#751 - Macken Murphy - What Does Science Say Makes Someone Attractive?

25:21It's nice that someone puts effort in, that the outfit works with the hair, with the makeup, up with the nails with everything else, but if you come in and you're completely caked, well it looks like you're trying too hard. It looks like you might be compensating. The same thing goes for the man. Well, we want a little bit of muscularity, but the absolutely jacked out of his mind bodybuilder, well what does that signal? Maybe it signals some sort of inner insecurity. Maybe this guy is trying to compensate for some of the, maybe he's only going to live for another 10 years. The whole host, I'm very concerned about his state of his mental health, all of these different things.

25:52So the averageness that we're talking about with regards to the face composition. And I do love that idea of like just processing speed. It's like, yep, eyes knows mouth, yeah. That looks all of the things are there. That took me point three seconds. I didn't have to hesitate. Away you go. Beautiful. And we can fall in love with people's imperfections in a way. But they're imperfections I'm going to guess are almost always within a particular bound of this is average. But yeah, I like the fact that there's a Goldilocks zone for most of these things. Some people love real muscular guys and some people really love more sort of skinny guys.

26:27Yeah, but this is a very complicated conversation. I think I want to be careful about again, conflating mathematical averageness with trait averageness. So with muscularity, it's a little, we don't see this preference for average muscularity. So we see a preference for average facial size -shaped placement of traits. But with muscularity, it's more complicated. I mean, do women like muscular men? Yes, yeah, yeah. I mean, there's some don't, right? But there's a variety of convergent, and so I'm not speaking, I'm not saying that like all women prefer muscles. And I'm also not saying as you noted that as muscular as possible is optimal, right?

27:06And it's also possible that a certain degree of muscularity is sexy in some context, but not at all. Right? Like the bodies that are popular in pornography might not actually look that great in real life. Right? There's something about like the kind of super stimulus of like a super muscular lean dude or someone who's you know, I had their body done to it an extreme degree that might work on camera but not you know, in the real world. But in any case, muscularity, there was a recent meta -analysis that just got published on this or I believe it just got published. It might be you know, still in the kind of public, awaiting review, sphere, but certainly, certainly the results are out, and they looked at kind of all the studies on predictors of mating success in all these different ways.

27:55And it just sort of is the case, right, in the sense that regardless of what people say is attractive and what isn't, men who are muscular have higher mating success than men who aren't, right, and men who are more bodily masculine in general seem to have higher mating success. And so there's a couple different reasons why that might be. I mean, the first thought is pretty obvious. It's like maybe guys with muscles are just sexier, right? And there are individual studies where it's like you show women a bunch of bodies and you're like who's hottest in this crew. And it's like a guy who's more muscular than average and leaner than average, right?

28:30Not stage ready bodybuilder, but certainly like pretty high standard, right? Right. There's other studies that don't show that, but there are other ways in which there are other ways in which muscularity can help you to compete for mates without making you more attractive. So one route by which this could be the case, there was a really interesting study which you might have already read. I'm sure one of your guests, it might have been him. It was the Frapp Boy study. So they studied a bunch of fat boys. I'll email this to you afterwards because you're going to like reading it They studied a bunch of fat boys and they had them raid each other on like who would roll who basically like who who would be the best fighter Who's the most intimidating that sort of question I can't remember the scale items they used and then they had women rate the fat boys as the lightouts.

29:20Yeah, how hot are these guys? Yeah, and really weird result how hot the women said the guys were didn't have it wasn't a strong predictor of the male mating success Now, mating success is very hard to measure. They measured it by number of mates. So we'll talk about this more in a second, but at least in that study with those measurements, the intimidation factor was better, right? It was better than being hot. It was better to be scary than hot. And so one potential idea is that if you're a super jacked, scary dude, and you're talking to a girl at the bar, everyone else is like, all right, that may as well be his wife.

29:55Like I'm not going anywhere near this situation. and she's off limits, whereas if you're a super scrawny guy who is frail, maybe not. That's one idea. But another idea, and this is, I think, another likely hypothesis, frankly, is that, and this goes back to the masculine trait off thing that we were talking about earlier, is that maybe the traits associated with accruing muscles are also the same traits associated with aggressive pursuit of short -term mating. right? And so measuring mating success with number of mates in that case, right? They didn't look at how good looking were these girls, how intelligent were these women, how high -mave value in general were these women, right?

30:34They didn't look at that. It was literally just how many people have you slept with, which say what you will, I mean, that's an indicator of something, it's it, but it might not be that much more of an indicator than you're not an in -sell, right? because after that, it's like, if you're at least at the bare minimum level of attractiveness to engage in short -term mating, and that's not a particularly low level, right? That is at least medium, surely. But once you're at that level, if you want to, in a modern mating market, you can have a one -night stand every week. So it's like, it might not be that great of an indicator, But it is interesting.

31:11What about weight, BMI, body shape for women? Well, I'll note briefly on BMI for men. It is interesting. There was a dating app data set where it indicated that the best BMI to be as a man was about 27, right? And it's just hard to know how to interpret that because 27 could mean like, oh, that dude is jacked. There's many ways to reach 27 BMI. But that's a flaw in BMI as a rule. Yeah. And that's kind of why I wanted to introduce that is that BMI is a great measurement of weight per height because that's the only thing it is. It's not a great measurement of health. It certainly tells you something.

31:49It's not a great measure of muscularity. It certainly tells you something. But it is interesting. So I mean, we're speaking in a Western context and this is I just know that this is what's going to happen I'm going to tell I'm going to talk about the actual findings from the anthropological literature on attractive body shapes and BMI and women and A bunch of people in the comments are going to talk about how I'm Pandering to women and I'm a simp and I'm just trying to make people feel better. I'm you remember you're among great companies Yeah, no, I know. I'm just I'm just saying that upfront to take some steam out of that, you know Silly response.

32:25I don't know whether you saw I got to interject. I don't know whether you saw that me you William Costello and Alexander dates like got lumped into a new term. Did you see this? We were given a name I don't want to hear it tell me so here's the problem and if you want to create a name to like Bring people in and kind of mock them as someone. Yeah, you can't make the name sound cool. What are those? The intellectual manosphere. Oh No, oh no what part of the intellectual manosphere. Well, that academic manosphere was also thrown around as well. Is that most of my, I can't really fit into that because most of my phone is women.

33:03So that's, so I'm just, you have to take me out. Unfortunately, you're a part of it. You don't get to choose. Okay, the intellectual manosphere is, yeah, what a, what a huge error to coin. What, to think that I'm intellectually a part of the manosphere. Yeah, well, I think that you're not giving yourself enough credit. I think that you're clearly a very sharp guy who knows literature better than many, better than many master students, frankly. But body shape, BMI. Body shape, BMI. Yeah, so this is in a Western context, quite low BMI's are attractive to men. I'm not denying that at all, right? for the most part, and in an industrialized context, generally, among wealthy groups of people, or historically wealthy, where starvation isn't a problem.

33:56Yeah, there's a lot of evidence that men prefer lighter body weights. But if you take a more broad view, this is not, and this is going to get into some of the reservations I have about just jumping to Evesike as the tool to use. Because people have come up with these Evesike theories for like why women, why why thinner women are, you know, a better choice. And then it's like, okay, well, we didn't evolve in like a modern Western media, a hyper wealthy, at least historically, unlimited food at the grocery store down the street situation, right? We evolved in a pretty, you know, probably unstable, probably relatively scarce environment, or can we at least say that?

34:37And so if you look at, you know, more traditional societies, often times, plumber is better, right, where it's literally women with more body fat are considered sexier, right? Presumably up to a limit. Yeah, but you'd be shocked. I mean, if you look at, for example, and this isn't necessarily more traditional society, it's just a society that historically has dealt with more resource scarcity than urban Japan. But if you look at, say, the South African Zulu, you'll consistently find BMI's up to 38 being considered very attractive. And in the West, we'd be like, that's a very heavy person, right?

35:13Just frankly, right. So, what's going on there? Well, one thing to notice first is that tons of women's evolved sexual signaling is conspicuous fat deposits, right? So we're the only primate that has year -round fat deposits on the breasts, right? For example, we have conspicuous fat deposits on the buttocks as well, especially in women, and on the hips, right? So fat to an extent in women is clearly works as a sexual signal, right? There's something desirable there. And it seems that, right, in a within -in -in -in -cultures context, there's some evidence that within cultures at least, people who are enduring more stress and scarcity tend to opt for heavier mates, right?

36:02Men tend to opt for heavier women. and those who are in an period of abundance, right there, they've got lots of resources, resources, tend to opt for relatively lighter mates. Another piece of evidence for this can be found. So that's within cultures, cross -sectionally. We can also see this evidence across time, right? For example, American Playboy Centerfolds, right? They become heavier when the economy goes down and they become lighter when the economy goes up. You're kidding me. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's a real result. And I'll send you the PDF. Another one's the before you get into that what's the proposed mechanism?

36:35What do you think's going on to to oh excuse me? I should have I should have set up front

36:44Imagine you're in an environment where calories are either absent or unstable right so you're in a situation where it's like I don't know either I don't have food right now or I don't know if I'm going to have food next month Your brain is trying to determine who you should mate with. It's doing calculations behind the scenes saying whose mate value in this sociological context is desirable. And so the theory, and this certainly isn't my theory, I'm not presenting it as such, but the theory from this tradition of research, the environmental security hypothesis, proposes that, and there's convergent forms of evidence which we'll discuss, and already have discussed in a sense.

37:25Proposes that if you're in that situation, it's like, okay, well, who's going to be fertile if there's a famine? Or who's going to be fertile during a famine? Who is able to obtain calories? So women engage in tons of caloric acquisition in traditional environments, oftentimes more than the men, in fact, despite Western conceptions of this. And so because they're gathering tubers and to an extent engage in hunting as well, but mostly gathering, gathering fruits, nuts, berries, all the stereotypical things. And so you're looking around, you're in the situation where you're literally hungry, and it's like who's who's sexy right now?

