What Psychology Says About Women Who Cheat - Macken Murphy

you have caused some drama in the world of evolutionary psychology a little bit of drama I I try not to get in trouble but certainly this uh last publication uh might be a little controversial within the field sure what have you done what's the current state of the leading infidelity hypothesis well I mean I guess we've got time to get into it but it is a bit of a long story so I would say that that the background to know for someone who's completely entry level here and has not heard about the Evo infidelity debate is that there's been a long running debate as to The evolutionary drivers of women's infidelity female infidelity in humans and you know during the late 90s and the early 2000s and to an extent the 2010s as well I would say that most evolutionary psychologists would have said that the primary driver of women's infidelity from an evolu perspective is the powerful benefit of being able to obtain better genes right better in a fitness sense not obviously not in a moral sense and we might end up saying you know the phrase good genes quite a bit on this show and and every time it's always in it's always good in a fitness sense but in any case the mainstream idea was that infidelity is a conditional strategy that women sometimes employ in order to obtain better genes for their offspring right so to pair the genetic benefits of one male with the parental investment benefits of another male so everyone when we're looking for mates there are two things that they can give our Offspring they can give our Offspring genes obviously uh or they can give our Offspring investment and normally women get genes and investment from the same person but the idea was is that women's infidelity allows them to get genes from one person and parenting from another let's say if they're with a mate who is very high investment right they're they love them they've got lots of resources but they don't necessarily have you know the heritable traits that a woman might want to pass on so that was the mainstream idea for a very for a very long time uh almost 20 years and then in the late 2010s there was a bit of a reckoning right which stemmed from the fact that during the the 2010s the original Suite of experiments that were used to evidence this idea which from here on we'll call the Dual mating hypothesis in this case I I mean there's a few ways to use that term I'm using it to describe that specific strategy there was a bit of a reckoning because the original support for the Dual mating hypothesis was based on these ovulatory shift experiments so so the idea was and it was a very clever hypothesis originally put forward by Steve gangestad and and Randy Thornell which is that if it's true that women's infidelity functions to pair quote unquote good genes with good parenting well women can only get pregnant during a brief window in their monthly cycle and so it would only really make sense for them to have affairs during that time right because the risks of infidelity are evenly distributed right infidelity is a very risky Behavior you could lose your relationship you could be subject to retaliatory violence or or social penalties and and so it would make sense for women to engage in the you know genetic strategy during their per ovulatory phase and the parental investment strategy during the rest of their cycle and so that was their hypothesis and the first tests which were with and this isn't their fault but small samples and relatively primitive methods those looked quite positive then as methods got better these effects either shrank or disappeared depending on who you ask right it seems to re analyzing the original data no not reanalyzing the original data collecting new data with better methods right although there has been some questions about the original data as well so so one example of this is that some of the early studies would use would determine when a woman was in her cycle based on self-report Counting so count since your last uh period essentially and that's just not that that's not a completely inaccurate method but it's not exactly High reliability and then later methods that use more you know direct tests um and just better bigger samples and also you know pre-registered in some cases uh Ju Just better methods overall they they ma they made this ovulatory shifts sub hypothesis of the Dual mating hypothesis right they made this look less good and so some scientists uh led by David bus but it it was it was quite a large number said well hang on maybe it's not just that ovulatory shifts aren't happening maybe dual mating isn't happening right so dual mating is something that we see in some other animals to an extent like we see for example that redwinged black birds uh the females will engage in infidelity with males who have more robust bodies right uh fly catchers another one where they they've got nicer plumage uh the the affair Partners compared to the primary Partners so it's not something that's without precedent in the animal kingdom but other animals like cockatils for example when they have affairs their Affairs are geared towards something called mate switching so the affair is a way of cultivating and obtaining a new and from a reproductive standpoint probably overall better mate so they put forward this idea that you know hey maybe humans are more like cockatils than fly catchers maybe the underlying Theory so we've got dual mating this you know uh quote unquote genes good parenting combo deal maybe it's not a combo deal maybe it's a best whole package type situation maybe that's what female infidelity is geared towards obtaining so that was the the history of the debate and they put this alternative idea forward and it wasn't based on you know this new idea it it was a hypothesis that was put forward it is a hypothesis that is put forward based largely on what we would what we would call circumstantial evidence right so it's drawing together a variety of facts from past studies and forming inferences about them right about these about what's happening from that so it's not that there was some experiment that showed mate switching was very common in humans it wasn't that we collected some you know awesome data set and it showed mate switching uh that's not what happened it was just an alternative hypothesis and then after that uh Brook shelza tried to test the mate switching hypothesis in her population at least the trading up function of it she tried to test it in her study population the HBA of that's a group of Agro pastoralists in Namibia and she didn't find evidence for the mate switching hypothesis she found slight evidence for dual mating and then she found evidence that a lot of women's infidelity in this area was geared towards obtaining additional resources from additional mates so it has an additional function and this is a theme that we'll probably talk about more so there was a little bit of evidence for dual mating women seemed to have a put a higher premium on physical attractiveness in Affair Partners uh but the mate switching hypothesis camp at least in what I read they seem to kind of I won't say brush it away but they seem to interpret that as saying as just applying to that population right so it's like okay the M switching hypothesis didn't work but it's in this pretty unique population and I think that's fair enough because the HBA are do have a unique relationship to infidelity and so what we wanted to do is we wanted to actually you know set up an empirical design that directly pitted the predictions of the Dual mating hypothesis against the mate switching hypothesis and what did that design look like well the mate switching hypothesis has quite obvious and intuitive predictions if you're looking at the trading up function some Scholars they would classify backup mating and breakup mating as part of mate switching but we're looking we're looking at trading up if women are cheating to obtain a better mate then they should perceive their Affair Partners as better very simple prediction uh probably better looking better as specifically as a potential co-parent since that's who they want to switch to overall mate value should be higher maybe a more attractive personality right that I guess that could go both ways and so what we did was we set up an experiment where we had them where where we collected women who and men so we collected a large sample of women and men who had actually had affairs because this was a problem with the previous literature even the L especially the literature you know in the mate switching dual mating debate not Brook Shell's work was that most of it was done on people who hadn't had affairs where do you find people that have had affairs uh I wish I could say something fun like like Ashley Madison or something but that we're recruiting on Ashley Madison but that's not what we did what we actually did was we put up a large survey that you cheated on your partner come and do our survey Yeah well yeah it was basically three questions it was like uh um well it was demographic questions and then it was have you ever been in a relationship that was you know sexually exclusive in any of those relationships have you slept with somebody else at any point and would you like to do our study right and we sent that out to I think it was 1500 people and quite a lot of people said yeah I actually have had an affair at some point but it was a relatively a a small subgroup let's say that actually wanted to go through all the way and do further research with us so and and that final sample was 254 people for those who are interested so let let's Circle back to the predictions here so if the M switching hypothesis is true and we're looking at people who have actually had affairs well then women should rate their Affair Partners as more attractive in some way but certainly more attractive overall and more attractive as a potential co-parent the those would be the things that you'd really expect to see if the M switching hypothesis were true the Dual mating hypothesis has different predictions so the Dual mating hypothesis would predict that there'd be kind of this crossover effect where the affair partner is rated as better physically right like physically more attractive but parentally they should be less attractive right so if if if women's Affairs function evolutionarily to pair good genes with good parenting well then the primary partner should have better parenting right it wouldn't the alternative wouldn't really make much sense I'm not sure I I don't quite understand that why would it be the case why would dual mating not predict uh better parenting as well because dual mating is pairing the good genes of the affair partner with the parenting of the primary partner so it's essentially a process where women will have an affair right or female animals other species will have an affair right try to pair the genes of one male and this and this is again none of this is meant to be conscious we're we're looking at the subconscious evolutionary drivers of our Behavior the structured psychology underlying it so it's so I guess to summarize mate switching would predict that aairs function to obtain a better mate overall whereas dual mating would propose that female infidelity functions to capture quote unquote better genes and pair it with better parenting uh better investment and so these These are these are distinct uh distinct hypotheses and you know I'll I'll flag post here that or signpost here that none of this is meant to be conscious per se right it doesn't it this isn't implying that anyone's deliberately trying to you know in the same way that when we enjoy sex right we're not thinking consciously oh this is great because I'm going to get to have kids in fact we might be thinking the opposite right it's more what psychological biases undergird our infidelity and you know we have very good reasons to suspect that infidelity did evolve uh it appears cross-culturally that's the first sign it appears you know this is something that your your friend step Stewart Williams likes to share which is that if a behavior appears even where it is socially discouraged it's probably not socially constructed right and we see that infidelity is very harshly punished and people still do it and then also humans are socially are mostly socially monogamous mammals and if you look at other socially monogamous mammals and other socially monogamous primates extrair paternity has some degree of presence extra pair compulation is documented with quite a high frequency so we have very good reasons to suspect that this evolved and so given the dueling predictions right that the Dual mating hypothesis proposes that it's better physical attract oh and here I I actually not to just over caveat but why would physical attractiveness be a sign of good gen good genetics quote unquote I would say listen to our last episode me and Chris's last episode covers that in very high detail um but the short tldr version would be be that one a lot of the things that we find conventionally attractive are just cues to health so you know the things that we think are good-look the reason that they're conventional is because they signal heritable benefits such as good health and then another idea is just that physical attractiveness itself offers benefits and is itself heritable good-look people tend to have good-looking children and so it would make sense that given