The New Science Of Female Attraction - Psychology Roundtable
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Have you seen the type of dancing which is scientifically most attractive to >> I've not seen this. >> According to a study at Northumbria University, the dances found this one. This is the dance that women found most >> a man dance song.
>> According to a study by Northumbria University, the dances women found most attractive were ones who moved their head, neck, and torso the most while also mixing up their moves creatively and showing more variation in rhythm. To test this, researchers used motion capture technology on 30 male dancers, turned their movements into computer avatars. The best dancers were the ones who used their whole body naturally
instead of awkwardly repeating the same arm and leg movements. >> Nah, looked like that dancing to me. >> Well, Asian people have got natural rhythm. Yeah. Rob's so I imagine that's how you dance. >> What I was noticing is uh he's keeping his elbows close to the body, so it looks like he >> Protecting the femoral artery. >> He's he's a he might be a trained boxer. >> Which could be you as well. >> I actually I know the guy who uh I know
the guy who did this study. Uh funnily enough, I was just at HBS with him. He's my friend Ismael. And uh one thing that he was actually talking about was that the dance is quite feminine. And this mirrors something that you sometimes see and uh facial attractiveness research where the initial assumption is like, "Oh, masculinity is just going to be amazing, as much masculinity as possible." But then in some areas with
some traits, femininity is favored. And I think it's femininity would be favored? >> Well, what would a masculine dance look like? Kind of like throwing yourself around at a in a mosh pit? Is that particularly sexy? I don't know. >> Shadow boxing. Yeah. There's two things that British guys do that I think must give women the ick more than anything else. One is shadow boxing on the way to a night out. And the other one is
football chance in the queue of a nightclub. Like doing football chance as you walk down the street, I think is just the most like vaginally repulsive thing that you can do. Uh but second only to shadow boxing. >> Why shadow boxing? What is it about shadow boxing that would give them the >> Well, it's this >> I I share that intuition, but what is it >> I the what I think is it's guys posturing how hard they are.
>> Like the look at how formidable and aggressive I would be if only it wasn't air. I was boxing. [laughter] >> There's no opponents. >> I think that it uh it ruins the positive illusion that they actually could win a fight. It's like oh >> It's that shadow boxing. They're even losing that shadow boxing fight. >> They're like this. >> How many punches do you have to throw at this invisible person? >> Uh does looksmaxing give women the ick?
>> I I think it does. Uh I'd be curious to hear Mackin's thoughts, Steve's as well on this, which is um the Clavicular, the looksmaxing influencer. He became very uh you know through propagating this idea of looksmaxing, bonesmashing, optimizing and you know he he told the New York Times that he is now sterile because he's injected himself with so many chemicals. Uh presumably he thinks it's worth it though.
I recently wrote a piece suggesting that this gives women the ick and that people mistakenly think that Clavicular is attracting women because he revamped his physical appearance. I actually think that he that most of that attention he's receiving from women is due to the fame. He got famous through promoting looksmaxing and people mistakenly think it's the looks and not the fame that draw the women to him.
For an ordinary man, like a Clavicular fan who's doing all of the same looksmaxing protocol, the bonesmashing, the injections and all of the fame the >> Just quietly bonesmashing. >> The um he recently I think got a nose job. I saw something going around on X. And an ordinary guy doing all of that stuff, optimizing for appearance, I think most women would find that kind of guy very vain, very self-centered,
you know, someone who is maybe uninterested in a relationship and is more just interested in themselves. And so, maybe it works for Clavicular because it made him famous, but for the average guy, I think that amount of looks maxing would be counterproductive. >> What do you think it signals? >> I [clears throat] mean, I would say that it signals narcissism, vanity, maybe sort of short-term oriented mating
orientation, kind of, you know, more interested in being immediately attractive to someone rather than someone who you would be interested in forming a long-term bond with. >> Yeah, and some of this is a bit weird as well, right? The bone smashing, that kind of thing is just odd. >> Yeah. Yeah, well, I saw this clip recently. He was Clavicular was in this interaction with this girl at this this bar in New York, and he was telling her
how reading is a total waste of time. I don't read, that's ridiculous, that's absurd. And I couldn't help but comment at how shocking is it that the guy who hits himself in the head with a hammer is an intellectual. >> SOMETIMES PEOPLE SURPRISE YOU. >> THAT'S FUNNY. IT actually I It's funny that you say that because on the main forum looksmax.org, it actually, if I'm not mistaken, it used to say, "First rule of looks
maxing, don't talk about looks maxing." Which reflects a open understanding like never say that you're doing any of this stuff. Like, looking good helps, but being transparent about the things that you're doing to look good probably won't improve your life. >> So, is the reason for that though? So, I'm I'm, you know, I'm looks maxing, but I don't tell you about it. Is that because what? Like, to to bypass all of
what? The prejudices involved there? Like, I don't want you to think I'm vain. I just want you to think that I'm naturally good-looking. Is that the that natural beauty is better than artificial >> Yeah, so I believe that that was part of it. Then a second facet was actually that they didn't want I mean, a lot of the methods that they use are such as bone smashing already been mentioned is are probably very dubious.
But I think that part of it is that they wanted to protect it with the honestly a a view that a lot of us might agree with, which is that the mating market is competitive and so if everyone gets better looking, uh it may be the equivalent of everyone's like kind of running faster but staying in the same >> They were worried that other guys would learn the exploit. >> Yeah, basically. Yeah, it's like if
other guys figure out that wearing makeup makes you more attractive then >> Then everyone's going to be wearing makeup and then >> That's the hustle and then it's negated. >> Yeah, exactly. And you've seen that you've seen that already happen to women. I mean women this is something that I said on your podcast three or four years ago that women have been looks maxing for decades and decades and decades. This is before
it came in as a as a real trend. And that's kind of what's happened, right? Is that all women are wearing makeup and now or almost all of them are. And now if you skip that part of your routine, it almost comes across and it shouldn't. It's unfortunate, but it almost comes across as unprofessional in a workspace. I mean it's just this extra burden of >> The minimum bar has been raised for what presentable is.
>> Yeah, exactly. So if all men start doing the same thing then yeah, I would say that the minimum bar probably I think that intuition even if some of the methods that they're coveting and protecting are ineffective, I think that the intuition about competitiveness and how it works is is probably correct. >> So we should do it but shouldn't talk about it. >> Yeah, exactly. >> Uh the thing that I wondered is whether
or not it's to protect the costliness or the reliability of the signal. That if you find out that the only reason that this guy is good looking is not because of what you might intuit is the ultimate reason of got good genes, strong immune system, sort of a natural sense and way of him, but it's too contrived. You actually think well, what am I dating? I think this is the same thing. There is a kind of ick
that women had where if they learned that a guy was doing real social dynamics or reading the game by by Strauss and doing pick up artistry or even if if you'd said I went away to a sex train and intimacy training sex training course weekend thing that was all professional and not not creepy, but that means that when you go and do something in bed, it's not because of your sort of natural proclivities, it's
because you've crafted and curated it. We're happy for people to learn to become better at playing the piano. We're less happy at people learning to become better at being themselves in a way. Does that make sense? Am I being >> Yeah, well with beauty No, you're not. And with beauty there's actually some evidence for this in women already. I'm not aware of any study that's been done on this in men, but Zia and colleagues
in China, they actually tested So it was makeup and plastic surgery that they tested on real women's faces, and they had men assess their attractiveness, their datability, etc. And what they found was that these methods worked to make them more attractive, but when men were informed, meaning once men knew like, oh, this woman looks better, but she's had plastic surgery, they they had a reduced datability effect. So it was an increase
that was attenuated. So the attractiveness boost was still was still present, like they were still considered more datable, but that effect was attenuated when you were aware of the effort that had gone >> the net? >> The net was still that there was a benefit, and you could see in these faces that the attractiveness difference I can send you the study. The attractiveness differences in their example were were large,
but it was an attenuated effect where it's like, oh, if if they know, if they detect it, then they're less interested, and it may be because of what attractiveness evolved for, where it's like it's meant to be this health signal, youth signal, etc. But if we have this cognitive knowledge of like, oh, this isn't a real youth signal, right? This is a woman with face lift, that may change the valence slightly, but I'd be interested
in Steve's thoughts. >> Yeah. So I mean, I I completely buy that that effect is real, but I'm not sure if that's an an evolved tendency to Cuz cuz I got evolved tendency it's just a gut level reaction to cues of health and fertility, I would say I would argue, rather than a tendency to think that that person's healthy and has good qualities that I would want to mix my genes with to create offspring.
And so finding out that it is not a real I'm not sure if that would like I say I think that would does have the effect of reducing attractiveness judgments, but I'm not sure if that we've evolved for that to be the case. >> Do you think we might have like a general kind of cheater detection thing where it's like oh this person is is deceiving me in some way and so it's not like I mean cheater detection refers to
a specific phenomenon that's different of course, but in terms of just general like what what do you what do you think what do you think would drive the effect of false beauty being a slightly less preferred compared to natural beauty? >> I think it could be that. I think it probably is something more general like that just a general tendency to be wary of of deception. I I I guess. Yeah. >> by this finding that that it was
attenuated but still overall in that benefit. And I think this suggests at least to me and I'm curious what what Steve thinks about this is that we evolved to respond more so to signals than to the underlying property. So I'm imagining a sort of a variation of the study you described where you see someone who's very plain looking and for whatever reason you know it's a contrived scenario but they used to be
very hot and then they got some surgery and now they're unattractive and you have a choice between sleeping with this artificially unattractive person who's naturally hot or a person who is artificially hot but but naturally is unattractive. Who do you choose? I think most people especially most men I think would choose the artificially hot one because we respond more so to these signals than the underlying sort of
trait that it's meant to communicate. >> At a gut level at a gut level I think so as well actually. And actually maybe I'm thinking maybe it's not deception exactly that reduces the attractiveness but maybe the inferences that we make about the personality of the person. >> Well that would be insecurity. >> Yeah, yeah. I I mean, I'm speaking from memory about the study, but I actually think that's precisely right. I'll I'll
I'll check it after and and send it to you over WhatsApp, but if I'm not mistaken, it actually was that there was a negative personality inference. Yeah, and that that was part of the story. So, it was like, "Yeah, they're more attractive, but now I I'm not as impressed by their personality." >> So, under these conditions. >> And they might be just as impressed by the looks, but we don't judge people
just on looks. And so, the looks elevated, the personality takes it down. >> And then that was the check study. This was a but datability had >> Yeah, it was it was either datability or it may have been overall personality perception, but it was it was some variable in that mix for sure. >> probably worth saying that a lot of this stuff is going to be either subconscious or sort of like peri-subconscious. It's
the sort of thing that you intuit. You don't really know why. It gave me the ick. Right, what the ick is is a kind of nebulous, ephemeral, really hard to grasp onto I'm not so sure about that thing. Uh, but that might actually be pretty even You know what would be great? An evolutionary uh theory of icks. Would be >> I've got a PhD student who's working on it right now. >> No [ __ ] way. Dude, I don't [ __ ] with
me on evolutionary psychology, dude. I'm on the [ __ ] frontier. >> There was a guy I don't know if it was the same one, but he's he he was presenting a poster at HBES on the evolutionary psychology of the ick. So, it's something that people are it's something that people are interested in >> coming. Yeah, there's been a couple of publications on it already. >> So, it's my student >> Louisa Lee. There were no publications
when she started, and then one one has come out that you know, she got scooped. We got scooped, basically. But, uh but yeah, she's doing some good work. >> Well, what's the what's the what is the evolutionary psychology of the ick? >> Uh, she's trying to explain it in terms of of a mate choice. She's predicting that cuz women on average are choosier, women are more prone to the ick, which is I don't think anyone would disagree
with that intuition. And we've now got good evidence that that's the case. Um, yeah. Uh, and she's looking at it in terms of evolved disgust reactions. Uh, Uh, and yeah, it is interesting, right? And so looking at it in terms of >> Behavioral immune system. >> Yeah, yeah, behavioral immune system and uh evolved disgust reactions or response or response to sexual stimuli, uh to sort of stuff that's gross, associated with disease
and the like, uh and moral disgust as well. >> I was going to say that maybe maybe something in that women are more uh adept at reading social cues, which means that if a guy does something which is socially ungainly, he might be able to breeze through it, or his friends might be able to breeze through it, or if a woman was to do it that's the partner of a guy, he might not notice it, whereas if she's able to pay more
attention more closely to how people are responding, understanding that uh sort of social hierarchy a bit more. So, what's fascinating and yeah, there's lots of things that you could do being unhygienic, being unhealthy, being rude, but the funny thing is that a guy trying to pick up a moving ping pong ball. Like, why is that an egg? Or why is a guy who misses a turn an like on in a car, like doesn't
doesn't drive dexterously. Why is that a particular egg? Like, stuff that's a bit more lifestyle-y and certainly yeah, more modern novel. I mean, Diana Fleischman said this before, she's very, uh attuned to her husband Jeffrey's sort of social status and his level of competence. And if he misses a turn when driving, she literally feels her attraction to him go down for a little while, and then it comes back up. If he
says if he says a joke that doesn't land at a dinner table, she's like actively unattractive to him for a little while, and then comes she's like, I I have some psychopathic tendencies, I'm aware of that. And then blew through, like just kept on going. >> I can't see that going the other in the other direction as much. I can't see >> Oh, my misses missed a turn in the car. I'm sorry, darling, I can't have sex
with you this evening. I could not. I could never the way that you would press the indicator, I could never. >> I mean, we place more value on looks, so would it be like, you know, seeing uh you know, if your if your spouse, you know, gained some weight or maybe first thing in the morning looks a little disheveled or something along those lines that maybe >> Maybe, but then men are just men are so much less choosier.