37:59And then a woman who is clearly advertising that she can obtain calories, survive a famine, and stay fertile, right, during periods of scarcity, right? Because low body fat is associated with infertility after a point, right? It's an incredible suppressant. Well, that woman is going to be more attractive than the woman who looks like if anything goes wrong, she's going to die. Now, in a Western context where you're not necessarily thinking that, where that's not an issue, well, then you might be concerned with things like status, signaling that you can afford to go to the gym, that sort of thing.

38:35Then you're going to be concerned with things like youth, having youth and let's say null parity, the state of not having had kids yet, which is signaled by an incredibly spelt body. So maybe it makes sense in a resource abundant context to prefer that. But in a resource scarce context, which is where most of our evolved psychology occurred, we see that heavier mates seem to be preferred. Now, the evidence for this, and I'll just recap very, very quickly. Within cultures, it seems that those who are on the lower end of things resources wise tend to prefer heavier mates. Across time, Right, it seems that the media that men consume of pornographic media, the women get heavier when things are going poorly economically and they get lighter when things are going well.

39:23So that's across time within cultures. Now let's talk about within individuals. There's a very funny study where they literally, they showed up at the University Dining Hall and the Edginess Study to be honest. And they're like, okay, you guys are about to have dinner. Which of these, what do you think is sexiest? what body type do you think is sexiest? And they found that before dinner, the men preferred heavier mates than after dinner, right? So now we've got within person's evidence, within culture's evidence, and across time evidence. And then we've got this very, you know, we talked about flashy theories that do well.

39:56We've got a great story as well. So you were asking about BMI and its attractiveness in women. Yes, it's true that in, you know, a Western context and maybe this is more attractive, but that doesn't mean that that's the default state of our species. And, you know, plenty of men prefer women with more curvaceous figures. I mean, I honestly, I remember, do you recently have Jordan Peterson on? I remember him correctly. I remember when he, you know, had the goal to tweet not attractive with the picture of the plus size model who has a hip to waist ratio, a waist to hip ratio of like 0 .7, and incredibly feminine, symmetrical, average face.

40:41And it's like, maybe not to you, but to most men throughout history, that would be one of the highest male value women that they'd ever encountered. If we ended a recession next week, then it might get a little bit more, she might be a little bit more attractive for everybody. And I think that she, or, I mean, not speaking about any specific women, that's certainly not my style to talk to comment on specific women's bodies, but it was one of those glaring examples where it's like, okay, well, Dr. Peterson, you're clearly not aware of this literature. Yeah, so a couple of interesting things. First off, is there a name for this?

41:13Is it like the economic mediation of female BMI and hypothesis? Yeah, so I've heard of the Environmental Security Hypothesis. But the last, it started getting research on it about 20 years ago, then, they just hit a few home runs, and then it was like, okay, this seems to be true. All right. But again, this is the different to behavioral ecology and evolutionary psychology is that evolutionary psychology. If you read one of their literature views on thinness, you'll just read about how, you know, not, you know, I'm not kind of character anybody, but you'll often read stuff about just why thinness is our psychology evolved for thinness.

41:51And then if you read someone from a more behavioral ecology standpoint, it's like, well, in as much as we have a default state, it seems to be towards, you know, slightly heavier, right, than is current, but we don't really have a default state. It's flexible based on the environment, and that's, yeah, that's pretty tied up with a bow. So, male preference for female body size over time as gauge by BMI has tends to, it's malleable. It varies based on your social ecology, and it varies on the individual level as well. Like if you grew up in a stressed resource deprived environment, then yeah, you're probably going to prefer bigger women as you grow up.

42:33Yeah, probably. I wouldn't think that there's enough evidence to say that. That would be fascinating to see how long it imprints, just how malleable are you? Is there a period during your formative years? If you were in poverty during your teenage years, does that lock in a particular time? That would be fascinating to study. So this is why I love behavioral ecology because they actually, they do something called the phenotypic gambit, where they say, you know, everyone else can handle the mechanisms. Well, we'll just figure out what's going on, what the relationships between variables are. So they come in like kind of cowboys and just get the relationships done, and then leave the mechanisms.

43:07But it is interesting. It's like you could have a cultural adaptation where it's like cultures over time figure out, you know, preferring lighter or heavier women makes a lot of sense, right? Or you could have individual level developmental mechanisms, right? where it's like during development, your brain builds itself differently. And then you can also have these immediate cues. I mean, the hunger study where it's literally before versus after dinner, come on. That's your brain within an hour, changing your make preferences based on how hungry you are at the moment. Well, I mean, you know, two areas that I got fascinated by last year, a Candace Blake sexy selfie study, right, which is women responding to the local socioeconomic environment by beautification and sort of posting photos with, I think she used Instagram or something to kind of reverse and that was Twitter and Instagram.

43:59That was one and then just all of the sex ratio stuff. Like we like plants respond to our local ecology. So you are, this is the first time I've even heard the word about behavioral ecology. Behavioral ecology. So, the first time I've ever done it, but it seems to be blending two worlds that I'm pretty fascinated by. One being the more behavioral economics side, the Rory Sutherlands of the world, and the other being the evolutionary psychology, the David Buses of the world. Yeah, so it's actually, it's about as old as evolutionary psychology in terms of its application to humans and what? Okay, so, so Candace Blake is my supervisor, right?

44:40That's my mentor. That's, and she is... Go check. Great hair. Great studies. It's an incredibly smart woman who is one of the only people in the human evolutionary sciences who I agree with about everything, right? Like it's one of the reasons that I chose her as my supervisor when I was figuring out after Oxford, like, who am I gonna do a PhD with? Is that we got on phone calls and it was like, oh my god, finally, someone who - Did we just become best friends? Yeah, yeah. So it was like just agreement agreement agreement. And you've also spoken of Rob Brooks, who's my co -supervisor. So you're slowly making your way for my entire lab where we have that we've probably the highest percentage of Chris Williams and Appearances, that's not why I mean David busses and far off Williams being on bus is being on a bar lab smaller So that's why I said percentage highest saturation.

45:27Yeah, highest saturation There's only a few more you know who was the guy who was the guy that did the body dysmorphia stuff as he dude Candace sent me him Fuck he was on the show no I'll go not skull just got Griffiths. Yes, it was got Griffiths. Yeah, you had him on as well Oh, yeah, that's I'm not even joking that's so I attend their weekly lab meetings Literally every week who was the dude was right every time they have it was Rob the guy that did video games Uh, yeah, so he's he's into some of the tacky stuff But he's a he's a hardcore biologist, but he's the dude that did uh when sex stuff.

45:58No, when a woman out performs guys in Halo 3 Was that Rob? I think oh, maybe I'm not sure that anyway, anyway, we get we get we get the weeds yeah, but um so this is what I want you to get to Who knows who? BMI, interesting for women, fluctuate over time. We respond to the local ecology. We respond across life within situations as well. Yes, yeah. What about waste to hip ratio? Waste to hip ratio. Well, this is another one that's interesting, right? So I just spoke to Barnaby Dixon about it. And I feel like I'm getting myself in trouble. I will make a note just about behavioral. This is an audience that has had every evolutionary psychologist on the I've been able to find.

46:34They're educated, they're bound to. But that's worse because I'm about to say another thing where, you know, maybe I'm pushing back against the website and maybe in a lot of, and I will note that a lot of evolutionary psychologists do actually think about things more in a behavioral ecology way. I almost despite the things maybe don't attribute it. Yeah. And so what behavioral ecology is, so evolutionary psychology, just historically, it is the intellectual child of cognitive psychology and evolutionary biology at that time in history, right? And there's, and I would say that most evolutionary psychologists have been psychologists who learned biological stuff later, right?

47:09Behavioral ecology is, we call it human behavioral ecology, but it's really just like behavioral ecology is a standard, powerful tool for studying animals and it's just reapplying the same tool, the same set of principles to humans, right? So it's not really, it's in some ways it's simpler in some ways is more complicated. And the fields can complement each other in a lot of ways. They certainly inform each other in a lot of ways. And there are some individual evolutionary psychologists who have done incredible work that is very consistent with behavioral ecology like Dallian Wilson, the classic homicide studies with income inequality in Chicago, fascinating and very behavioral ecology -esque.

47:54You want to ask about ways to help ratio. And I want to say that I love evolutionary psychology. But if you open an evolutionary psychology textbook, you'll generally read that it's a universal preference that men like this very, you know. No .68 is that the... Yeah, that's not my deal. About 7. Yeah, so 0 .68 sure. And it's interesting because we see that in, you know, westernized college students, you'll see an even more extreme, you know, closer to Kim Kardashian type ratio, right? But if you go to, and this is still kind of in its nascent stages, it's possible that this turns out not to be true.

48:33But there is this other idea that it's like, well, maybe in a, maybe in a super rich Western environment, that makes a lot of sense, right? But I was speaking to Barnaby Dixon, right, who's the beard guy we mentioned earlier, and I just asked him about this. I was like, is there anything on variation? Like I know there's the BMI thing, but what about, and this was this was off podcast? And I was like, what about the waste of a hip ratio stuff? And he was saying that he has some indicative evidence that maybe an environment where women are doing more physical labor, that super wide hips, which makes it harder to run, harder to jog, harder to do athletics.

49:10I mean, if you look at like incredible female athletes, they often don't, you know, they often do have relatively masculine eyes bodies. Maybe a more masculine figure in women is preferred as well. So it's like the waste to hip ratio stuff, it makes sense why it's attractive, right? It's like it signals null parity as we discussed, right? It becomes harder to maintain, you know, this Coca -Cola shape after you've had children, unfortunately, right? It becomes more difficult as you age as well. And so it could be an honest signal to what we might call future reproductive potential, right? It also might be an honest signal to fertility.