the tremendous benefits that come with being good-look you would want a partner with quote unquote good-looking genes anyway so different predictions mate switching predicts that the affair partner will be better overall and better as a co-parent dual mating predicts that the affair partner will be better looking but worse parenting right or yeah worse parenting really it's the primary partner should have better parenting is the is the correct way to think about it and so what we did was we took uh everyone in our sample and we had them rate their Affair partner and their primary partner separately on valid and reliable scales and our study was pre-registered it's a very diverse sample and compared for differences so we had them rate their Affair partner and their primary partner's physical attractiveness parental attractiveness mate value their overall desirability and also their personal attractiveness although to be fair that could have gone that could have gone both ways it might it would have been interesting but not necessarily consistent or inconsistent with either hypothesis and what did we find well we found that Affair Partners were about two points more physically attractive on our scale on average and primary Partners were about three points more parentally attractive so we had this you know crossover interaction between rating type and attractiveness which was really the best Cas scenario for the Dual mating hypothesis it's also very unlikely just for for those at home it's very unlikely that you would find this sort of structure by accident because usually better-looking people because of the halo effect and just positive Perceptions in general they're going to get better ratings on everything and so it's very strange for one group to be better looking but worse parenting this this is a very unlikely thing to see if there's no structured psychological adaptation involved so the Dual mating hypothesis was I would say strongly supported best case scenario uh pre-registered study on actual women who have had affairs signaling this and the mate switching hypothesis there there was no difference in mate value overall mate value overall desirability even between a fair partners and primary Partners no statistically significant difference and no statistically significant difference in personality either so our study ended up being the best case scenario for dual mating and the worst case scenario for mate switching so I guess we started this conversation with you know why why has this why would this cause controversy well it it it kind of seems like everyone has been a little too hasty in dismissing dual mating based on the fact that the ovulatory shift studies don't replicate but the truth is is that ovulatory shifts are just as hypothesis of dual mating and human sexuality is actually unusually stable across the cycle and so maybe it was a I mean I still think it's a cool hypothesis and maybe more complex methods will prove that there are there is something to you know human estris but the truth is that dual mating doesn't need this hypothesis it's just a sub hypothesis and the more important thing is that uh is that we do seem to have different priorities in our Affair partners versus our primary partners and one thing that I'll flag maybe we can talk about this later because it's more confusing and maybe the most interesting result from our study is that men showed the same pattern so men also contrary to Conventional wisdom men also tended to cheat up in terms of physical attractiveness and cheat down in terms of Parental attractiveness a lot of people responded to our study basically saying huh I would have thought that men cheat down across the board uh basically because it's easier right kind of the the a man is only as faithful as his options and most men have more options that are less attractive than themselves that that didn't really seem to be supported and then in our qualitative data we did we also didn't find any differences in novelty based uh so I I would say that the overall picture the Dual mating hypothesis traditionally has focused on women but I would say that it's really a human strategy in the sense that humans in general it's it's different what benefits are sought but humans in general see seem to prioritize conceptive benefits in Affair partners and parental benefits in primary Partners this is just one study of course and you know I I did design the study to be persuasive to myself so I am persuaded by the result right uh but there are other results that converge with uh that converge with us in terms of at least the physical attraction side of thing that Affair Partners tend to be more attractive and primary Partners less so I've spoken for quite some time so I'll I'll not at all what what is the evolutionary function of men following that same pattern when it comes to infidelity it's a little confusing right so I know that you've obviously had a pretty intense crash course in EV talking to all the uh the world leaders in the field let's say and so you would be aware of the fact that if you ask an evolutionary psychologist why do men cheat they're going to say oh easy more mates means more offspring for male mammals they're going to talk about you know Jenis Khan and they're going to talk about you know how the ceiling is basically unlimited for a man reproductively if he just has enough mates uh whereas for women the ceiling you know in theory and you know if you believe the accounts of Valentina vasev this this is kind of a funny anecdote to illustrate the conventional AB view Valentina vasev was a Russian peasant and I believe she had 60s something children all with her husband right and then her own husband so she's the she would be if it's true she would be the world record setting uh mother as a woman right the the most prolific uh the most prolific women woman in child birth and then her own husband if you believe the gossip her own husband outpaced her by having Affairs and he had like 80 something so the idea being that a woman can in theory and potentially in practice maximize her reproductive output with just one male whereas a male can only maximize the reproductive output by seeking additional mates so that's the conventional wisdom in Evy our study it's not inconsistent with that right like we didn't design our study to test that hypothesis but but then we didn't find support for this hypothesis where we expected to find it so one prediction that I think would be pretty natural from that idea that men's infidelity is purely quantity driven right so the women's infidelity hypothesis mate switching dual mating both of those are both of those are quality hypotheses and then the main male hypothesis is a qual is a quantity hypothesis right and so you'd expect I think that you'd expect to find that men cheat down right to maximize their numbers so to say uh and then you'd also expect when you ask men why they cheated you'd expect them to report variety driven motives at a higher rate than women it could have been because of our study design we also asked participants just straight up why did you cheat uh I believe we've got certainly in the Evo literature the maybe I I won't say this but certainly one of the largest data sets on on just people saying why they cheated from our qualitative data and men and women both reported you know sexual boredom a desire for novelty there were no statistically significant differences in that area maybe a better design would find that but there was no uh sex differences in proximate reasons for why people cheat there well there were sex differences in approximate reasons but not the not in the novelty not the boredom and not in the combined measures of both those not in the variety areally but I think that that's just because I mean maybe I'm being too generous but I think that we have to be really skeptical I think our quantitative data is is really good really reliable our qualitative data has unavoidable shortcomings that come from just you know interviewing people right if you just ask someone why they cheated people have perfect insight into their own motivations and then they also aren't perfectly honest right humans are storytellers we like telling stories where we're the hero and so we're going to you know downplay motivations that are unseemly or subconscious and we're going to play up motivations that are flattering like I'll give you an example of this that's that's pretty Stark so we asked women what motivated you to have an affair and about 5% of them said oh is cuz my Affair partner was really hot right just he was super attractive that's part of the reason why I had an affair so 95% of women didn't even mention it but then in our quantitative data women were 77% more likely to prefer their Affair partner's physical attractiveness than to prefer their primary partner's physical attractiveness what a coincidence if that's not a motivating factor right so we have to be I am happy with our qualitative data but we have to be careful with it I think the only thing that it really shows is strategic diversity how do you know that that's not just novelty seeking it doesn't need to be better it just needs to be different yeah so there there there was there was a bit of that I would say that about one in 10 people in our our again our our quantitative data doesn't really get at novelty but it does suggest that it's not just novelty because from a physical attractiveness perspective on average it was better right but that's the the my point being that physical attractiveness is inherently a subjective you're asking you participant what do you think about the rating of A and B which I'm sure you can see is being open to just straight novelty itself as you've said we are not a clear pool of water that we can see down into the depths of uh if you were to get people to say okay show me a photo of both your Affair partner and your main partner then let's get other people to rate whether they think which one is more attractive and compare that to their answers that would be fascinating that would be a very good test yeah how much of a role but can you send me a photo of the person that you're in a relationship with and the person that you cheated on them with please that would be great thank you yeah the the ethical nightmares that you've just designed oh yeah and by the way I'm going to show these I'm going to show these to loads of people yeah yeah yeah yeah so that would be a bit ethically fraud but a good genuinely good study design that would that would be a test of our hypothesis I guess one and I think that that's a legitimate limitation it could be that novelty itself is causing more physical attraction that seems plausible to me but if it were just positive Illusions associated with novelty I think you'd expect higher ratings overall it's weird that this is only happening with physical attractiveness so we all know that you know in early stages of a relationship we tend to have these you know very biased views very positively bi yes they're wonderful they're perfect and so if that's what's causing the physical attractiveness Gap very peculiar that didn't happened for mate value very peculiar that it didn't happen for personality and extremely peculiar that actually reversed for Parental attractiveness so it's a legitimate critique and I I would be interested in I would be very interested in results of that study if anyone can get ethics approval for it oh dude I I'm the king I'm the absolute king of coming up with studies that you can't do you know I'm like a I'm like one of those rock stars that never actually learned to play classically and is able to like I'll do it left-handed and upside down it'll look awesome but sound terrible that's my that's my sort of contribution to the world of of Evey and humanology that and giving us uh giving us cool cool terms cool new names I'm good at meing that's it meing meing coming up with studies do um dig into what else you learned from a qualitative perspective what was what was interesting what did men say what did women say and sort of how does that tie in with your new reinforced perspective of infidelity well sure I mean so the top motiv the first thing to notice would be that the top motivation for men and for women was relationship dissatisfaction in their stated motivations so the way we did this was we read it was it took a very long time we read all of the responses and our data is public by the way other people can also look at you know if you want to read hundreds of reasons why people had affairs and get a gist uh you can just access our data it's fine and we read through all of these we coded them for themes so that's when you basically write down like oh this one mentioned that the affair partner was H that kind of thing so we coded them for themes and then we went through and we found the themes that were repeating themselves and then myself and a lab assistant went through and we separately recoded these items to see you know where which themes were occurring at what rate and then we ran statistical analyses to test for sex differences so that's our methodology relationship dissatisfaction was the number one stated motivation for infidelity in both men and women however it was a big sex difference as well so only 30% is of men uh mentioned relationship dissatisfaction in their answers so most men even though this was the most common response most men didn't bring it up whereas 