>> Yeah, that's true. >> Even in long-term relationships, I think that that gets offset. >> Yeah, I think that's absolutely right. >> Yeah, I think I think that the the it's it's a reflection this sex difference in the ick with which Steve says is now, you know, backed by good data and it is also something that everyone knows anecdotally. I think it reflects different risk levels between men and women where for men the biggest risk is
and this is something that a lot of evolutionary psychologists talk about. Biggest risk is that you miss a mating opportunity. Whereas for women the biggest risk is that you mate with the wrong person. And so it's more important to have like this visceral response where it's like, oh, you know, that last thing just pushed me over the threshold and you're now selected out. Like I do not want to >> More discerning.
>> Yeah, exactly. >> Uh what's the speaking of the sort of current world of looks maxing, guys trying to rise to the top of the level as much as they can. What's the myth of the Chad? >> Mhm. Well, so so I wrote this piece the myth of the Chad and I think I dropped it in the the the group chat which is you know, for a long time we've heard this story. I think you and you and I talked about this on a previous podcast,
Chris, because it made some level of intuitive sense that uh as the dating marketplace has become more deregulated, people can meet each other [laughter] >> The idea of a deregulated mating >> We live in sexual capital. Late sexual >> Um and so now you have you know, with dating apps, online dating, people can meet each other more easily. We are you know, supposedly placing more value on looks as a result of social media and
dating apps and so on. So the story was and we saw some statistical trends that supported this notion at least initially a small percentage of men were getting the majority of female attention and that men are sort of on the lower end of uh mate value were getting uh increasingly less uh female interest. And so the story was what was it? Like 20% of men are getting 80% of the attention. There's some truth to that at
least with regard to sort of um match rates and swipe rates on Tinder and so on. But uh if you look at the actual data, you dig into it and and you know more statistics and findings have come out since uh you and I have had those discussions a few years ago. Suggest that actually that story isn't completely true um that in fact this this has been going on for a long time that very attractive men have always had
the opportunity to mate with more women. so when you look at the data, it looks like something like about maybe 18 to 20% of men um report having three or more sexual partners within the past year and that really hasn't changed since about the year of 2000 uh which is as far back as I could find uh data on this. Uh and so you might think okay, well that's there you go. You got the chads, the 20% of
men are getting three or more partners a year. Those are the guys, you know, hogging all the women. But then when you look at the sexual behavior of women, you find essentially the same pattern which is that something like 12 to 18% of women also report three or more sexual partners a year. And what this means is that the vast majority of men and the vast majority of women have relatively unexciting sexual lives. The
most common response to the question of how many partners have you had in the past 12 months is one followed by zero. So most sex is going on in relationships followed by people not having sex at all and then a small fraction of men and a small fraction of women who are high in socio-sexual orientation, very promiscuous and open to short-term mating, they're having a lot of sex with each other. They're highly attractive as
well presumably. Oh yeah, yeah, I'm yeah, I'm sure you're physically attractive and what I suggest is that because um dating apps have made this uh uh you know it's of frictionless and because social media has created this kind of panopticon where you know, men in particular, um, you know, they are you got sort of the pickup artists and red pill guys who claim to be very successful with women bragging about how many women they've
hooked up with and then you have the incels on the other side of this who are, you know, not bragging but, you know, I guess whining and complaining about how little sex they're having. This gives you the the impression that, oh wow, you got one segment of guys who are having all of the sex and then you have this other section of guys who are having none of the sex and then women are just passive bystanders who are
maybe getting, I you know, duped by the the pickup artists or the Chads or something. Uh, but what this suggests actually is that, you know, there is a kind of a Chad but the the myth of the Chad is that, um, yeah, that a one a segment of guys are having all of the sex with all of the women and it's it's not the case that, uh, there are, you know, there themselves, there are women in relationships, there
are women who are just uninterested in dating and, uh, and you kind of see the, you know, mirror image of this for men as well that, you know, and weirdly this suggests that men and women are more alike, uh, than than many think which is maybe a point to to your book. >> It's one of one of the key ideas in my book, yeah. And I think that, you know, the average uh, number of sexual partners that men
have, if you exclude sex workers and like, is somewhat higher. Uh, but, uh, do you think it's a very important point that, yeah, among among the guys who are having sex with lots of women generally having sex with the women who are having sex with lots of guys and, uh, >> And that's the the sociosexual view, right? It's Alexander Alexander Desai. >> Yeah, the the the promiscuous 10% is the is the kind of meme version of it.
>> Yeah. Um, but I I actually I so I think that tons of people at home and in the YouTube comment section are like I I 100% think it's interesting and take it for granted, um, that what you're saying is true. Um, but what where where do you think the myth actually originates from and what do you think explains the cuz it's it's not it's not just necessarily the myth of the Chad, it's also the illusion of the Chad where it's like
people have this profound felt sense that they're being excluded from the mating market where some other, you some gorgeous guys are having tons of >> Yeah. Well, you know, I think part of it the trend of dating apps. So, you know, the swipe rates are very easy to measure. There's been a lot of research on this, and we mistakenly kind of over-interpret the findings of what people see on Tinder or on Hinge, which do show, you know, on on
Tinder it's something like 4% of the men get the vast majority of the swipes. Um and then you know, much smaller numbers. Or rather a larger numbers of women get get liked versus versus men. Same thing on Hinge, that the top 10% of male users on Hinge get 60% of the likes. And so, it's very easy to come away from that thinking like, oh, that's reality, that you know, 10% of the guys are getting 60% of the female attention. There was
that other finding about male attractiveness. You guys have probably seen this that okay Cupid data. That's kind of, you know, it's it's it's a little outdated, but um it also kind of makes sense in a way that people would come away from that thinking like, oh, what most women are only attracted to that small section of a fragment of guys, and you know, men are much more even and kind of fair in their assessment of women. And then I
think social media as well, that you're seeing guys like they take these very anomalous interactions where women suddenly lose interest in them or ghost them or something, and they tell this, you know, elaborate story, and it's very attention-grabbing, and then those stories go viral. But the reason they go viral is because they're anomalous and atypical. >> Normal stories of, hey, like I met this girl, and we really liked each other,
and now we're engaged, we're getting married. You post that, you'll get, you know, 17 likes. But if you post, you know, I had this one-night stand with this girl, but then she ghosted me, or like I you know, she was leading me on on the app, but then she agreed to meet me, but then she didn't talk to me anymore. And you tell those stories like, oh, it's over, boys, or whatever. Like those are the stories that go
viral. And then I the other the other point I want to make about this is that this this promiscuous 10%, this of of of on the side of the women, that is a highly sought-after group. And you know, there is you know, a small fraction of women who are more promiscuous than other women. And the very attractive men have access to that group. And the unattractive men who see this, they get jealous and they want access to that
small group of women as well. But they mistakenly think that that's all women. >> Without realizing that there's a huge cohort of women that have had zero or one partner. >> It's it's sort of this you know, this availability bias thing of like well, I'm seeing all of this stuff happening online, all of the chatter about sex and chads and whatever, but you're not seeing this dark matter of women who aren't posting,
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If there's so if there's this Porsche polygamy, like Scott Galloway calls it, going on at the moment, at least even if it's an online dating, even if it's not represented in who's getting laid and all the rest of it, but if there's some degree of big bucket of attention going towards small number of guys, historically, does that mean that monogamous marriage was basically affirmative action for men?
>> Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, so this there was a recent paper about this, where they they suggested that marriage was affirmative action for >> sexual redistribution. >> Yeah, sexual redistribution of women. They also used the phrase DEI for men, that you know, by definition most guys are not in the top 10% or top 20%, and so monogamous marriage was a way to you know, sort of pair men up with women
one-on-one, and it was a form of I'll sometimes tongue-in-cheek call it sexual communism, sexual social >> for the deregulating of the the dating market place. And and now that we've you know, we we've kind of lifted that now. >> Now we're in >> Yeah, we went through a phase I think now maybe maybe arguably starting in the 1960s, we deregulated things, and now we're in this sort of the late stage. And I think now people on well, for a
while on the right, the kind of I don't know, the the manosphere right have been calling for some kind of a return, return with that that that V thing. And then on the left increasingly, I think women are becoming fed up, and they're the the sort of you know, finding ways to you know, reinvent you know, what's that phrase? Demisexual. There's this phrase >> I'm only going to sleep with people that I'm emotionally connected to.
>> have sex with a stranger. You know, it requires its own >> Yeah. Sapio, sapiosexual, that's being attracted to people that you're intellectually stimulated by. And then there's solopoly. Solopoly Solopoly is my favorite. It's [ __ ] hilarious. Solopoly is just one person sleeping around.
>> Yeah, or or like it just like a a Lothario dude. >> Yeah, exactly. Just manwhore-ing about. >> But yeah, the the I wonder whether part of some of the pushback against um reintroduce sexual norms, regulate the sort of mating marketplace from women that you do sometimes see online. I mean, it's pushing back against freedom, independence. It kind of hearkens back to pre-1960s type of restrictive expectations, gender
stereotypes, etc. But I wonder if another part of it is that there is this implicit understanding that it maybe benefits men more than it benefits women >> to have marriage norms because it redistributes. It means that if it's got to be one to one, then maybe I'm going to be less able to compete, whereas if there's a little bit more free-flowingness in the casual sex marketplace, I may be able to show traits that aren't immediately
obvious to a partner and be able to get somebody of a higher value, whereas with guys they're always going to struggle a little bit more because women are >> I'm not sure cuz I think if that were the case, then women wouldn't be so keen on the idea. And women often are very keen on the idea of having just one guy >> to themselves rather than having a guy who's going to have other women as well. >> I think that's why it was a puzzle to me
about why it would be pushed back against to encourage monogamous norms from women. >> Given that the benefits, at least traditionally, I'm trying to go through late-stage everythingism to work out where the culture is sort of coming to land. Do you understand what I mean? >> I do. I do. Yeah. I've seen paper arguing that polygamy actually can be beneficial to women because women can choose to marry a high-status guy who's
already got a wife >> and high-status, rich kind of guy, rather than having to >> Oh, it's like you're not being able to have a thousand >> Totally. Yeah. >> Yeah. It takes away that choice if somebody wants that. It means that the only choice is have no partner or have somebody further down the totem pole. >> Yeah, I will highlight that this this discussion is is bordering on a really controversial debate in the evolutionary
social sciences, which is whether humans are more like maximally constrained polygenists, where it's like we're naturally an animal where males mate with multiple females and accumulate wives, so to say, but cultural practices and cultural evolution has restrained us. But then the other perspective is that you know, in as much as we like obviously humans have a menu of mating systems, as a lot of evolutionary
psychologists like to say, but in as much as we have a default state, it's pretty clearly monogamy. And you'll hear different Evo social scientists from different backgrounds argue for very different cases. I personally, and I think in in reading Steve's work, he's actually been quite influential to me on this, I personally think that the monogamy case is stronger for a few reasons that I could speak of.
