The New Science Of Female Attraction - Psychology Roundtable

I'm starting in Ony Fans and I'm selling merch. This has taken way too long and I'm very sorry, but it is so worth it. The designs are unreal. We've upgraded the blanks so they're even better quality than last time. And this bursting heart design with Japanese text in the middle is just so beautiful. Also, your girlfriend's new favorite hoodie. I apologize to anybody who buys this because I get the sense that your girlfriend's just going to steal it. All of it is available right now at mwmerch.com and it's only available for 6 days. So, get it. Once it's gone, you won't be able to buy it again. That's it. Completely sold out. Never to be printed in the future. mwmerch.com. Have you seen the type of dancing which is scientifically most attractive to women? >> I've not seen this. >> According to a study at Northre University, the dances found this one. This is the dance that women found most attractive. >> This is a man dancing. According to a study by Northre University, the dancers 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, turn their movements into computer avatars. The best dancers were the ones who used their whole body naturally instead of all quickly repeating the same arm and leg movements. M >> look like they're dancing to me. [laughter] >> Yeah. Well, Asian people have got natural rhythm, >> Rob. So, I imagine that's how you dance. >> What I was noticing is he's keeping his elbows close to the body. So, it looks like >> protecting the femoral >> art. He's he's a he might be a trained boxer, >> you know, which could be rib cage. >> Yeah. >> 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 Isma. And one thing that he was actually talking about was that the dance is quite feminine. And this mirrors something that you sometimes see in uh facial attractiveness research where the initial assumption is like oh masculinity is just gonna be amazing as much masculinity as possible but then in some areas with some traits femininity is favored and I think it's seems like dancing 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? >> Shadow boxing. >> Shadowing. >> 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 chants in the queue of a nightclub. >> Like doing football chants 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 about? I the what I think is it's guys posturing how hard they are. >> Like look at how formidable and aggressive I would be if only it wasn't air that I was [laughter] fighting. >> There's no opponents. >> Yeah. >> I think that it uh it ruins the positive illusion that they actually could win a fight. It's like >> they're shadow boxing. They're even losing their shadow boxing fight. >> Exactly. Exactly. >> They're like how many punches do you have to throw at this invisible person? [laughter] >> Uh does look maxing give women the ick Rob? >> I I think it does. Uh I'd be curious to hear Macken's thought Steve as well on this which is um clvicular the looks maxing influencer he became very popular uh you know uh through propagating this idea of looks maxing bone smashing 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 clavvicular 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 looks maxing and people mistakenly think it's the looks and not the fame that draw the women to him. for an ordinary man like a clavvicular fan who's doing all of the same looks maxing protocol, the bone smashing, the injection, any of the fame, >> the the the [laughter] just quietly bone smashing >> the um he recently I think got a nose job. I saw something going around 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. uh you know someone who is maybe uninterested in a relationship and is more just interested in themselves and so maybe it works for a clvicular because it made him famous but for the average guy I think that amount of looks maxing um would be counterproductive. >> What do you think it signals? I [clears throat] mean, I would say that it signals narcissism, vanity, um maybe sort of short-term oriented mating orientation, kind of you're more interested in being um immediately attractive to someone rather than someone who you would be interested in forming a long-term bond with. >> Yeah. And some of it's just a bit weird as well, right? The bone smashing, that kind of thing is just odd. >> Yeah. Yeah. Well, I I saw this clip recently. He was clic was in this interaction with this girl uh at this this bar in New York and he was telling her how reading is a total waste of time and I don't read. That's ridiculous. That's absurd. And I I couldn't help but comment at how shocking is it that the guy who hits himself in the head with a hammer isn't fantasy. [laughter] >> Yeah, >> sometimes people surprise you. >> Yeah, indeed. That's funny. It actually It's funny that you say that because on the main forum uh looks.org or 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 uh but being transparent about the things that you're doing to look good uh 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 the um what the prejudic is 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 beauty? >> Yeah. So, I believe that that was part of it. Uh and 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. Um, >> but I think that part of it is that they wanted to protect it. Uh, with the honestly 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 like kind of running faster guys would learn the exploit. >> Yeah, basically. Yeah. It's like if other guys figure out that wearing makeup makes you more attractive, then everyone should be wearing makeup, but then Yeah. Exactly. And you've seen that you've seen that already happen to women. And I mean women, this is something that I said on your podcast uh 3 or four years ago that women have been looks maxing for decades and decades and decades. This is before uh 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 >> minimum bar has been raised for what presentable is. >> Yeah. Exactly. So if all men start uh 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 the intuition about competitiveness and how it works is is probably correct. >> So we should do it just shouldn't talk about it. >> Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. >> 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 it 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 a guy was doing real social dynamics or reading the game by Neil Strauss and doing pickup artistry or even if if you'd said I went away to a uh sex train an 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 cured 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? >> 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. Uh but Zia and colleagues in China, they actually tested um 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, uh they they had a reduced datability effect. So it was an increase that was attenuated. Um so the attractiveness boost was still was still present. like they were still considered more datable. That effect was attenuated when you were aware of the effort that had gone. >> What was 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. Um 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 facelift, that may change the veilance slightly. But I'd be interested in Steve's thoughts. >> Yeah. So, I mean, I I completely buy that that effect is real. Um, but I'm not sure if that's an an evolved tendency to because the evolved tendency is just a gut level reaction to cues of health and fertility. I would 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. Um, and so finding out that it is not a real signal, 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 um I mean cheetah detection refers to a specific phenomenon that's different of course, but in terms of >> just general >> just general like what do you think what do you think would drive the effect of uh false beauty being uh 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 guess. Yeah. Yeah, I'm I'm intrigued by this finding that that it was attenuated but still overall a net benefit. >> And I think this suggests at least to me and I'm curious what what Steve thinks about this is um 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 um and for for whatever reason, you know, is 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 especially most men I think would 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 um reduces the attractiveness but maybe the inferences that we make about the personality of the person >> insecurity exactly yeah I I mean I'm speaking from memory about the study but I actually think that's precisely right I 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 and that that was part of the story So it was like, yeah, they're more attractive, but now I'm not as impressed by their personality under those condition. >> 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, but and was up, 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. >> It's probably worth saying that a lot of this stuff is going to be either subconscious or sort of like perisubconscious. It's a sort of thing that you intuit it. 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 ev You know what would be great? An evolutionary uh theory of X would be wonderful. >> 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 was presenting a poster at HBS on the evolutionary psychology of the So, it's something that people are it's something that people are interested in. 