49:44There's more mixed results on that. I've seen a lot of mixed results on waste to hip ratio and association with fertility. I know. So basically like zero. Yeah. So some people are like, no, it is. It does associate. Maybe it just doesn't associate in a modern context, but it is legit. And then which is possible, right? And then there's other people who say, no, that's just a bad idea, right? But the, but it is true that it's like women who are, you know, who have the most quote -unquote future reproductive potential and are fertile, right? Women in their early 20s, let's say, are generally going to have this, you know, crazy waste of hip ratio.

50:18And it becomes harder to maintain after they've had more kids, harder to maintain after they've aged. So it does kind of make sense that it's like, okay, that's a signal, again, it's to go back to like signaling underlying qualities. It does make sense that that's kind of what happens there. But then if you think about it more broadly, again, just stepping back and you know, plenty of evolutionary psychological accounts are just correct and there's certainly a huge contingent of people who think that they're always compatible with behavioral ecology. But this would be an area where it's like, well, maybe that's not representative of our ancestry actually.

50:52Maybe there's actually we have a more modest preference in context where you know, women are working all day and you have to choose someone like what I don't know. Well, I'm getting guess just to interject. I'm going to guess that the wherever it was, West African South African study that you looked at. I didn't look at this study. It was talking about me. Yeah. Him. But for 38 BMI was the one that was talking about. Oh, yeah, the South African -Jewel or yeah, that's not him. That I'm going to guess that those women aren't going to be shaped like a snowman. They're going to be shaped with probably an awful lot of fat deposits in the ass and really, really big boobs.

51:33So even within that, I would be very interested to look at how does waist to hip ratio mediate that BMI because bigger girls that are bigger in the wrong areas can look less sexy than bigger girls that are bigger in other areas, right? In the same way as the dude, exactly as you said, a 28 BMI, like is that a 27 BMI for a guy? Yeah, is it all in the gut or is it all on the shoulders? Yeah. It's very different. You can move the body shape around. Yeah. I mean, that's a very good point. And with that study, I'll note that it was up to 38 because you were asking the context of a limit. Like when does it, when does it become a problem?

52:16And that would be a very, you know, more extreme example, right? But they can have their, there are, there are some groups actually now that I'm thinking about it where it was just basically like there are some groups historically where the heavier the bride is, the higher the bride price. Yeah, so it's like it's this whole this whole view again going back to the whole like not attractive thing It's like speak for yourself. Well, I mean just to add on Yeah, I agree with you that there's gonna be an interaction with waist tape ratio and the original It's funny that you mentioned it because the original evolutionary psychology studies on this which were like what's an attractive female body They were using drawn figures which isn't great But they made a matrix of like heavier and curvier and they were like oh the heavier doesn't seem to matter as long as they're curvy interesting But that's what those original, so that's what I would have predicted that the heavier can increment you get.

53:08How do you say like more leeway, there's more buffer with heavy as long as curvy is retained. Yeah. And the reverse wouldn't be true. Yeah, and it's probably just, just so we're not only talking about this because a lot of the things that you're saying are very likely true, but also so extrapolable to men in the sense that it's like BMI of 30 probably is still sexy if you've got big shoulders, wide arms. But again, if you're shaped, if you've got super skinny arms, twig legs, and you've got, you know, just a huge pop belly, you know, and I understand that some people are going to be listening to this and feeling, you know, self -conscious of that, there's other things you can do.

53:47It doesn't matter. But that's just a different 30. Everyone that listens to this podcast is jacked, so it's okay. So the interesting thing that was thinking about there to just add on, you won't have seen this because you're not as terminally online as I am. Sports Illustrated just had to let like a shit ton of its staff go. Jordan retweeted his old tweet. Okay. I think that he foresaw like a Cassandra complex type thing. If he said, if he said, if he, if, if, well, you know, actually, I thought it was such a rude thing to say about a woman that I didn't fuck with it anyway. But, you know. What role does height play in attracting men and women for men and women?

54:30Yeah, it's interesting. Well, I think that lets get men out of the way. Let's get the, you know, since... Just like the blue -pilled cuck that you are, let's get men out of the way and get onto women. We're in good, we're in good confidence, though. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No. Well, this is one of the things that I say where people are like, he's black -pilled. And it's like, okay, I'm so upset that that's that's the. If you can manage to thread the needle between all of the pills at once, if you can be bigoted and cucked in the same podcast, that means that you're doing something right. Sure. And you've managed to do both so far.

55:05Yeah, what a disaster. So I'm up, as long as you know, as long as extremists on both sides and you know, reasonable people. So, well, height, actually, I think that I don't think I'm going to say anything particularly surprising. Every inch that, if you're a shorter guy, every inch that you add, and this is based on a couple of different data sets, I'm not just looking at one study here, you know, looking at things like just women's stated preferences, women in speed dating studies, women in dating apps swiping, right? I mean, dating at filters, as well as response to online ads for, you know, like I'm single that kind of.

55:48So there's a bunch of different evidence that women like a very tall man who is not too very tall, right? So if you graphed women's hype preferences, it would look kind of like a candy cane, right? Where it's like, if you're very short, then adding a few inches really increases your attractiveness, like the difference between being five four and five eight, that's a big deal, right? that's going from a bit of a problem to actually probably not that much of a problem. Then it starts to taper off around six foot one, right? So it's like you're getting every inch is sick and then around six foot one it starts to taper off, which is hilarious because the average height of American men I think it's about five foot nine and on dating apps I think it's about six foot one.

56:30I'll have to double check that, which is just ridiculous. High inflation is such a disaster. I'm considering getting like extensions just because of the height flation and the The two the two maladies of 2020. Yeah, so the Once you get to around six foot one you start to get kind of diminishing returns per inch and that seems to settle down around six foot three Six foot three to six foot five. There seems to be about you know, even it doesn't seem like being maybe six foot five is is better Maybe it's not but it doesn't seem to be that big of a deal whether you're six foot three six foot four six foot five Then around six foot six six foot seven six foot eight.

57:04That's when it's like okay this is definitely not optimal, right? This is not ideal. But again, it's like a candy cane. So it comes down, but you're still better off being like basketball player tall than being five foot 10, right? And it's interesting because this this data converges with a very funny anecdotal experience. I know one of the only men ever to lie about his height on a dating app to make himself shorter. He's six foot six and he claims that he's six foot five because he's like six with six just scares me. Well, to be honest, like looking up, if you're a five foot six -chick, like what do you know about anything over six feet tall?

57:39You can't even reach six feet tall. Like you don't know what's up there. You can't get up there. Well one thing that is interesting though is that it's not so a lot of people think, and this is the intuition, is like they want a man who's taller than themselves, and it's like they want a man who's taller than average. So it's not that they're looking up and saying, oh that's a lot taller than me, is that they're looking at you and looking at the guys around you and they're like, oh, he's the tallest one. That's all of my fucking friends in Austin at all. Super nine. Yeah. Super two. You're five ten.

58:08Quite tall. You're five ten. Five ten. So a little taller than average. Yeah. So five five ten and a half, I think, technically, if I was, if I was posting it on a black pill forum, but all of my friends, my housemate six four, another one of my friends is six four. Another one of my friends is six two. So if I ever have to use a dating app, I'm six foot four, and I'm showing up in stilt. Fuck it. All right. So that's for men height. I saw and I've cited this a bunch that the average preference and difference between men for women is 21 centimeters taller and women for men is 16 centimeters shorter.

58:44This hold is this similar to any of the stuff you know. Yeah, that's it. That's sounds about right. Got it right, baby. It's bro signs for the win. Yeah, it's a, I believe that was actually a speed dating study that you're referencing if you're talking about the same one where it was like what height was optimal and they interpreted it as a ratio, right? Where men prefer somewhat shorter and women prefer significantly taller. Men's preferences are kind of more interesting than women's, but they're also so much slider that it's almost not worth talking about them, but we can. It seems to be that men prefer women who are about average height or maybe a moderate amount shorter than themselves.

59:21It's kind of unclear why. And I think that a combination of factors, It's a slight preference, but I would say that a combination of factors make it such that a tall woman, and I say this is someone who's dating a, you know, absolutely lovely, very beautiful, but also very tall woman. Tall women, I think, have artists just on the mating market from a hypersvariate. Why I called it the tall girl problem. Yeah, I heard you say that. Was that to Candace? I just said it. I shell that theory. I've only come up with two cool names in all of evolutionary psychology. I'm actually told girl problem in male sedation hypothesis, but I'm shit at science, great at meaming.

1:00:00So I played toward my strengths. I'll have to talk to you afterwards and tell you some of the theories that I'm working on testing. And I'm about... Told girl problem's about socioeconomics, not about height. Yeah, I heard you talk about it in that context, but it works in terms of height because well, two things happen, right? One is that it might be similar to the socioeconomic situation. Although one thing that's interesting, right? And it's worth kind of as a supplement to the modeling work. So Candice's modeling work obviously super cool study very interesting But then it's like well richer women are more married and less divorced more educated women are more married and less divorced Then less educated and so it's like this whole kind of meme of like oh Careful, you know careful ladies the the richer you get the harder it's gonna be for you to date It's like okay theory fine modeling fine practice They're doing better than the rest of the women I would be very interested to look at that longitudinal over the next 10 years.

1:00:53I think it's gonna get even better for them. And the reason I think that is because what we're seeing in Europe is that women are becoming more and more willing to date hypothetically. So we're seeing much more of these patterns where women who are super educated are like, you know what, sexy plumber, sexy firefighter, let's have it. I have you looked at the relationship outcomes for those relationships, longevity, satisfaction. Well, this is something we can talk about as well. I mean, in the West, we see that there's that these, these relationships for the women make more, maybe you are more likely to have issues, but there's a real question of like, is that just, I mean, this would be my first gut reaction, is it's like, well, they feel they can leave.