And and one of them actually is just that what what we've said in this conversation is like yeah, in theory we've deregulated the market, so it's like look, if an attractive man, if it honestly, even if a kind of good-looking man wants to just have infinite sexual partners, essentially, that is on the table for him, right? He can he can spend a lot of time doing that. But in the data, we're not really seeing people
do that. Even though you're you're now as sexually permitted to do basically whatever you want with minimal judgment, most of what people do is still just do the boring thing and maybe monogamous I'm largely interested in one other person for at least for a while. Uh yeah, I I agree. I agree with my views on >> Yeah, you're right. I agree with you. You gave me then I repeat them and yeah. >> Are we serial monogamists, though? I
mean, I've seen some ethnographies, hunter-gatherers, where you know, it's it's common to pair bond with one person, maybe have a child, maybe two children, and then the kind of uh the the romantic feelings can dissipate and then form a new relationship [clears throat] with someone else, kind of swinging to >> Very common. I've seen data as well. In those kind of societies though, often like a small number, small but
like non-trivial number, 5% or so, of first marriages do last for life. So, I think serial monogamy is probably more And I think we know that cuz most people fall in love more than once in their But it does sometimes happen and we have a polygynous streak as well, I think. But yeah, so when when the guardrails are off and there are no strict rules, you tend to find that most relationships are pair bonds
and largely exclusive pair bonds. But you do also find that you have a small level of polygyny and a small level of and yeah, small level of for life mating. >> Can you ask ChatGPT how many people how many romantic partners does the average person fall in love with across their lifespan? Because until you had reliable contraception, anybody that you fell in love with presumably you were having sex with and outside of either infertility
issues or fertility compatibility issues, pretty much all of those people eventually would get pregnant if it was more than I don't know, couple of years, something like that. The honeymoon period typically lasts for around about that long. >> Like 85% fertility for a couple for 1 year then it jumps up to in the 90s after 2 years and then >> go. 2026 Kinsey Institute study of over 10,000 US adults found the average
number of passionate love experiences is 14% reported never having been passionate in love. 28% reported being passionate in love once, 30% twice, 17% three times, 11% four or more times. >> Measured passionate love the intense falling in love experience, not long-term attachment or commitment. Some people can fall deeply in love only once, others do multiple times. People also experience renewed feelings
of love within the same long-term relationship, which is harder to count. So about two times on average throughout your life. So that would suggest like if you don't have reliable contraception, if having sex leads to having babies and if you're having sex when you're in love with somebody, you know, 11% of people just going through the machinery, forget culture, forget anything over the top, like those people would have cycled
through multiple partners across their lifespan. Uh surely this is just the most unencumbered that that you don't you don't get to dictate your attachment system, unfortunately, as much as lots of people would want to not fall out of love with a partner that they're attached to or fall in love with a partner that they can't, whatever. Uh This seems to just suggest like that's what our system is doing. Most people
by a distance only is it so 14 + 28 so 42% so only 42% of of humans, less than half, >> have said that it's only happened once or none. >> That it hasn't happened twice or more. >> I think that's interesting cuz it aligns with the data I had mentioned about number of sex partners as well. That most people say that in the past 12 months they've had sex with one person or zero people. And that a small number
of people, I don't know what the number exactly was up there, three or more times. It was a a small fragment of people who say that they've had sex or rather well have sex have had three or more sexual partners in the past year but then also fallen in love three or more times uh in their lives. So I think this is like this is >> to stay really monogamous. What what we what's going on there? >> We tilt toward monogamy but then maybe a
small percentage of people are more uh polygenist or uh high socio-sexual orientation, less less monogamous. >> Yes, so I guess one thing in this kind of discussion is to remember individual >> Yes, yeah, yeah. Yeah, that humans aren't all the same and we have different mating strategies. >> What's this new study that shows preference for resourceful partners softens when women are richer? >> Uh are are you talking about the PNAS
paper that that we did >> Yeah, well, I mean that this is a new >> This is something that I could talk about for hours, so please, you know, tell me to shut up after 30 to 50 seconds if you can manage it. Uh but >> to 50 minutes. >> I was like there too. I was like, all right, I'll kick back, probably open a new ton. >> That's funny. Uh yeah, so what So there's been a long-standing debate over the last, I would say, 37 years. Um
I mean, it's been intense for 37 years, but it's you know, it actually predates that even. About the causes of sex differences in mate preferences. And a huge variable that people consider uh in this topic, probably the variable if you were going to pick just one, is gender inequality. And if you're going to pick a second one, it's probably income. And >> What does gender inequality mean? >> Well, it
I'm glad you asked because it means different things depending on which social scientist you're talking to. Uh so there have been So we know and and anyone who listens to this podcast has heard a million times that men have a stronger mate preference for looks, on average, at least certainly in their stated mate preferences and in some revealed measures as well. And then women um have a stronger stated
preference for resources. And then obviously there's the sex difference in age preferences, where men have a preference for youth and then and then women have a preference for slightly older than them throughout their lives. So you've got all those differences, and there's been this very long-standing debate over the extent to which this is explicable with reference to social and economic factors and the extent to which
it's explicable by evolutionary factors. So what we did uh if you go through this debate, there's been tons of cross-cultural studies. Um there's been there's been seven um really, really big ones, and those have generally found that I I mean, it in in five out of the seven have found something there with regards to mate preferences for resources and gender inequality. Um all of the ones that checked age um found that when gender
inequality is lower age mate preferences and age gaps get smaller. And then the beauty basically doesn't move. In fact, there's even some evidence that it goes in the opposite direction in one of those analyses. So you've got this kind of mixed result And then you can look at the individual level studies as well where you look at when people have more money what happens to their mate preferences and
I could talk about that more. It's actually a bit controversial. So there's there's different ways of measuring But basically what it finds is is that it does not move in the way that you would expect from the social role theory perspective where it's like oh when women have more money they're going to start wanting young gorgeous men. Individual women who are rich um that that doesn't seem to happen.
However, there there are some caveats there. So what we did we've got all this cross-sectional data. Basically you're hearing about correlational study correlational study correlational study until the cows come home and we said we're testing causal relationships and we know what's happening correlationally and there's been critiques both from the evolutionary psychologists and from the social role theorists about the
correlational nature of these studies depending on which ones they don't like essentially. And so we said okay well we'll we'll do an experiment. And so we did a really complicated unfortunately complicated complexity is not a virtue but it's just necessary for this sort of study design. We did a 45 condition experiment that varied people's individual income and local gender economic inequality. And then we tried to see how those
variables would predict changes in mate preferences. So basically participants were put inside of a virtual environment where their economics were different. Now I'm sure the timer has probably gone for 5 minutes. I feel like I'm giving a massive speech here but it is just a complicated background to review. And what we found was actually something that was slightly inconsistent with the EvoPsych perspective slightly
inconsistent with the social role perspective, and actually most consistent with a perspective that's been common in behavioral ecology for a very long time, which is that people will adjust their mate preferences strategically based on what the environment incentivizes them to want. And what we found is that when people are poor, as in as individuals they're poor, or as in the opposite sex is rich and their
sex is disenfranchised, they upregulate their mate preferences for resources. So, they wanted they wanted This is true in ranked preferences, in rated preferences, and also in hypergamous preferences. So, desire to mate with someone who's richer than yourself. >> And this goes for both men and women. >> For both men and women, yes. >> Is the effect less for men than it is for women? >> The effect it's really complicated and
it depends on which specific measure you're talking about. Um and and so it so it depends. We could we could kind of go into detail on there. Um our main analyses were were testing the effects of the variables on on both >> It's interesting, man. >> And uh we didn't find beauty preferences moved, which actually it didn't wouldn't make sense to a social role theorist. Uh it would make uh but Can you explain? As
in social role theorists, they generally say, "Oh, the reason that uh mate preferences for beauty are different is because there are social and economic gender differences." Um but those experimentally they it doesn't really show up in the cross-cultural data to begin with, but also doesn't show up in the experiments. And then weirdly the age differences didn't move. The age preferences, those didn't move.
And I really expected them to because the cross cult We pre-registered that we thought that that was going to happen because that's what the cross-cultural literature showed, but it didn't. However, mate preferences for resources, which is really what you'd expect to move in this sort of experiment because that's the that's the strategic variable that's being adjusted. Um it makes a lot of sense. I think verbally like I could
talk about the modeling work, and I could talk about it in like a really obscure way, but at a very basic level I find it very intuitive that it's like if I was poor, and if women were rich, yeah, I would want to Yeah, I would want to prioritize it. Yeah. Yeah, I would want to date someone rich more than I currently do now and vice versa. Like we even saw this in our qualitative data where, you know, when women were in
conditions where it's like, "Oh, you you have a lot of money and men are really poor." They're like, "Well, then I don't really need to date for money. That's >> Interesting. But, do you think that that's an evolved tendency? I would kind of think that there's a evolutionary push toward men being Sorry, women being more interested in in resources and status than men are. But, they're they're also just They just think about things and
you just about reason. What's the best way for me to make a living in life while I'm poor? So, I'm just going to reason about the fact that it would better for me to marry this person who's wealthy than to measure than to marry someone who's poor. If you see what I mean. So, you could just explain it as a rational thing, a reasoned thing rather than an evolved >> Yeah. So, I take I take an evolutionary
anthropological approach. My whole My whole background is anthropology. And so, it's slightly different from the evo psych approach where there there's actually this maneuver that's used in evo anthro work, which is called the phenotypic gambit, where you basically say, "Well, I don't really know what's happening inside the mind is a bit of a black box, but I'm interested in the inputs and I'm interested in the
outputs. So, let me see what the inputs So, let me change the inputs and see if the outputs match what you would expect from a strategic perspective." Um so, it could be the case that it was purely conscious strategic thinking, which is also an evolved trait, right? That's an evolved ability that we should use presumably in ways that help our Otherwise, it couldn't have it couldn't have evolved. If strategic thinking
didn't improve fitness, it wouldn't Um but, there there have been some scholars like Gangestad in 2006 who have played with the idea that there might actually be a domain-specific evolved psychological module in the mind that is designed to essentially detect scarcity and change your resource preferences to some degree. I'm not sure if he focused on scarcity. He looked at He looked at a couple variables, but I do remember that
he did posit this. So, I'm open to the idea that there's some evolved resource scarcity detection thing, but I don't know because the experiment didn't test that. It just tested the inputs and >> Yeah. Have you considered that the reason that the age didn't show up is that the single biggest predictor of wealth is age, and if you control for wealth much of what is added by age gets taken away? >> That's exactly what we wrote in the
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controversial, but the idea of the evolutionary adapted environment or the environment of evolutionary adaptation, um it was wasn't wasn't scarcity more or less the norm? And so, this idea that we have an evolved module to detect scarcity versus abundance, I mean, everyone was roughly equally poor because in these communities people shared just about everything. Yes, you had talented but generally my understanding is they
you know, shared their spoils and you know, it wasn't until after the agricultural revolution that we were able to stockpile large amounts of >> Well, this is Yeah, this is actually something that's controversial in anthropology because it's true that if you go off of modern hunter-gatherers, then you do get this impression that like oh, scarcity is the norm. >> But all the good places became agricultural. So, it's like there could
have like you look at there are animals where it's like they're in environments that they're very well adapted to and they're not really struggling. And I would say that there >> But they've not been around for long enough for us to have been able to develop modules that would be baked in to be adapted to. >> Well, again, I personally don't have an opinion on the module thing. So, it's not something that I'm I'm It's not It's
It's actually not something that I think is true. It's just something that I'm kind of putting out there. Like I'm I'm genuinely open about mechanisms. I could hear any side of the story. Um but I do think that it's like there are there is some there is some interesting [ __ ] here. Like for example, there's the studies that we've talked about before where when men are primed with scarcity, um such as when they're
hungry or when they're acutely poor or when there when there's a local famine, they shift to preferring larger women, right? And it it that seems to suggest that there may have been some fluctuations in how valuable larger women were that selected for some >> it suggests that there was fluctuations in how large women were. >> Yeah, exactly. >> times We spoke about this earlier on. There were times of surplus to the point
where people could at least gain a little bit more body fat. >> Yeah, and there are very realistic depictions of obese people in prehistory. I know it's I know it sounds surprising but >> you managed to be fat in prehistory, that is a real accomplishment. Yeah. Real accomplishment. >> Yeah, so I I think that there probably were some I think that there probably were some cases of people I don't You won't find it in modern hunter-gatherers
cuz they've been pushed out by the agriculturalists to these places that are really difficult to live for the most part. >> Ah, that's so [ __ ] interesting. Okay, so when we do studies of modern hunter-gatherers by design, they're not in the desirable locations. The the desirable locations have all been populated by modern people. >> So, modern hunter-gatherers are in the the scraps, the bottom of the barrel
from an ecological perspective, from a soil condition perspective, from how much wildlife they've got to hunt. So, that's just not Whereas, you could have the equivalent of a a Galapagos valley type thing with no natural predators and abundance of food and fresh running water and even if you're not yet at the point of doing agricultural induced >> you're still so overwhelmed from just from a resource perspective. There's
[ __ ] deer running everywhere and rabbits and berries and >> And there is paleoanthropological evidence of these massive kill sites where it's just like you wouldn't believe how many animals they were killing. So, it's like it seems like they may have been doing okay in some cases. But I I don't know. Again, the module thing it's it's it's it's it's um it's not something that I it's genuinely not something that I've
thought very deeply about because it's not an interest area for me. >> So, what's what's the um the data of rationale though if if there's lots of abundance, you would want a more a more heavier woman? >> Oh, right. Um well, that's that's separate from the separate from the PNAS paper. >> The date, yeah, yeah. >> Um so, the rationale there Yeah, exactly. So, the the So, some people call it that and others call it the