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 scooped basically. But, uh but yeah, she's doing some good work. >> Well, what's the what's the what is the evolutionary psychology? >> 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 egg, 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 in terms of evolved disgust reactions. >> Uh and yeah, it is interesting. And so looking at it in terms of um >> behavioral immune system. >> Yeah. Yeah. Behavioral immune system and uh evolved discussed reactions in response in response to sexual stimuli. uh the sort of stuff that's gross associated with disease and the life uh and moral disgust as well. So, I was going to say, is there 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 unggainainely, 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 things are a guy trying to pick up a moving ping pong ball. [laughter] >> Why is that an ache? Or why is a guy who misses a turn >> an like in a car like doesn't doesn't drive dextrously, why is that a particular egg? Like stuff that's a bit more lifestyly and certainly Yeah. more modern novel. I mean, Diana Flashman said this before. She's very very uh attuned to her husband Jeffy'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 unattracted to him for a little while and then comes like I I have some psychopathic tendencies. I'm aware of that. >> And then blew through just kept on going. I can't see that going the other in the other direction as much. I can't see. >> Oh, my 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 look. So, would it be something like, you know, seeing uh, you know, if your if your spouse, you know, gains some weight or maybe first thing in the morning looks a little disheveled or something along those lines that >> maybe, but then just men are so much less choosier. >> Yeah. Even in long-term relationships, I think that that gets offset. >> I think that's exactly right. Yeah. I I think that the the it's it's a reflection this sex difference in the ick which Steve says is now, you know, backed by good data and 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 um 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 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 luxing guys trying to rise to the top of the level as much as they can. What's the myth of the Chad? M well so I wrote this piece the myth of the Chad and I think I dropped it in the the the group chat which is um 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 um 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 capitalism um and so now you have uh you know with dating apps apps, online dating, people can meet each other more easily. We are um you know supposedly placing more value on looks as a result of social media and dating ads and so on. So the story was and we saw some statistical trends that supported this notion at least initially that uh a small percentage of men were getting the majority of female attention and that men 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 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. Um, 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, 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 chats, 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 socioexual orientation, very promiscuous and open to short-term mating, they're having a lot of sex with each other. >> Partly attractive as well, presumably. >> Oh, yeah. I'm Yeah, I'm sure you physically attractive. And what I suggest is that because um dating apps have made this uh uh uh you know sort of frictionless and because social media has created this kind of panopticon where you know men in particular um you know they 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 incelss 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 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 oh one 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 are themselves there are women in relationships there are women who are just uninterested in dating and uh and you kind of see the mirror image of this for men as well that 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 I do 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 the socioexual few right >> Alexander D the promiscuous 10% is the is the kind of meme version of it. Um, but I I actually 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 do you think the myth actually originates from? And what do you think explains the because it's it's not it's not just necessarily the myth of the chat. It's also the illusion of the chat where it's like people have this profound felt sense that they're being excluded from the mating market where some other, you know, some gorgeous guys are having tons of fun. >> Yeah. Well, you know, I think uh part of it is um 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 interterpret the findings of what people see on Tinder or on Hinge which do show you know on Tinder something like uh uh uh 4% of the men get the vast majority of the swipes um and then uh much smaller numbers um or rather larger numbers of women get get liked 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 you guys have probably seen this that okay data that's kind of you know 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 most women are only attracted to that small section of 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 uh as well that you're seeing guys like they take these very anomalous interactions um 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 there. 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 I, you know, she was leading me on on the app, but then she greeted me, but then she didn't talk to me anymore. And you tell this story, it's 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 um you know this this promiscuous 10% this um of of on the side of the women that is a highly sought after group and you know there is you know a small um fraction of women who are more promiscuous than other women and the very attractive men have access to that group. Uh and the um unattractive men who see this, they get jealous and they want access to that small group of women as well. Um but they mistakenly think that that's all women that all women >> realizing that there's a huge cohort of women that have had zero or one partner in the last it's sort of this um you know the this availability bias thing of like well I'm seeing all this stuff happening online all the chatter about sex and chads and whatever but you're not seeing this dark matter of women who aren't posting who aren't on the apps who are [laughter] just like living their lives. >> Dark matter. Yeah, I've learned from over a thousand podcast episodes that the easier you make your health routine, the more consistent you'll be. It's like golf, right? You want to keep it simple and not mix a bunch of pills. You want the eye of the tiger, not the DUI of the tiger. That's why I'm such a huge fan of AG1. One scoop contains 75 vitamins, minerals, probiotics, and whole food source ingredients in a single daily drink. And now they've taken it a step further with AG1 NextGen, backed by four clinical trials. 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If there's 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, uh 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 monogous marriage was basically affirmative action for men? [laughter] >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, so this there was a recent paper about this uh where they they suggested that marriage was uh uh affirmative action for uh sexual redistribution. Yeah. Sexual redistribution of women. They also used the phrase DEI for men. Um that you know by definition most guys are not in the top 10% or top 20%. And so monogous marriage was a way to um you know sort of pair men up with women one-on-one. And it was a form of I'll sometimes tongue and cheek call it sexual communism, sexual socialism [laughter] >> for the deregulation of the the dating marketplace. >> And uh and now that we've you know we we've kind of sexual capitalism. We're in [laughter] Yeah, we went through a ph I think maybe maybe arguably starting in the 1960s we deregulated things and now we're in the sort of the late stage and I think now people on well for a while on the right the kind of um I don't know the manosphere right have been um calling for some kind of a return return with that that V thing and then um on the left increasingly I think women are becoming fed up and they're they're sort of you know finding ways to you know reinvent um you know what's that phrase demisexual heard this phrase is demisexual. >> I'm only going to sleep with people that I'm emotally connected to. Yeah. I'm not going to have sex with a stranger. You know, it requires its own special. >> And then there's sapioexual. That's being attracted to people that you're intellectually stimulated by. >> And then there's solo poly. >> Solo poly. Solo poly is my favorite. That's [ __ ] hilarious. Solo poly is just one person sleeping around. [laughter] >> Okay. Yeah. or or or like a just like a a normal lethario dude. >> Manhoring. >> Yeah, exactly. Just manhoring him out. Um but yeah, the the I wonder whether >> part of some of the push back 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 onetoone, 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 choosier. >> I'm not sure cuz I think uh if that were the case, then women wouldn't be so keen on the idea and 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 monogous norms from women. >> Yeah. >> Given that the benefits at least traditionally I'm trying to go through latestage everythingism to work out where the culture has sort of come into land. Do you understand what I mean? >> I do. I do. Yeah. I've seen uh a paper arguing that um polygamy actually can be beneficial to women because women uh can choose to marry a high status guy who's already got a wife >> and a high status rich kind of guy um rather than having to uh either be able to have a thousand >> totally wives. Yeah. And it takes away that choice if if somebody wants it. Um it means that the only choice is have no partner or have somebody further down the totem pole. >> Yeah. I I will highlight that this this discussion is is bordering on a really controversial debate in the evolutionary social sciences uh which is whether humans are more like maximally constrained polygynists 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. I think 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 um but in as much as we have a default state it's pretty clearly monogamy and you'll hear different evocial 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 in this. I personally think that the monogamy case is stronger uh 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 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, um, most of what people do is still just do the boring thing, >> fall in love, are largely interested in one other person for at least for a while. Uh yeah, I I agree. I agree with my views on >> your views which you gave [laughter] me and then I repeat them and yeah that's what >> 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 uh you know the the romantic feelings can dissipate and then form a new relationship else kind of swinging to >> Yeah. Yeah. Very common. I've seen data as well um in those kind of societies though um often like a small number small but like non-trivial number 5% or so of first marriages do last for life. So um I think serial monogamy is probably more common. Uh and I think we know that cuz most people fall in love more than once in their