhibits their ability to approach women and have conversations with them so um

00:45:40.980 so uh so it's not a uh they shouldn't give up and these are fixable fixable problems and it's

00:45:49.380 very interesting now that we're talking about in cells because they have the myth of the chad

00:45:53.460 which is the myth and that's the terminology for the guy who's really buff really handsome yeah

00:45:59.140 and you know every woman wants him and you go all right okay so there are there are guys who

00:46:04.440 are more popular with women i mean that's just obvious but there is a type of guy online who is

00:46:11.160 high mate value who on hinge or tinder or whatever it may be he can literally go out and have a date

00:46:17.780 every night of the week if he wants. And then they would say that those women would gravitate

00:46:24.140 to those types of men. So it's those types of men who are getting most of the matches.

00:46:30.220 Yeah. Well, yeah. But for short term sexual hookups, you know, I would say so, you know,

00:46:38.700 this is where sites like tinder you know i i wouldn't advise any um woman to go on a site like

00:46:48.140 tinder because they're first of all there are 30 percent of the men on tinder are in relationships

00:46:53.900 are married you know and so they're looking for short-term hookups sexual hookups so if you're

00:46:59.740 looking for a long-term mate you don't want to go on tinder you want to go on a dating site that is

00:47:04.860 more geared toward long-term relationships and compatibility so um so maybe for those um incels

00:47:15.340 who are resentful about the chads who are getting these short-term hookups um well you know um

00:47:26.300 that's another mismatch um again evolutionary mismatch there were there ancestrally there

00:47:32.300 There was no such thing as this large pool of single people.

00:47:36.860 They didn't exist.

00:47:38.220 So ancestrally and in almost all hunter-gatherer societies, traditional societies, women get married, all fertile women get married and they reproduce.

00:47:50.720 And so there's not this pool of singles like you have now.

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00:49:14.100 And we've obviously returned, I was going to say straight, but we returned to the topic of

00:49:19.600 infidelity would i be right in saying that cheating is an evolutionary adaptation um

00:49:26.720 well uh did we evolve to be monogamous i guess is what i'm uh i would say um i would rephrase

00:49:34.320 the question so the way i would phrase it is have we evolved a long-term mating strategy

00:49:41.200 and i would say yes we have as one strategy within our repertoire of mating strategies so

00:49:48.080 So do we have adaptations for long-term pair-bonded attachment, committed mating?

00:49:55.000 Yes.

00:49:56.000 Do we also have adaptations for short-term mating?

00:49:59.300 I would say yes.

00:50:01.000 Do we have adaptations for EPC mating, extra pair copulation mating?

00:50:06.260 I would say yes to that as well.

00:50:08.160 So which particular mating strategy an individual pursues depends on a variety of factors.

00:50:16.120 um mate value uh problems in the relationship and this is actually something we're working on right

00:50:23.380 now is um different forms of infidelity different forms of cheating so you have sexual infidelity

00:50:31.360 which is obvious but you also have emotional infidelity and then you also have financial

00:50:36.700 infidelity or resource infidelity so turns out i was surprised at these stats i didn't do these

00:50:42.980 studies, but something like a third of married people have secret bank accounts or credit

00:50:51.600 cards that they have the bills mailed to their office rather than their home and conceal

00:50:59.680 debt or other stocks or resources that they have that they don't want their partner to

00:51:10.240 uh share in so so there's financial infidelity emotional infidelity and sexual infidelity and

00:51:17.280 humans do all three and why why do people cheat uh well there there are sex differences there

00:51:26.400 which won't surprise you so um uh for men um um there's going to be generalizations for which

00:51:36.640 many many exceptions occur but on average for men it's desire for sexual variety

00:51:43.600 you know it's it's um something like 70 75 percent of men it's it's uh a an opportunity

00:51:53.040 presented itself when i was at this conference and you know i hooked up with this um with this

00:51:59.840 woman while i was there it was sexual sexual variety for women sorry just to pause there

00:52:07.040 david is that why when you watch like a movie and see the woman goes to the man why did you do it

00:52:12.080 and he goes it meant nothing yeah yeah and often it does mean nothing uh so so often that is an

00:52:19.840 accurate statement um but um but this is interesting so um uh so so let me just finish on women yeah

00:52:28.800 And then I want to return to this point that you raised here. 1.00

00:52:32.840 So for women, women who have affairs, 0.79

00:52:37.780 something like one study shows 79% of them

00:52:42.220 become emotionally involved with or fall in love

00:52:46.380 with their affair partner.