insurance hypothesis and there's some kind of disagreements as to what exactly is going on there. >> It's scarcity specifically. So, in environments of scarcity, they prefer uh heavier women. >> Yeah, but it's scarcity. Yeah, yeah. >> Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, it's um so, it's interesting. It's something that shows up with a lot of different study designs, which is pretty cool, right? Like you can do the cross-cultural
anthropological stuff and see like, oh yeah, among the South African Zulu, they're saying that up to or in Jamaica or in Saint Kitts, they're saying that, you know, women who have BMIs in the 30s are quite beautiful. And then you go somewhere like really like affluent Singaporean women or or something like that. They have different preferences. So, um or career or someplace. Uh then you see experimentally where when men are
hungrier, they have a preference for larger women. And the idea is that it's like, "Well, what is fat?" Um fat is literally like a bank account filled with calories. And so, if you're in an environment where it's And also, we know that when when women are acutely starving, um they can they they become infertile, right? So, it's So, it's not just like, "Oh, this person knows where food is and will be able to feed me and offspring and do
provisioning and stuff." It's not just that. It's also like a practical thing of like, "Oh, if we're in a famine right now, these women can definitely get pregnant. These women definitely definitely can't." So, that's that's that's that's a huge difference. >> it flip then in conditions of uh non- >> Yes, and this is what's This is what's so um This is what's so much more difficult to explain. And the leading
hypothesis, I would say, for why thinness is preferred in abundance is cuz it's a very reliable signal to youth and nulliparity. >> Um so, it it's it's one of those things where you >> that the case in all societies? And isn't some degree of um uh a sign in all societies, regardless of then abundance or scarcity, that the person's going to be able to get uh pregnant? I'm just not sure why I'm I'm not really persuaded by that
adaptive rationale for why it would switch and also why it would switch so quickly. And you just get a little bit hungry and suddenly your preferences switch. And then you eat some food and then they suddenly switch back. >> The The switches The switches are very small in those in those studies. So, we're talking about like a 10-lb difference. Like, it's like I believe the dining hall study, for example,
which is the has been replicated. It is pretty cool. Um where it's men going into a dining hall versus coming out. Yeah. It was It was a small shift. Um like, it wasn't It wasn't like they were preferring completely different-looking women. But the cross-cultural stuff, where it's really big differences in environment, then you're seeing genuinely different beauty standards. And a lot of people say it's like, "Oh,
they're like It's It's it's interesting how much um Western male psychology often resists this. Like I've had interviewers really push back on me like you know, isn't this just that they're they're taking what they can get? Like these men don't have options and so they have to go with the bigger women. And I'm like, "No, no, no, you're not understanding. It's not It's not It's not that they are they are
given a chart of body types and asked what's attractive and as to what >> what they prefer." cross-cultural speaking. Yeah, [laughter] that's what they're >> It's a status thing, right? >> I I wonder if it's um that certain body types get linked with status in different cultures. In cultures where there's not a lot of abundance, to be able to get bigger indicates that you have good access to resources. It becomes associated with
status and it's the reverse in more abundant societies. >> on this point, total conjecture here, but in both environments, fatness or thinness could signal conscientiousness. So if you are in an environment of abundance and you're thin, that signals impulse control and the ability to withstand temptation, conscientious personality. And then in environments of scarcity, if you're big, that means you're conscientious because you went
out and acquired the calories [laughter] and you're a hard worker. >> That's really cool. >> I like that. >> So the status the status link is really interesting. What you're saying is really interesting and it does fit with the cross-cultural beautification research as well, where what we see is that I would say broadly, this isn't based on one study but many, you know, individual sites um essentially. So
maybe you do like a true cross-cultural regression and it doesn't come out. But it does seem, based on reading in individual accounts, that environments where food is abundant, the signal is like, "Oh, I'm going to increase movement and restrict calories." And then you go to some places where, you know, they have the the the fattening huts, for example, um where it's like restrict movement and increase calories in order to try and be
more attractive. >> Um so this is something that's seen in some cultures where women before marriage will restrict their movement and increase their caloric intake uh in order to >> Inside of a hut? >> Um, I don't know if it's I don't know if it's always literally the case um but it but it but yeah yeah. There's There's actually even I was reading one account and I can't remember which um I think it was Mauritania but
I'm not sure where it was them talking about how I and I really realized like oh this is a beauty preference. Like this this is real um because they were having to stop the men from spying on the women who were in the fattening huts because they were coveting They were coveting us. So it So it was like So it was like they really wanted to see >> beauty pageant going on that happens to >> Yeah yeah yeah yeah so it's not a hot
dog eating contest. >> So it's just a really >> an actual supermodel contest as well the same thing. >> Yeah. So I would say that the state of the status thing is interesting. I have no doubt that there there's that that could be part of it. Yeah. But when I look at the full range of evidence and include the hunger studies it's like the status benefits of thinness or fatness are the same when you're going
into the dining hall versus coming out and the mate preference is still shifting. I think there's probably some kind of mechanism there. >> I got [ __ ] ripped on the internet uh until the guy realized that the clip had been cut both before and after what I meant what I actually said about saying I think that Ozempic is more pushed back against by people who are in shape than people who are out of shape
because it derogates the signal uh of I got here naturally and there is a sense that that is somehow superior that is somehow better and uh that whole world of what does when you can manipulate the smoothness of your skin using makeup or Facetune or cosmetic surgery, when you can get limb lengthening surgery or you can wear boots that have got heels on them. All of my friends all of my friends wear cowboy boots. Because it's
a 2-in height advantage whilst wearing a cool piece of footwear. And in Texas you can get away with it. Uh like all of these different ways this is arms race that's permanently going on. But what you need to do is actually scrutinize now. And maybe this is part of the reason that people are more hyper-vigilant that there are more ways to cheat the system to bypass what this signal is supposed to mean.
Well I I are you actually in good shape or you on a lot of TRT? Like do you actually have the ability to gain muscle or are you somehow are you are you speed running that? Are you actually youth fecundity nulliparity or is have you got foot reduction surgery? And and have you been you know what I mean? Like all of the different I didn't realize I found this out a couple weeks ago. I didn't realize that women's feet grow
like when they have kids. Like women's feet get bigger which is why there's a preference for smaller >> Did you hear this from War Castello by any chance? >> Yeah yeah yeah. >> Is it true? >> Well you know he's got the sex doll study as well where >> That's what he brought it up. >> sex dolls have tiny tiny feet and it's like why would that be? And he's like oh >> to be like unusable feet.
>> It's part of the supernormal stimulus. >> exactly. Fish shaming runaway but in reverse going >> No no foot at all. >> Yeah it's it's just some Yeah that's our up to Go go back to the the sort of inequality thing. What is the state of the gender pay gap in big cities now? Cuz I saw some data been for a while it was 29 that women were out earning men by about a thousand pounds. I think now it's up to 31 32. Does anyone know this?
>> Don't know the exact numbers but I do know that in a lot of cities it's reversed and that um young women are earning more than young men. >> Yeah major metro areas in the US New York DC Boston LA and Seattle as well. I don't know the state of Austin but it wouldn't surprise me if Austin I'm sure that the same pattern as well. For for under 30s. >> Yeah yeah yeah. >> I think it's squeaking into the 31s 32s
>> And that's what's going to be really interesting. Like yeah, maybe you're right and we've managed to preference for resourceful partners has as women have gotten richer. There was some studies a little while ago, Vincent put this one out in his paper from like article from like six years ago that suggested that very high-powered career women had an increased preference for more high-powered men.
>> So ambitious people desire more ambitious partners. >> Uh specifically women to men of the effect in reverse. But it seems that what you're suggesting here maybe for the middle bit of the bell curve. Perhaps when you get to the top 10% of hyper ambitious people, they that somehow flips because they have they've warped so much of their sense of self-worth around ambition that inevitably it's going to bleed into what
they find sexually attractive to or the desirable in a partner or maybe that there's such an outlier that they breach some threshold of being able to talk to the normies about what they're going to You know what I mean? That all of these things like an elite athlete would would probably be good if their partner at least understands how the game of American football's played.
>> I think I think you can take our the gender economic inequality findings of ours to the bank because they're consistent with the cross-cultural literature. The income finding is very interesting. But it's matched with the cross-sectional literature on individuals as >> know what any of this means. So the it is true that higher income in so in our experiment, there was a like they they were less interested in
mating up economically. So higher income women less interest in mating up. but in it's true also that in the wild higher income women tends to still have strong mate preferences for resources. >> Like what you see in the real world is like high-achieving, highly educated, high-income women tend to marry men who are still doing at least as well as they >> there's a couple caveats on that broad pattern. Um
one thing that's interesting that comes from the social role theorists is that they say, "Well, richer women are qualitatively different from poor women in that they they they are they are different in lots of ways. And so, to say, "Oh, they're different in this way." It it's not really controlled. That's part of the reason we did an experiment, by the way. Um but then also richer women have stronger mate
preferences in general. Like in Koyomasu's research, in Liu's research, they want hotter guys, too. And and in >> going on there? >> Well, the I mean I I >> There's an old David Buss study that literally said like attractive women wanted it all. Like that was the title. >> rich women all rich women also wanted it all. And I think that part of it is that people who are >> you're [ __ ] >> Yeah. Like people who are good at people
who are good at getting stuff probably are confident in their ability to get stuff. Um people who are, you know, high-achieving. I think that it's very like my older sister is a successful banker. If she has a preference for a guy who's doing well economically, that's like that's a very realistic preference. Whereas for a woman who's working at a gas station, that's a very unrealistic mate preference.
>> it's And then also when you look at the ratios of preference as opposed to just the absolute preference, I do have to kind of tip my hat to the social role people a little bit on that where it's like it does seem that even though richer women have a stronger mate preference for resources, they have a lower relative mate preference for resources um in Liu's data, for example. So, it's like >> in English?
>> It's like I want So, it's like um you talk to I'll put it in a kind of uh imaginary example. It's like you talk to a poor woman, exemplary poor woman, and she says, "You know, I kind of want a rich guy. And I kind of want a hot guy." And then you talk to an exemplary rich woman, and it's like I really want a rich guy. And you say, "Oh, it doesn't match the thing." But then they say, "But I really really want a hot guy and
I also really want a guy who's going to take care of the kids and I also want a guy who shares my same political beliefs." And it's like, "Oh man, so they just have higher standards across the board and as a relative preference it seems to decline." Also, I would say that there's the >> That sounds like it increases not >> So it increases absolutely but then maybe decreases relatively. So it's like
>> the rank ordering. >> Yeah, so it's like if I They're they're they're maybe able to relax that preference relatively. >> to other preferences but not relative to their own level. >> Yeah, exactly. >> drop away though. It doesn't drop away. It doesn't drop away. >> And I think they used to predict that it would. That it's just there because women are poor. >> There's a hard limit on the standards
that we need to hit and we can portion this out however we want between the two different partners. >> And as and as much as there's a winner >> Yeah, and as much as there's a winner on that bickering between the Evo psychs and the and the social psychologists, the Evo psychs won that one because it was pretty clearly predicted like, "Hey, richer women are going to have a reduced mate preference for resources." And then
they tested it in a bunch of different ways and it it didn't. But there are some caveats. >> What's fascinating here is it's just people with high standards have high >> The high standards that got them to be valedictorian, the high standards that got them to get a high-powered degree and then a good career and then to work at it to get promotion and to make it to C-suite or become partner and then when
it came to choosing a partner they have high standards high standards high standards. It's like just kind of like like it's the sort of thing that your parents would understand. >> standards for the themselves and their accomplishments then also for partners as well. >> this with the research on perfectionism that perfectionists it comes in at least two broad buckets but maybe three I think actually. The first one is
perfectionism around your own behavior and your own standards but the other is perfectionism for the people around you's behavior and standards too. This is one of the problems that perfectionists have built themselves into a more perfect life. It's not one-to-one. Might actually be net negative, but you have pushed yourself unreasonably to raise your standard of living, and then as you become more of
an outlier in terms of your perfectionism in your own life, you look for more perfectionism from a higher baseline, which is your new one, in the people around you. And that happens more on average from people that are >> Yeah, interesting. >> Mhm. Yeah, mhm. >> You might not believe me, but this is what peak sleep optimization looks like. Not talking about the nightgown, it's just for sex appeal. I'm talking
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can If we can gently steer the conversation If I can ask the captain of the ship to to to steer [laughter] us back. I've actually wanted to hear his opinion. Uh but there is the there is the there is a Oh, this is going to be terrible in my head, but there is the um revealed element where it's like if you look at women now today and this is from the Institute of Family Studies where they it's kind of it's a kind of a way
of visualizing the data more than anything but they bucketed different income brackets and in the top 20% of women like the top quintile they are already on average are dating down very slightly economically. >> quintiles of men are doing the same >> Yeah, they're dating up. They're dating up. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So there's this really weird kind of thing there where it's like you can say in the abstract and and I'm I'm teeing
you up for some thoughts on stated versus revealed but you can say in the abstract oh richer women they have a stronger mate preference to mate up let's say but then you see what they're doing and it's like oh they're less likely to do it so it's like what is what is stronger mean in that context? >> don't necessarily the fact that they on average going with somebody who's somewhat earning somewhat less than them
isn't necessarily cuz that's what they there's not at those kind of echelons there's just not much available at all. >> It's a tall girl problem. >> It's a tall girl problem. >> Yeah, exactly. >> Okay, so if if there's a shortage of tall men then you'll settle for a guy who's not as tall. >> tall women are probably also less likely >> Exactly. Not cuz they prefer shorter men so I don't think that's revealing a
preference necessarily. >> Well what about the what would you could you I don't know if you've been following Paul Eastwick's work on stated versus revealed preferences? I've I've been you know I've been reading a lot of his scientific work. I haven't read his his book yet. Uh but I would love a rejoinder to his So he makes the claim that essentially I'll I'll summarize it and then maybe you can tell me what you
think about it. Um but he makes the claim that yes in survey data you see these consistent sex differences in what men and women want. But when you measure it through speed dating or through how these stated preferences predict romantic evaluations of partners well women care a lot more about looks than they say and men care a little more about resources than they say such that there's essentially no sex difference.