lifetimes. >> Mhm. >> Um but it does sometimes happen and we have a polygenous streak as well I think. Um but yeah, so when when the guard rails are off and there are no strict rules, you tend to find that most relationships are pair bonds and largely exclusive pair bonds. >> Um but you do also find that uh you have a small level of polygyny and a small level of and yeah small level of full life mating but switching. Can you chat GPT? Uh, how how many people how many romantic partners does the average person fall in love with across their lifespan? >> Because until you had reliable contraception, >> Yeah. >> 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. that the honeymoon period typically lasts for around about that long. >> Yeah, it's like 85% fertility for a couple for one year. Then it jumps up to in the '9s after 2 years. >> Here we go. Uh 2026 Kinsey Institute study of over 10,000 US adults found the average number of passionate love experiences is 2.05. >> Uh 14% reported never having been passionately in love. 28% reported being passionately in love once, 30% twice, 17% three times, 11% four or more times. uh 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 minate, forget culture, forget anything over the top. Like those people would have cycled through multiple partners across their lifespan. Surely this is just the most unencumbered 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 or 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. >> Mhm. that it hasn't happened twice or more. >> I think that's interesting because it aligns with the data I had mentioned about number of sex partners as well that most people say 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 small fragment of people who say that they've had sex or rather well have sex have had three or more sexual parts in the past year but then also fallen in love three or more times uh in their lives. So I think this is like really monogous like what what's going on tilt toward monogamy but then maybe a small percentage of people are more polygenist or high socioexual orientation less less >> monogous. >> Yes. And I guess one thing in this kind of discussion is to remember individual differences. >> Yes. Yeah. >> Yeah. That humans aren't all the same. Different mating strategies. Yeah. >> What's this new study that shows preference for resourceful partners softens when women are richer? Uh, are you talking about the PNAS paper that that we did? Yeah. Well, I mean, sexy new thing. >> 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 basically >> say 30 to 50 minutes [laughter] there, too. I was like, all right, kick back, crack open. >> 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 basic 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 state of mate preferences and in some revealed measures as well. And then women um have a stronger state of mate 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 in 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. Uh 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 there. And then you can look at the uh individual level studies as well where you look at when people have more money, what happens to their mate preferences? And I I could talk about that more. It's actually a bit controversial. So there's there's different ways of measuring this. Um, but basically what it finds is is that uh it 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, uh, individual women who are rich. Um, that doesn't seem to happen. However, there there are some caveats there. So 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, well, 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 uh 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 and make preferences. So basically participants were put inside of a virtual environment where their economics were different. Now I'm I'm sure the timer has probably gone for 5 minutes. I feel like I'm giving a massive speech here. Uh but it is just a complicated background to review. And what we found was actually something that was slightly inconsistent with the evoc 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 um 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 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 sexes. >> It's interesting that >> 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 but >> can you explain >> as in social rule 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 crosscultural 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 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 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 were like well then I don't really need to date for money that's fine. >> Interesting. But do you think that that's an evolved tendency? I would kind of think that there's a evolutionary push toward um men being uh sorry women being more interested in resources and status than men are. But there also just you just think about things and you just might 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 be 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 anory. Yeah. So I take uh I take an evolutionary anthropological approach. My whole my whole background is anthropology. And so it's slightly different from the evoc approach where there there's actually this maneuver that's used in evoanthro work which is called the phenotypic gambit where you basically say well I don't really know what's happening inside the mind. 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 let me change the inputs and see if the outputs match what you would expect from a strategic >> perspective. Yeah. Um, so look, it could be the case um 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 fitness. Um, otherwise it couldn't have it couldn't have evolved. If strategic thinking didn't improve fitness, it wouldn't have evolved. Um but there there have been some scholars like Gangistad in 2006 who have played with the idea that there might actually be a spec 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 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. just the exact 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 paper. >> Dude, don't [ __ ] test me, okay? >> I know this [ __ ] [laughter] on on this point about resources. So if you 95% of people don't get enough fiber, which is why Momenus built Fiber Plus, because hitting your daily fiber target through food alone is actually kind of hard, even harder than your last toilet trip. Fiber isn't just a digestion thing. It's the foundation of your gut health, which drives how well you absorb nutrients, how stable your energy is, and how quickly you recover. If your gut isn't dialed, everything else you're doing is working at a fraction of its potential. Fiber Plus is a threein-one formula built to address digestion, gut barrier strength, and blood sugar stability all at once. That's why I plan to make my next big dump momentous. Best of all, they offer a 30-day money back guarantee. So, you can buy it and try it for 29 days, and if you don't love it, they'll give you your money back. Plus, they ship internationally. Right now, you can get up to 35% off your first subscription and that 30-day money back guarantee by going to the link in the description below or heading to livemus.com/modernwisdom and using the code modernwisdom a checkout. That's l i v o m n o.com/modernwisdom and modernwisdom a checkout. You know, this this is generally sort of controversial, but this the idea of the evolutionary adapted environment or the environment of evolutionary adaptation. Um, 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 hunters, but generally my understanding is they, you know, shared their uh spoils. And you know, it wasn't until after the agricultural revolution that we were able to stockpile large amounts of resources. >> Well, this 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 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 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, um, 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 whether when there's local famine, they shift to preferring larger women, right? And it that seems to suggest that there may have been some fluctuations in how valuable larger women were that selected for some. >> And also it suggests that there was fluctuations in how large women were. >> Yeah. Exactly. >> There were 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 >> if you're if you manage 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 because they've been pushed out by the agriculturalists to these places that are really difficult to live for the most part. But >> oh, that's so [ __ ] interesting. Okay, so when we do studies of modern hunter gatherers, by design, they're not in 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 an abundance of food and fresh running water. And even if you're not yet at the point of doing agricultural induced abundance, >> Mhm. you're still so overwhelmed from just from a resource perspective. There's [ __ ] deer running everywhere and rabbits and berries and >> and there is paleo anthropological 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 don't know. Again, the module thing it's it's it's tricky, right? >> 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 adaptive rationale or if there's lots of abundance, you would want a more attractive a more uh heavier woman. >> Oh, right. Um well, that's that's separate from the separate from the uh PNAS paper. >> Indeed. Yeah. Yeah. >> Um so the rationale there Yeah. Exactly. So the the so some people call it that uh and others call it the insurance hypothesis and there's some kind of uh disagreements as to what exactly is going on. >> Scarcity specifically. So in environments of scarcity, they prefer uh >> did I say the other way around? Yeah. Yeah. Scarity. 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 crosscultural anthropological stuff and see like oh yeah among the South African Zulu they're saying that up to or in Jamaica or in St. Kits um they're saying that you know women who have BMIs in the 30s are are quite beautiful. And then you go somewhere like really like affluent Singaporean women or something like that, they have different preferences. So um or Korea or some place. Then you see it 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 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 it definitely can. So that that's that's a >> why does it flip then in conditions of uh non. 