00:52:48.160 And this is very describe.

00:52:49.720 For men, it's more like 20, 25, 30%.

00:52:52.960 It's much, much lower.

00:52:54.000 This is a huge, huge sex difference. 0.62

00:52:56.500 And that reveals something fundamentally different

00:53:00.040 about why women cheat versus why men cheat. 0.62

00:53:03.980 And that is for women, 1.00

00:53:06.220 it's what I call the mate switching function. 1.00

00:53:09.760 That is women who cheat, 1.00

00:53:11.560 and this is gonna sound really obvious, but it's not. 0.86

00:53:16.160 Women who cheat tend to be very unhappy 0.99

00:53:19.460 with their primary relationship.

00:53:21.860 And you say, okay, this is state,

00:53:24.000 Tell me something more obvious than that.

00:53:26.880 Well, if you look at men who cheat

00:53:29.400 and men who don't cheat,

00:53:31.080 there's no difference in how happy they are

00:53:33.220 with their relationship.

00:53:34.680 And so there's a big sex difference

00:53:36.500 in predictors of who cheats.

00:53:41.880 Now, men who are perfectly happy in their relationships

00:53:46.800 can cheat if the costs are low,

00:53:48.580 the opportunity presents itself,

00:53:50.420 the risks are low, the risks of discovery and so forth.

00:53:54.000 uh for women it's much more meaningful uh and um and so uh and so it's what what i call i think

00:54:03.200 if you ask the question why do women cheat i think the majority do it for mate switching function 0.95

00:54:10.560 now it might be there are varieties of mate switching so it could be she's just she's

00:54:17.120 really unhappy with her primary relationship and she's looking to see um what is my mate value if

00:54:25.600 if i were to leave this how desirable are the people who are attracted to me or it might be

00:54:32.000 she meets someone at work falls in love with them and and switches to him or after years of a um

00:54:43.200 an unsatisfying relationship the affair gives her confidence that she can do well on the mating

00:54:50.080 market and causes her to exit the relationship and it's actually i'm not recommending this but it's

00:54:57.440 quote effective as a way of exiting in the sense that uh it's one of the two leading causes of

00:55:04.880 divorce worldwide is sexual infidelity so um have sexual infidelity and it gets revealed which

00:55:13.840 often it does over time if it lasts for any amount of time um then um men don't like that

00:55:21.600 of course getting back to that paternity uncertainty issue uh and so it's a pretty

00:55:28.240 cool study done by a former student of mine, Barry Cooley is his name, where he analyzed

00:55:36.340 the episodes of this, it no longer exists, but a reality show called Cheaters.

00:55:42.860 And what they did is they had, if you suspected your partner of cheating, you could claw them

00:55:49.480 up and they would put a detective on your partner.

00:55:53.800 And so then if the detective spotted your partner going into the no-tell motel, then

00:55:58.520 the detective will call and say, hi, we've discovered your partner just walked in with

00:56:04.020 another person into the no-tell motel.

00:56:06.040 Do you want to come down and confront them?

00:56:09.240 And so what he analyzed is the verbal interrogations of people who confronted their partners as

00:56:16.560 they're walking out of the no-tell motel.

00:56:20.140 And what they found is that,

00:56:21.820 what he found is that,

00:56:23.300 the first thing men wanna know is, 1.00

00:56:26.560 did you fuck him? 1.00

00:56:28.840 Did you have sex with him? 1.00

00:56:31.320 First thing women wanna know of their husbands is, 0.99

00:56:34.980 are you in love with her? 0.80

00:56:36.900 So there's this huge sex difference. 1.00

00:56:38.540 Because women are more forgiving, 1.00

00:56:41.020 they don't like it at all, 1.00

00:56:42.240 but they're more forgiving if it is a,

00:56:45.480 doesn't really mean anything.

00:56:47.920 But if the guy's in love with another woman, that's going to signal that he's going to defect over the long term and devote his resources and commitment to another woman.

00:57:00.900 But that must make women quite paranoid, really, because in a way, if someone really cheats on you because of love, you go, right, well, maybe I didn't care enough.

00:57:13.560 Maybe I wasn't sympathetic enough.

00:57:15.680 Maybe I didn't do enough.

00:57:16.620 Maybe, you know, I just wasn't a good partner.

00:57:21.320 But you can be the most amazing partner in the world and he's still going to go off and shag someone else.

00:57:28.120 That must put you in a state of paranoia, doesn't it?

00:57:31.340 Well, the comedian Chris Rock said men are only as faithful as their opportunity.