And I think I even saw an excerpt from his book where he says, "Well, how could How could these sex differences in preferences have evolved if they don't result in behavior? If they're just resulting in survey items." I know I don't necessarily buy that that kind of I buy his data. I don't necessarily buy the follow-up part of the argument, but I'd love to hear what's your with your billion years of sex differences
background, what's the what's your >> Well, first of all, let me say I think he's a he's a great scholar. I don't I don't agree with him on this, but I do think he's a very good scholar and he's worth taking seriously and reading his Um so, I think he he seems to be he seems to focus a lot on the two lines of evidence that don't show sex differences in mate preferences. Um and exclude pretty much everything
else. So, one thing he focuses on the speed dating data that he's personally um and often doesn't find the differences that you might expect. Um I'm not sure if it's uh representative samples for a start. Like a a lot of the studies that he's done he's done have been university students, all of whom are quite possibly I mean, presumably do have pretty good career prospects. So, there's not going to be a huge amount of variance there
Um in a speed dating context, you don't get to know somebody uh particularly well. So, their looks are going to be a large part of what shapes your assessment of them. Um he points out that uh a lot of the data that evolutionary psychologists look at dating uh app data, for instance, is evolutionarily novel. It's not a speed dating. It's it's an evolutionary novelty. It's nothing like what happens in reality.
Um but he's happy there cuz you don't find the differences that you expect to find. Um so, he focuses on that. And actually, there is some um speed dating research that does show some of the standard differences. Um Rob Kurzban, I think, did one study that did find it. So, it's it's mixed rather than showing no effect at all of the standard uh evolutionary uh, psychology predictor stuff. Um, with the revealed preferences, I
think that, um, well, it I don't I don't know. It's also I'm a bit dubious about it. Uh, partly just because it goes against the 90% of other or 95% of other research, including real world data, uh, that does find directions, uh, effects in the direction you'd expect. Like women are more likely than men to leave a guy who is unemployed, who becomes unemployed or, fails to earn a decent living. Um, and
actually, that's one one reason that the revealed preferences data might not be accurate is that when you're looking at how how important it is in a relationship that the guy is earning quite a bit among current couples, those are current couples and and there's going to be a bunch of, uh, couples who uh, partnerships that have dissolved already. >> And you got to catch them as they lose their job.
>> Yeah, before they do, exactly. And so you're just looking at the subset that >> after after those kind of processes have happened. So you're going to have reduced variance in terms of ability to make a living and and earn a good wage. And reduced variance therefore means that the uh, the correlation is going to be weaker and other things are going to, become more important, seem seemingly more important. But maybe that's part of
the data rather than the fact that women actually don't care more about that after all than men. >> Did you see the, uh, worldwide preference matching paper? >> I think I did, yeah. >> Yeah, uh, last year.
>> one to kind of remind people. I know that I know that you spoke to Eastwick about it on the show, so people people may already know. >> first episode I did with with >> Yeah, so it was basically he had people and I'm summarizing someone else's work, so there's there's a chance I make a an egregious error.
>> So it's >> Directionally correct. >> So the directionally correct summary is that he had people assess their romantic partners on various traits and then saw how much those assessments correlated with their overall romantic evaluations of them. And in that he found no sex difference. And he also found some weird findings like the the number one thing people wanted was someone by that measure was
someone good in bed. >> Yeah, so that the overall overall romantic evaluation was most which is intuitive but and and fits >> difficult it's very difficult to separate that out from the fact that you're in a relationship with someone and needing to be physically intimate with them regularly. Like almost all sex for all the myth of the chads and the [ __ ] girls being run through and guys and man [ __ ] and all the rest of it. Almost
all sex the whole galac the whole [ __ ] galaxy of sex occurs in relationships and then there's one brown dwarf star on the outside that's casual sex from a like portioning the sex across Yeah, it is. Am I wrong? Am I right? It's almost all sex occurs inside of relationships. Right like the global amount of sex that happens It's almost all inside of one form of relationship or another. Did you see Jake Kosloski from Keeper AI put up the
ask men if they'd marry down on three >> I think I DM him every time he tweets out new data. [laughter] I'm like can I get another look at that? Can I go a little bit closer to that? >> Jake's got the possibility to be a really fascinating source of stated preferences with real world results. Real real world incentives. So for the people that don't know Keeper AI is an AI matchmaking service. It's 50 grand the guy pays the
women don't. It's 5 grand per date for the first for each date It's credited against it but it's only credited against it up to the first five. So if you have like 10 dates in order to get there then you got to pay 75. Anyway, they have a pretty comprehensive psychometric evaluation, personality testing, all of these sorts of things. Uh pull up the Keeper AI website Jared It's kind of It's kind of fun. And um
anyway, because he's got this raw data and he's happy to aggregate it and presumably the terms of terms and conditions just say like hey, [ __ ] open this open this sucker up. Uh asked if they'd marry down on three axes, women say no far more than men every time. Earns less, women are 12 more likely 12 times more likely to refuse. Less intelligent, six times more less educated, four times more. Marrying down
is a near deal breaker for women and a non-issue for men, consistent across all three. Hm, right? So especially when you bundle those together, like that is a real [ __ ] covariate bastard, but a multivariate bastard. Uh what I realized thinking about Eastwick's stuff, if you're in a world where the new ecology involves this ability to sterile autistically design what it is that you want, like stated preferences become revealed
preferences. Does this make Am I saying >> sense. And what's funny is that I actually DM'd Jake that exact um that exact point where it's like >> Don't [ __ ] with me, dude. I'm on the [ __ ] level of the academics. >> All day. I'm on fire today. One and a half Newtronics, don't [ __ ] with me. >> You've been anticipating a lot of things. Um and uh it's interesting cuz it's uh it's not I don't really think it is a stated
preference in the traditional sense because it's a stated preference with consequence. And if you actually look at the traditional >> preference incentive. >> Yeah, so I'm very interested in stated versus revealed preferences and very interested in which which people assign to what. And there's actually precedent for this scholarly precedent where in uh Buss and Schmitt's uh mate preferences and behavioral manifestations, I think
that they had um classified odds as a as a as a behavioral manifestation essentially where it's like it's not like an expression, but like what people are actually shopping for. And so that's Yeah, exactly. So it's like if I tell my matchmaker, can I please have a young wife, that's more than just a statement. Like that's a that's an action, yeah, in a way. But I don't know. So >> Is it unique is cuz a matchmaking I
arranged marriages are a kind of matchmaking but they're not done with hey here's my [ __ ] list of requirements type thing. It is this a new category that's somewhere in between stated and revealed preferences when it when you look at something like Keeper AI and you you you go in with your preferred list of things. Is it stated? Is it revealed? What is it? >> It's converting your stated preference
into a revealed preference by going out in the world and making it uh making it happen and putting skin in the game to do so. >> So it feels closer to stated. I mean revealed would be cuz you can I can give you can be my uh coach or whatever the match maker and I can give you the list and then you show me someone and I can still choose. Actually, I may give you this list but then I meet this person
and this actually isn't what I want. Let me scratch these two things off the list and add this other thing and then go that direction. So it still feels more >> Two two slamming lines I've seen recently. One from Jake that says being good at dating apps is mostly orthogonal to being a good spouse. >> But the people that win on dating apps are actually probably not the people that you want to get into a relationship
with. And then Diana Fleischman, female dating strategy tells the women to date only men who ask first, text within three days, pay, and reliably plan the next date. Sure, this might be a good good filter to make sure he's really into you, but it's also a way to select a man who is great at wooing side >> Mhm. Right. Right. >> That just the ability to play the game. Uh but the Jake one about being good at
dating apps is orthogonal to being a good spouse. I would be a fantastic study to do. How many swipes have you got? How many first dates have you got? Doesn't even matter really about conversions. And then how likely were you to cheat, infidelity, level of relationship satisfaction with your other partners down the line. Like tell me about your online dating era and tell me about your spouse's relationship
satisfaction now and the quality of your relationship. Like it might actually be that the traits that make you good on a dating app are opposite contrary to what make you a good spouse. >> There was a study a few years ago on on Tinder users back when I I think Tinder was still the number one dating app in the late 2010s. And this was only on college students and they looked at students who had never used Tinder and students who
were currently using Tinder and they they looked at the dark triad personality traits and found that the users of Tinder scored significantly pretty pretty sizable effect sizes 0.3 0.4 higher for the Tinder users than the non-Tinder users. So these are you know more psychopathic more Machiavellian more narcissistic but it I didn't say as I recall they didn't say anything about sort of were the successful users
higher on the dark triad traits than the less successful users. But you know this this is presumably people don't want spouses who are high on dark triad but that's what those are the people who are using these these apps you know they're more like >> There is there is plenty of research I think though that shows revealed preferences for some of the traditional ELA's type predictions like the fact that
guys who are wealthier more likely to get married more likely to stay married more likely to have kids more likely to get remarried if they're divorced whereas it doesn't predict that anyone there as well for women women's wages don't. And and women's looks are a better predictor of whether they get married and the the wealth of the marital partner than is the case for men men men's looks [clears throat] don't predict that
anyone there as well. And all of that's revealed preferences right that >> Did you see the that Whiteman study looking at facial attractiveness is 12 times more influential on swiping behavior than height is? >> Facial attractiveness? >> Yeah so they did so I I I tweeted that and someone replied photo competition app shows photos for the most important factor and I was like oh yeah you did kind of get them there
but it is but it is an interesting it is an interesting study right? >> Trying to find some white >> So, what they did was they tried to So, what they what they did was they tried to essentially set up a gamified dating app. Importantly, there was no height filters on this app. So, the So, that's usually how people see heights in a dating app. That's usually how it has in a real dating app. That's usually how
it has an influence. And I'd actually be interested in Rob's opinion on whether a kind of testing the intuition of whether a height filter is a stated or revealed preference. Um because that's also kind of in between. Uh but yeah, they set up this game and then they and it was it was very sophisticated. I had a lot of people who come back to me asking, including really prominent scholars coming back like kind of challenging the
study. And I had to open the study back up again and check and I was like, "No, they actually thought of that, too." And yeah, they found that essentially face was everything. And anything else was you could put anything in your bio, you could have any height, and it wouldn't really make that much of a difference with the caveat. With the caveat that if filtering for height um wasn't an option. And then it
had a typical dating app interface. So, it's like if you're looking at 50 different faces as as a participant in the study. And it's literally like face, face, face, tiny details, tiny details. There is kind of a click-through temptation of like I mean, this is what happens on real apps, though. I mean, it's it's it's actually On real apps, people are doing the same thing. So, I think it's methodologically, it's very
ecologically sound if you want to find out what >> Pokémon trading card game. >> Yeah, exactly. >> I wonder if to to your question, I wonder if after the introduction of height filters, did users come away more satisfied or less satisfied or the same compared with prior to the introduction of height filters on the apps? Like, are women happier? Are And presumably, men aren't happier, especially the men who aren't
that tall. >> I was saying this before. The Tinder released the height filter as a April Fools about a decade ago. And then just as a feature available to premium users like 3 years ago. >> And I feel like that 6-ft mark is like it's somewhat arbitrary because I I I I read this and I don't know exactly but >> Well, guys lie but then the 6-ft it's just because it's a round number and I've heard that in Europe the number is
180 cm which is something like 5 10 and 1/2 or 5 11 and they just go 180 because it's a nice clean number, you know, if they wanted 6 ft they could have gone 182.5 cm. Uh and so even the 6-ft thing is somewhat arbitrary. >> So what you're saying is that we should change the units of measurement. >> To make more guys 6 ft. >> Get on the metric system. So it's it's going to be scientists, drug dealers,
and short kings. >> If you're not Europe maxing. >> If you're not metric maxing, dude, what the [ __ ] are you doing? >> That would really be DI for men if we could change it to the >> Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. >> Most people don't realize how much being dehydrated impacts their performance, which is why for the last 5 years I've started pretty much every morning with Element. Element is a tasty electrolyte
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about trade-offs, right? And typically some people generally have good things that come along with good things, but for the most part there are there are some sorts of trade-offs with with someone's spent an awful lot of time dedicated on one thing they've maybe neglected another part of another area. >> It's an study that, right? Can you explain for the Sean >> So yeah, normally normally he did a did
a study where he gave people a budget of $8 and then asked them create create the ideal mate that you can with this budget. Some people got a big budget where that was the case men and women they both wanted everything they wanted good looks they wanted they wanted like a good job high status blah blah blah the the works. But if they had a smaller mate budget which I think is probably more like most
people's situation in life no offense. If they had that they sex differences became more pronounced and so people men would spend more to get an attractive partner. Whereas women would spend more to get a partner with resources and status.