1:01:32Well, I mean, look, so this is, I love the, those are the two ideas, right? It's preferences or they feel they can leave. So I love the tall girl problem. I think that it explains an awful lot from, and the reason that I came up with it originally was, I wanted to explain to educated and or wealthy women that were struggling to date that they weren't personally cursed. That their preference on average for men that are as wealthy or more and as educated or more means that it amounts to a diminishing return. If you're standing atop your own hierarchy, it's very difficult to look at above and across the next one, especially when that one is slowly kind of sipping and sipping and sipping.

1:02:09Yeah, because men are becoming less educated precisely correct. No. That being said, there's some pretty scary stuff that I'm sure that you've seen increases in domestic violence have been going up in line with the decrease in hypergamous dating. So that would suggest that perhaps men whose partners earn more than them that they are concerned and no longer financial prisoners may be resorting to a cost inflecting as opposed to a benefit of 40 mating strategy. Yeah, I mean, that's extremely depressing and that's a horrible thing to hear. I'm not aware of that data And this is what he's telling me about it.

1:02:45Yeah, you can ask him about it in it tonight. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So this is something This is something that will just kind of flag up front is that a lot of especially just kind of internet characters are very willing to speak out length about subjects that they know incredibly little about and in a, well, you know, quite a bit through talking to people and you're also, you know, this is kind of your role is that your bringing on experts and then asking the questions that the audience can hear out if being the most stupid person in the room. That's one of, I wouldn't say that at all. You're being humble.

1:03:21But that's why you're popular is that you have a knack for as a smart guy obtaining enough information to ask the questions that everyone's wondering, right? But there's a, but there's, so I'm not talking about you at all, but there's a real tendency of people who are on the internet to just, you know, pick out one finding here, one finding there, and then just speak out length as if they've got all the answers to the world's problems. And the truth is that like in academia, if you haven't spent a year reading about something, your knowledge is basically zero. Like you're, that's, that's like entry level is once you've been thinking mulling over and reading the literature, the idea of getting straight up to speed on a subject, that's very unlikely to have the right context to decipher it.

1:04:09And so with a question like this, it's like, I'm not an expert in domestic violence. I'm not an expert in, you know, hypergamous versus hypoagomestating outcomes. And although I, so, so, so, so even though I'm from a broad theoretical standpoint, as someone who looks at things from a behavioral ecology point of view, I'm very optimistic that our nature or cultural norms will naturally change to accommodate shifts in gender equality. Just to interject, do you think that women's preference for socioeconomically competent men is sufficiently malleable for that? To me, and I think to a lot of the guys, and to give the guys on the internet that are talking about this, they're due, if it was being spoken about in a less sort of cantankarous adversarial way.

1:04:57I think what they would try to say is something like women's preference for socioeconomically successful men is so ingrained. It is such a fundamental part of their source code of attraction. I don't believe that it is something that they are going to be able to reprogram. And I would say that preference in terms of strength, men's preference for youth and fertility. I think that that is the equivalent. And fundamentally online, just again, to get metafree second, this is the debate. The debate online typically is you have a preference. That preference is wrong. I have a preference. My preference is right.

1:05:45Your preference can be changed. My preference should not. That's the way that the discussion online gets presented. But I think I'm right. I think that I speak my favorite place, and it's a shame that you're leaving this week as we could have done it unsat today. Favorite place for dating and mating research. Soho House Pool in Austin. We're correct. Soho House Pool, it's $3 ,500 a year for a membership, so that has a pretty good selection effect for the kind of people that go there. And I just sit by the pool and listen to the chicks, talking and just wander over and say, how are you? Talk to me about your current dating experiences.

1:06:24And they'll say, I've got a degree, I do this thing, I work in marketing, I work in sales, I work in this thing, I mean, blah, blah, blah. But what's happening with your dating life at the moment? I'm really, really struggling. Why are you struggling? What are the things that you, and a lot of the time, they'll say, okay, how old are you? What's your income? What's your education level? And a lot of the time, they're struggling to find men that they feel are at that level. So give me your thoughts on ability to nudge preference for high pygamy versus men's ability to nudge preference for youth and fertility.

1:06:54Yeah, and I'll note that the word hypergamy is kind of, it's just, it's the internet meme, so I'm happy to use it in this context, but I almost never hear it in academia. I mean, we, we, we, we, I'd say, hypergamy, right? But hypergamy, that's, that's about marriage typically and it's also narrowly to like status, right? But we'll use it just in kind of a broad sense of mating up socioeconomically.

1:07:24You're asking, is it flexible? How am I liable is women's preference for socioeconomically as or more successful mates? Okay, flat answer we'll see, right? because the weather, there's no, for all the internet, chit chat, and I think that a lot of the guys who are resistant to this, it's not actually about the mating, they don't care about the mating success of women. They give a fuck. Like they don't care about women having trouble dating. What they care about is they don't want women to have as much resources as men, right? That makes them uncomfortable at friends, their status, their sense of manhood, et cetera.

1:07:59And they're masking that as like, oh, women, you'll have so much trouble dating if you get rich, but in reality, they just hate to see women make money. Because again, the flat reality is, is that women who are more educated, right, are more married and less divorced than women who are less educated, right? Just the same thing holds the wealth, do you know? I'll have to check. Although, yeah, I think I'm pretty confident in saying that it would be, but again, it's not necessarily my area. In terms of how flexible it is, there is some indicative evidence that an individual level, it's flexible in the sense that women who have decided that they want to be the primary breadwinner, right?

1:08:39They tend to, in their mate selection, care about good, bad qualities, right, and sexiness, right? Whereas, you know, how much money they make that's not necessarily. That's interesting, because I've seen, I've got some data that I've been throwing around with David that suggests that women's preference for socioeconomic success over and above their own increases. As they've understood. Yes, this is intent to be the breadwinner, right? Not. Right. Not what? What's the determinant of that? What's the determinant of intent to be the breadwinner? Yeah, it's interesting. I mean, is that going to be a switch that people, that goals flick?

1:09:14Oh, and now I'm going to be the breadwinner or one of the breadwinner. No, no, no, no. It's more just that I'm, that I'm quite confident that humans can, I just think that humans are incredibly phenotypically plastic creatures. Well, this is the behavioral ecologist and you coming out. Yeah, it's just that, I mean, I see that. that you know, you could look at all of human history 70 years ago and say, oh, women just will only marry men who are more educated, then you look at the modern trends in Europe and it's like, oh, seems to be changing. So I guess I guess interesting. And then also it's like, I think that it's possible that we'll also see some shifts on the male side of things.

1:09:52I mean, there are plenty of cultures where men actually do, I mean, the basic of sex difference, you're right. I'll just put a flag down here to say that it's true that across cultures, men have stronger beauty preferences and women have stronger resource preferences. But the fact that the degree of difference varies suggests that there is some... Motivational for ecological malleability. And we're only now just entering into a phase where it's even possible to do the experiment. Like we're doing the experiment and we'll see how it plays out. Yeah, for better or for worse. And I think that probably, frankly, I think it probably will be for better.

1:10:30I think it's going to be fine. Yeah. Well, I mean, here's another thing that kind of doesn't get, doesn't get brought up in awful lot online. When you look at the increasing divorce rates, and yeah, I think commonal birth control hasn't awful lot to answer for. I think that in many ways it was a very dangerous piece of technology to throw around, although it also opened up a lot of opportunities for women. Nobody talks about the fact that the success of marriage success, I lower divorce rates, et cetera, was very heavily in part due to the fact that women were financial prisoners of their husband.

1:11:03Like if you don't have any resources and you don't have any education and you've got two kids or no kids or five kids, where are you going to go? Yeah. Where are you going to go? You know, you're literally a financial prisoner. One other thing you were talking about, like, create isn't stuff online and this works for friends as well, but I'm playing with this idea. And I had a four, four questions that you can ask to gauge the honesty of other creators, but it also works for friends too. So first question, when was the last time that you heard them change their mind on something? Second question, did they primarily identify out groups as a mode of bonding their in group together?

1:11:42Number three, how often do they admit mistakes, genuinely not performatively, publicly is an advantage. And number four, do they want to hear alternative points of view for reasons other than mocking them? That four -step process identifies pretty much like if you - All about actors, yeah. Correct. If you put the guys that I don't, I just don't enjoy their content or I don't want to be friends with them, that all of those questions they answer in the negative. So yeah, it's very interesting. It's very, very, what myths? If you could clean house, what myths would you like to get rid of from the mating and dating world?

1:12:27What's been bastardized the most in your opinion? All right, well, the most meme one is definitely body count. This idea that the idea that, you know, historical promiscuity is a predictor of bad outcomes and long term relationships. That's pretty well validated by a bunch of studies. It's just that it shows this same. One of Buzz's, David quoted a number of times, right? Yeah, so we see that the idea that it's like, yeah, if you're someone who loves casual sex and loves sleeping around, you're gonna have a harder time. I don't think it takes a rocket time just to figure out that type of person is gonna have a harder time in a monogamous lifelong marriage, right, if that's what they love doing, right?

1:13:07And that's just so sexual. Yeah, it's just sociosexuality. And that can partially be measured with the past sexual partners you have with the important caveat that there's a huge difference between an 18 year old boy who's just showed up as freshman year of college and is somehow slept with 10 girls in the first week. And a 32 year old man who's had a few failed relationships, a few flings, and so on, and has got to the same number over a longer time period in different contexts. But this idea that body count is associated, quote unquote, body count as the term is, is associated with negative relationship outcomes is true, right?

1:13:41at least based on the available evidence. The optimal number, it's about four. I think it's three for women. In terms of people's preferences, it's like a very, very long spread out candy cane. I think the same zero is desirable as like 12. Yeah, it's something like that. It might even be less. It's like zero starts here, and then it goes up for a second, and then it plummets. So it's like between a few and several. Between a few and several is hot, and then after that it's like what are you doing? And before that, it's like why haven't you done anything? But it's worth noting, so you ask about memes to destroy.