00:57:40.300 So I think that's an exaggeration.

00:57:42.400 you know there are men who um could cheat but remain faithful for moral reasons for religious

00:57:50.000 reasons because they don't want to jeopardize their relationship uh uh so um but um but yeah

00:57:58.960 you can see that sometimes with um well an older example would be the actor hugh grant uh who was

00:58:07.200 had a long-term relationship with elizabeth hurley who was uh at the time a one of the

00:58:12.560 top models in the world regarded as gorgeous beautiful sexy etc uh and um and he was found

00:58:21.360 having sex with a hooker in los angeles in a car and um people are just like totally baffled by this 0.96

00:58:28.080 like why you you have elizabeth hurley uh drop dead gorgeous and why would you have sex with a 0.99

00:58:35.920 prostitute in Los Angeles and you know of course he didn't have an explanation 0.98

00:58:42.040 for that but but we do you know it's just simply someone who's different that 0.94

00:58:47.920 desire for sexual variety which is I view it as evolution has played a nasty

00:58:54.160 trick on men so this is not a good thing for men because what it means is that we

00:59:00.160 have these desires that can never, never be successfully implemented, unless maybe you're

00:59:07.600 Mick Jagger or a king or an emperor or somebody like that.

00:59:13.760 But there must be variation within men. 0.96

00:59:15.580 So, with female infidelity, as I understand it, the single biggest predictor is happiness 0.70

00:59:21.420 in the relationship, right? 0.67

00:59:22.740 If a woman's unhappy, the risk goes up significantly. 0.85

00:59:26.140 What about for a man?

00:59:27.340 There must be, you know, is it he's a cheater, as in like he's just born to seek sexual variety 0.54

00:59:33.120 more than other men?

00:59:34.180 Or is there, how, if you're a woman, how do you sort of go on, he might be into this?

00:59:40.320 Yeah, well, that's a good question.

00:59:42.140 And there are, I think, several factors that contribute to it.

00:59:46.200 One is there are individual differences among men.

00:59:49.080 So some men are more novelty-seeking.

00:59:54.260 Some men are higher on what we call sociosexual orientation.

00:59:59.360 They're more short-term oriented and will cheat if the opportunity arises.

01:00:06.880 And there are other men who would not dream of cheating even if the opportunity is so.

01:00:14.920 Just to give an example.

01:00:16.860 Oh, here is an example, again, from older time, but there used to be this act for the

01:00:23.660 younger generation, this actor called Paul Newman, and in his heyday, he was, like, viewed

01:00:31.220 as the, I don't know who would be the modern analog, Brad Pitt, or maybe he was too old

01:00:37.980 now, but he was drop date gorgeous.

01:00:41.740 Jason Momoa.

01:00:42.740 Sorry?

01:00:43.740 Jason Momoa would probably be the...

01:00:45.740 Okay, yes. He would be the perfect example in the modern day era.

01:00:51.720 So, but he was asked once, so Paul Newman met and married Jillian Woodward, another actress,

01:01:01.260 and they were married for 50 years and he never, as far as we know, never cheated on her.

01:01:07.220 Even a million opportunities to do so.

01:01:10.220 And he was asked by a journalist, why do you remain faithful, given you have all these opportunities?

01:01:19.620 And he said, he said, why eat hamburger out when you have steak at home?

01:01:27.860 And that was his answer. You know, so I have this.

01:01:31.820 I'll pause it there. Sometimes you've had a few drinks. You just fancy a hamburger.

01:01:35.920 Well, you're out to yourself, mate.

01:01:38.580 yeah so but anyway that was uh and that made him even more attractive to women

01:01:44.200 that he was so uh loyal and faithful to her so uh so and same with um another uh example

01:01:53.860 is jimmy carter former president of the united states he who said in an interview that he

01:01:59.800 had lust in his heart and that he had committed adultery many times in his in his heart but never

01:02:08.120 in actuality, and probably could have. It's a very high-status guy. And as you know, many presidents

01:02:15.940 have committed adultery in the past, going back to JFK, but there's this discrepancy,

01:02:24.240 and this reveals the difference between our desires and implementing those desires in our

01:02:32.380 behavior and Jimmy Carter I think was a very religious person and he also is

01:02:37.940 very dedicated to his wife and so it would violate his religious beliefs as

01:02:43.880 my sense of morality and so so I think there are to get back to your question

01:02:50.200 large individual differences in men in their willingness to act on their desire

01:02:57.900 of sexual variety. I think the desires still exist in most men, but some men inhibit their

01:03:05.840 desires. And then, as Chris Rock said, some men don't have the opportunity.