>> Yeah, he also did a study where he had people allocate for themselves if I'm not mistaken and it mirrored the it mirrored that that same pattern where it's like when men were kind of RPG style building their own character. I think it was him I don't I don't mean to give him credit if it wasn't but basically men tried to make themselves richer relative to women and women tried to make themselves prettier
relative to men. So >> That's the reason why we don't see women turning up in super cars with expensive Rolexes at a nightclub or guys spending tons of time doing the beautification thing. We know we have a an intuition about what is effective. It's the the failures just continue to stack up in really interesting ways. >> Well, this is something that we proposed actually in our PNAS paper in the discussion section we talked
about this where it's like it is interesting and quite conspicuous but also quite circumstantial that over the 1900s there's pretty good data from David Buss. It's hard to do it's hard to gather this survey data but it does seem that over time throughout the 1900s, um especially in the period after women's kind of financial emancipation, let's call it, uh mate preferences converged quite a bit between men and women.
>> Oh, that's interesting. >> And then also we're now seeing this tremendous behavioral convergence where it's like women aren't doing sports cars and flashy watches, but they do have pretty nice handbags, pretty nice shoes, and they are pretty ritzy in terms of their financial status. >> signaling to women. >> And that well, maybe. And then but men are definitely, even if you say for the women side that's not true, on the men
side we see that men have tripled their parenting effort since the 1970s. Um and male beautification, I know that it's really trendy right now with the whole looksmaxing thing, uh but this is actually just the newest instantiation of a documented trend going back to the 1990s. You can read the historian Lynn Luciano's work on this, uh where male beautification has increased decade on decade to a point where basically
everyone, even like a normal man who doesn't consider himself like a beautifying person, uh his beha- his daily routine would be unrecognizable to his grandfather. Like the average >> Shave your head, dude. Shave your head, you don't need to think about [laughter] >> We did a we did a little data analysis um on using health data, essentially seeing like how much has weightlifting actually increased. And generation on
generation it's like you go from basically like not a behavior to every young man is now like a every every like every other member of Gen Z essentially is like a recreational bodybuilder. >> Sure, that's what I I I totally agree. But they do find that attractive though, right? Um they do find uh some some muscularity uh attractive and uh good grooming attractive. They find parenting attractive. But I'm not I'm not
persuaded at all. In fact, I don't think it's the case that men think that um she's really hot. I love her handbag. >> I don't think I don't think so, either. You know what I mean? That was a bit cheeky. But I do think that it is I do think it's conspicuous um and so it's worth pointing out where it's like I don't think that women are necessarily signaling their resources to attract men, but it's interesting that they're
signaling resources more over the same time period. And then the male beautification, I would really put my foot down and say no, that that is to attract women. And I think it is because they have their own money. >> Right. Okay, so you're this is your pet theory, right? That because the socioeconomic imbalance between men and women has been reduced or even reversed, men need to find a different way they
need to compete on another domain of >> And that has been self-beautification. I'm going to make myself look nicer. >> Beauty is the beauty is the flashy one. Parenting is the quiet one that's actually better evidenced where it's like men used to >> Yeah, exactly. Where it's like and we see this even in in Lee's 2015 study. Where it does seem that when women have their own money, they recognize where
it's like, well, I have the financial thing kind of sorted. I really need like a helper at the nest a little bit more. And that's been the preference shift. And men have definitely responded to that. I mean, men have tripled their A man today spends more time with children, I believe. I think I heard this from you that it was then then women did in the 1950s. >> It's a dramatic difference though. At
least in the US context, I've read that this differs by socioeconomic status and education where educated upper middle class men are spending far more time with their children than fathers in the past whereas non-college men are spending the same amount as decades past or even slightly less. >> And the average is getting brought up >> by primarily by college educated men. Although those those women don't
necessarily have as much money. >> So maybe but then the men are also spending less. >> Well, yeah. >> Is part of it though just the people that think guys are thinking it's only fair. You know, they're responding to arguments that have been made by by feminists and others just that guys haven't been pulling their weight in the past and they think that they >> To a degree Can I on this handbag point,
I I I heard this from Tanya Reynolds that, um, she suggested that that it's not it's not that men always aren't attracted to, you know, these luxurious handbags. And, uh, in some cases women, uh, you know, they're they're they're buying these handbags or wearing them to impress women. But but but it's about deterring deterring rivals. >> how much my husband is in the hole for this stupid bag >> that he doesn't understand what it is.
None of his friends understand what it is. I'm not even doing it for other >> It's not my boobs, right? Which would be the sort of thing that wouldn't be a deterrent. It would actually probably be the cause of ire from other women.
women would compliment handbags more than they would compliment boobs. >> Yes. Yeah. Yeah. >> I mean, if you imagine that we're in an environment of, uh, you know, increasing mate competition, if you were in a few >> engagement ring? Why the massive >> Then, yeah. So, ultimately it's about >> Yeah. So, ultimately it's about >> But what's the benefit, though, of intimidating other women and saying, "Look at this great handbag. I can't
>> To keep them away from the the partner. >> But why is guys don't care about it? Why would other women think, "Well, I better stay away cuz I don't have as as nice a >> Well, I I If if he's so invested in her that he spent 20 grand on a handbag, then it's probably not worth my time to to poach him or to attempt to poach him. >> I see. >> So, it could be a mate It could be a mate poaching deterrent. It could also
be just kind of classic high status to low status threat behavior. Um, I remember literally first day of my PhD, arrived in Melbourne, um, and went for a walk with Candace, and I asked her this exact question. I was just like, "Why do you think women love their handbags?" Cuz I knew that she was really into the beautification stuff and that she really had her head around these things. And she just immediately said, "Scare young
women." Just immediately. And then, yeah yeah yeah. And so, I was like, "Okay, interesting." And I do think that it is, I I feel like I've had I've since then maybe tried to observe it as like a second order thing. And I think it's kind of maybe the male equivalent of a guy who's really jacked walking into the room. When a woman walks in and she's very glamorous, she's got the expensive shoes, the expensive bags,
throws it on the table. It's like It's like I like I could I run this [ __ ] Like it's kind of like that atmosphere. >> also a sense, at least with guys, guys have got a ton of muscle on them, you have to have spare time. You have to have spare time. You have to have spare money to be able to afford the food and the PEDs. You need to be at least somewhat disciplined. You need to have the time to be able to plan your
training sessions and, you know, not be at work every single hour of the day in the same way as the long nails that a woman might have and the well-done hair and the good beauty regime is costly in terms of time. And that indicates an awful lot more about lifestyle than just resources too. But I totally didn't think about the fact that guys going to the gym is a form of male beautification. If you class that in,
which I just like totally did not consider. If you add in guys going to the gym as a form of male beautification, it's got to be 4x, 5x, 6x, 10x what it would have been 100 years ago for male beautification. >> mean that's what the best that's what the best study on beautification did. It's It's Marta Kowal's study. It's and she found that in all except for seven countries, women beautified more. There were there were seven that
men beautified more, And And this was the weightlifting side of it essentially was what it was the was the behavior where men were uh >> It's a big Pac-Man chunk that's been taken out the side. >> Yeah, it is. And And you some might say, "Oh, well, a lot of men beautify a lot of men hit the gym, sorry, for health, not beautification." And some of them do it for status competitions. They actually but they thought of that. They
had a question in there that it's like, "Okay, doing it for beauty though, basically, how much time are you spend like bodybuilding?" And so they they they they really were able to drill down on that. And there was one other behavior, this is so counterintuitive, among the people who did it, men actually did this behavior more. So, think about different beautification behaviors. I won't bore you by making you guess, but it was
Among people who wear makeup, the men who wear makeup spend way more time on it than the women. >> Is that just because they're less good at it? >> They've been They've been growing up on YouTube tutorials. >> Yeah. I think that it's um what she said to me was that she thinks that it's um essentially men who wear makeup have some kind of special qualitative difference. Maybe it's that they're like a sense I told her, "Look, you're
picking up on like male beauty influencers." Essentially, like you're like, "Who is" and so they just have >> visual, yeah. >> But I thought that was interesting is that the um is that in terms of numbers among the people >> on repeat. >> Yeah, it's just James Charles clocking in 16 hours a day and causing the difference. But it was it was interesting. So it was basically yeah, there was this uh the second biggest difference
technically was the weightlifting. The biggest was the makeup, but it was because of >> that effect. >> Going back to the clavicle thing, it it's kind of fascinating the weightlifting being the biggest change because I don't know whether guys increasing their upper body strength makes a bigger impact on attractiveness or formidability. Like if you were to just to rank it starting at a baseline of this and you do you gain 10 lb of of
lean muscle mass, are you more attractive or more more formidable to other guys? That would be fascinating to work out because I don't know what the net gain is. Now obviously you get both and that's what's great, but certainly when we look at sort of the myth of Chad and and Louis Theroux's documentary and sort of the caricature of hypermasculinity at the moment, a lot of what guys are doing it's the male-to-male transsexual, as
Mary Harrington calls it, is like the most caricatured parts of of the masculine look to the point where that hypermasculinized face we know from tons and tons of data is not as attractive as a average or slightly feminized face on a man is to women. And all of these other things to me seem to be just signaling formidability, signaling status and formidability to other men. It's the handbag of the face.
>> As it the David Buss work would suggest, it's more about formidability or rather the the increase in formidability would outpace the increase >> Do you want to just redo it? I mean, we've dropped it on the show like 10 times, but it's the [ __ ] It is the the best. Do you need to Do you know it? >> Yeah, I I know Yeah, yeah, I can do it. Uh so, David Buss and his colleagues famously did this study
where they brought in a group of men and recorded them in these videos and you know, very very short clips. And then they brought in a different group of men to watch the men in these videos. And then they asked these men who were watching these other men in the clip, they asked them a question, which is how likely is it that this man that you're watching in this clip could beat a man in a physical fight. Uh and it was a
range from very likely to very unlikely. And then they showed a group of women these videos as well of these men in the short clips. And they asked these women, okay, this man in this video, how sexually attractive is this man? And then these researchers followed up with those men in the videos 18 months later you know, collected data on them including how many sexual partners they'd had over the previous 18 months.
And they found that how formidable they were predicted how many sexual partners they had, whereas how sexually attractive they were to these women had no relationship at all. So, formidability predicted >> [ __ ] insane study. >> Now, as as we mentioned, this is this this was on college students, you know, fraternity members. But >> like a specific frat, wasn't it? >> No, it wasn't. I think it was a specific
Okay. But you know, this is consistent with David Buss's other work showing that formidability seems to have this huge effect on sexual success. >> This is my take. This is my take on clavicular and the looksmaxing world. That they >> have closed their eyes, thrown the dart, and hit the bull's-eye if they've fluked optimizing formidability for male attention over attractiveness to only land in the middle of David Buss's study
finding out that formidability is better predictive of male mating success than >> also this form of like psychological formidability, too, where, you know, I've I've seen >> How well regarded I am. >> Yeah, yeah, and they'll they'll keep their distance from from Aliyah, like a famous person, you know, like if if there's a famous man who's getting a lot of attention from women, ordinary men are going to be intimidated by that
fame, and they're probably not going to try to interrupt him or compete with him for attention and that kind of thing. But if you're famous and you're jacked, then it's like, you know, like imagine The Rock being surrounded by How many men are going to be like, "Oh, I can take that girl." >> I don't think I can push that girl from The Rock. Like he's famous and he's jacked, and so no one will attempt to
interfere with his uh his mating >> Yeah. Well, haven't you been studying female teacher sex scandals?