65% about about 65% of women mentioned relationship dissatisfaction soen were twice as likely to bring this up essentially over twice as likely even though it was number one for men even though it was number one for men correct does that mean that men had uh a sort of flatter distribution of reasons in that case uh not necessarily that that inference would be correct if we coded them one to one but the way that we coded it was that one one Affair could have multiple motivations so for example a participant might say h I was in a long dist relationship and things weren't going well you know she really wasn't treating me right and my Affair partner was just gorgeous right that would be a pretty that would be a pretty reasonable answer that would be the sort of thing that we'd see and then that would get coded as attractive Affair partner long-distance relationship and relationship to satisfaction so it doesn't necessarily mean flatter distribution of reasons because we can recode variables in this way but great question so historically right the whole women are more likely to have relationship dissatisfaction when they commit infidelity that that's a that's an expected sex difference it's something that pops up in the literature quite a bit since the 80s why why is it expected well it's funny because the original logic was that's was that it was evidence for the mat switching hypothesis because it's like oh if women are usually this satisfied when they have affairs that means that they want their relationship to end right two reasons I'm skeptical of this one women are women often have higher relationship dissatisfaction anyway right a given given certain circumstances they might be more more sensitive to cues that the relationship is not going well there also might just be a difference where they're more likely to express dissatisfaction even if dissatisfaction levels are in actuality even the Sexes that's number one number two and this is more important and more deeply theoretical which is that infidelity as we discussed earlier is a very risky activity and it is especially risky for women so based on Martin Do's research who I believe you might have spoken too uh I'm I'm lining up I would have called him daily so I'm glad that you fact check check me on it might be daily it might be daily I've only read his name I mean it's only it's only your industry mate so um I can't get away speaking I'm speaking to Martin through a combination of Rob kurban and Steve um I think I think he'll be great yeah no he surely will be he's written just some of some of my favorite stuff has been written by him but some of his early research basically found that women's infidelity is more likely to result in relationship dissolution than men's infidelity and so this is a funny way of thinking about this but in Evy it's pretty common to think of relationship satisfaction as an internal regulatory variable that partially tracks the value of your relationship and so if your relationship satisfaction if you risk your relationship every time you have an affair and your relationship satis action is low well then you're literally risking less than someone relationship exactly exactly and so if infidelity is more likely to result in relationship dissolution for women than men then the risk is at a baseline higher and so you should expect that women should be more likely right to be tuned to whether they have the infidelity discount that comes with relationship dissatisfaction and so this has been interpreted as evidence for the mate switching hypothesis and I think it's reasonable to say that someone who's relationally dissatisfied is more likely to be matate switching with their Affair and some some people do matate switch you know several women in our sample but only several said that they were made switching but I think it's reasonable to assume that they're more likely to be M switching than someone who's really relationally happy but I don't think it's reasonable to do the reverse inference which is that because they're relationally unhappy they want to mate switch there are plenty of people who are relationally dissatisfied having an affair but also want their relationship to keep going and that's also quite intuitive to me this idea that you know sometimes relationships are unhappy but you you want to stick things out what do you make of the uh difficulty that women supposedly have in separating their emotions from uh having sex with a guy that women will fall uh more when they are physically intimate with a man because there is a high hurdle for this man to get over that it is her being more risky um would it not be the case for mate switching that women would be more likely to fall for that partner still even if it's not not uh sorry for dual mating uh even if it's not for the purpose of mate switching while they're dual mating would it not be more likely that they were going to fall for that partner in any case is a sort of a natural byproduct of the the feminine desire to uh be emotionally intimate with someone that's very clever I haven't considered that and I have to think about it more because I mean you're familiar with the mate switching hypothesis but what Chris is referring to here I believe is that there's a one of the flagship pieces of evidence for the mate switching hypothesis is that women are more likely to fall in love with their Affair Partners than men are and what you're saying is that women are more likely to feel emotionally entangled with sexual partners in general and so that also isn't necessarily particularly good evidence one thing that I will note is that we didn't find that love for a fair partner was coming up much at all right we're talking like 1 2% like just it was I can't remember it was sub 5% uh very few people in our sample men or women said that they were motivated by love for their Fair partner that just didn't come up very much and so I I'm a bit skeptical I mean maybe it is the case that women are more likely to be in love with their Affair partner right but at least in their stated motivations it doesn't seem to be a big factor in why they had the affair to begin with and so it might that might be even though that's my favorite evidence for the mate switching hypothesis as you say it might not have as much theoretical mph to it as it seems to at first first glance and then also the there's an inference involved there where it's like if they love them that must be their motivation and it's possible to be in with your Affair partner and have that be pretty low on the list of why you had an affair yeah yeah I remember um Andrew Thomas talking about what women say that they want in terms of traits when choosing for sperm donors so um everybody's a eugenicist right everyone is everyone is whether you like it or not uh and some people are more uh quantitatively and obviously genes ISS if they choose sperm donors or if they choose a like if they go through IVF with a donor for either side I suppose and um one of the things that I thought was really interesting that Andrew brought up is um women who choose sperm donors it is the only time where the traits that you want in your future child are divorced from the traits of the man that is able to get you into bed to be able to create that f future child so you have this sort of weird territorial cut off which is what do I what what do I want my future kid to be like without having to jump through the hoop of what is the sort of thing that I find attractive that gets me into bed so it's kind of a much more sterile controlled environment when it comes to doing that uh and given that with regards to dual mating it surprises me that things like uh personality didn't include in that given that although you want sexy sun hypothesis presumably you want likable Sun hypothesis it's interesting in our pre-registration we didn't make specific I guess I guess one thing that I'll note on the uh on the Eugenics point is that i' I've heard a lot of people say that say the same thing of kind of like it's it's sexual selection is eugenics I personally do see a difference between individual level what do what traits do I want my child to have right in the case of you know embryo selection in the case of IVF and and sperm donation and then what traits do I want to be high frequency in society at large that's a good that's a I'm yeah that you're perfectly acceptable to do that there's a difference between you know um uh tub's concern about that Gene erosion thing um that that's sort of scaling up even though I think it's still largely ethical um uh that's that's more of a scaling up uh that being said the one conversation that I've ever had about uh embryo selection I got called an actual Nazi uh for having uh so but it's it's it's it's okay I'm over it I I mean I'm not uh I'm not someone who's super into science philosophy I'm sure that someone's listening and just thinking that I sound like a bit of an idiot but I will say that I don't see a huge difference between I mean maybe I'm just think about this wrong but I don't see a huge difference between selecting an embryo and selecting a mate at the individual level where I would find it where I would start defining it as Eugenics and start defining it as you know ethically abhorent to myself would be when people are telling other people what they should do or when the government is getting involved and trying to adjust yeah trying to adjust any top down trying to adjust the frequencies of genes in the population I I would see that I would see that as very very bad but at the individual level I don't understand I mean I also don't really understand embryo selection to be honest uh it's not my area I'm I'm you know I'm I'm an expert in very few topics uh so we'll we'll stick to those but it is interesting of course anything else from the qualitative uh insights that you learn yeah yeah I think it would be cool to just go over the top three motivations for oh I actually can I just ask though what what was Andrew Thomas what was his actual conclusion on like what traits did they want from sperm because that's very relevant to the Dual mating I can't remember let me see if I can pull it up Andrew Thomas the advantage of having 3,200 uh notes okay conducted an experiment while you ask chat GPT for mate preferences uh no I can't I don't actually I don't actually have it on there I certainly know that um things like kindness uh were much more prioritized it seemed to me to be um softer skills what if you want to call it that sort of the soft skills of of being a being a person uh so I think in there uh kindness um humor intelligence um yeah it was it was more pro-social stuff I think which maybe you might you would probably be able to predict pretty easily that you can uh look away from someone's dark Triad adjacent uh personality traits because they're hot or cool or or funny or something interesting it's funny because embryo because you know sperm donation embryo selection all of these it's all it's hard to know if it's stated or revealed preferences it's hard to know where to put it there was a really cool study from Paul Eastwick and his colleagues just awesome uh where they looked at this is very recent it's I I think it's still in press so it's not even fully published yet but it is fully peer-reviewed it's going to be published as is and they looked at what people say they want in a partner and then they looked at how what they say they want actually predicts romantic evaluations in practice so that stated preferences on one end and then kind of a version of revealed preferences on the other end and there were some kind of funny examples the number one stated preference trait was loyalty that's what people said it's like what do you want in a partner number one thing loyalty and the number one revealed preference was being good and bed a good lover so there's that took I I took that table uh from your from your Twitter yeah they said uh the first rank was loyalty uh but that to be fair that ranked as number two it's still ranked as number two yeah that's the other thing is that it only got suppressed a little the main thing that was shocking was the uh how much so how much women a good lover jumps from rank 12 to rank one I know people don't again it's it goes back to what we were saying about the people want to tell stories in which they're the hero it doesn't sound great if you're asked by a psychologist you know what do you wantan to mate and the first thing you say is good and bed you sound quite unhinged uh but in practice that might actually be more predictive of your romantic evaluations than anything else and it certainly seems to be in this large sample and then they also found that in general I think that the general gist of that table is that traits physical traits are much more important than people say and they're especially more important than women say so for men and women SE sexy jumping from number 19 to number six yes yeah that's a huge jump uh smells good that's another just physical trait whether you smell good or not what was that I know it jumped to like number four but smells good oh number 15 to number four attractive number 16 to number eight yeah so if you want to contrast what people say they want and what people actually want one of the main things that's going to come up over and over again is that people understate and this doesn't necessarily mean they're lying it could just be that we don't