01:03:10.440 And David, let's talk about the dark side, particularly of male sexual desire.

01:03:16.120 Why is it that men stalk? Why is it that men are abusive, either verbally or physically?

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01:05:21.320 before it's gone yeah i think i think there's an evolutionary answer to that and that's it basically

01:05:29.900 both of those things stalking and abuse are unfortunately um mate guarding functions so

01:05:37.820 um so let's take these one at a time so abuse whether it's physical or psychological abuse and 1.00

01:05:46.440 both are important they're designed or have the effect of lowering the woman's 0.96

01:05:54.140 self-perceptions of her desirability and sometimes it literally lowers their 0.98

01:06:00.480 desirability if she has bruises, scars, black eyes, and so forth. And so men tend to do it

01:06:10.260 when there's a mate value discrepancy, and it has the effect of lowering the woman's

01:06:17.820 self-perceptions of her desirability so that she feels sometimes even lucky that this guy's still

01:06:25.160 with her and someone would even interpret the abuse as a sign of his love for her is that he's

01:06:31.000 so in love with her that he will do everything possible to keep her um so so it's that's a dark

01:06:38.440 side um that the abuse has this function and stalking uh similarly occurs when there's a

01:06:46.440 mate value discrepancy and the typical scenario is that the woman dumps the guy and he doesn't

01:06:53.960 want to get dumped because he realizes consciously or unconsciously that there is no way that he's

01:07:01.400 going to be able to attract a woman of equivalent mate value as the woman who has just dumped him

01:07:07.800 and in our study we did a study of 4 000 victims of stalking and that's one of the things we found

01:07:13.960 is the stalker has much lower mate value than the victim of the stalking and so the mate value

01:07:22.120 discrepancies predicted. And so these guys think, well, she was with me once, maybe I can get her

01:07:29.700 back. And yes, because when you look at that behavior, you were also, I was reading one of

01:07:35.960 your studies and you were saying that stalking is a very good predictor of violence and then murder,

01:07:41.320 isn't it? Well, yeah, I wouldn't say a very good predictor. It statistically increases

01:07:48.680 probability of so so yeah so I think criminal stalking I mean it should be

01:07:56.780 taken very seriously you know and women should do and and one thing that women

01:08:02.120 should realize is that the first three to six months after the breakup are the

01:08:09.280 most dangerous times for women of being murdered by the ex and and it's

01:08:17.480 It's typically when the guy realizes that it's permanent.

01:08:22.240 It's a permanent break and that there's no way she's coming back. 1.00

01:08:25.940 When that sinks in, that's the danger sign for women.

01:08:30.640 And let's talk about the flip side of it, because one of the things that we don't really

01:08:34.280 talk about, we talk about male violence and towards women, of course we should, and it's

01:08:40.900 horrifying that women have to go through this, but we talk about it less about female violence

01:08:46.060 to men.

01:08:47.060 what do we know about that yeah well what we know is that um there is female violence to men to their

01:08:55.180 mates it's typically less extreme um and so i think there right now is there didn't used to be

01:09:04.140 any there's one in the country one shelter for battered men in the country that's up in dallas

01:09:11.380 whereas there are thousands for battered women and and so that that tells you something about it so

01:09:19.660 um women do uh sometimes um abuse their partners physically um but um

01:09:27.980 uh but uh it typically does less damage and i imagine the number of victims will be

01:09:35.380 incomparably small yeah right is that fair yeah the number of victims is smaller now some argue

01:09:40.240 It depends on if you get, sometimes there's a mutual abuse where you get, they'll get into a physical confrontation where one will slap the other, the other will slap back or hit and hit back.

01:09:54.600 And so you get some of that. And so if you simply count up the number of acts of violence, the sexes are actually not that wildly discrepant.

01:10:06.600 But in terms of the damage done, the damage done is much greater to men, and it's also predictable.

01:10:16.600 The other predictor of it is if the guy suspects an infidelity or discovers an infidelity.

01:10:24.600 That's a big predictor of abuse.

01:10:27.600 And even more disturbing, perhaps, is if the woman gets pregnant.

01:10:34.600 By another man?