1:14:13It's like this idea that this is only important for women and that this doesn't have any effect on men sleeping around or it doesn't indicate anything about men's likely personalities. That it doesn't make much logical sense, right? They'll talk about these like pair bonding memes using studies on other animals that have nothing to do with humans. But it's like, we see the same effects in men, right? So men who have higher body counts and men who are more sociosexually unrestricted generally have all the same negative outcomes. But the difference is that a man who is sexually promiscuous is not seen as, that's not seen as a negative outcome in the same way.

1:14:48Yeah, well, in itself, it's not the cultural, the culture surrounding it, but there's U .S. about memes to delete and it's like, look, I think that there's a great argument to be made that maybe sleeping around isn't great. Right? I think that there's, you can say it from a societal level. This might not be good for people and you can say it an individual level. This might I'll be good for people and you could write, you know, a great little essay that makes all the right points and I'd be like, well, you know, that makes a lot of sense. But if you say only for women, well, then you just sound like you're a sexist, right?

1:15:19Because it's like all the same points you could make would be makeable about men. And all they have is these trite analogies about, you know, a key that opens many locks da da da da da. And it's like, all right, look at the data. You're seeing the same effects in men and women, but you're only talking about women. And then also just from a societal perspective, it's not what I would call an exportable idea, right? If you can't recommend, if you're making like a recommendation to people culturally and it's contradictory and it's execution, it's not a good recommendation, right? To say, men have fun, sleep around, women don't.

1:15:49It's like the only way that's mathematically possible is if those men are sleeping with each other and that doesn't seem to be what they're recommending.

1:15:59What's the truth about women being more picky or discriminatory than men when it comes to physical attributes, physical attractors? Oh God, okay. Well, this is a funny one. To the next specter, you're going to come on and have easy, simple questions. No, no, no. I thought you were going to be a lot nicer to me. You've already gotten me in trouble a few times with everybody, but it's fun. This one's interesting because...

1:16:30All right. It is true that I would say that women are more selective. Like most, you know, this is a pattern that we see across most animals, right? That female animals are more selective and in as much as women overlaps with female mammal, then you're gonna see that effect. And so So women do seem a little more selective about who they may with. You've mentioned David Buss at a couple of times, right? Those classic studies of like walking up to someone on a university campus. I mean, you know, even if it's a really sexy guy going around like, hey, I want to go back to mine, right? It's some ridiculous number of men say yes and some tiny number of women do, right?

1:17:08So women are, and there's multiple ways of measuring it. I know that's kind of a silly study, but it does seem that women are more selective in their mating, right? And so, you know, it's not particularly surprising that women want a higher percentile of the mating market than men do on a lot of traits. And good luck seems to be one of them in the sense that men, I would say that most men are attracted to most women, right? And most women are attracted to a subset of men, right? So there's a difference there. And this is going to bring in a real funny insight from Alexander, a mutual friend, which is like, well, what if, let's step back here, what if men just are less sexy than women?

1:17:52Right? They're like, they're just the average, because there's no rule that the gender's average has to be equivalent, right? Like some people say, oh, it's a logical, it's delusion, and it's like, well, there's no rule. Like men, the average man is taller than the average woman. There's no rule that the average man can't also be less hot than the average woman. And it's interesting. How would you, just a question here, I don't quite understand how you would compare female attractiveness or hotness to male attractiveness or hotness? So two ways you can do it, right? So the basic thing, oh, the first basic thing to notice is that attractiveness is a perception.

1:18:24So when we say that, when we're looking at a study, and we say, this really determines the length. Well, to an extent, I mean, but, okay. So we can say empirically that apples taste better than cardboard because when we survey the humans who are the determinants of taste, the average human says the apple tastes better than the cardboard. Haven't run that study, but I'm pretty sure the p -value would be significant. With facial attractiveness and bodily attractiveness and all these things, it's measured the same way. It's just kind of the apples cardboard thing. it's like, yeah, it's like sure to there, you know, people have different tastes, but on average, right, there's so much overlap, right?

1:19:05It's like beauty is in the eye of the beholder, sure, but most beholders are seeing vaguely the same thing. And so there's nowhere really to go there. In terms of men being, is it possible that men are less attractive than women on average? It's like, well, if you ask women, right, to like look at couples and say, who's harder the guy or the girl, they'll say, I think the girl is actually the harder one more, right? But then if you ask men, and the same thing happens, right? So men and women agree that women are hotter, right? And so it's like by who is standard and whose opinion is there some like objective, you know, thing to notice there.

1:19:40Another thing that people struggle with is that there are some studies that indicate that women find most men less sexy than average. And some people are like, oh, that's a perceptual bias, right? It must be. And it's like, well, most men are less wealthy than average because some guys are super wealthy and most guys are moderately poor. mean versus median. Yeah, exactly. So it's like it's entirely possible that we're living in a world of kind of zeros and ones in a sense where it's like most men are completely unfocable, let's say, and then some small subset of guys are just gloriously attractive.

1:20:12And if that's the case, then yeah. Use the bell code. Yeah, that's like most guys are below average attractiveness. So yeah, so two things that are really important on this that are really just want to put into the conversation. Yes, women find a smaller subset of individual women generally find a smaller subset of the opposite sex physically attractive than men do. But women also put a lower priority as you said earlier women also put a lower priority on looks in general right so it's like good news bad news right it's like sorry fellas most of you probably aren't looking that good to you. women on first contact.

1:20:56Good news. That doesn't really matter that much compared to if you were a woman in that same state. Does many ways to win? Yes, and women are more willing to compromise on their beauty standards than men. It seems. Yeah, well, I mean, again, you know, this is where the black pilled philosophy does come true to some degree. And I think that it's a culture which is born out of men who see themselves as genetic dead ends, right? They see themselves as completely unable to get a woman because they have fallen below a threshold that is impossible, LMS, right? But L is first, money status. So they believe that they've fallen below a particular net.

1:21:38Now there is an argument about where that net is and it's like, if you're not above a six out of 10 as being often rated by other men, not by other women. But I've said this before that a man's ability to change his mate value is significantly more malleable than a woman's. That's the conventional wisdom. I think that it's, well, can I say something kind of just a little controversial, it's just the idea that women are, might be working harder at it than they get credit for, right? So one quick example, one of the coolest studies of the past, certainly of this decade, in my opinion, Martico Al's enormous 93 country study on something like 93 ,000 participants across the world measured all of the things that they do to enhance their physical attractiveness and how much time they spend on it.

1:22:35And it's like all over the world with some variants, right? And we You can talk about that because again, very interested in how sociology affects this sort of thing. But with some variants accounted for, women are spending much more time, significantly more time, on their looks than men. Five times, three times, times. About half an hour more per day, right? So there's this idea that men can do this idea and this is accounting for everything. So this is including the time in the gym. This is including the time you spent picking an outfit. This is including the time you spend on my fitness pal figuring out like I don't know what are my macros for the day all of it Together, right the time you spent doing your hair, etc.

1:23:17lining up the lovely heavy stubble to contour the face whatever All of that together women are spending more time so there's this conventional wisdom of like oh men can men can do more than women to adjust their Mate value and it's like maybe we're seeing a final product where women have already put in so much more work. It's like imagine if Imagine how much harder it would be to compete as a man to like upgrade yourself if every man except you suddenly spent an extra half hour a day on their looks. Like even if that was just gym time, it's like, oh my god, everyone's hotter and I'm less hot by comparison.

1:23:48So this idea that there's more runway for men, it's like there might be, I would be more open to saying that at a modern Western economy, there's more routes, right? In the sense that it's like, okay, I'm not the hottest guy. But boy, I can, you know, I can grind at computer science and become funny educated salary. Yeah, yeah, exactly. I can and maybe maybe physically, you know, honestly, there's a huge, there's huge, we don't like talk about it, but there is variance between individuals as to how much muscle you can put on. Right? There are people who just can't look a certain way and it's like, hit the gym bro and it's like, well, they can hit it as much as they want, but they're still skinny.

1:24:23Right? And there's not a lot of sympathy for that because we like to think, you know, people who have muscles like to think like, oh, that it's just hard work, but a lot of us just vaguely are lucky, right? I know a lot of guys who are jacked who don't work that hard is all I'm saying. I have a couple of friends that are super respondents to test our throne, and they're just absolute, like root hype, yeah, complete hype of wheat. And I also know guys who it's like they've never done a bicep curl in their life, and they've got like 16 inch arms, just flat. And it's like that's, if you're starting with 12 inch arms.

1:24:51So anyway, I'm getting off track, but this idea, there's this kind of conventional wisdom of like men you have more kind of upward trajectory space through hard work. But then there's the other question of like, okay, well, women are already working really slow for women has been brought up by this week. By the fact that they're doing it. Where it's like, if you're like think about just how much time it takes to get ready to go to work as a woman versus a man. It's like if you've lived with a woman, then you know it's like, well, we're going out to dinner. I'm going to be looking. I'm going to be 45 minutes.

1:25:20Yeah, I'm going to be, yeah, if you're a man, it's like I'm going to be looking my best in 15 minutes. Five minutes in the shower, five minutes on my hair, right? Maybe shaving my face and I'm out the door looking as good as I can look that day, right? For a woman to go from her zero to her 10 in terms of effort, it's like it often takes a lot of time because we have these cultural technologies that are used in our society, such as makeup, such as these additional hair products, etc. And so I think that, yeah, I think that there's a real question there, but I'm not giving an answer. I'm kind of playing devil's advocate.

1:25:54I might agree with you, but that's certainly the conventional wisdom. So I'm probably being an idiot. Talk to me about discrimination around hair color. Discrimination around hair color. Well, you love evolutionary psychology. So I want to just give you the basic, evo -sike view. Even though... Don't fucking throw me in with basic bitch. I'm a fledgling behavioral ecologist at the moment. I'm slowly... This is my new cool thing. Well, my new shiny toy is this area of research. Well, you've spoken to a lot of people who would, you know, maybe at a conference, maybe depending on the conference, say their evsike or behavioral.