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 because it's a very reliable signal to youth and null parity. >> Um so it's it's one of those things. >> But isn't that the case in all societies? And isn't some degree of um chubbiness a sign in all societies regardless of their uh abundance or scarcity that the person is going to be able to get uh pregnant? I'm just not sure why it would I'm not really persuaded by the adaptive rale for why it would switch and also why it was switched so quickly and you just get a little bit hungry and suddenly your preferences switch and then eat some food and then they suddenly switch back. >> The the switch the switches are very small in those in those studies. So we're talking about like a 10 pound 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 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 uh interviewers really push back on me like you know isn't this just that 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 they are they are given a chart of body types and asked what's attractive and to what degree >> that's what they prefer that's all that's left [laughter] >> yeah status thing right I wonder if it's um that certain body types get linked with status in different uh cultures and cultures where there's not a lot of abundance to be able to get bigger uh indicates that you have good access to resources becomes associated with status and it's the reverse in more abundant societ total 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, you know, withstand temptation, conscientious personality. And then environments of scarcity. If you're big, that means you're conscientious because you went out and acquired [laughter] the calories 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 beautifification 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 in 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 fattening huts, for example, um where it's like restrict movement and increase calories in order to try and be more. >> 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 >> view it of a hut. Um I don't know if it's I don't know if it's always literally the case. Um but but but yeah there's there's actually even I was reading one account and I can't remember which um I think it was Moritania but I'm not sure where it was them talking about how 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 this right so it was like so it was like they really wanted to see >> a supermodel beauty pageant going on Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So hot dog eating contest. >> Yeah. So [laughter] it's so it's just a really >> I imagine an actual supermodel contest as well. The same thing. >> Yeah. So I would say that the stat the status thing is interesting. I have no doubt that there there's that that could be part of it. But when I look at the full range of evidence and include the hunger studies, it's like well >> the status benefits of thinness or fatness are the same when you're going into the dining hall versus coming out and the make preference is still shifting. I think there's probably some kind of mechanism there. got I got [ __ ] ripped on the internet uh until the guy realized that the clip had been cut both before and after what I meant to what I actually said about saying I think that OMIC is more uh pushed back against by people who are in shape than people who are out of shape because it derates the signal uh of I got here naturally and there is a sense that that is somehow superior that is somehow better and uh I that whole world of what does when you can manipulate the smoothness of your skin using makeup or face tune 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 2in 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 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 hypervigilant that there are more ways to cheat the system to bypass what this signal is supposed to mean. Well, are you actually in good shape or are you on a lot of TRT? Like do you actually have the ability to gain muscle or are you somehow are you speedr runninging that? Are you actually youth ficundity nullarity or is have you got foot reduction surgery and and have you been on you know what I mean like all of the different I didn't I found this out a couple of 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 feet. >> Did you hear this from Will Costello? Yeah. Yeah. >> Is it true? >> Well yo he's got the sex doll study as well where sex dolls have tiny tiny feet and it's like why would that be? And he's like unusable feet. Hm. >> Supernormal. >> It's part of the supernal. Exactly. Fisharian runaway but in reverse going [laughter] no foot at all. We actually Yeah, that's our optimal. Going 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. It's been for a while it was 29 that women are out earning men by about a,000. 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. So, New York, DC, Boston, LA, I think Seattle as well. I I don't know the state of Austin, but it wouldn't surprise me if Austin show the same pattern as well for under 30s. >> I think it's squeaking into the 31s, 32s now. >> 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 reduced as women have gotten richer. There was some studies a little while ago, Vincent Harinam put this one out in his paper from like well article from like six years ago that suggested that very highpowered career women had an increased preference for more high-powered men. So ambitious people desire more ambitious partners. Yeah. >> Uh specifically women to men. The the uh effect didn't reverse. Uh 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 selfworth around ambition that inevitably it's going to bleed into what they find sexually attractive too or the desirable in a partner or maybe that they're such an outlier that they breached some threshold of being able to talk to the normies about what they're going through. You know what I mean? 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. >> Yeah. >> 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. >> I don't know what any of this means. >> Okay. So the it is true that higher income women uh in so in our experiment um there was a broad like they they were less interested in mating up um economically. So higher income women less interest in mating up. Um but uh in it's true also that in the wild higher income women tend to still have strong preferences about this like what you see in the real world is like uh high achieving highly educated highincome women tend to marry men who are still doing at least as well as they are. >> So 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 poorer 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 control. 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 Coyoma's research, in Lou's research, they want hotter guys too. And and in fact, >> what do you think's going on there? >> Well, the I mean >> there's an old David Buzz study that literally said like attractive women want it all. Like that was the title. >> But rich women rich women also want it all. And I think that part of it is that >> if you're rich and attractive, you're [ __ ] >> Well, 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, it's like that's a very realistic preference. Whereas for a woman who's working at a gas station, that's a very unrealistic preference. 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 lose data for example so it's like >> plain 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 >> it sounds like it increases not declines >> so it's increases absolutely but then maybe decreases relatively >> the rank ordering >> yeah so it's like if I there there may be able to relax that preference relative >> relative to other preferences but not relative to their own level. >> Yeah, exactly. >> It doesn't 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 that we need to hit and we can portion this out however we want between the two different >> parties. In as much as there's a winner. Yeah. In as much as there's a winner on that bickering between the EVOSes and the and the social psychologists, the EVOSes 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 and it didn't. But there is some caveat. >> What's fascinating here is it's just people with high standards have high standards. Yeah. The high standards that got them to be valictorian. 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 seauite or become partner and then when it came to choosing a partner they have high standards high standard highiz standards it's >> like just kind of it's a sort of thing that your parents would understand >> they have high standards for themselves and their own uh uh accomplishments then also for a partner >> you see this with the research on perfectionism that perfectionists h it comes in at least two broad buckets but maybe three I think Actually uh 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 onetoone 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 perfectionists. >> Yeah. 100%. >> Mhm. >> You might not believe me, but this is what peak sleep optimization looks like. Not talking about the night gown that's just for sex appeal. I'm talking about my eight. The EightLe Pod 5 comes with a smart cover you throw on your mattress that actively cools or heats each side of the bed up to 20 degrees. And now they've added the world's first temperature regulating duvet and pillowcase. So you've got 360° coverage for deep uninterrupted rest. It's like being Walt Disney without the cryogenic chamber and the racism. 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Another thing I'll say on that is that the there is also the caveat of the I mean I I actually really would love to hear Steve's thoughts on revealed preferences stated versus if we can if we can gently steer the convers if I can ask the captain >> [ __ ] left to steer that I've actually wanted to hear his opinion but [laughter] >> but there is the uh there is the >> there is 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 uh different income brackets. Yeah. And in the top 20% of women like the top quintile they are already on average are dating down very slightly. >> The bottom two quintiles of men are doing the same thing. >> Yeah. They're dating up. So, there's this really weird kind of thing there where it's like um 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 does stronger mean in that context, >> but they don't necessarily the fact that they um on average uh uh going with somebody who's somewhat earning somewhat less than them >> isn't necessarily because that's what they prefer. That's what what's available. >> There's not at those kind of echelons. There's just not much available at all. >> Tall girl problem. >> Tall girl problem. Exactly. >> Okay. So, if there's a shortage of tall men, then you'll settle for a guy who's not as tall. >> Yeah. Like tall women are probably also less likely to >> Yeah. Exactly. Not cuz they prefer shorter men. So, I don't think that's revealing a preference necessarily. >> Well, what about the uh what would you Could you I don't know if you've been following Paul Eastwick's work on stated versus revealed preferences. I' I've been, you know, I've been reading a lot of his uh 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 then 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 and preferences have evolved if uh 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 >> joiner? 