01:10:36.600 If she gets pregnant, there's a suspicion that it's not his. And in those cases, something 0.64

01:10:47.720 like 50% of the physical blows to the woman are directed toward her abdomen, toward her

01:10:55.840 pregnant belly uh and so it seems like and not consciously but an effort to terminate arrivals

01:11:06.160 offspring wow horrifying yeah it is it is truly horrifying but you know but again you know if 0.82

01:11:16.720 if we're ever going to have any success at solving these problems we have to understand

01:11:22.400 understand the circumstances in which they occur. Because when we talk about an issue such as rape,

01:11:29.720 we interviewed a gentleman called Luke Gittos, who's a lawyer, who said that rape is an act of

01:11:36.080 violence as opposed to a sexual act. But if you look at it through the lens of evolutionary

01:11:41.020 psychology, and maybe I'm wrong, push back on it. I mean, it can serve an evolutionary purpose of,

01:11:46.400 you know, I want to impregnate this woman. She won't let me. Therefore, I have to do what I have 1.00

01:11:50.480 Yeah, well, so here you have to look at it, whether it's really a, people are confused

01:12:00.080 about is it sex or is it violence. 1.00

01:12:02.960 So from a woman's perspective, it is violence. 0.81

01:12:07.060 From a man's perspective, it's often about sex, you know. 0.93

01:12:11.980 So why did you do this?

01:12:15.980 So in interviews with convicted rapists, they say, well, I wanted her sexually, and I knew 0.86

01:12:25.480 there was no way she was going to have sex with me voluntarily, and so I forced myself 0.98

01:12:29.680 on her. 0.99

01:12:31.000 And so from a male perspective, it is often about sex. 0.82

01:12:35.040 From a female perspective, it's about violence, because it is an act of violence. 0.71

01:12:40.780 And so there's been a muddle of that. 0.99

01:12:45.540 Is it sex or is it violence?

01:12:47.140 Well, according to who?

01:12:49.580 And it matters greatly whether you're asking a man or a woman.

01:12:54.220 There is debate among evolutionary scientists about whether rape is an adaptation,

01:13:01.720 whether we have adaptations to rape or whether we don't,

01:13:06.540 whether it's a byproduct of other things like desire for sexual variety the fact that men have

01:13:13.580 a higher sex drive than women and um and other things like that so and it hasn't been resolved

01:13:21.340 um and i i myself i don't have a strong opinion about whether there are adaptations to rape or

01:13:29.100 whether it's a byproduct or not and it's kind of unfortunate it's such a loaded topic that you

01:13:38.300 can't do you can't really do research on it and you certainly can't get any funding to do good

01:13:44.460 quality research on on the topic because it's so politically loaded but that's quite look i

01:13:51.820 understand why that may be that attitude but you look at the number of women who have been raped

01:13:57.100 or suffered sexual violence. This is an important topic. And if we can get to the bottom of

01:14:01.720 why it happens and pull it apart, we might be able to protect women.

01:14:06.900 Yeah, exactly. That is my position, exactly. But it's such a loaded political issue for many

01:14:15.640 that they inhibit the act of research into the topic. So even though it absolutely could

01:14:24.560 benefit women if we knew more about it. David, it's been great having you on the show. We're

01:14:29.840 going to ask you some questions from our supporters in a second, but before we do,

01:14:33.300 in the main interview, our final question is always the same, which is, what's the one thing

01:14:37.320 we're not talking about as a society that we really should be? Well, that's a hard one.

01:14:45.320 What's the one thing we're not talking about? Well, we've talked about some of the things that

01:14:51.100 most people are not talking about,

01:14:54.000 and rape would certainly be one of them,

01:14:58.220 but I think, I guess what I would say is,

01:15:04.300 and this is partly, you know, maybe touting my own work,

01:15:09.800 but I've always been intrigued by understanding

01:15:12.940 the darker sides of human nature,

01:15:16.040 and they include the things we've been talking about,

01:15:19.240 abuse, rape, murder, and why people do stalking,

01:15:25.340 why people do these things.

01:15:26.940 And so, but I think most people avoid these more

01:15:34.200 the darker sides of human nature.

01:15:36.200 And I think that one of the things

01:15:38.460 that evolutionary psychology does is it says,

01:15:42.620 yes, we have this large collection

01:15:45.500 of psychological adaptations for good stuff

01:15:49.960 and for bad stuff.

01:15:51.000 So for cooperation, for altruism, for helping

01:15:55.100 and all the good side of human nature,

01:15:58.300 but we also have adaptations to do some nasty stuff,

01:16:03.100 ranging from gossip to malicious behavior

01:16:09.400 toward people we don't like,

01:16:11.660 ranging all the way up to killing.

01:16:14.880 And warfare is another one.