1:26:30And that would certainly be me. Like it just depends on who I'm talking to. It's a short hand for like, I use evolutionary theory and think about humans. Yeah, exactly. And evsike is the is still the queen in this equation. I spoke at H best last year. There's been so much to drop them out. Oh, wow. Well, well, well. I think I might see you there this year if you're going. Symposium. Yeah. That's the awesome pose you have. That's the awesome pose you have. It's good as my symposium. I don't even know if I'll get a symposium. Yeah, wow. It's because you're a bitch. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

1:26:57It's because I'm a wheezer. Yeah. So in any case, we'll have to do a study design on your tall girl, syndrome stuff and see how. God, don't do that. Well, it would be cool if some of these ideas got into the literature because of it is. I got my first citation by David and William. Oh my God. For the male sedation hypothesis. That was really actually in a paper actually being tested. Oh my God. That's so cool. I'm gonna do it now. Yeah Yeah, that's it dude. I'm good at meaming. I'm not gonna I'm not gonna science you do the science Well, go do the science fucking nerds. Yeah, I'm gonna come up with the name.

1:27:29Yeah. Yeah. What's funny is that the Part of the reason evsike has been so successful is that David bus is amazing at me Oh, yeah, people don't talk about it, but like he has a knack so much of the words that we've used in this conversation I are actually terms coined by him all these little, like putting mate in front of everything, like all that little stuff. Like that's mostly, if not his invention, than his promotion. And that's - Everyone stands stream from like a Bessarian philosophy. Yeah, is that you can start sounding really sciencey. Which is really what everyone wants. Yeah. And you can also, and also, here's the other thing, is that a lot of people who are in the scientific space, they coin terms, but they're terms that nobody can use because they don't make sense.

1:28:13I say the word mate preferences. Immediately, you know exactly what I'm talking about. There's no confusion at all. Anyway, what were we, what were we trying to call it discrimination about hack color? Okay, so Look, there's variation, right? And the some studies show different facts, but the standard EVO theory is is actually quite simple and seems to fit at least with Folk wisdom, right? Which is that men will prefer on average all else being equal relatively light hair colors because hair darkens throughout life until it turns gray or white. And so lighter hair colors, signal, youth, and there's also some potential evidence that women's hair might darken during pregnancy as well.

1:28:55So we're going back to youth and nulliparity, being signaled by relatively light hair. In a Western context, this would be relatively light for our very diverse population, where we have everyone from a very Nordic people to all sorts of people. So we have very light hair colors on that distribution, we see that a huge percentage of American women, there's one study where it's like 40 % have experimented with lightening their hair, right? There's this effort, right? Where it's trying to, it seems to an extent, respond to this male preference for lighter hair that might be downstream of an ancestral signal of youth and null uparity.

1:29:36Not fertility. So the term null uparity is the state of having not yet had children in biology. And the reason that that would be attractive is it's not attractive in all animals, but in our species where we're monogamous, pair bonding, theoretically. High MPI. Yeah, so theoretically it's like you want to, this is gonna sound like a crazy term, but the optimal male mating strategy for humans is often, you know, if you're in a evolutionarily informed psychology classroom, you'll hear people use this phrase, which I mean, it sounds psycho for saying, but it's called monopolizing a woman's reproductive years, right?

1:30:11Where it's like you're spending, you're trying to meet someone and then spend that those 20 years with them where you're able to reproduce with them the entire time. Because that's if everyone's pairing up monogamously as is the case in most human societies and cultures, then that's kind of real and up. Now on the other end, kind of for the same reasons, women seem to prefer somewhat darker here. The whole tall dark and handsome thing that seems to, that seems to play out. We've spoken a little bit about tall, just better fighters. You know, we're able to defend themselves, but dark seems to maybe come from a signal to age.

1:30:44There is some dispute of this, right? Some studies have found that men don't actually prefer lighter hair, but I'm very amenable to the idea that they do just because and there might be some frequency effect exposure effect. There's definitely a cultural effect, but that seems to be part of the story. What about age gaps? What about them? Well, do men actually lock in at 21 years old once they hit 21 and then just one year 21 year olds for the rest of the time. No, in terms of physical attractiveness, there does seem to be a probable thing in the early 20s, but if you look at men's dating app filters, for example, they'll tend to filter out extremely young women once they get older, but they do want increasingly wide -aged apps as they get older.

1:31:25Is that not just because that's what they think that they can get? Could be. Yeah, totally. I'm gonna look at it. 45. But I also, getting a 21 year old seems unrealistic and so you don't might be a bit icky, so like, Yeah, let's put it 27. Well, yeah, I so might be a bit icky is going to be, you know, that's part of like, part of mate value is like, what does this mate signal to other people about mate? Hmm. So, why would women prefer an old mate? Well, this is the thing is that in countries, so women have, we talked about women being more selective, more selective party holds more power in terms of who gets together, right?

1:32:02That's how it is in business as well. The person who's more willing to walk away from the negotiating table and has more of the things that the other person wants. Anyway, I don't need to explain that. That's pretty simple. But in countries where women are free to choose, they tend to choose men who are slightly older, not super older. So we're talking like two to four years, right? And that seems to be reducing even now, where it's like age gap is getting smaller and smaller. and it could be, again, like we talk about malleability, it's like, let's talk about malleability. In a context where you're completely dependent on a man for his resources, maybe a guy 13 years older is the best because he has more resources, right?

1:32:38But in a cultural context where you have your own money, right, it's like, I don't want the deteriorating sperm. Well, let me give you a counter example. In a society where you on average are out performing socioeconomically the men who are around you at your age bracket. Yeah. One of the best predictors of wealth is age. Is age. And yet we still see that women who have these options and have the freedom to choose choose very small age gaps. And this is the thing is that if you ask men what do you want, they tend to want pretty big age gaps pointing downward. But if you ask women what do you want, they say, oh, I want a few years older maybe.

1:33:15And then if you see what women actually do, what do they get? They get a few years older maybe, right? And if you look at what they do on dating apps, right? They filter out much more of that. Right, okay. Because again, think about this, right? It's like if you're, if you're, one's very simple thing that really everyone in the audience should understand about sexual selection is that we're looking for indirect benefits and direct benefits. And if you focus too much on either of those indirect benefits, that's who do you want to have your kids, right? Who do you want the offspring genetically to be with, right?

1:33:44And then direct benefits, that's who do you want to raise your kids in a species like ours, but also who do you want to take care of you, help you out, be compatible with you, etc. Right? And if you focus too much on either of these, then you miss the entire picture. So thinking about direct benefits, sure, older is better. From a direct benefits perspective, of course, the older may is going to have more money, more status, they're going to be able to take care of you better in a modern economy. But from an indirect benefits perspective, sperm to quality declines every year. Men met the signals of quality, those decline every year.

1:34:20You become all that facial attractiveness signaling, that goes away, right? Those signals of underlying genetic health, those go away, right? The muscularity, that goes away. So there's a real balance here where it's like in a culture with very high gender inequality and where women don't have control of their own resources, maybe, or, and there's, you know, there's debate as to why this varies, but the fact of the matter, the underlying fact, the matter is that in cultures where women, you know, have their own resources is an or free to choose their mates. They choose men who are slightly older than themselves, and that seems to be to get a little bit of the direct benefits but mostly maintain the indirect ones.

1:34:56And there might also be to be 100 % fair. There might also be a direct benefit to having a mate your own age, in the sense that they'll actually be around to raise your own kids. There's a reason that women generally aren't falling over, you know, 60 -year -old men. It's like, human children, they take a long time to take care of. That's not necessarily the best part now around. Talk to me about tattoos. Well, I mean, I wish I wanted to told me in high school, but I doesn't seem to have women care about them very much. The, you know, women perceive tattooed man as more healthy, masculine, dominant, etc.

1:35:30Healthy. Yeah, and it might be just because it's like more like they'd be a Jim bro, but the more, you know, evolutionarily coherent one, the one that's like really complicated is like, well, a tattoo is exposing yourself to a high infection risk and it's like I can handle that. I don't necessarily think that's true, but it is interesting that there are some immune markers that are higher in men who are heavily tattered. That could just be because it's like if you go into a tattoo and it makes you really sick, you're probably not going in another one. So guys who are heavily tattooed, it's like bounces off them.

1:36:04But those are attractive traits and yet women don't seem to find tattoos more attractive than not. And so the question is, and most of this is Polish data. It probably varies between side, these cultures and sociocologies. I bet it would definitely vary in Japan. Yeah, right. There's gonna be huge cultural context there. I mean, there are some countries on earth where this amount of tattoos would make me look like some kind of criminal. But it was made possible. And it's totally chill. Wasn't allowed to go in the bats in Japan when he went there in the public bats. You're given one pack thing and he's like, thigh full, two full sleeves, like stuff on his back and he's like, the fuck am I gonna do with this?

1:36:47Like he's 250 pound right? Like that's gonna, he doesn't cover a nipple. So yes, women interpret men more healthy, more masculine, more dominant. But there's all these trade offs, it's like, because you ask them, it's like, like, okay, do you think that it's like digitally modified photos? Do you think the ones with tattoos are harder than the ones without? And you talked to a couple thousand women about that. And the result was that it's like, yeah, he's healthier, probably more masculine, probably more dominant, probably. But he's not more attractive. And it's like, why? And it goes back to the masculinity tradeoff thing.

1:37:20This is actually kind of good evidence for it. Is that they're like, well, I don't think he's gonna be as good of a dad. I don't think he's gonna be as good of a husband. Tatus, what about women with tattoos for men?

1:37:32Well, that's really interesting and there's actually a cleaner story. So there was a fascinating French study and it's one of the most ecologically valid studies. Really that I've ever read, not to overflatter it, but it's just usually when you do a study, right? You do it in a lab setting or you do it digitally or you do a survey and you just don't know whether it's going to translate, right? But what they did was they did real world human mating behavior where they took a bunch of women and they sent them out to the beach in a bikini and we're just like read a book for hours and we're going to count how many men approach you and every time a man approaches you we're going to have you know someone run up to be like stop we're doing a study to reset the timer.