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 work. >> 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 done 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 lot of the studies that he 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 necessarily. 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 so 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 Kursban 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 evolutionarily psychology predicted stuff. Um, with the reveal preferences, I think that um, well, it I don't [laughter] 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, 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 uh 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 partnerships that have dissolved already and >> Well, you got to catch them as they lose their job. >> Yeah. Or before they do. Exactly. And so you're just looking at the subset that remains 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 the correlation is going to be weaker and other things are going to um become more important seem seemingly more important. But maybe that's a problem with 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. >> Yeah. Uh last year. >> Yeah. So that was one to kind of remind people. I know that I know that you spoke to Eastwoke about it on the show, so people people may already know. >> It's the first episode that 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 >> academics yet. [laughter] >> 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. Um and he also found some weird findings like that the number one thing people wanted was someone by that measure was someone good in bed. Yeah. So the the overall overall romantic evaluation which is intuitive but and >> it's very 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 chad and the [ __ ] girls being ran through and guys are manhores and all the rest of it. Almost all sex. The whole g 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 >> exoplanet. >> Yeah, it is. Am I wrong? >> That everyone on the other planets almost all sex occurs inside of relationships, right? like the global amount of sex that happens in a relationship, >> it's almost all inside of one form of relationship or another. >> Uh did you see uh Jake Kuzloski from Keeper AI put up the uh ask men if they'd marry down on three axes? >> I think I DM him every time he tweets out new AI, [laughter] can I get another look at that? Can I go a little bit closer? >> 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 five grand per date for the first for each date for the guy on top of the 50. >> 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're going to pay 75. Anyway, uh 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 dealbreaker for women and a non-issue for men. Consistent across all three, >> right? So, especially when you bundle those together, like that is a real [ __ ] coariant bastard. But a multivariant bastard. Uh what I realized thinking about Eastwick 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 >> Yeah. No, it makes 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 [laughter] >> all day. I'm on fire today. One and a half newtonics. Don't [ __ ] with me. >> You've been anticipating a lot of things. Um and uh it's interesting because 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 incentive. >> Yeah. So, I'm very interested in stated versus revealed preferences. I'm very interested in which which people assigned to what. And there's actually precedent for this scholarly precedent where in Bus and Schmidt's preferences and behavioral manifestations. I think that they had um classified ads 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 that's an action. Yeah, in a way. But I don't know. >> Is this a unique is cuz a matchmaking I guess arranged marriages are a kind of matchmaking, but they're not done with, hey, here's my [ __ ] list of requirements type thing. Is this a new category that's somewhere in between stated and revealed preferences? When it when we 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? >> Converting your stated preference into a revealed preference by going out into the world and making it uh making it happen and putting skin in the game to do so. >> That feels closer to stated. I mean, revealed would be because you can I can give you can be my uh coach or whatever the matchmaker 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 stated. >> 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 Flashman, female dating strategy tells women to date only men who ask first, text within 3 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 chicks, >> right? >> 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 would be a fantastic study to do. How many swipes have you got? How many first dates have you got? It 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 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 uh 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 uh significantly higher uh pretty pretty sizable effect sizes 3.4 >> uh higher for the Tinder users than the non-Tinder users. these are, you know, more psychopathic, more mchavelian, more narcissistic. Uh, but it I didn't say, as I recall, I didn't say anything about sort of uh were the successful users um higher on the dark triad traits than the less successful users. >> Um, but you know, this this is presumably people don't want spouses who are high on the dark triad traits. Um, but that's what >> those are the people who are using these these apps. You they're more like use them. There is uh there is plenty of research I think though that um shows revealed preferences for some of the traditional evilite predictions uh like the fact that uh guys who are wealthier more likely to get married, more likely to stay married, more likely to have kids, more likely to um get remarried if they divorce. Um whereas it doesn't predict that anywhere near there as well. Uh for women, women's wages don't um and women's looks are a better predictor of whether they get married. uh and the uh the wealth of their marital partner. Um that is the case for men. Men men's [clears throat] looks don't predict that anywhere near there as well. Uh and all of that's revealed preferences, right? That >> that Whitmouth study looking at uh facial attractiveness was 12 times more influential on swiping behavior than height is. >> Facial attractiveness. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. So they did. So I I I tweeted that and someone replied um photo competition app shows photos for the most important factor and I was like you did kind of get them there but it is but it is an interesting it is an interesting study right so >> trying to find some white pills. >> Yeah. So what they did was they tried to >> so what they what they did was they tried to essentially set up a gamified um dating app. Importantly there was no height filters on this app. So the so that's usually how people see height 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 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 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 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 this study and it's literally like 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 accurate 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 >> Pokemon trading content. >> Yeah, exactly. I wonder if to to your question, I wonder 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 presumably men aren't happier, especially the men who aren't this before. Tinder Tinder released the height filter as a April Fools about a decade ago and then just as a feature available to premium users like three years ago. And I've heard that six foot mark is like it's somewhat arbitrary because I I read this and I don't know exactly guys lie. >> Well, guys lie but then the six foot 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 510 and a half or 5'11 and they just go 180 because it's a nice clean number. You know if they wanted 6 feet they go 182.5 cm. Uh and so even the 6T thing is somewhat arbitrary. >> What you're saying is that we should change the units of measurement [laughter] >> to make more guys Got to get on the metric system. It's going to be scientists, drug dealers, and short kings. You got to be Europe maxing. You're not Europe maxing. [laughter] >> You're not metric maxing. Dude, what the [ __ ] are you doing? >> That would really be DEI for man 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 drink mix with everything that you need and nothing that you don't. This orange salt in a cold glass of water is like a sweet, salty, orangey nectar. And I really tell the difference when I take it versus when I don't. 