01:16:17.700 So I think evolutionary psychology gives us a handle

01:16:21.780 on the complexity of our nature.

01:16:24.600 And this has been a perennial debate

01:16:27.000 going back to the philosophers like John Locke and others.

01:16:33.060 Are humans fundamentally good,

01:16:35.880 but corrupted by bad society or capitalism or culture?

01:16:40.880 capitalism or culture or humans fundamentally bad and I think we're both

01:16:47.760 you know we have good elements and bad elements to our psychological nature and

01:16:55.520 both need to be understood I suppose it raises the question of what is it that

01:17:01.120 activates those predilections right and that's perhaps where culture and

01:17:06.260 morality come in and religion too is that right yeah yeah I think that's

01:17:10.280 that's that's that's well put and certainly one way to phrase it because um all adaptations

01:17:17.040 that you know almost all adaptations just reside within our brains in a dormant status

01:17:25.580 they they're quiescent until they are activated by external circumstances of one sort or another

01:17:32.420 like a mate value discrepancy or a mate poacher hitting up on your partner or

01:17:39.000 cues to a partner's infidelity. It's always these external circumstances that activate

01:17:45.820 a subset of our psychological mechanisms and then keeps others quiescent. So, yeah, I think that's...

01:17:54.980 Well, you're talking about a circumstance, but what I'm talking about is what...

01:17:58.800 So, there's three men in the room around the table. What determines how we act if we discover

01:18:06.220 that our wife is cheating is we've been exposed to the same circumstances, but we might act

01:18:13.520 differently based on the values been taught by parents, the cultural values of society

01:18:18.460 we live in, the religion we follow, the other things I'm trying to think off the top of

01:18:25.180 my head.

01:18:25.900 And that's kind of an interesting area because it's a way of regulating these things that

01:18:30.660 are latent in our brains, as you're saying.

01:18:32.580 Yeah.

01:18:32.880 Yeah.

01:18:33.140 No, I think that's right.

01:18:34.100 And, you know, that's another interesting suite of topics of religion and morality and group norms and the degree to which they play, they have an influence on activating or deactivating some subset of our psychological adaptations.

01:18:52.480 Yeah, because sorry that I'm delving into it as far as I am, but I think it's interesting

01:18:56.400 because what it really makes, I think that's the way you've explained it, which is we have

01:19:02.300 these adaptations in our brains and they're sitting there waiting to be triggered, we

01:19:06.460 might say, or activated.

01:19:08.480 That really puts a lot of emphasis, at least as I think about it, on creating values and

01:19:15.360 social structures that regulate our behavior in those environments.

01:19:19.660 Yeah.

01:19:19.860 That sounds like that's really important.

01:19:21.980 And if we don't do a good job of that, we're going to end up with people, otherwise decent people, running around doing terrible things because they haven't been prepared to avoid those pitfalls once those things are in place.

01:19:37.060 Yeah. Yeah, I think that's right. Although I would say that there are, I think, elements of our morality that are part of our evolved psychology themselves. So fairness, for example. So like if you, you know, they have these economic games where I give you $100 and you can give, you know, it's up to you how to distribute the $100.

01:20:05.100 You can keep $99 for yourself and give one to your partner.

01:20:09.520 You can split it 50-50.

01:20:11.580 And people show in these one-shot economic games that people who, say, get $1 on that,

01:20:18.540 they decline the offer.

01:20:20.360 And so if the person declines the offer, nobody gets anything.

01:20:23.780 But they will decline it, even though from a purely economic perspective,

01:20:28.660 they should take $1 because it's $1 or nothing.

01:20:32.120 But they don't.

01:20:33.240 And the reason is because we have an evolved sense of fairness, and we don't want to develop

01:20:39.300 a reputation, a social reputation, as exploitable.

01:20:44.200 And so if we are willing to accept unfair offers, we will develop an exploitable reputation.

01:20:51.840 And so that's bad, but so I think that fairness is just one example, but I think that we have

01:20:58.520 evolved standards of morality that are part of our evolved psychology and not just externally

01:21:05.880 imposed by religion or parental instruction. All right, head on over to triggerpod.co.uk

01:21:13.080 where David answers your questions. What traits humans consider attractive are most clearly linked

01:21:20.120 to evolutionary psychology, and why is that trait seen as evolutionarily better by human beings?

01:21:28.520 We'll be right back.

TRIGGERnometry - May 16, 2026

What Science Actually Says About Men and Women — Evolutionary Psychologist David Buss

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