have perfect insight into what makes us happy but we understate uh how important physical the black pill was right all along you just need to smell nice yes the new black pill just dropped smell maxing smell Max so smell maxing right now yeah um okay uh qualitative the rest of the qualitative stuff yeah the rest of the qualitative stuff so that was that was a diversion but a but a happy one and and one that's actually relevant because we in a way we found the same same result again 5% of women mentioned that their Affair partner was physically attractive and then they were 77% more likely to prefer their Affair partner physically what a coincidence but top motivations for women relationship dissatisfaction number one and a high number one again most women mention that second place and and second place by quite a bit only only 20% that's still a high 22% um mentioned that their Prim partner was uninvested and this also illustrates an important point which is that not all women's Affairs are explained by dual mating it seems that there might be a psychological bias towards the Dual mating strategy but many women had affairs with Affair Partners who they perceived as less attractive right 77% more likely is not you know that's not an infinite Gap and then um if there there one of the reasons that many women cheated one in five women cheated precisely because they thought that their primary partner wasn't invested enough so if it's pairing good genes and good investment that doesn't make that doesn't make a lot of sense um with for those women and then the third most popular motivation for women was Revenge so 15.5% of women said that they were cheating to get revenge and did they say what on um well in this case the 15.5% figure is Revenge for their Partners Affair specifically so I remember I spoke to a guy who was kind of a unofficial marriage counselor in his neighborhood and I asked him you know why why do women cheat in your experience like what what do you see and he very flatly said he said women cheat when men cheat now that doesn't seem to be 100% true but there's certainly some truth to it in our data in the sense that women were much more likely to cheat for revenge and you could interpret that as a genuine strategic difference but since men cheat more than women women have more opportunity to cheat for revenge or at the very least they have more opportunity at the very least they have more opportunity to cite Revenge as one of the reasons why they cheated whether it was going to happen or not yes what are What what is the state of who cheats more men or women oh that's a pretty open and shut case men cheat more men say they cheat more when you ask them uh men say they get cheated on less when you ask them so women report getting cheated on more and then women who are the third person right so some people might say oh well maybe women are just understating things when you ask you know who's more successful as a mate poacher uh women who mate poach tend to have a higher hit rate so there are three people involved in any given Affair there's the primary partner there's the person who's cheating and then there's the affair partner and you can do studies on any one of those three groups and you generally find the same result which is that the man is generally more likely to have an affair in some studies it's not a big gap in some cultural contexts it's a huge gap but that that would be the overall state of the science there and so the Revenge difference it may just be Downstream of uh the sex difference in committing infidelity they have more opportunity to have an affair what do you what do you learn from a woman's concern about investment from their partner it's a good question so this is pretty consistent with it's not consistent with the Dual mating strategy but it's consist and it it's actually a really good thing to illustrate that women cheat for men reasons they cheat maybe for traditional variety based motivations such as genetic heterogeneity or you know uh fertility backup so uh some percent of couples are infertile and so if you're mating with multiple males you're really lowering the probability that that's going to result in the end of your lineage um there there there are many motivations for Affairs Revenge um so so having being an uninvested partner low investment I would say that it signals I would say that it signals kind of the traditional FS difference which is that women's investment in Offspring is largely obligate physically obligate in the sense that women have to go through pregnancy and lactation this is part of why women seem to be more careful about who they mate with more choosy uh a lot of men complain about you know women having high standards for their mates but really what do expect right like if you could get pregnant surely you'd be pretty careful as well about who you m with and so women's investment is partially obligate whereas men's investment is not morally but pragmatically entirely optional men have the option to seduce and abandon mates and so you'd expect given that that women would be very sensitive to cues that a man might seduce and abandon her and really try to avoid that as much as possible and so if they're in a relationship and they think oh my my partner is not investing in me he's not invested well that's a huge signal that he's a low mate value mate essentially it's like oh I this isn't going to work and maybe that maybe that's evidence for mate switching but maybe it's also evidence for breakup or backup or just lowering the cost of infidelity again the discount infidelity idea I was going to say you know this doesn't mean that no woman ever leaves her partner to get into a relationship with the cheating partner yeah reliably that does happen and also I'm going to guess that if you looked at the cohorts of women and you were to find the one that said I was worried about investment from my relationship partner that would probably result in more likely of a pivot to the new um infidelity partner as a new relationship I'm going to guess that that would probably be predictive of that because like what am I sticking about for if if I'm going to have genes and investment and I don't have investment then I might as well try and get genes and investment together yes exactly so the so the Dual mating it doesn't explain all of women's infidelity certainly and we did see some mate switching in our samples several women in our sample were mate switching I'm wondering whether the uh era that we were in inste of 2017 when we look at the mate switching hypothesis the Dual mating hypothesis feels a bit to me like when you think about it when you think about and maybe this is just me as a man but thinking about some guy male parental uncertainty raising another man's children uh whether this is or is not during a period of ovulatory shift where you're fertile as a woman um it makes me go like H you know it's a little bit more mellan it feels like in that way whereas mate switching seems to just be okay you're monkey branching from one relationship to the other people people have backup mates people have you know their friends females friends that are men often tend to have the attributes of the sorts of men that they would get into a relationship with which kind of has these sort of weird quasi Orbiter backup mate things floating around a little bit uh I wonder whether in a post me too world that was just a bit more uh it was a little bit easier to digest uh to have something that was a bit less like oh I know I mean I don't really in terms of assessing theories I don't really care about how icky they are or how yeah it just doesn't affect my assessment of the facts I just want to know what's true whether or not it's kind of gross and I would say that the evidence points to this idea that this is a part of human evolution I mean in modern populations quote unquote cuckoldry is quite uncommon uh you know 1% 2% 3% that would be those would be the sorts of estimates that you'd get from people who really understand the subject that would be of a one to two 1 to 3% are men raising a child that they are unaware is not their genetic Offspring yeah yeah yeah yeah exactly uh one one two 3% kids of kids are you know you are not the father type situation but the the male sensitivity to uh parental uncertainty though has to exist for a reason exact exactly if it never happened exactly we wouldn't how could we have how could we have such concern with paternity certainty if there was no paternity uncertainty to be concerned about that's number one number two the modern percentages are based on they're based in a cultural context where infidelity has been highly suppressed socially and they're based in a a technological context where we can choose through contraceptives and whatnot who consciously who you have kids with to some extent there's much more control over it if you look at populations with less contraceptives well then you start to see rates of 5% 10% uh among the HBA 48% really high rates of extra PA paternity so is some evolutionary psychologists have said oh dual mating isn't true because it happens at such low rates and it's like well first reconsider that you know 2% number in terms of the 15% of women who have affairs uh reconsider it as a hit rate as opposed to an attempt rate and then also reconsider it in the sense that that's not nothing over millions of years right from an evolutionary time scale but also it's not necessarily relevant to our understanding of our ancestry given that we have contraceptives now and we really didn't then what about men's motivations what did you learn from them yeah men's motivations um I guess I actually do want to say one more thing on the on the icky point because I think that there is a and then I'll talk about men's motivations right after I'll just go straight into it I guess one issue from outside evos is this idea that the Dual mating hypothesis is somehow or the mate switching hypothesis or any of these that it's somehow sexist to talk about the evolved psychological influences on human sexual behavior the first thing that I would say to that is just that the Evol psychological influences on men's sexual behavior are also very unfavorable right the portrait that you can paint of men's behavior using evos pych is downright dastardly right it's it's full of deception uh men's Affairs just you know as much variety as possible you know completely emotionally detached we've talked about the seduce and abandon strategy all of this is very ugly and it's important that we have if we want to reduce ugly behaviors it's vitally important that we have a good understanding of what's actually happening instead of diluting ourselves that other influences are at play more you know comforting ones another thing is that the primary advocates for the Dual mating hypothesis I mean the senior author on our paper Candace who you've spoken to uh she has a gender studies degree everyone on our paper is a feminist right like we all we all believe in you know gender egalitarianism and you know some of the chief advocates for dual mating Elizabeth pillsworth back in the day Marty Hazelton even today these the these are women and feminists who are interested in this topic so the kind of outside evoy View that it's like oh this is like some kind of like anti-woman agenda no we're just interested what's true what's false and we're trying to take the politics out of it as much as possible so we can just buckle down and do good science we talk about top motivations it's certainly um it doesn't paint women in a particularly flattering light but we're talking about infidelity like you know talking about most women don't cheat but what this what this does show I think uh if you do get push back more push back saying this is unfair this this is you trying to control women's sexuality this is you painting them as mellian and all the rest of it I think that what that betrays is the typical social expectation and interpretation of women's Behavior which is that sexually women are not the protagonists that they are almost always responding uh it's actually low-key quite a sexist perspective on women that they don't have agency to go and Chase down a new partner you know it's the same people that will will tweet uh you're too good for him ba you know like remember remember your value Queen whilst also saying no no no no no women are never the ones that initiate women should never be the ones that s yourself it's such a it's such a low like it's such a midwit take from people that pretend to be egalitarian between the Sexes it's not it's not it's like the soft bigotry of male expectations it's it's yeah it's it's it's based such a good point it's incredibly patronizing how everyone's happy when you talk about men's evolved psych psychology but then as soon as you talk about women's it's it's it's almost as if the whole story is about men and this is something that I see a lot in kind of public discourse is that you know if you label everything as you know the patriarchy let's say well then you're basically saying that men are the only ones with their hands on the wheel and that's a pretty patronizing view of women uh our lab views women and men both as active sexual strategists and that's a much more for I mean politics aside it's just a much more accurate view I mean it would be weird if if women weren't active sexual strategists but it but also you know I I I think it's