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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 that maybe neglected another part of another area. >> It's an interesting study there, right? So basically, >> can you explain for the normies? >> Sure. Um, so >> normalies. [laughter] So yeah, normally normally he uh did a did a study where he gave people a budget of mate dollars and then asked them create create the um ideal mate that you can with this budget. Some people got a big budget and where that was the case men and women they both um wanted everything. They um they wanted good looks, they wanted uh they wanted like a good job, high status, blah blah blah that the works. Um but if they had a smaller mate budget, which I think is probably more like most people's situation in life, no offense, um if they had that, they um sex differences became more pronounced. And so people uh men would spend more to get an attractive partner uh whereas women would would spend more to get a um a partner with resources and status. >> Yeah. Yeah, he also did a study where he had people allocate for themselves if I'm not mistaken. And it it mirrored the uh 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 um 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 supercars with expensive Rolexes at a nightclub or guys spending tons of time doing the beautifification thing. We know we have an intuition about what is effective. >> Yeah. >> It's that the failures just continue to stack up in really interesting ways. >> Well, this is something that we proposed actually in our PNAS paper. uh 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 Bus 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 >> that's interesting >> and then also we're now seeing this tremendous behavioral conversion 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 financing to women. >> And then, well, maybe and then uh but men are definitely even if you say for the women's side, that's not true. On the men's side, we see that men have tripled their parenting effort since the 1970s. >> Um and male beautifification, I know that it's really trendy right now with the whole looks maxing thing. Uh but this is actually just the newest instantiation of a documented trend going back to the 1990s. You can read the historian Lin Luciano's work on this uh where male beautifification 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 behav his daily routine would be unrecognizable to his grandfather. Like the average >> shave your head, dude. Shave your head. you don't need to [laughter] think about. >> 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 every every me like every other me member of Gen Z essentially is like a recreational bodybuilder. That's >> women do find that attractive though, right? Um, they do find uh some some muscularity 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 that handbag. >> Yeah, >> I don't think I don't think so either. Maybe those are 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 in the male beautifification, 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 your 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 attractiveness. And that has been self- beautifification. I'm going to make myself look nicer. Now, I >> beauty is the beauty is the flashy one. Uh 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 um in Lee's 2015 study, um 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 than than women did in the 1950s. 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-ol men um are spending the same amount as uh decades past or even slightly less. The average is getting brought up by >> primarily by college educated men. >> Although those those women don't necessarily have as much money. >> Yeah. Well, but then the men are also spending less. Well, yeah. >> It's part of it though just that people are um 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 should >> to a [clears throat] degree. Can I ask on this handbag point? I think I heard this from Tanya Reynolds that um >> she suggested that that it's not it's not that uh men obviously aren't attracted to you know these luxurious handbags and uh in some cases women uh you know they're they're buying these handbags or wearing them to impress women but it's about deterring deterring look at how much my husband is in the hole for this stupid bag [laughter] >> that he doesn't understand what it is. None of his friends understand what it is. I'm not even doing it for other guys. Yeah, >> 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 other women. Whereas >> women would compliment handbags more than they would compliment boobs. >> Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Imagine that we're in an environment of uh you know increasing mate competition if you were in a few engagement. Why the massive engagement? >> Look at how much he's in the hole. Yeah. So ultimately still >> But what's the benefit though of intimidating other women and saying, "Look at this great handbag." >> To keep them away from the the partner that if 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 handbag." >> 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 poach him or to attempt to poach him. >> I see. >> So, it could be a mate it could be mate poaching deterrence. It could also be just kind of classic high status to low status threat behavior. Um, I remember literally the 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 why do you think women love their handbags? Because I knew that she was really into the beautifification stuff and that she really had her head around those things and she just immediately said scare young women just immediately. >> Scare [laughter] and so I was like, okay, interesting. And I do think that it is um I I feel like I've 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 like 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 bag, throws it on the table. >> It's like I like I I run this [ __ ] Like it's kind of like that atmosphere. >> But there's also a sense at least with guys, guys that 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 peeds. 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 to. But I totally didn't think about the fact that guys going to the gym as a form of male beautifification. 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 beautifification, it's got to be 4x, 5x, 6x, 10x, what it would have been 100 years ago for male beautifification. >> Yeah. I mean, that's what the best uh that's what the best study on beautifification did. It's it's Marco Wall's study. Um it's and she found that in all except for seven countries, women beautified more. Uh there were there were seven that men beautified more um slightly. Um, and this was the weightlifting side of it essentially was the was the behavior where men were uh >> a big Pac-Man chunk that's been taken out the side. >> Yeah, it is. And uh and some might say, "Oh, well, a lot of men beautify. A lot of men hit the gym, sorry, for health, not beautifification. 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 like bodybuilding?" And so they they they really were able to drill down on that. And there was one other behavior, this is so counterintuitive, where among the people who did it, men actually did this behavior more. So think about different beautifification behaviors. >> I won't bore you by making you guess, but it was makeup. Um, among people who wear makeup, the men who wear makeup spend way more time on it than the women. Um, >> just because they're less good at it. [laughter] >> They haven't grown 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 I told her, "Look, you're picking up on like male beauty influencers essentially like like who is and so they just have different usual." >> Yeah. >> But I thought that was interesting is that the um is that in terms of numbers among the people >> James Charles on repeat? >> Yeah. It's just James Charlesing in 16 hours a day and causing the difference. But it was it was interesting. So it was basically Yeah. there was this uh that the second biggest difference technically was the weightlifting. The biggest was the makeup. Um but it was because of that effect. >> Going back to the clavvicular thing, 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 pounds 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 threw documentary and sort of the caricature of hyper masculinity at the moment a lot of what guys are doing it's the male to-male transsexual as Mary Harington calls it. It's like the most caricatured parts of of the masculine look to the point where that hyper masculineized 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. [laughter] So that the David Putt's work would suggest it's more about formidability or or rather the the the increase in formidability would outpace the 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 best. Can you do you know it? >> Yeah, I know. Yeah. Yeah, I can do it. Uh so David Putts uh and his colleagues famously did this study uh where they brought in a group of men and recorded them in these videos uh and very very short clips and then they brought in a different group of men to watch the men uh in these videos. And then they asked these men who were watching these other men in the clip um you know they asked them a question which is uh 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 arranged from very likely to very unlikely. Uh, and then they showed um a group of women these videos as well of these men in these short clips. And they asked these women, "Okay, this man in this video uh how sexually attractive is this man?" And then uh these researchers followed up with those men in the videos 18 months later and um 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 uh predicted how many sexual partners they had whereas how sexually attractive they were to these women uh had no relationship at all. So formidability >> [ __ ] insane study. >> Now as you know as we'd mentioned this is uh this this was on um college students you know fraternity uh members but >> it was like a specific frat wasn't it? No, [laughter] I wasn't. I didn't specific. Okay. But um you know, this is consistent with David Putt's other work showing that formidability seems to have this huge effect on sexual success. >> This is my take. This is my take on clvicular and the luxing world that they have closed their eyes, thrown the dart, and hit the bullseye. if they've flooked optimizing formidability for male attention over attractiveness to only land in the middle of David Puttz's study finding out that formidability is better predictive of male mating success than attractiveness is also this form of like psychological formidability too where you know I've I've seen how well regarded I am >> yeah and they'll keep their distance from from Leo 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 joke. I can I can poach 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 success. >> Yeah. Well, haven't you been studying female teacher sex scandals? [laughter] >> Study. >> That was that was behind the payw wall, but I love Chris Williamson and I love modern wisdom, so you know, let's bring it out. Yeah. [laughter] 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 Luis Perry had written. I believe this was in the spectator. You know she was kind of riffing on this idea of of Only Fans 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 only fans it's this supernormal stimulus in the way that porn is for men. So porn you know novelty all these different naked women and so on it's very exciting for men whereas only fans as a creator can be very exciting for women cuz you're getting large huge amount of sexual tension 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 women. 