1:38:20So it's not you know people thinking it's their boyfriend I'm not sure why they did that method, but that's what I assumed when I was reading the study. And sometimes they send these women out with fake tattoos on. And sometimes they send them out without. And they found that with fake tattoos on, women got approached substantially more. And they were like, huh, this goes against the lab studies that show that men say they don't like tattoos. So this is kind of an interesting little problem. What's going on here? And then they asked men on the same beach. It's like, what do you think that girl?

1:38:55Right? And they didn't find that the tattoos made them hotter, but they did, the men did say, I think that that woman would be more likely to say yes to a date with me. Right? So the anticipation was basically like, these women are more open to - Sociusectually. Yeah, I mean, it might have been a sociosec sexual signal. They didn't measure that. But the idea - That it would be. Yeah, but it could be that. It could be that. And it could also just - Openness on its own. Openness to new experiences. It's like, no, no, it wasn't openness, like psychological trade openness. It was literally like, I think that this person would be more willing.

1:39:23It was just the basic question of like, if someone walks up into our on the street, is she more likely to say, fuck off or say, yes, and they thought, yes. Right. But the outcome that they're looking for is a sociosexual one. Potentially. Well, unless they're saying, hey, why don't we go for a coffee? I'd love to learn about your tattoos. Yeah. Well, here's the thing is that it's not all, I mean, it's interesting. It's not, it's, it's, they could easily be approaching to ask for a date. It's just they don't want to get rejected. But it does highlight two things. One is that not all beauty signaling is about signaling attractiveness.

1:39:53So sometimes you don't wanna look more beautiful, you wanna signal underlying personality traits. Like it's like if you wanna look, I don't know, like it might make sense. If you're a woman who's interested in short term mating, maybe it would make sense to deck your body out in cool tattoos to be like, like, hey, I'm more socially liberal, probably. I'm more interested in ventrists. Yeah, more adventurous, et cetera. Yeah. So I think that social sexuality is totally fair estimate. But the basic idea is like, it's not that tattoos make women more attractive if anything they make them less attractive, but it is a signal of, like, as we say, like openness to going on a date with a guy that they've just mattered, whatever.

1:40:38Have you seen the studies on women wearing choke in necklaces? Is this the same result? Pretty similar. Okay. Interesting. That's awesome. Both men and women rate that woman is probably having had more partners previously. Well, the tattoos we have, it's interesting that you said sociosexuality because there's probably bang on now that I think of it because there is some research indicating that people with tattoos have higher sociosexuality. I mean, there's going to be outliers, of course, and there's going to be people who don't fit that pattern. But yeah, maybe having tattoos is like, yeah, not only do I have tattoos, I probably have casual sex and people learn that through, you know, cultural reinforcement and life experiences and then when they're on the beach, they're like, oh, maybe this person would be more approachable.

1:41:20What is that to know about stated and revealed preferences when it comes to attraction? That's an incredibly deep question. Well, you've been very interested in beauty today and I think one place to start would be that people, if you ask them what matters most in a mate, I mean, the jury is still out, but if you ask people what matters most in a mate, they're generally not going to say looks. Right. They're going to say I want someone who's honest, who's loyal, who's kinds. These are the bus studies and other replication since. Right. But then if you do an experiment like a speed dating experiment, it's the hot person wins.

1:42:00If you do a vignette study where it's like photos and biographies, the hot people win generally at least passed a certain threshold. And so there's this kind of tension there where it's like, okay, okay. So we've got all this data showing that people say that they care more about personality traits than looks. And then we've got all this data looking at what people do and they seem to care more about looks than personality. One exception to this, which is interesting, is that inter -partner correlations of attractiveness, right? Those tend to disappear at least in one study after nine months of knowing someone before the date, meaning that I've phrased that terribly, because I can see the confusion.

1:42:39If a couple knew each other for nine months or more before they started dating, each partner's physical attractiveness does not predict the others, which is a strong signal that attractiveness, physical attractiveness, was not a huge factor in their decision to date each other, right? Because in most couples, inter -partner correlations of attractiveness are, you know, similar to self -rating and other ratings of attractiveness. They're pretty significant, right? What's the mechanism that you think's going on where this nine -month window seems to change something? Personality -accumulated information about personality, pushing out physical attractiveness as a determinant of mating.

1:43:16But when you don't have enough time, you've met somebody a couple of times or whatever it is, you use much more easily accessible cues. Physical indicators of mate value. So this isn't a particularly controversial way to think about beauty. Steven and Ludo review article on this, they titled it physical indicators of partner quality. And that's there. They weren't using that only for beauty, but that's one way of saying beauty. right, is that you're looking for someone who is high -mate value and when you just meet them, you know, 95 % of the information you have is their looks and after nine months, 5 % of the information you have, let's say, made up numbers, but let's say, is their looks.

1:44:00And so it doesn't factor into your decision as much. And so if you're, you know, if you meet someone at a bar, right, if you meet someone at a pub and you, the first interaction you have is securing a date, well, then you probably both met each other's looks thresholds, right? That's kind of the only thing that makes sense, right? But if you met someone as a coworker and you were working together for a few years and then after you know a blossoming friendship became something else you're like, you know what, let's actually get drinks this week, right? How much did looks factor into that decision, right?

1:44:30It's hard to say and in this study apparently not at all. Interesting. All right, so at least not measurably. Let's just say that. Keep digging deeper into the state and reveal preferences thing because I think a lot of the time it's kind of like the God of the gaps for people that want to make arguments before and against a lot of the theories. It's like, oh yeah, I mean, you know, people will say anything in surveys and my lived experience is better. Say something else. Yeah, and there is, you know, as a, I mean, as someone who thinks about things from a behavioral ecology lens, even though, you know, the two studies I've done are both, you know, they're both very evsiky, frankly, but I do think about issues pretty behavioral ecologically.

1:45:15And the first word of that is behavior, right? Watching what people actually do, right? Evolutionary psychologists really like looking at stated preferences, right? The favorite tool of an evolutionary psychologist is a questionnaire, right? That's often been said. And then other scientists like economists and behavioral ecologists like looking at what people do. So there's stated preferences, what people say, and then there's revealed preferences, what people do. But my personal opinion is that you need to look at both, right? There's an old joke about economists. I'm going to butcher it because I'm not a funny person, but you go to an economist's funeral.

1:45:49And nobody's mourning because his revealed preference was to die. It's like what people do is constrained by the vicissitudes of life. The chance happening is then the limitations of one's own position. So when we see that, sometimes it's like, okay, well, I don't see a reasonable way where your decision was constrained. And so the fact that you chose to go on a date with the hottest guy at the speed dating event instead of the funniest guy tells me that you probably do care about hotness more. What's the use of stated preferences then? So here's a really major thing against the divergence from revealed.

1:46:30Yeah, so let's talk that's a great, great question. I'll give you a couple examples where I think stated preferences become a factor. Men say they want larger age gaps than they get, right? And it makes sense where the constraints coming from because women are the Selectors typically they select more at least and they say that they want smaller age gaps and then the smaller age gap happens So it's like that looks to me like dueling preferences, but it heads and the woman's preference one out and she might Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah The man might want a woman seven years younger, but he ends up with a woman three years younger And then you ask the woman and it's like well, my state of preference is three years older and that's what I got And it's like okay, that seems to be a case of dueling preferences.

1:47:09That makes perfect sense Another one would be, and this is really interesting, is that we see in these stated preference studies that men don't care that much about ambition, about resources. You know, she can have whatever career she wants. You know, I don't really care about her education. And then you look at what men actually do, and it's like you very most educated men are with educated women, right? Most rich men are with women from the same socioeconomic background, even if that woman and individually isn't making as much money, right? The same stratosphere class wise. This is just to interject, the, I saw Alexander's video maybe a year and a bit ago and he was talking about do men trade wealth for looks?

1:47:50Do wealthy guys get with good looking women? And it actually seems that most partners pair off. Yeah, good looking people get with good looking people, rich people get with rich people, and there are these status for resources trades or resources for look straights and these trades do seem to happen more men to women, right? But overall, it's like if you just look around even, it's like, oh yeah, people who have college degrees, tend to date people with college degrees, people who are super hot, tend to date people who are so hot. Now, that's a stated versus a real preference's problem because you asked the guys, do you care?

1:48:22And they said not really. And then you looked at what they did and they ended up seeming to care, right? And so now we've got a case where we kind of have to look at the whole picture And I'm not saying that it's a closed question like the age gaps one seems pretty straightforward to me This would be an example of it being a little more complicated, right? So the age gaps one seems straightforward in the state of preferences are probably accurate direction Just because of the totality of the evidence and then the looks question it seems to be the revealed preferences Probably are more indicative looks probably do matter quite a bit at least when you're getting to know somebody and then for something like this now Now, how it's a little more tricky, isn't it?

1:49:01Because maybe men care more than they say, right? I certainly don't relate to the idea of not caring, right? Like I feel I might be biased, because internally, like, you know, I've obviously got quite a bit of education and I can't at a personal level, I would rather all else being equal date a woman who's very educated, right? That would just, I can, like, so my girlfriend's a scientist, right? And so it's fantastic for me that when I'm having trouble sorting something out, I can talk to her about it and she gives me coherent, helpful advice. Well, beyond just having a fucking research assistant you get to have sex with, what you also have is somebody that understands your passion.

1:49:44Yes, exactly. It's not just, it has a utility beyond, but beyond just practicality, where it's like, well, yeah, it's super helpful just emotionally in the sense that it's like, oh, this is someone who understands me. Yeah, exactly. So I think that there are probably a lot of men who, if you ask them on a pen and paper, and again, this is probably my bias. I think there are a lot of men who it's like they're educated, they're doctors, they're lawyers, whatever. And you say, do you care about a woman's education? And they say, no, I'll date anybody. And then in practice, they're on the date with a woman who doesn't have the same education with them and they're bored, right?