even less flattering to just say you know to just pretend that women are always acted on as opposed to active agents in their own rights actually but yeah I mean I think I think I I can't tell if we're being woke or anti-woke here I'm sure we'll be I'm I'm sure that we'll be accused of being both yeah the last five minutes of our conversation is going to be a roar Shack test online so correct we'll see dude I've been using that all the time two uh memes that I'm yet to write into existence one being an ideological RW shock test uh so a good example of this was uh Trump getting shot in the head uh that was an ideological Rush shck Tes that was either uh on one side the Dems trying to take down uh the candidate that was going to win through purposefully stopping the Secret Service from protecting him or that was Trump attracting crazies in a world where he's enabled everyone to have a gun like it was just pick and the other one the other uh meme being a thinking in super positions so you have these two worlds that both exist at the same time and they collapse down into one and uh it's interesting to see you know we talk about okay so are you saying that women don't have agency sexually well no no of course of course they do of we need in fact they need to have more it's like right okay so you're saying that they can make choices when it comes to their own infidelity and you would surely expect that they would make strategically prudent choices I mean what's what they're going to be culpable they're going to be culpable for this thing yeah it's it's so it's so funny okay uh men's motivations what did you learn yeah that was that was that was a rich segue this this now feels relatively uh this now feels relatively Lightweight by comparison but again Top Male motivation is relationship dis dissatisfaction again but it's at relatively uh comparatively more frequency that that that a comparatively lower frequency that's the sense that I'm using relatively here so about a third of men about 30% said that they were dissatisfied uh about 16% so significantly more than women said that it was because they had an attractive Affair partner and about 14% of men said that it was motivated by sexual desire and here again I just want to note that the qualitative data is qualitative and so it's subject to these reporting biases it's subject to these interpretation biases are we really meant to believe that only 14% of men's sexual Affairs are motivated by sexual desire I mean that surely it was part of it for much more men it's just that it's not particularly flattering or self- flattering to talk about those things and so men are going to be want to report that at a lower rate because it seems a little inappropriate that would be my interpretation of that but it is interesting that there's a sex difference there and that actually was something that's consistent with the mainstream Evo takes on infidelity that men's infidelity is somewhat more sexually driven directly sexually driven than women's infidelity because for men's infidelity the only benefit really is is sexual that's that's the mainstream take it's not my take I think that men cheat for a lot men and women both cheat for lots of reasons some men in our sample were mate switching some men in our sample had an affair because they wanted a new girlfriend that happened um at a similar rate to women as well what was the rate of men saying that their partner wasn't invested uh I think it was 5% right that's interesting we're going to get on to talking about jealousy shortly but just to kind of round this out what are the what are the exoplanets the unspoken uh ghosts and sort of potential orbiters of uh infidelity hypothesis is there anything else that's still lurking out there in The Ether that isn't dual mating mate switching oh yeah yeah multiple investors is the is the elephant is the has to be the elephant in the room I mean there's a few elephants in the room one that I think you've talked to Jeff Miller have you yes multiple times yeah yeah yeah yeah I actually I've seen Clips so Jeff Miller had a hypothesis that didn't really get hardly any attention which is that part of the Affairs that we have are to gain information right to calibrate our own mate value to gain skills in seduction and that theory has largely been brushed off but it did pop up quite a bit that uh I can actually check the percentage here um it wasn't nothing you know about one in 20 people said that they were cheating for some variety of information acquisition right what like what do you mean information acquisition are they [ __ ] spies what's going on uh so so for example one woman said that she wanted to uh basically wanted to obtain skills in seduction she didn't phrase it that way but it was like I wanted to be able to do this I wanted to have this ability and so that's kind of a that's a reason for infidelity that's strategically legitimate where it's like look I don't really know my own mate value or I don't really know how to get guys or I don't really know how to get girls and that's a very important life skill it's going to be important throughout my life let me go work on it right on the side that I I wouldn't expect it to be the main motivation for infidelity but it's a motivation you can imagine someone who is you know let's say a college student they're in their first big relationship they're halfway through college and they realize huh I actually don't really know what I'm doing still dating and I'm gonna have to date my whole life right until I get married at least so let me go get some skills here I said this about uh people who get into a marriage with the first person that they ever have sex with uh and it's kind of like being with your first ever therapist I'm doing therapy at the moment and a lot of people it's the first time I've ever worked with someone for this long in person Etc people go what's you therapist like I go think she's great but I don't really know because I've got nothing else to compare it to uh and it's it's kind of the same with that and I suppose you just don't know could I do better could I do any better is this really the best that I could do yeah so there could be some mate value calibration that comes from engaging and infidelity to some degree multiple investors is worth talking about because that's most of the theories that we've been talking about for women's infidelity have been quoted unquote quality driven theories the difference is what qualities are being searched for so again mate switching is best overall whole package whereas dual mating is the best combo deal but both are quality motivated multiple investors is a very interesting hypothesis it seems to be the primary explanation of infidelity among the HBA of Namibia and it's essentially that if a woman can't get enough resources from one man well then she can obtain supplementary resources from additional mates on the side so this wouldn't be a quality-driven hypothesis it would be a quantity driven hypothesis it's just that the quantity or not necessarily quantity driven but to but it's quantity of resources and that could translate quantity of mates I I would have to talk to shelza about it but it's it's a very interesting hypothesis and I think it does happen we didn't find a lot of evidence for for it in our sample unless you take the uninvested primary partner as evidence for it like oh this guy's not invested in me let me go get some investment somewhere else but very anecdotally I have at least heard of you know people having you know maybe kind of sugar daddy character on the side who it's like he's not particularly attractive but you're but you need you need to pay rent at the end of the month and so this is something that uh something that you engage in so I don't think multiple investors should be expected to be at high frequency in high sces countries and in high sces individuals but in situations where resources are scarce that could be very well be the main reason that women have affairs to obtain additional resources do you know the wizard Liz do you know that YouTube channel uh no right so her Channel's huge but just has not come across my radar until recently she got six and a half million uh Subs on YouTube huge hugely uh engaged Instagram as well and she regularly does videos basically explaining uh how to get the princess treatment which is how to make your man a man pay for your entire life uh pay your bills buy your car pay your tuition ensure that you're looked after treat you treat you like princess and uh if I was to speak to her I would very I would be very very interested in asking sort of what are the motivations for that what do you think about using multiple partners like really trying to dig in she's like super duper famous um and it's you know it's kind of tangential to this sort of Boss [ __ ] thing but it's done in a very different sort of a way because obviously it's it's not focusing on financial Independence and not needing a man it's a more uh some would say mellian manipulative version of this to get the guy to pay for those things uh for everything that you should be showered in gifts that it's very important that you're showed in gifts that you should set the tone she uses I was watching this video from her yesterday she says that you should lie to uh every new relationship that you're in and say that the guy in the previous relationship spoiled you because men will only work as hard as they feel like they need to to beat your previous boyfriend so uh basically if your last boyfriend uh beat and abused you and never cared for you your next one will just think well if I just don't beat and abuse her then I'm better so a very interesting like super super interesting fascina I I'll send you some of the videos once we're finished up um yeah I'll be interested to see if uh Men start taking on that strategy because it's this is the first period in history where it's viable to be you know a boy toy or a dude I'm I'm an aspiring [ __ ] trophy husband have been have been for a very long time unfortunately you've got too much money for that I still have hope ah [ __ ] um I'm still hoping for an ARS to step out of somewhere um okay so what about the role oh how does this fold into your new sort of perspective on this how does this fold into the discussion around jealousy about sex differences in jealousy about why men and women get jealous it's evolutionary function Etc well I mean this is what's funny is that the Dual mating hypothesis is more consistent with the evolutionary psychology literature on jealousy uh I mean it's quite conspicuous to me but it doesn't seem to have been acknowledged generally it's something that we've touched on earlier which is just that if so okay well for to give everyone the download if they don't have this information yet on average it varies the degree of the sex difference the the sex difference varies and then it also varies what people care about right so there are plenty of cultures where everybody cares more about sexual infidelity or everyone cares more about emotional infidelity but the general difference is that within a culture on average men will be relatively more concerned with sexual infidelity and women will be relatively more concerned with emotional infidelity and that makes sense if dual mating is the concern because men aren't protecting against a woman leaving them for another partner they're protecting against the potential that they will be quote unquote cuckolded right they they don't want they're they're more upset by sexual infidelity because men can be cuckolded where women really at least not in the same way right in a euphemistic way maybe but not in not in the literal sense on women's on the women's end we've talked quite a bit about investment they're going to be chiefly concerned or not chiefly necessarily but they're going to be um more more concerns than men with losing investment because women's investment is more obligate men's investment is more not morally but pragmatically optional and so that's really the landscape in terms of sex differences in jealousy it pops up everywhere it's looked for and I will note though that some people have taken it some people have have exported this FY finding and said that like oh women women don't care at all about sexual infidelity their main concern is emotional infidelity as long as it's just sexual it's fine that's not what that that doesn't pop up uh women are very upset by sexual infidelity and then also on the other end men are very upset by emotional infidelity it's just that relative to one another within a culture you'll generally find the difference in that direction and this makes sense under a dual mating view because men are paranoid about getting cuckolded and then it also makes sense from a traditional kind of what what women stand to gain from relationships in the view that it's like well if he is invested in her emotionally then he might go off and raise her kids instead of mine and maybe he's not invested in me a men have paternity uncertainty women have investment uncertainty that's how i' summarize it a consequence of this being accurate dual mating being the leading infidel Theory would be more men being cook holded ancestrally is that right yeah and I think it's very reasonable to think that that happened quite a bit I mean if you look at even even like rural American populations I've seen higher numbers like close to 10% in terms of estimated