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 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 those 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 and you see um and you see a uh [laughter] now >> now that look >> I look like a chef that look that look with your race. >> Yeah. >> 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 Tinton. >> Wait, [laughter] I don't know this. >> Pull up the [ __ ] Pull up the dude from Tinton in the hat. You can keep going for now. >> Um Oh, I lost. Uh okay. So, um you know, 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 so 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 to. >> The reason that 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 like >> why why you could go and get anyone. >> Yeah. Well, well, so for this 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 uh, you know, someone who's uh, attractive and whatever, and then like, you know, this there's that kind of like vulnerability and that 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 and 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-g 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 >> Did I read I'm into like horrendous chick books like just like like every Freda McFaden book. I just blast through. And uh I read The Teacher. Have you read The Teacher? No, [snorts] >> dude. It is. Fried McFan's the person that did The Housemaid, right? Of which Sydney Sweeney just starred in. And then she did The Housemaid's Revenge. And then she did The Housemaid Cometh backth and 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 prot the main guy that usually all the guys in the books turn out to be the bad guy. Like that shock, horror, Freedom McFat, 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 16year-old but doing it when she was 15. And then it turns out these do 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 whoa that's okay that's a little strange >> the final for people that want to read the teacher listen 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 wife and the jock was 16 too. >> And 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 to come in and [ __ ] 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 club. Like, you know what I mean? It was a guy that worked in in like the local shoe store or whatever and at the end you find out it's the high school jock. >> I was like, >> "Yeah, >> 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 cuz it definitely made me think made me go, "Huh, >> 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 32y old woman >> the 16-year-old boy >> described as attractive in the book. >> Yes. Yes. And classically overlocked. >> Okay. >> You know like um >> she wants the attention and fits with your theory. >> Yeah. Well, I mean this idea of like so I I don't know like cuz every time we see a story it's always an attractive female teacher and maybe it's possible again there's this dark matter the unattractive the headines 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 have more opportunity, right? Like if you're an attractive person, you just have more opportunity in general. And so, you know, that also sort of, you know, 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. >> Did didn't you have a Twitter poll on this regarding um 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? >> Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, um I put up uh two different uh polls on Twitter. um first uh for men and I asked you know this is a force choice this contrived scenario uh would you rather sleep with someone who you find uh 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. uh that's way more preferable than uh sleeping with an ugly person who finds me hot. Yeah. 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 unattracted to them. Um so it's almost like men and women were made for each other. >> This was something that this was a mess up that I this is a mess up that I did in my conversation with Esther Pel uh where she said something to the effect of when have you ever she was 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 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 turnon." Uh or the other thing that women want as a turn on. Just put this hat back on backwards for me. I've worked out who it is that you look like. I got it wrong. Put it on backwards. Put it on backwards. >> Hold on. I got a, you know, I got a big dome, man. >> You do? Both of you do, actually. I couldn't believe that. No, no, no. So, there it is. So, I thought that it was uh Tinton. >> It's not Tinton. It's Indiana Jones. And it's this. [laughter] >> I'm just glad you >> Is that not you? >> I mean, no. >> Oh, wait. But don't I have to wear it like this? >> Yeah. >> No, he's got it on backwards, does he not? >> No, he's got it the right way there. >> Okay. Well, it's not a captain's hat anyway. I knew that I was right. Um, [laughter] yeah. I uh >> Wait, that's Tinton? >> No, no, no. >> That's [ __ ] the kid from Indiana Jones. >> Um, >> 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 beautifification. I actually think that what guys think they're doing, even if it doesn't work with the formidability, double loop, close-eye, bullseye thing, is uh I think that it's a kind of rejection of the female gays in some ways. Like, it's just male to-male intros competition. Do you ever remember Zizz Ziz the he was a kind of the original Luxmaxer in some ways? He was a bodybuilding icon in 2010, 2011, 2012 uh and died. Aussie Aussie guy, real good-looking dude, just trained in the gym. He wasn't like doing the hardcore looks max and stuff but 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 he was saying this as a naturally very attractive man who' then done some weightlifting to make him look real Adonis Greek goddy but uh I get the sense that it is kind of a rejection of I'm just going to focus on becoming the most like mog you know where that comes from do you know the ethmology of mogging is >> 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 this is uh there was that the the clavvicular profile and you know I don't know how representative he is but this is this aligns with what you're saying here where he said two interesting things. One, he said something like, um, you know, I my the main thing is mogging people. Like that's where he gets his rock. >> All I want to do is mug. That's like 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, hire dance moves or whatever. Mog other men and and not have sex with women. >> Oh, how common is that ever going to be, though? I >> don't think it's 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 or the performance-enhancing castration. >> 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 lineage through? Hm. You're looking at me because I'm talking quite a bit in my book about the denial of sex differences, but I can't see a direct line. >> I mean, you talked about in your book um Superb, you you discuss the dangers of um ignoring minimizing sex differences. >> Um but you, you know, you also sort of acknowledge that that historically people have sort of overstated the sex differences. The dangers of overstating um can be uh you know, particularly harmful to women but to to to men as well. And so so what yeah I'm curious what are the dangers of minimizing and and then overstating >> uh the dangers of minimizing. So we talked about this right um so one danger is that just as people used to uh try to force boys and girls and men and women into um traditional gender roles >> even if they didn't quite fit them. Uh 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 uh we should be trying to minimize them. we should be trying to push uh boys and girls and men and women out of traditional uh uh gender roles and that is a problem if they don't fit into them. That's that's one problem. >> Uh another one if you minimize sex differences is that you might uh fail to to notice physical problems and psychological problems >> that present differently in one sex than the other. So uh classic example is cardiovascular problems like like heart attacks. the symptoms are different for men and women. Um, and the male symptoms are better known. So, the pain in the sort of chest and down the arms is quite well known. >> Um, that's much less common in women. Uh, shortness of breath is a much more common uh symptom in women. People don't tend to know that. Uh, they 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 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. >> On that point, like even minimizing sex, I'm thinking about with Chris's question of something like um you know, if you truly believe in sort of, you know, blank slatism for men and women and then you're a young 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, p predatory men. You know, the average difference is, as you've mentioned in your book, aggressiveness is not that large. But in the tales, 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 understand there are sex differences here in terms of uh, you know, motivations around sex and so forth that this can, you know, can I don't denial of sex of 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 uh 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. Um 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 we know if there's anything new? >> I I I I I can't spoil their party unfortunately, but there is there's new I heard. Oh, >> [ __ ] you, dude. >> I genuinely can't behind the scen under the buses because you've got special behind the scenes. >> No, it's 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. Uh it's like, oh, it's preliminary. Oh, we're going to have to roll it out in its own wisdom conference. >> I know. I know. I mean, I'll I'll happily I'll happily tell you the full kind of update off camera. You like when I 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 the summer [laughter] in the hotel." >> Well, it's it's it's not me trying to or farm or anything like that. It's literally just like I know that I know that I know that I know I know that uh Ryan Dobson and and his party are are going to be rolling out some cool research pretty soon. >> Is it not public once it's been uh put out at the conference? >> Uh well, I I was told by Candace no, but maybe that that's kind of a social intuition. Uh but I I I'm a I'm a new academic so to speak so I don't necessarily have the issue. This is the issue that Macken's got. Macken and Williams the same and I don't understand it but I kind of get it. There's sort of the mafioso of the human behavior and ecology world and you don't want to step on the toes of anybody as just a a mere underling. But if you were the boss right or an underboss actually [laughter] if you're David B if you're David bus you can just start spouting theories at whenever you want. But if you're sort of a new entrance at the bottom of the >> signaling 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? [sighs and gasps] >> I I genuinely don't know. I tweeted it as a question. I'm hoping that maybe Steve or um Rob here 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 >> But this isn't this isn't so that effect exists as well. >> Yeah. >> But this effect is even more peculiar where if they remate again later, the sex drive goes up again. Oh, it does. >> It's just that it's like, oh, the first >> year sort of a a mate retention strategy, right? you're in a new relationship, so you would want to sort of boost your sexual uh uh you know, whatever libido to >> you're getting it's an adaptation to get them on the hook to say if you mate with me, there'll be sex all the time. 