1:50:15Because they're not, they're just not interesting. That's a specific subsection of men, though. Yeah, it is. A very specific subsection of men. So the other possibility, though, and I'm gonna give full, this is totally possible, and maybe even more likely, is that men actually don't care that much about money and status and women in education. They actually don't, they're telling the truth when they say they don't give a shit. And it's not that they don't say that they don't give a shit. They say that it matters, it's just not top. It's just not, it doesn't matter to them as much as it matters to women in these questionnaire studies, and then the behavioral studies that doesn't seem to be as much for sex difference.

1:50:48At least Gordon some scholars. It's also possible that it's just exposure and opportunity. It's like if you're a male lawyer, right, you've spent the last eight years of your, you know, prime, you know, getting educated, I'm around educated women. So it's like, who did you happen to date? Who did you happen to marry? Educated women because those are the women that you happen to meet based on who is in your local environment. So I'm open to both possibilities. I think that if you really want to understand human mating, you don't want to say something as blunt as watch what they do, not what they say, right?

1:51:20Even though for the most part, I am more interested in what people do than what they say. I think that if you really want to understand you in mating behavior, you want to take a step back, relax and say, okay, what do people want? What are they end up doing? And what's the most coherent explanation I can build based on the combination of those? Have you had a look at Gregory Clark's work? No, he is a Demographer, I suppose, he has, behavioral genetics background. He wrote a book called For Whom the Bell Curve Tolls, which is a fucking phenomenal title. Interesting. He has tracked... Also putting the phrase bell curve in a title should be, you know, that's that of RISK.

1:51:59He likes to sort of glance off the bottom of certain things. I really appreciated the fact that, again, same as a plowman, actually a little bit more kind of like based... Have you had Pomeran? Pomeran? What a smart guy. Phenomenal guy. And there's a really sweet guy as well. Fucking super sweet counter signal. I mean, dude, if you're gonna do behavioral genetics and be really accepted even slightly by the mainstream, you need to do the counter signaling thing, right? You need to be overly not pliable, but like kind of placid and so gently softly softly. Well, I'm not saying that this pre -determins, but it does pre -dispose and I'm not saying that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, like it's caveat, caveat, caveat.

1:52:36Page Harden, right? You know, Paige wrote the genetic lottery. Okay. She's the only well -known public facing behavioral geneticist that's ardently from the left, as far as I'm aware. Is plumbing not, I think you... Yeah, he doesn't bring his politics into it too much, but she's like outwardly like, these are my politics. So fascinating. Gregory Clark, let's start. Gregory, I'll send you the episode, tracked the social status of people via a very complex system of surnames in the UK for like 700 years. And he found that people's social status is genetically determined. That over time you may, sortatively or unassortatively, make yourself out of your social class, either down or up.

1:53:23But give people enough time and their family phenotype is more important. That's what they go back to. This sort of regression to your phenotypical mean. Does that make sense? I mean, it's fascinating. I will say, though, that again, I'm gonna have to kind of plant that I haven't spent a year on it flag in the sense that it's like. I'll send you a podcast. Yeah, no, yeah. Well, here's the thing is that I've read, you know, I've read a couple of relevant books on Behaviour Genetics. I read Plumman's book. I spoke to Plumman for a few hours. I've read several articles on it, but I really am not a, I'm just not, and I understand the Behaviour Genetics of infertility quite a bit, but I just don't, I'm not an expert on, I'm just not an expert on it, and I'm not going to pretend to be.

1:54:09And there's, you know, there's a lot of even academics who will come on shows like this and just be like experts on everything they're asked about. And it's like, well, I know that you're not an expert in everything. Science is lame, bro, science is real. That's really, but you know, I have this like rule that I stole from Douglas Murray, which is normalize saying, I don't have an opinion on that. I don't know. Yeah, I've said that several times today. That is, again, you know, when was the last time that your favorite content creator said that they don't know? Would be a fifth, a great fifth question to ask.

1:54:42Just because your great in behavioral ecology, infidelity, make preferences and attraction doesn't mean that I should believe what you say about geopolitical strategies to fix the problem with the Middle East. Yeah, it's so based, so true. And I will, you know, one thing that I'm happy to be proud of is that on every single podcast I've ever done, I've said, I don't know more than once. There's never been a time where I've gone on a podcast and just gone through, yes, yes, yes, I know this, I know that. It's always, you know, at a point where I'm like, I haven't studied that. So there is, you know, and I've said that a few times just now.

1:55:19There is a degree. Maybe, and I think, I'd probably say that I've had maybe second only to Riccardo Lopez. I've had more evolutionary psychologists on this podcast than pretty much anybody else. And what I do like are when that caveat comes in and you know the boundaries of whatever somebody's talking about. But then they go, let's have a bit of fun. Yeah. Let's have a bit of fun. Let's postulate about the mechanism, you could say. And it's like, black, we don't know what's going on here. Here's some cool ideas. is because that's the fun bit. The fun bit of evolutionary theory and presumably of behavioral ecology as well is going like, why does that happen?

1:55:59Well, given what I know about the way the humans work and given what we know about the environment that they're in, that's how to play with a couple of mechanisms. And that for me is the best stuff. I fell in love with this subject when I read The Moral Animal by Robert Wright. That book's from 1993, dude. And you can read it today, and there's some stuff in there, I would say, like that's just silly. It holds so much fucking water still now. For a nominal read, it's one of my top five books of all time. Steve Stewart Williams, April and just at the universe also in there. It's just brilliant.

1:56:33And I loved learning about evolutionary psychology first off because it helped me to understand me, helped me understand why I am the way I am. What are the mechanisms that are driving me? Why do I feel that way about these things? Oh, this isn't some weird quirk of my psychology. This is like the source code that I'm built on and this is a commonality and this is what I'm trying to do a lot of with the show, which is, look, if we open up the hood of our preferences, of our fears, of our dreams, of the ways that we think about ourselves, of our curses, of our competencies, if we do that, it makes you feel less alone and less personally cursed and less inside of your own head.

1:57:17Very wise and flattering words about evolutionary psychology. I'll weigh in mostly to agree. Evolutionary psychology was my first love in science. My closest mentors at Boston University were anthropologists, but they came, you know, like Carolyn Hodgschemian, she was one of my teachers. One of my professors, and she came straight from San de Barbara, right? the mecca of Evesite. And what I loved about Evesite was that while cultural anthropology and to an extent other disciplines emphasize what makes us different, evolutionary psychology emphasizes what makes us all the same. They would call it the psychological unity of mankind, right, or shared nature as a species.

1:58:02And I think that evolutionary psychology, while, you know, while I think that on some questions, there are better tools now after, you know, after learning more about the field, frankly, at Oxford and its alternatives. While my opinion has kind of shifted on it, I still maintain that they're right about so many things and that their big wins are some of the biggest in psychology ever. I mean, it's incredible that you know, a bus's original mate preferences stuff holds up what nearly half a century later, and that you can still basically find the exact same results by running the exact same study.

1:58:45I mean, you want to talk about a replication crisis, that's awesome. But again, for things like understanding the complex interplay between culture, environment, and nature to determine who we find sexy and who we don't, I've come to just think that that evolutionary psychology is part of the picture. And that's how you've been obsessed. Yeah, you also need, you also need a deep understanding of sociorecology. Well, ultimately, you're not looking at... Which many evolutionary psychologists have, of course. I mean, I'm not criticizing anyone. They know you're not. Yeah. The human behavior isn't occurring inside of a Faraday cage, right?

1:59:25people are influenced by what we've said before, like two very obvious ones, beautification in relation to local socioeconomic inequality and the sex ratio hypothesis, right? Two, just two effects that occur. Yeah, income inequality and sex ratio fascinating. Yeah, and you're like, right, okay, and both of those are like, you know, pretty hardcore, at least, every evolution of your psychologist will be familiar with. Yeah, exactly, and that's a huge, that's a brilliant point because that's very behavioral, ecologically compatible, like those two fields would not disagree. Yes. So you go, okay, well, in this, like, I need to do more work because this is literally the first time I've ever heard the words behavioral ecology put together.

2:00:05And maybe I've heard it, like at some point before, it's the first time I've heard it used properly. So I need to look into the field more. But the way that I could see, if you're right with the way that your field looks at the world functionally, it will be better at predicting behavior. Yes, so one, yes, so there are cases where you test them against each other, like you could test them against each other. Whereas, this is what we should do. This is what humans should do. This is what their preferences are, but that's in a, you know, petri dish, confined box, sandbox, fire day cage. If you're not in this himetically sealed lab, what happens?

2:00:45Well, you are intrinsically fused with the culture and with the presuppositions of what you think and your assumptions about yourself and about the world and about your place in the world and about what other people think of you. So, perfect example of this. 20 years ago, every girl wanted a thigh gap. Now, it's like... When the economy was great. Ah, dude. I've really, really enjoyed this. I'm very glad that you've come through. We have literally like five more episodes to do. And I look forward to finding some ungodly time for one of us when we get back to Australia to run this back again. I'm really glad that you came through and stopped off in Austin.

2:01:27Where should people go? They want to keep up to date with everything that you do. You're massive on TikTok. You've got fantastic podcasts as well. Where should people go? They want to check out. Yeah, well, there's, I guess there are a few things that are worth flagging. The first for my kind of social media presence, It would be good to just Google my name and follow it. And then in terms of the actual work I'm doing, so there's academic work which I'm going to keep everyone abreast of. And then there's also some corporate work as well, frankly, where you've met Tim today. So we're working on an app called Couplie and you can go to just a flag this, right?

2:02:05Couplie .io slash mac and if you're in a relationship, right, and you're looking to improve your relationships. This is an app where both partners download it and we're going to be bringing some of the science that we talked about today Into the app to help improve couples and help them last longer. Yeah Dude, I appreciate you. You're awesome. Yeah, your stuff's really really good and I'm glad that we connected and I hope that you continue going And I hope that we have more conversations. Cheers. Thanks so much Chris. Appreciate it