like like if contraception is low and infidelity is high you're going to get a lot of men raising kids that aren't theirs um that doesn't happen a lot in the mo in modern America in modern Britain in modern Australia where there's contraception and strong social norms against infidelity we don't really see we don't really see a lot of that so it's not really something to worry about in a modern context but in an ancestral context I would say that this would be a real worry I will also note that uh there is a great new paper relatively new paper from uh again book shelza called The cuckoldry conundrum which is just pointing out that sometimes you know our conception of cuckoldry doesn't isn't necessarily exportable in the sense that and this might sound strange but sometimes you know that a child isn't yours but it still makes evolutionary sense to invest in them so for example among the HBA there's tremendous status to be gained and social clout from being a good father to your wife Affair partner's children so [ __ ] that's that's pro-social in some ways Jesus yeah so it's like you would be because and and you got to keep in mind that you know uh they've probably played both sides of the field here so they've probably got they've probably got eggs and other nests themselves to use a metaphor and so it's kind of it's kind of in everyone's best interest to be like you know let's just invest in the kids that are in our Nest freefor all it's a PO well this is kind of like the human equivalent of the um why female chimps mate with multiple males because the risk of infanticide gets reduced because each male is uncertain about whether or not that child might be his I'm not sure if that's even true but it seems to me this seems to be a more kind of yeah socially enforced equivalent of that uh yeah I would call that a yeah I would call that a tangentially related hypothesis for sure I I I don't know how high and this is something that you should talk to Martin dally about actually is because he's his Cinderella effect book is just um the truth about Cinderella so yeah that such a fun one about infanticide and humans I say fun oh my gosh don't clip that ruthless but yeah interesting how about I really did mean it when I say I don't care how gross the theory is I just want to know if it's true uh but I don't know how much in fantas side has actually played a role in humans but it's kind of funny and this actually relates back to the political conversation we were having earlier is that some of the initial theories from Sarah herie on women's infidelity in humans were related to paternity uncertainty and hilariously given that you know this is something that Lou Bash uh pointed out to me which is that you know in the 70s 80s and 90s these findings on women as sexual Strate strategists dual mating uh paternity uncertainty creation these sorts of things they were championed at that time as feminist ideas and pushed back upon by right-wing people who wanted women to you know they had this archaic view of women as passive and you know not engaging in the sexual Marketplace as active agents and now today we have the complete political reverse where it's the same set of scientific findings but it's the super feminist groups that are saying oh that's just not true da d d d they're kind of acting like the old right- wiers and it's the really misogynistic groups uh such as you know the the tail end of incels and and and such who are holding up these same findings and saying they're great so that I think that that's better evidence than than I've heard for anything that uh these facts facts are facts are neutral and if you have an agenda you can collect a set of facts and spin them in a way that sit fits whatever agenda you like the same findings that today we call our sex we call sexist were originally you know championed by by feminist Scholars and uh that's that's just the way the cookie crumbles well the the the Horseshoe is very horses shoy and it ends up being a a total [ __ ] Circle eventually yeah it's more like a merry gound in the history of this debate the same the same sexual findings that were considered liberal are now considered conservative and if you give it another 20 years it'll probably flip back while we're just going to keep our heads down and try to figure out what's actually going on what are the predictors of infidelity how can you tell if someone's going to cheat okay there there's actually there's actually a long list here the most obvious one would be have they cheated on a past partner once a cheater always a cheater this lines up with our folk psychology it's not exactly true in the sense that many people cheat on one person and then never cheat again but it's it's true enough let's say so there was one longitudinal study from Kayla op that found that if someone had cheated in their last relationship they were three times more likely to cheat in their next relationship have you got any idea what the base rate is oh the base rate of infidelity yeah it's difficult to find in dating couples I'll say two things that I'm quite confident in I would say that about a fourth of marriages will encounter infidelity at some point in their lifespan and I would say that about half of people maybe a little more than half in men a little less than half in women but somewhere floating around that kind of mid-range not like a super majority or a super minority will cheat on somebody at some point but that doesn't mean that they'll cheat on you specifically in one relationship so for example there are plenty of people who you know cheated on their college boyfriend or college girlfriend and then they never cheat again for the rest of their lives uh but given that most people have several relationships and also given the data showing that most people report getting cheated on by somebody at some point I would say that the inverse is also though though it doesn't logically necessarily follow I would say that it is likely that about half of people will cheat on somebody at some point but I would love to see better data on that unfortunately the really good data has been collected on marriage and married couples and uh again I would say that I would say that a conservative and reason estimate would be about ath of marriages will experience infidelity and it's usually going to be the man who does it okay what else someone was a cheater in the past that's a pretty good predictor that there might be in future what else yeah uh extra pair interest we are naturally quite sensitive to extra pair interest we notice it so people tend to notice if their boyfriend is constantly checking other girls out that seems to predict infidelity empirically I I believe there was even a study where they tested you know how long uh a man's eye lingered on other women and that was predictive of infidelity which is kind of funny and you know extra pair flirtation that sort of thing I I would I would be attuned to that uh there are people who are let's call it laser focused on their partner and then there are people who you know you go to the social event and they just want to they just want to talk to talk to all the hot guys or all the hot girls and they they that kind of thing that probably doesn't doesn't bode well narcissism is another thing to look out for that's another that I think people find intive and a history of and I don't I don't say this in like a loaded way but a general history of promiscuity I would say it would be something to look out for like if you're if you're a woman and you're choosing between two guys and one guy he's slept with over a hundred women he loves going to the club he loves having one night stands he rarely has long-term relationships and the other guy has had like two long-term girlfriends and has never had casual sex if you're choosing between those two guys which is more likely to cheat on you I think it should be obvious but it is statistically backed as well that the guy who has the more of a history of monogamy is going to uh is going to be more faithful in practice so that I mean I've given you like five things there so I think that maybe four I'm not sure that's quite a bit I seem to remember a line from one of David's books maybe the evolution of I can't remember um where he said that the single biggest predictor of extramarital sex is premarital sex that's probably true that's probably true I love that line I'm stealing it but it's uh I I'll have to check it yeah I just wonder I wonder how true that is I wonder whether it's whether it's the case you know is it is it just sociosexuality all the way down that's such a driving force that the person who wanted to have novelty in their teens and in their 20s um you know how much of that is setting a particular type of habit you know damaged goods how much how much are you damaged goods how much have you set some sort of Lifestyle routine versus how much of how much is this like a natural outgrowth of you and your nature as a person you know what I mean yes I completely agree I think that it is is it's possible I mean it's I I don't find it completely implausible this idea that it's like if you practice having one night stands over and over again throughout your 20s maybe in your 30s it'll be hard for you to not do that when the opportunity arises uh but I also think it's plausible that as you say and this would be my this would be what I would think is that it's sociosexuality all the way down so it's like if you want novelty and you're just holding yourself back from it I'm not sure that that actually will maybe the ritual of doing that will help you in a marriage but maybe it won't also maybe you want those things you want to be sexually unrestricted but women just don't like you and so when you're married the first time that you get the opportunity maybe that's the first time that you take it as well uh so I would say that if someone is I think that yeah it's kind of you know humans seem to exist partially on this spectrum and it's it's a construct but it's a useful construct of sociosexuality some people are quite let's say unrestricted they like to have sex without love they like to have casual sex and some people are quite restricted and the people who are more restricted the people who are you know who don't have sex with people who don't love them the people who would feel you know uncomfortable getting naked in front of a stranger those people are probably going to be more faithful to you and I think I think that's pretty reasonable and I think you know that for all the internet discourse uh I know that every podcast I I want to put like a moratorium or like a ban on body count because I've talked about it before so many times but yeah I would say that body count is a kind of a dull proxy but it probably is a proxy for likelihood of committing infidelity at least in the studies that I've seen yeah I suppose the reason the body counts uh an interesting discussion the reason it comes up so much is it's such a low resolution rough Hune signal in the same way as saying your bank account shows how hard you work you know it's just it's this sort of odd singular figure that you can compare everybody has one everybody everybody has one everybody has a bank account how much money is in your [ __ ] bank account how many how many people have you had sex with I would say that it it probably isn't predictive I mean I think there was one actually I won't quote it because I don't I don't remember the exact stats but you know like I think it's pretty intuitive that if you're if You' got one person who's only slept with one person before you and another person who slept with 100 who's more likely what they're going to cheat on you with the third person they've slept with or the 100 first you know I think it's pretty intuitive what are some of the common signs that a person is cheating signs that a person is actively cheating I mean a lot of these aren't literature backed but you do hear them from you know relationship counselors and relationship psychologists and things like that uh I would say that in I don't think that you know you should be I don't really have prescriptive claims in my personal life I I wouldn't really want to be in a relationship where everyone's you know snooping on each other's phones all the time and accessing each other's technology but conversely anecdotally you do see it a lot where people who get cheated on they're they say that their partner became very digitally secretive very protective of their phone right they leave the they go to the bathroom leave the room and they are sure to take their phone with them right never leave their phone unlocked never let you use their phone for any reason I would say that that would be something that would be somewhat I would say that that would be somewhat suspicious I suppose there are plenty of reasons why someone might be digitally secretive that aren't infidelity but it's also hard to imagine carrying out a full-blown Affair in a modern context without keeping digital Secrets uh that would that would be very Stone Age In in nature um I would say that yeah I mean signs that they're actively cheating are much more difficult because we don't have as much research on it um well by virtue lot the people who are actively cheating are trying to conceal it so who's going to who's going to you know blow the Tom Cruz mission impossible mission whilst it's still underway yeah exactly so yeah yeah do you want