>> That was that was behind the paywall, but I love Chris Williamson, and I love Modern Wisdom, so you know, let's yeah. >> Yeah. This is uh this was my, you know, kind of this is my conjecture. I I don't have hard evidence for this, but I was building on something that Louise Perry had written. I believe this was in The Spectator. You know, she was kind of riffing on this idea of of OnlyFans and how
sexual attention for women can be as satisfying as um as, you know, actual sex can be for men. So, you know, men really like to have sex, women really like sexual attention, and these can be sort of equally powerful incentives. And you know, in the context of OnlyFans, it's this supernormal stimulus in the way that porn is for men. So, porn, you get the novelty, all these different naked women, and so on. It's
very exciting for men, whereas OnlyFans as a creator can be very exciting for women cuz you're getting large huge amount of sexual attention from thousands of men, and all of them are praising you and telling you how beautiful you are. You could imagine this would be uh extremely uh enjoyable for some Now, this the female sexual scandal thing, the female teacher sexual scandal I should say, um you know, every few months we see these
stories come out of some surprisingly attractive female teacher who sleeps with a male student, some 15-16-year-old kid, and you know, all these you know, all the other the online discourse around this always goes crazy. Um it's also important here to remember that male teachers are still far more likely to um commit this transgression of sleeping with an underage student than female teachers are. The reason why these
stories go viral is because again, they're anomalous. Um my suggestion for at least in some cases why these female teachers sleep with their male students is because the response that they get from the male student is is a one-of-a-kind, unique, sort of supernormal stimulus. Where, you know, if you're an attractive 25-year-old woman and you get naked in front of, you know, your typical 28-year-old guy who's
seen naked women before, whatever look on his face, whatever attention he gives you is not going to be nearly as potent as when you undress for the first time that you see um and you see a uh now [laughter] Now, that look >> a chef. >> That look That look with your race. >> Half half Latino, half Asian. >> Does not scream captain of the ship when it's facing backward. I don't know what it is. You look like you look like the
guy out of Tintin. >> Wait, [laughter] I don't know who this >> Pull up the [ __ ] Pull up the dude from Tintin in the hat. You can keep going for now. >> Um Oh, I lost uh okay. So, you know, you So, so the response, right? So, you're you're an attractive 25-year-old woman, you get naked in front of a 25-year-old guy, you know, the response is, you know, he's going to be like, "Wow, cool." cuz, you know,
women men like seeing naked women. But a 16-year-old male who has seen very few naked women in his life, he sees a fully grown, you know, woman at the peak of her fertility and and on for the first time, the attention he gives you is going to be extremely potent. And it's the kind of look and level of attention that most people wouldn't have access >> this is interesting is what is the motivation for these female teachers to
do it? For male teachers, we have at least a little bit more of an understanding. I think there is a question and that's one of the reasons it's fascinating. It's so anomalous. why? Why? You could go and get anyone. >> Yeah. Well, well, so so for the it's it's if you're, you know, if you're a predatory male teacher, you know, it's sort of this warped extreme version of the typical male, which is, you know,
you want you know, someone who's attractive and whatever. And then like, you know, this there's that kind of like vulnerability and a power asymmetry and so on. Um whereas I think if you're a predatory female teacher, you get your rocks off through this extreme level of attention. Um it's not so much the sex in it of itself, although that may be part of it because again, you get to see this teenage boy have his first sexual
experience with a full-grown woman. And I think that in itself, that kind of power that you have over him and that level of attention is so unique um that you couldn't replicate in any other situation or context. In the same way that for the male teacher, right? Like sleeping with this underage girl, you couldn't replicate that in any other >> read I I I'm into like horrendous chick books. Like just like like every Freida
McFadden book I just blast through. And uh I've read The Teacher. Have you read The Teacher? >> Dude, it is Oh, Freida McFadden's the person that did The Housemaid. Right? Uh which Sydney Sweeney just starred in and then she did The Housemaid's Revenge and then she did The Housemaid Cometh Backeth and then she's done like uh The Patient and The Teacher and a bunch of other and it's just easy reading, right? It's my guilty pleasure.
And um this one about The Teacher, the the main guy that usually all the guys in the books turn out to be the bad guy. Like that shock horror Freida McFadden like the guys turn out to be the bad guys and they're all scumbags the way that they're presented so like rightly so. But this one takes it to another level and it turns out this teacher's being like wooing a first off he's wooing a 16-year-old
and then you find out that he was wooing another 16-year-old but doing it when she was 15 and then it turns out he's doing one when she's 14 and I'm like this is the it completely changed even the 16 thing you already like [ __ ] me and it's in the first few chapters like woah that's okay that's a little strange. The final for people that want to read the teacher list listen away the final final final [ __ ] bit of it the whole
twist at the end is that the young jock who's in high school has been sleeping behind the back of the guy that was the nasty teacher with his and the jock was 16 too. I'm like the only reason the the reason that you had to put in oh and he slept with this other student when they were 14 is to even the scales but even then when I read it there's a bit of like retribution the guy was real mean and then he's like tried to kill people and
whatever whatever like he had it coming [ __ ] him. But that even this example that we've got in front of us as I read it I was like good for her she got railed in the shoe cupboard like you know what I mean there's a guy that worked in a in like the local shoe store or whatever and at the end you find out it's the high school jock I was like is that really the I it just completely lays out like however ethically dubious it was I mean
maybe she means it as a something for people to think about because it definitely made me think made me go how do I feel about that do I feel does the fact that it was being done by her husband before and younger make this less cuz she's like a 32-year-old woman the 16-year-old boy >> She was described as attractive in the >> Yes yes and classically overlooked. >> You know, like um >> She wants the attention.
>> So that's that's where your theory is. >> Well, I mean this idea of like so so I I don't know like cuz every time we see a story, it's always a an attractive female teacher. And maybe it's possible, again there's this dark matter. >> The unattractive ones just don't make the headlines. >> Yeah, because no one wants to click on an unattractive teacher who sleeps with some kid, but if she's hot, people will
click on the story. But if it's the case that more attractive teachers tend to do this, I think that too sort of aligns with Well, well, two two things here, which is one like they are likely to get that sort of intense reaction from male students because they're attractive. And then the other thing is they just have more opportunity, right? Like if you're an attractive person, you just have more opportunities in general, and so, you
know, that also sort of, you know, it's it's Maybe maybe there are ugly teachers who would like to sleep with their teachers, they just don't have, you know, very many chances. >> Didn't you have a Twitter poll on this regarding It was it was a really interesting would you rather where you found a big sex difference on like would you rather sleep with someone very attractive or someone who's very attracted to you?
>> Yeah, yeah, yeah. >> So, I put it two different polls on for men, and I asked, you know, this is a forced choice, this contrived scenario, would you rather sleep with someone who you find intensely attractive, but they are not at all attracted to you, or would you rather sleep with someone who finds you very attractive, but you are not attracted at all to them? So, I administered that poll first to men and to women, and
literally got the exact opposite, where something like 75% of men were like give me the hot person who finds me ugly. That's way more preferable than sleeping with an ugly person who finds me hot. Whereas women it was the opposite. Women were about 75% of women said they would rather sleep with someone who they find ugly who finds them attractive than to sleep with a hot person who is unattractive to them. So, it's almost
like men and women were made for each >> This was something that This was a mess up that I This is a mess up that I did in my conversation with Esther Perel where she said something to the effect when have you ever She's talking about desire and what makes a woman feel desired. Said something to the effect of when have you ever heard of a woman being turned on because her partner was like aroused in front of her. Like women
need to be wooed. And I was just like in I wasn't in my EP hat. I was in my relating and she's the expert hat. And uh I should have just said, "Dude, like being desired is probably the number one thing that women want as a turn-on." Uh the other thing that women want as a turn-on. Just put this hat back on backwards for me. >> Watch out who it is that you look like. I got it wrong. Put it on backwards. Put
it on backwards. >> I got a you know, I got a big dome, man. >> You do. Both of you do, actually. I can't believe it. No, no, no. So There it is. So I thought that it was uh It's not Tintin. It's Indiana Jones and it's this >> I'm just glad you can tell. >> not you? >> I mean, you know. Oh, wait. But don't I have to wear it like this? >> No! He's got it on backwards. Does he >> No, he's got it the right way. Yeah.
>> Okay. Well, it's not Captain's hat, anyway. I knew that I was right.
>> Yeah, I uh Wait, that's Tintin? >> No, no, no. >> It's [ __ ] the kid from Indiana Jones.
Yeah, I'm I'm like I'm kind of fascinated by what's going to unfold over the next few years with what's happening with increased socioeconomic success for women, male beautification. I actually think that what guys think they're doing, even if it doesn't work with the formidability double loop close eye bulls eye thing is uh I think that it's a kind of rejection of the female gaze in some ways. Like it's just
male-to-male intersexual competition. Do you ever remember Zyzz? You know, Zyzz? The The he was a kind of the original looks maxer in some ways. He was a bodybuilding icon in 2010, 2011, 20 12 uh and died. Aussie Aussie guy. Real good-looking dude. Just trained in the gym. He wasn't like doing the hardcore looks maxing stuff. He just trained in the gym. And he had this line which was uh disregard women, acquire dance moves.
And it was just him talking about you want to go out with your boys and have a good time. And they were saying this is a naturally very attractive man who then done some weightlifting to make him look real Adonis Greek goddy. But I get the sense that it is kind of a rejection of I'm just going to focus on becoming the most like mog mog you know where that comes from do you know what the etymology of mogging is?
>> Yeah, a mog. >> Alpha male of the group. >> That was what it came and then that shortened to mogging. So alpha male of the group is referring to your status within the hierarchy of other men. >> Not like Chad of the group. Chad is almost rejected as a term. It's like I'm not doing this for anybody else and this is you know >> Yeah, this is there was that the clavicular profile and you know I don't
know how representative he is but this is a this aligns with what you're saying here where he said two interesting things. One he said something like you know I the main thing is mogging people. Like that's where he gets his rocks off. >> All I want to do is mogging mog. That's like a >> that's what's fun for me. The second thing he said was knowing he could have sex with a woman was more satisfying
than actually having sex with a woman. Just the knowledge that he could is is good enough for him. So yeah, it's like disregard women, you know, get get jacked, acquire dance moves and whatever, mog other men and and not have sex with women. >> How common is that ever going to be that public is going to be that common? >> Exactly, yeah. >> You've got to be a real extreme to say I'm going to do all of the work to be
able to have sex with a woman but it's somehow more enjoyable to me to not do it. I mean this might be part of the medical castration thing that's going on. Like the performance enhancing >> How much do you think a denial of sex differences at the moment has led to the current mating crisis? >> Is that something that you've drawn a >> Mhm. You're looking at me cuz I'm talking quite a bit in my book about the
denial of sex differences. But I can't see a direct line from that. >> talked about in your book superb. You you discussed the dangers of ignoring, minimizing sex differences. But you you know you also sort of acknowledge that that historically people have sort of overstated the sex differences the dangers of overstating can be you know particularly harmful to women but to men as well. And so so what
yeah yeah curious what are the dangers of minimizing and and then overstating? >> The dangers of minimizing so we talked about this right? So one danger is that just as people used to try to force boys and girls and men and women into um traditional gender roles. Even if they didn't quite fit them. You can get you can get the reverse if you minimize or deny sex differences and just think that they're due to
discrimination. You're going to think that actually we should be trying to minimize them we should be trying to push boys and girls and men and women out of traditional gender roles and that is a problem if they don't fit into them. That's that's one problem. Another one if you minimize sex differences is that you might fail to to notice physical problems and psychological that present differently in one sex than
the other. So classic example is cardiovascular problems like like heart attacks. The symptoms are different for men and women. And the male symptoms are better known. So the pain and the sort of chest and down the arms is quite well known. That's much less common in women. Shortness of breath is a much [snorts] more common symptom in women. People don't tend to know that. They often often in the past especially just didn't
know that and so women would have heart attacks and not be aware of it until they'd progressed quite a long way down the road and so you know it cost lives and by by not noticing sex differences rather than than noticing them. >> On that point like you minimizing sex difference I'm thinking about with Chris's question of something like you know if if you truly believe in sort of you know blank slatism for men and
women and then you're like you're a young and naive girl and you go off to college and you assume oh you know men and women are basically the same and then you go to a frat party and get really drunk and you assume you know guys are kind of like girls and there's no real and you don't understand that there are like you know predatory men you know the average difference isn't as you've mentioned in your book
aggressiveness is not that large but in the tails the most extremely aggressive sexually predatory people tend to be men and if you go to yeah get drunk at a frat party and you're 18 you don't there are sex differences here in terms of you know motivations around sex and so forth that this can >> So don't you think it's a denial of sex differ of differences between the sexes it's a denial of where they come from?
>> Well there is both and I think the one you're talking about is where you might fail to see the sex difference at all regardless of where it comes from and open yourself up to certain kind of risks that you otherwise might not but you are right there are a lot of sex differences people will acknowledge the differences including that difference but just think you can attribute it entirely to largely to socialization.
>> What's happening with the dual mating and mate switching hypothesis race at the moment has there been any update do >> I I I I I I can't spoil their party unfortunately but there is there's news I I heard >> you dude. >> I genuinely can't. >> Dude behind the scenes under the bus us because you've got special behind the scenes access. >> not it's not that it's just that I recognize that when people present work
that's you know like at a at a conference it's like oh it's preliminary we're going to have to rule it out in its own kind of time. >> Modern wisdom conference. >> I know I know I mean I'll I'll happily I'll happily tell you the full kind of >> You're like when I you you know what it's like it's like when I bring navy seals on and they go dude I know exactly what happened with this summer >> I'll tell you on air.
>> Well it's it's it's not me trying to or a farmer or anything like that it's literally just lazy I know that I know that I know I know Ryan Dobson and and his party are going to be rolling out some cool research pretty soon. >> Is it not public once it's been put out at a conference? >> Well I was told by Candace no but maybe that that's kind of a social intuition. >> Come on, Candace. >> I'm a new academic, so so I don't
necessarily have that >> This is This is the issue This is the issue that Mackin's got. Mackin and Williams the same, and I don't understand it, but I kind of get it. They're sort of the mafioso of the human behavior and ecology world, and you don't want to step on the toes of anybody as a just a mere underling, but if you were the boss, right, or an >> If you're David Buss If you're David Buss, you can just start spouting
theories at whenever you want. But if you're sort of a new entrance at the bottom of the pyramid, yeah, yeah, it is. Okay, I've got I've got a question that I've never been able to work out. Why do you think women's sexual desire declines faster than men's in relationships?