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 and >> yeah I wish it was 20 years the decline is the decline within the so 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 looking at the women's side of is the wrong maybe it's just doesn't decline for men because it's not such a big cost for men Maybe sex starts as a bargaining strategy but then sorry a retention strategy but then becomes a bargaining chip later. I don't know if that's too >> I don't know if that's too out there, but maybe maybe the strategic function of non-conceptive sex because 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. I remember that study that you tweeted which was uh women say that inside of 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 Balmeister uh if I'm not mistaken. And yeah, I think he does he does um offer this as a as an idea that um the the you know that that sex can be a bargaining chip and that kind of as 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 know get the commitment and then you know once once he's uh he's committed then you don't have to have as much sex. thinking about sort of 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 >> but if you can presumably these studies are controlled for age though >> yeah again 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 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 >> 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 >> Are we talking like like in absolute terms? Like how much does it actually decline? Absolutely. >> It'll be on my Twitter versus two. It's going to be hard to find >> because like relative to men, it totally makes sense that men are always going to have a stronger sex drive like in relationships, single, whatever the situation is. Men are just because, you know, from like an 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 uh the decline uh occurs from time one to time two and time three and so on. >> Not not sure. Um, 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 um sex bonds both parties to both partners to each other. >> Mhm. Often. >> Yeah. >> The the king of sex differences telling us I don't think there's a sex difference there, which is >> Yeah. Yeah. There's always going to be one. >> I wanted to ask something um and you can tell me if this is taking us too far a field here. Um on our earlier discussion, something occurred to me, which is, you know, like what what's the question we're interested in uh like regarding sex differences? Is it um 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 um 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 um I think I was in college working as an RA years ago >> and um you know we were reading about weird societies western educated industrialized rich democracies And you know there was this thing going and 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 some we 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 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 extent hunter gatherers or hunter gatherers, you know, in pre-aggricultural 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 pre-industrial preiterate society. And actually, we should be studying rich societies because now that you have all of your needs met, now sort of the true underlying uh traits and attributes and characteristics can finally emerge and um you know instantiate themselves. >> So like the gender gender inequality paradox like the abundance paradox, let's say we're >> 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 ways? >> Yeah. uh both of those ideas came to my mind as you were as you were saying that >> uh in terms of what the evolutionary push is 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 weed societies but sometimes that's quite good evidence of in weird societies often you have a push against traditional sex differences and they often emerge anyway suggesting that then there is an innate nudge >> um yeah if they get bigger in uh abundant societies It may be that they're um expressing themselves more than the level for which they were selected to be expressed. >> So it could be that uh human nature is able to express itself to an unnaturally extreme degree. >> Mhm. >> Uh potentially. >> Yeah. Does that >> Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah. I mean, I spoke to um the anthropologist William Buckner about this and he actually had a real gripe about uh the evoc um on sex differences and mate preferences and his gripe was that if the logic is that the EA 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 yeah it's caricatured as like oh there was like 10,000 years in the police scene where we're really but it's really it's like a composite of all selection that has happened essentially and and Steve could probably summarize it better than me. Um but um his perspective which I think is really fair um was that these sex differences and mate preferences are less consistently found in these smallcale huntergatherer 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. Um because really if it was like these are formed by, you know, the these sex differences and mate preferences evolved in a hunter gatherer context and then you go and ask the schwar and they're like, >> "Hey, we actually don't really agree with you about that." That's that that's real alarm bells. I It's not It's not >> gender equality paradox, but just across time. >> Exactly. and you don't find it at all in some of those societies, right? Some some sex differences aren't found >> and some of them even seem to be reversed. Like among the um among the Wuhab 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 pageantss and the the females actually pick um a partner based solely on on the physical appearance or 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 don't know whether we're talking hunter gatherer, but 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. Uh every uh girl that was in the tribe, their back was it looked like some horrendous out of the 1700. >> So they're signaling mate value through formidability as as >> through pain tolerance. I could withdure child birth. >> Yeah. >> Specifically, I can I can endure child birth. >> 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. 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-huntergatherer 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 that do find sex differences and 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 consistently 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 in women's. So, a lot of it does depend on the kind of data that you look at. It just occurred to me uh Steve in 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 the way that that gay men what they find attractive appearance in 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. And I don't think they put 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, 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 career ambition and success and those kinds of things? You know what I would love to see? I would love to see a sex toy >> study between what straight women like and what gay women like. >> Because like there's no reason that the sex toys should in any way resemble a male. >> Yeah. >> Except for female anatomy. >> Yes. But it the the way that it's put together, the humanness of it. Yeah. >> Right. 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 time. >> Billionillion years. Yeah. Over a billion years of penis penis evolution. Speaking of speaking of the ways that uh humans are quite different. Min, 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 hamster? >> I was. Yeah. But it's I didn't realize that this was going to be a huge I didn't realize this was >> It's interesting that you say that because [laughter] >> Oh my god. >> 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. Um, but this is happening. Um, but yeah, no, I think that I was obsessed with hamsters as a child. >> Not sexually, right? Just to be clear, >> sexually. I was just >> I pivoted from the penis thing to the hamster thing seamlessly there, but it wasn't for >> This is uh this is an incredible gift. Thank you so much. Yeah. My dad got me a shirt that said hamster man on it, and I think there uh I think that there are some photos on Google images floating around of me as a of me as an 8-year-old. what you put on the internet. I didn't 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? Why should people go to check up to >> Rob Henderson's newsletter on Substack? Robk henderson.com and the paperback of my first book, Trouble, the Memoir of Foster Care, Family, and Social Class. >> Nice. 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 Nature Newsletter. >> Yeah. >> Nothing to sell. Follow me on Tik Tok. >> Yeah, you do. Uh, hamster man on Tik Tok or Mal Murphy. Uh, boys, I appreciate you all. These round table things are so [ __ ] fun. It's the best. It's the best. I love you all. Thank you for coming. >> Thanks, Luke. >> See you next time, everyone. >> Boys. Yes. >> All right. >> You've done it. >> Congratulations. You made it to the end of a full podcast episode. You are not so Tik Tok brain that you've completely dissolved into nothingness. Why not watch another one right here? Go on, press it.