to take part in my study that'll completely you know you to unnecessary risk yeah in your secret operation but I would say that cautiously millions of years of evolution has prepared your brain for this moment of uh you know detecting uh partner infidelity potentially maybe maybe it's only tens of thousands of years it depends depends how deep monogamy goes in our lineage but point being I would say that trusting your gut to some extent is probably wise if you think something's fishy uh there might be uh with the caveat that you got to look at your personal history if you know that you're someone who's just morbidly jealous you're really over sensitive to that sort of thing then uh play a cautious hand I was going to say there's thousands of people right now who are like Vindicated well just the people who are adamant at all times that something's going wrong um there was this interesting uh study that I saw on cost uh the top four behaviors that signal commitment within relationships on social media number one deleting dating apps number two ignoring flutatious messages number three indicating relationship status online and number four unfollowing potential alternative mates researchers found that individuals with high attachment anxiety reported significantly higher levels of discomfort worry and jealousy when imagining their partner interacting with an attractive alternative on social media this confirmed that such scenarios are particularly distressing for anxious individuals interestingly the partner's High commitment behaviors on social media successfully increased perceived partner commitment and the perceived devaluation of Alternatives regardless of the participants attachment style however these behaviors did not significantly enhance feelings of security or relationship satisfaction for anxious individuals as hypothesized this suggests that while explicit commitment signals are important they may not be sufficient to fully alleviate the deep-seated insecurities and fears associated with attachment anxiety you have to send me that that's very cool and also I would say that the you know it's it's it's it's modern but that doesn't mean that it doesn't have some evolutionary Roots this broadcasting that you're in a relationship on social media what it reminds me of most is I I I spoke to one of if not the leading experts on Gibbons on my podcast species and we were discussing monogamy and Gibbons so Gibbons are our closest socially monogamous relatives and one thing that they do is they sing Duets together and part of that function I mean it's got many functions but part of that seems to be to broadcast the pair bond to basically say they the Gibb and pair will sing a duet to say hey everybody just so you know we're still dating it's the relationship status update on Facebook yes exactly and so whenever I see someone just kind of put up you know their their girlfriend posts them and then they share the story or vice versa it's kind of like it's kind of like you're doing a du in the sense that you're both signaling hey everybody alternative mates we're in a relationship um so there's no uh and and we're and we're doing well uh so that sort of thing it it has its roots I would say in a very basic evolved desire even if the behavior itself is not evolved obviously we there's no selection on Instagram posting at least not yet not yet that will be soon um what have you learned about what counts as Che uh there's that there's that there's major variety I mean I mean it's hard to know because a lot of this is from the gray literature but some I mean if you're in an open relationship for example even sleeping with someone else is not necessarily cheating so and then on the other end some people who are in very uh let's say sexually restrictive relationships would say that pornography is cheating or that even fantasizing about other people is cheating or that light social flirtation with other people is cheating and there's a huge Spectrum as to what's considered cheating what's not what's considered just disrespectful versus full-blown Affair for what it's worth our study only looked the study that we spent the first uh half hour or so discussing today we just looked at sexual Affairs and it's possible that if we you know women are more likely to engage in emotional Affairs than men based on the existing data that we have on that subject and it's possible that purely emotional Affairs are more geared towards mate switching that would make sense towards to me oh that is interesting yeah like non the what is the function of nonsexual emotional Affairs like where a woman is you know daydreaming about her coworker Crush but isn't actually acting on it or man you're blowing my mind you're blowing my mind because this you chose a particular bar to classify infidelity and by design that bar would lend itself toward the Dual mating hypothesis more than it would lend itself toward the mate switching hypothesis that is correct however I will also say that cheeky cheeky it's not cheeky I wasn't rooting for the Dual mating hypothesis if anything I was rooting for the M switching hypothesis but tried to you know stay as emotionally neutral possible I I was surprised by the results and I'll also say that to be to give the devil it's due Advocates the M switching hypothesis they do think that the they or they did think maybe maybe this research will change their minds that the primary function of women's Affairs sexual Affairs is to obtain a new mate uh so the sexual Affair test I I think was a fair one because look we're looking at extra PA mating we're not looking at extra pair flirtation which can have even more functions I mean sometimes you'll flirt with someone who's not your partner or one will flirt with someone who's not their partner just because they want to be more popular at work or they want to get a raise or they want the airport they want going through the airport to be slightly smoother that's literally what I was about to say if I want a second Lotus Biscoff on a delta or something I better hope that it's one of the female air hostesses that comes around because if it's that miserable looking bloke with a beard I've got no chance if I flood on my eyelashes in the right way at at some lovely lady then maybe I get a second biscuit um yeah I mean I'm just I'm so fascinated by that by uh what constitutes cheating and the sort of emotional infidelity versus the sexual infidelity uh it's a term we haven't used yet but monkey branching sort of from one relationship to another the slaying for Mid switching yeah where you are um sort of dipping your toe in just how invested is this person just how funny is this person just how good are the G how good does he smell uh before we get to how good of aover is he how good of a lover yeah before we get to that so I'll ladder up all the way um before I get to that one and uh it's also I suppose the thing from a operational perspective for want of a term that makes it sound less like a a a military [ __ ] undertaking it allows more culpable deniability for anybody did you sleep with him look I haven't even touched anybody darling I've never touched anybody it's like well yeah but that's not that's not what much safer yeah it's a much safer form of an emotional affair is much safer and so you're insulating yourself against the costs while you're engaging in it I think that makes a lot of sense I will also say that one of the strengths of the matate switching hypothesis is that because it it is about sexual Affairs it's also about emotional Affairs but because it is about sexual Affairs is that it acknowledges something that's true that Helen fer actually said this to me she said you learn a lot about someone between the sheets right there's a lot of mating relevant information that is obtained through having sex with someone how conscientious they are how much they care about you versus themselves uh how athletic they are you get a lot of information is cheating heritable if you looked at that the behavioral genetics of cheating yeah I mean everything's heritable I'm not I'm not a behavior geneticist uh but there have been studies on this subject and it shows that you know uh I mean gen code for proteins and Regulatory molecules that build and operate your brain it would be bizarre if genes had no influence on any Behavior like for a behavior to have zero genetic input would be peculiar and there hasn't been a ton of research on this but there have been you know some twin studies some candidate gen Gene studies and candidate Gene studies are always a little a little more questionable but the twin studies I find that study again I'm not a behavior geneticist I do find that study design quite persuasive and those indicate that yes cheating is heritable uh Hey talking about uh a gene embryo selection uh imagine if you could I'm gonna I'm going to select for a a scoundrel Chad of a son and I'm just gonna have I'm gonna have him just absolutely decimate Stockton ones in the northeast of England well the re the reason that that's I mean that's very funny but I suppose the reason that that is and the reason that I think I don't know why embryo selection is coming up so much but I guess the reason that think that this whole project might be a little unlikely is that the things that the genes that affect one's propensity to cheat it's not going to be one cheating Gene it's going to be thousands of genes that each do hundreds of different things right in all likelihood at least by my understanding it's going to be like you know the influence of one gene that has a tiny effect on risk-taking propensity another Gene that has a tiny effect on sociosexuality another Gene that has a tiny effect on honesty right just all these gen that have tiny effects on things that are good in some context and bad in others and so in order to genetically adjust someone's probability for like what does what does someone who has a zero zero% of the cheating genes look like maybe they're maybe they're super boring yeah um have you seen this new I think it's yakob or Jacob fought uh examining the Fraternal birth order effect and sexual orientation in sites from an Eastern European population yakob for and colleagues examine the Fraternal birth order effect Why by men with more older brothers are more likely to be gay this seems at least slightly relatively robust uh analyzing data from Croatia and Slovakia they find that the Fraternal birth order effect exists for lesbians to women with more older brothers are more likely to be lesbian strange I I I I I mean so not my area uh but very interesting fascinating dude I I thought that was so so cool I mean you know I had um uh Dr James Cantor on the show uh and he's just he's spicy and lots of people really don't like him but I I I for his area uh parasexuality is that it uh um the one where it's like all sorts of weird sexualities uh he he is he's just the best and uh yeah he he taught me very much he's he's gay and he taught me a lot about the birth order effect but the fact that it occurs for lesbians too I thought was a bit a bit confusing and also I I would just love for there to be like a really this is something that I don't know if we'll ever get it because it might not be adaptive but it would be so cool to get an Adaptive story of homosexuality that works but at the end of the day it just matters what's true and I just I haven't heard I haven't heard an EV story that one makes a lot of sense and two actually has good data behind it not my area I can't give you the data but I can give you one that's got a good story so um if as a but it only works as guys it really doesn't work as for females and this female thing throws a huge spanner in the wrench uh The Works of it which is if you have had multiple males go through the same woman your mom it is likely that the sex ratio is going to be skewed toward men which makes it less likely that you as a man are going to be able to find a female mate and so you become a kin helper essentially and invest in your brother's Offspring I think so yeah I mean that's again very interesting doesn't fit with this new finding on absolutely totally [ __ ] pointless like why would the lesbian no no no no we need more of you like we need we really the men all of your brothers well maybe not your brothers yeah it seems more of a it mean seems more of a I think that it seems more of a spandrel like that would be the sort of hypothesis where it's like there's selection on like I've heard again this is so not my area but you know I've heard stories about maybe that maybe certain strong selective biases uh select for genes that also you know at a low dose they're they they lead to certain things that are very selectively advantageous but if you get a high enough dose of them then you become purely same-sex attracted and the buck stops there um I guess my favorite hypothesis that might have been true in our ancestry just doesn't seem to be particularly true now would be this idea that would be this kin selection idea that it's like in some circumstances because we see this in other animals in some circumstances it makes more sense to invest in your kin's Offspring than your own offspring because they share 50% of your your kin born basically to be an Alo parent and you've got born to be an Alo early warning uh sort of detection system about the sex ratio and then down street okay I met an evolutionary biologist who liked that and he called