>> I I genuinely don't know. I tweeted it as a question. I'm hoping that maybe Steve or Rob here can have better answer than I do. >> I genuinely don't know, either. I was >> Bro, if I'm three for three here, this is [ __ ] money. >> I mean, would it not make sense that women at the peak of fertility would have the strongest desire for sex? I mean, for for productive age. >> But this isn't this isn't So that effect
exists as well. >> But this effect is even more peculiar, where if they remate again later, the sex drive goes up again. It's just that it's like, oh, the first year or two >> sort of a a mate retention strategy, right? You're in a new relationship, so you would want to sort of boost your you know, whatever libido to keep your partner happy. >> adaptation to get them on the hook. >> To say, if you mate with me, there'll be
sex all the time. >> Yeah, but once you have a guy locked in and you've been married for 20 years, and you're no longer fertile, and you know, the the risks to you are very low if you're, you know, in >> I wish it was 20 years. The decline is The decline is >> precipitous. It's within the first year within the first The first year, I think it drops by half, and then it drops again, and then it drops again. But I I
talked about this earlier on. Your risks of pregnancy are much higher the older you get, too. >> Yeah, there's not a big cost for men. So, maybe you're looking at the women's side of it as the wrong Maybe it just doesn't decline for men cuz it's not such a big cost for men. >> Maybe it's like starts as a bargaining strategy, but then it Sorry, a retention strategy, but then becomes a bargaining chip later. I don't know if that's too
>> That's [ __ ] >> know if that's too out there, but maybe the maybe the strategic function of non-conceptive sex cuz there's two types of sex, right? There's conceptive sex and non-conceptive sex, and humans are weird that we do both. Um and this non-conceptive sex I could see it having this retention function early, but then once you're in the relationship, it's like, well, what am I doing with this?
And maybe it's maybe it's a bargaining chip or something. >> that study that you tweeted, which was women say that inside relationships they have around about the the amount of sex that they want, and men self-report that they would like to have about twice as much sex as they are, which suggests that the couple zero in on the preferred level of sex that the woman wants and that the man is making a compromise.
>> Yeah. Yeah, yeah, that was uh that was from Roy Baumeister, uh if I'm not mistaken. And yeah, yeah, I mean, I think he does he does um offer this as a as an idea that um the the that that sex can be a bargaining chip, and that kind of as you as the relationship prolongs and endures and so on that uh you know, sex is essentially used initially the reason why it's so high is to lock the male partner in and to you know, to to to you
get the commitment, and then, you know, once once he's uh he's committed, then you don't have to sex. You know, thinking about sort of the the costs and benefits of sex in general, and you know, the the costs are relatively low when you're in your 20s and you know, early 30s, but then as you age, uh pregnancy you know, gets higher. And then you hit menopause and >> Well, if you could presumably these
studies have controlled for age, though. >> Yeah, again, it there is the age effect is real. Um there's actually some new data out on that, which is not uh which is kind of kind of weird, actually, but we can talk about that separately. Um but yeah, no, it's a it's a within a relationship time span effect and it's surprisingly quick. So, it wouldn't necessarily just be like fertility decline. It seems to be like genuine um
I mean, maybe it's just non maybe there's not much evolutionary storytelling to be told here. It's like boredom, but I don't know what's the >> Well, are we talking like like abs in absolute terms? Like how much is it actually decline absolutely? >> It'll be on my Twitter if you want to pull up the graph. >> It's going to be hard to find because like relative to men, it totally makes sense that men are are always going to
have a stronger sex drive like in relationships, single, whatever the situation is men are all just because you know, from like an average error management perspective, um it's better for men to just sort of be ready to go at any time. But for women, I'm just wondering like how much of the decline occurs from time one to time two to time three and so on. >> Not not sure. Can I just add you know, the idea of
women using sex to get guys into relationships? I think it's a bit more symmetrical than that. I think that sex bonds both parties to it both both partners to each other. >> Mhm. I think >> The the king of sex differences telling us I don't think there's a sex difference there, which is kind of >> Yeah, yeah, there's always going to be >> I wanted to ask something and then you can tell me if this is
taking us too far afield here. On our earlier discussion, something occurred to me, which is you know, like what's the question we're interested in like regarding sex differences. Is it you know, how interesting that men are different now than they were decades ago or how interesting is it that sex differences are larger in this context but smaller in that one or are we interested in you know, what's like the
true sex difference? You know, you strip away everything and like once you really drill down, here's what it is. And I remember I had this conversation I think I was in college working as an RA years ago and you know, we were reading about weird societies, Western educated, industrialized, rich democracies and you know, there was this thing going on both of you all of you are aware of this of like oh, we can't really learn anything
about I mean, I'm simplifying somewhat. You can't really learn much about human psychology studying weird societies because this is a very sort of peculiar time in history. These are very strange, you know, weird societies in both senses of the term. Um, and so we need to collect data from other countries and other uh parts of the world and you know, look look historically and so on. Um, and I I I wondered like like when
we're trying to study psychology, when we're trying to study human nature, um, what is more reflective of human nature too? Is it um, you got to look at the hunter-gatherers, you know, whether extant hunter-gatherers or hunter-gatherers, you know, in pre-agricultural times when they were sort of scattered all over the world and had access to different kinds of land and territory and so on. Um, we got to study the hunter-gatherers in
environments of relative scarcity uh because that's what humans uh that's how humans lived for most of our evolutionary history. That's what human nature is. Or is it um, that can't be human nature because they lived in relative scarcity and they're they're only behaving that way because they're stuck in this kind of, you know, archaic uh pre-industrial, pre-literate society and actually we should be studying rich
societies because now that you have all of your needs met, now sort of the true uh traits and attributes and characteristics can finally emerge and um, you know, instantiate themselves. >> kind of like the gender gender inequality paradox applied except it's like the abundance paradox, let's say, where we're going, >> Like like what what what I mean, yeah, or or or does the question not even make sense? That there is no real true human
nature and that it'll always kind of interact with environments in weird Uh both of the ideas came to my mind as you were as you were saying that. Uh in terms of what the evolutionary pushes just directionally, I think it's good to look at all the different uh types of societies. Do you find it in hunter-gatherers? Does it persist even in weird societies? Like sometimes that's quite good evidence if in weird
societies often you have a push against traditional sex differences and they often emerge anyway, suggesting that the there is an innate nudge. Um, yeah, if they get bigger in uh abundance societies, it may be that they're expressing themselves more than the level for which they were selected to be So, it could be that human nature is able to express itself to an unnaturally extreme degree. Uh potentially.
Yeah, does that >> Yeah, yeah, that's interesting. Yeah, that makes sense. >> Yeah, I mean I spoke to the anthropologist William Buckner about this and he actually had a real gripe the Evo Psych studies on um on sex differences and mate preferences. And his gripe was that if the logic is that the EEA is what forged these, then they really should be more consistent. >> The environment of evolutionary
adaptedness. Which isn't which is you know, it's it's a it's a it's it's as like, oh, there was like 10,000 years in the Pleistocene where we're really but it's really it's like a composite of all selection that has happened essentially and and could probably summarize it better than me. Um but um his perspective, which I think is really fair, was that these sex differences in mate preferences are less consistently found
in these small-scale hunter-gatherer societies and they're more consistently found in these industrialized populations. And that feels like it gives me a gut feeling of like, there's something something's a little odd here because really if it was like these are formed by you know, the these sex differences in mate preferences evolved in a hunter-gatherer context. And then you go and ask the Shuar and they're
like, hey, we actually don't really agree with you about that. That's that's real alarm bells. I It's not it's not >> paradox, but just across time. >> Exactly. You don't find it at all at all in some of those societies, right? Some some sex differences aren't found. >> And some of them [snorts] even seem to be reversed like among the among the Wodaabe of the Sahel region, it's men who are, you know, wearing tons of
makeup and looking incredibly glamorous and they actually stand side by side in male beauty pageants and the the females actually pick um a partner based solely on the on the physical appearance. Well, not not solely, but you know, quite a lot. >> Speaking of some uh some odd rituals, Craig Jones, BJJ guy, was telling me he went to go and see a I didn't know whether we're talking hunter-gatherer, certainly something that's got some
primitive elements to it. And um the young women would walk through a kind of alleyway of men, guys on either sides, and the guys would pick sticks of a particular width, and they would whip the girls as they walked past, and the girls were not to make a sound. And if the girls didn't make a sound, they were seen as higher status because they could endure their their pain tolerance was higher. And every woman that was in this
tribe, it may be hunter-gatherer stuff, I'm not too sure. Every girl that was in the tribe, their back was looked like some similar >> around the 1700s. >> signaling mate value through formidability as as women do. And they could endure child birth.
>> Specifically, I can I can endure child >> We are very varied as a species culturally, right? It's amazing. Yeah, it does give me pause that mate preferences aren't found as consistently among hunter-gatherers. That definitely does give me pause. Uh the reason I don't just automatically just say, "Well, then it didn't evolve the way evolutionary psychologists have said." is that even though you do more
consistently find them in uh non-hunter-gatherer societies. Um you do find them very consistently in those societies, which I think would be surprising if there was no innate push. So, I'm not exactly sure how to square the circle there. Um and it does give me some degree of pause, but yeah, I do think there's something there. And and also, you know, there are other lines of evidence that do find it in more traditional
societies. They do find sex differences in mate preferences. Maybe not in sort of self-report contexts, but if you look at um uh folk tales and fairy stories from right across the world, different world regions, you do find that very that people put more importance on women's appearance than they do on men's, and more importance on men's resources and status than they do on women's. So, a lot of it does depend on
the kind of data that you look at. >> It just occurred to me uh Stephen, your book, I think you you point out uh you know, one one line of evidence for uh you know, the the sex differences being um you know, sort of evolutionary in origin and not entirely socially constructed is uh the way that that gay men, what they find attractive, appearance and youth and so on. But, um do gay women um like, what are they
attracted to? Do they like resources and status in their female partners? Does anyone know this? >> Uh yes, I think that they do. I don't and I don't think they put a like huge amounts of uh weight on on appearance >> even though they're evaluating women rather than >> Yeah, yeah, that that makes sense to me because I've seen you know, the gay men tend to be very fit and so on and and gay women less so. But, then what what
are they attracted to the kinds of things that that heterosexual women are attracted to in a partner? >> Like career ambition and success and those kinds of things. >> You know, I would love to see I would love to see a sex toy study between what straight women like and what gay women >> Because like, there's no reason that the sex toy should in any way resemble a >> Except for female anatomy. >> Yes, but it does the way that it's put
together, the humanness of it. >> Right, it shouldn't actually matter. Unless you manage to say that well, and this is true, the penis is the optimal vagina penetrating machine, right? It's been shaped It's been shaped across >> Yeah, over a billion years of penis penis evolution. Speaking of Speaking of the ways that uh humans are quite different, Mackin, can you tell me what this hamster thing is?
>> What hamster thing? >> Oh my gosh. >> What's this hamster thing? >> Does something something to do with a hamster from you as a kid? >> What hamster thing? >> Were you not Were you not obsessed with >> I was, yeah, but it's uh I didn't realize that this was going to be a huge >> I [laughter] didn't realize this was going to be a huge >> It's interesting that you say that >> Oh my god. >> Oh, nice.
>> Oh, nice. >> That's incredible. Well, I didn't realize that this was public. This is I feel like I'm in a fever dream and I'm like what the [ __ ] is happening. Um but yeah, no, I think that I was obsessed with hamsters as a child. >> Not sexually, right? Just to be clear, >> I was just >> I pivoted from the penis thing to the hamster the thing seamlessly there, but it wasn't for >> Yeah, I mean this is uh this is an
incredible gift. Thank you so much. Yeah, my dad got me a shirt that said Hamsterman on it and I think there are I think that there are some photos on Google Images floating around of me as a of me as a nine-year-old >> Be careful what you put on the internet, it's dangerous to do that. >> I didn't put I I didn't even put it there. This is uh I'm going to put this on right now. >> Heck yeah. Boys, I appreciate you all.
You're all awesome. Uh what do you want to plug? Where should people go to check you out? >> Uh Rob Henderson's newsletter on Substack, robkhenderson.com, and the paperback of my first book, Trouble: A Memoir of Foster Care Family and Social >> Uh my new book, A Billion Years of Sex Differences, my previous book, The Eight That Understood the Universe, uh and my Substack, which is the Nature Nurture
Niche newsletter. >> Uh my >> Nothing to sell. Follow me on TikTok. >> Yeah, you do. Uh have at Hamsterman on TikTok. All right, Mark and Murphy. Uh boys, I appreciate you all. These Roundtable things are so [ __ ] fun. It's the best. It's the best. I love you all. Thank you for coming. >> Thanks, Luke Smith. >> See you next time, everyone.
>> All right, we've done it. >> Congratulations, you made it to the end of a full podcast episode. You are not so thick top brain that you've completely dissolved into nothingness. Why not watch another one? Right here. Go on. Press it.