it I don't know if this is his name but it's such a funny one um he was gay and he called it the uh the rich gay Uncle hypothesis and I was like huh it kind of is true and I looked it up and it was like oh yeah gay guys do tend to make more money and they do tend to invest a lot in their nephews I was like this is kind of cool but it doesn't seem to be it doesn't it's again it's just a hypothesis and I actually don't think it's true I think it's more likely that not everything is explicable by evolutionary psych I mean I wish it was it's F which is that's E's biggest hurdle is that it's so fun to come up with stories that we tell too many and so uh you have to be very conservative with your hypotheses and test them rigorously we've spoken about uh repeat um uh people that are consistently being uh cheaters uh the culprits what about people that are repeatedly victims is there such a thing as a repeat INF Fidelity victims some people always get cheated on uh other people manage to sail through completely smooth if I'm remembering correctly in the kalop study people who were cheated on in their last relationship were twice as likely to be cheated on in their next relationship and some people hear that and they think of it as like oh that's just lightning striking the same spot twice oh my gosh but the truth is is that lightning does tend to strike the same spots because are things that affect the probability of where lightning hits so this isn't victim blaming but it's possible that someone is very low skilled in mate guarding let's say uh they just don't do that effectively and so they consistently get cheated on or another thing like we often see that people are attracted to narcissists we know that narcissism co-varies with infidelity and so if you're someone who finds you know super cocky guys really sexy well you're G to pick those guys over and over again and then you're GNA end up picking you're picking a trait that co-varies with infidelity and so you become repeatedly victimized to it again not victim blaming just stating the reality that sometimes people's strategic decisions have an influence another possibility though is that this is based on self-reports right did you get cheated on in your last relationship did you get cheated on in this one and it's plausible to me that some people are too suspicious and over report infidelity or some people are just really good at catching cheaters like they've got a skill there and so you know everyone maybe the rate of getting cheated on is relatively evenly distributed between the two groups but the group that gets cheated on a lot are constantly catching it um I mean and you know it's plausible to me that you know uh if you're someone like myself for example who wouldn't go through their partner's phone right I would just feel like that was like a a gross thing to do um I mean I'm I can certainly imagine circum I'm not going to say I've never done it or that there wouldn't be circumstances where I could but just that it would generally that would be something that I would find very aversive there would need to be some really legitimate reason well then maybe I'm more vulnerable to to infidelity but I'm also just more vulnerable to not noticing it so there is this effect where people who get cheated on in the past are more likely to get cheated on in the future and people who haven't been cheated on in the past are less likely to be cheated on in the future so winners keep winning and losers just lose more right that seems to be the case but it could be a detection bias it could be a as you like to say a skill issue just not good at skill issue man yeah not good at detecting it or not good at picking mates or you know but uh it's an interesting phenomenon I'd love to do more research into it but it's not my research so that's fascinating yeah uh it's uh the consistent themes that you find throughout your life if they continue to come up have to have something to do with you maybe it's you yeah it has it has to have something to do with you and maybe it is that you you're you're unbelievably good at at detecting uh but given that not everybody cheats all the time uh maybe it's that you're good at picking cheaters maybe that's your skill I think the most likely explanation is that you're attracted to traits that co-vary with infidelity so if someone says to me why does everyone cheat on me the first thing that I would ask in a less callous way why do you keep dating cheaters yeah what is it that you're predicting yeah what are you attracted to that's causing this problem because if you think narcissistic bad boys are super hot well problem solved maybe not and if you're yeah M yeah Sherlock Holmes over here I've I've I've I've solved it and vice versa for men if you're attracted you know if you're a man and you're attracted to really dark Triad kind of sexy flirtatious women you know maybe maybe that maybe that's maybe maxing out on that and it could also be it could also be a prioritization issue so let's say you're the sort of guy who puts physical attractiveness above all else you don't pay attention to personality it's just who's the hottest girl that likes me that's who I'm going to date and then it's like why do they all cheat on me it's like well maybe you should have you know considered uh shared values you weren't selecting you weren't selecting for loyalty yeah you didn't select for loyalty so bit of a skill issue but we won't victim blame too much what does this new uh study this new uh insight how does it inform your perspective on how natural or unnatural infidelity is uh ancestral mating strategy sort of monogamy versus monogamish versus serial monogamy versus polygyny does that does it sort of adjust your worldview at all no but I'm so glad you brought this up one thing that I will say is that again I want to emphasize that my study is just one study and I look forward to more research hopefully research using the same Paradigm where we look at actual uh people who have had affairs that try to investigate women's infidelity more and then also that even though the Topline conclusion is a you know a pre-registered win for the Dual mating hypothesis best case scenario and worst case scenario for mate switching we also found that some women mate switch and women cheat for a variety of reasons including obtaining additional resources getting revenge Etc how does it affect my view really not that much it it definitely affects I thought that mate switching would be much more common and I found David bus's arguments very eloquent and persuasive for the mate switching hypothesis and I'm a huge fan of David bus so I I I I thought that maybe this would be a win for the mate switching hypothesis I was kind of surprised it wasn't so I guess it changed my view in that sense but it didn't change my view as to whether we're naturally socially monogamous mammals because most socially monogamous mammals engage in extra param and most have some degree of extra praternity so the idea that we a socially monogamous mam also engage engages an extra mating and also has you know some degree of strategic evolution in the context of extra pair paternity neither of those things were particularly surprising a lot of people hear the word monogamous so the way that the way that Folks at home use the term monogamous is different from the way biologists use monogamous generally when we talk about monogamy we are distinguishing between genetic or sexual monogamy and social monogamy and most species that are labeled monogamous are only socially monogamous so there's some degree you know plenty of them don't cheat but many of them do one example and this would be a very unethical study to perform in humans our closest socially monogamous relative the Gibbons there was a a study in the 1990s this scientist named Reichard he or he or she I can't remember they he they went out into the field and just watched Gibbons having sex and tried to tabulate how often was it with the primary partner and how often was it cheating and a full you know 11 to 12% of the time it was not the primary partner right so that's not that's not 11 to 12% of Gibbons cheating that's that number of Gibbons that's Gibbons having sex with other partners at that rate so usually with the primary partner but very often times not so some people are going to hear this and think naively because they don't have and and this isn't you know this isn't there's nothing wrong with this but because they don't have the kind of biological anthropology context they might think some people might think oh Mack's infidelity research suggests that humans aren't naturally monogamous I would say on the contrary it's completely consistent with us being socially monogamous and given that again most women do not execute a dual mating strategy in this way most women get their genes and parenting from one partner both in terms of their psychology and the psych psychological mechanisms um undergoing their behavior and in terms of their actual Behavior Uh and but but in any case they're they're going to some of people are going to hear this and think oh this means we're not naturally monogamous it's consistent with us being socially monogamous it's just uh it's just a question of how sexually monogamous we are so fascinating stuff man so interesting and uh I think I I'm I'm going to like throw a little bit of money into the ring that there's something missing with the way that the studies are being done for ovulatory shift uh that it it seems too unlikely to me that we could have all of these converging uh and it would be so useful for ovulatory shift to happen uh for it to not actually have an effect because it seems to me that each time that it comes up it sounds really cool and it's sexy explanation and then it doesn't replicate or there's there's something in the data that does whatever and it it just to me seems like such an obvious mechanism for evolution to take advantage of you know the original pill the original the original pill the original contraceptive control for women concealed ovulation with behavioral change that occurs during that period of time no one knows maybe not even her and it would just be I don't know I also I feel the exact same way in the sense that I think that maybe more sophisticated study designs that look at partner qualities and look at relationship qualities as mediators maybe those end up validating the OV shift hypothesis but I will note again and emphasize that the Dual mating hypothesis does not need ovulatory shifts for example one might intuitively think that in monogamous relationships right fully sexually monogamous relationships it would only make sense for a woman to have sex at ovulation because sex has risks and that's the only time she can get pregnant but instead we see that there are benefits to having sex outside of the cycle outside of that part of the cycle and it's possible that there are benefits to having sex with one's Affair partner outside of that part of the cycle as well uh in terms of Seduction in terms of uh M acquisition I mean it's funny I was talking to a couple of ovulatory researchers at a conference and uh one of them said offhandedly but it was so clever they said we'd have more success testing a a weekend weekday shift hypothesis because so much more cheating happens on the weekend versus the weekday and that really puts the that really puts the cycle shift effect sizes into comparison it's not like it's not like humans are werewolves and depending on what part in our hormonal cycle there's like noticeable changes humans part of being human part of the defining characteristics of our species or the suite of defining characteristics is that we exhibit remarkable sexual stability across the cycle and even if we exhibit dual mating it's not inconsistent that that stability translates to infidelity hell yeah Mack Murphy ladies and gentlemen dude Chris Williamson I really appreciate you your work's fascinating I love the fact that you can communicate it this well and uh I'm excited to see what you do next I will be seeing you in Australia in only a couple of months time when I'm out there for my tour so are you you still going to be there start I've got tickets I have got tickets to your to your Australia concert of sorts oh yeah yeah yeah yeah I'm gonna come out and play the banjo so if anyone is if anyone is going to Chris's uh Melbourne show uh that's a that's that's that it's going to be I'm I'm sitting in one of the regular seats it's going to be a it's going to be a very easy opportunity to meet me as well I I'll be I'll be doing an unofficial meet and greet in the a where should people go they want to keep up to date with your work podcast all of the things where do you want them to go uh if you Google my name everything comes up uh my podcast is species uh the app that I have for c for couples is coule and uh you know I've got a course on human evolution if anyone wants to learn about those very good highly recommended I bought it go and buy it if you want to learn more about this thank you Chris and so you know there's a few there's a few ways to get more time with me but all of them can be found through Google oh yeah Mack I appreciate you man Chris I appreciate you thank you so much for having me back on if you enjoyed that episode you will love a selection of the best clips from the podcast over the last couple of months and it's available right here go on give them a watch