#825 - Macken Murphy - The New Science Of Why Men & Women Cheat

30:36Does that mean that men had a sort of flatter distribution of reasons in that case? Not necessarily that that inference would be correct if we coded them one to one, but the way that we coded it was that one affair could have multiple motivations. So for example, a participant might say, oh, I was in a long distance relationship and things weren't going well. She really wasn't treating me right, and my fair partner was just gorgeous. That would be a pretty reasonable answer, that would be the sort of thing that we'd see. And then that would get coded as attractive a fair partner, long distance relationship, and relationship to satisfaction.

31:19So it doesn't necessarily mean flatter distribution of reasons, because we can recode variables in this way. But great question.

31:29So, historically, right, the whole women are more likely to have relationship to satisfaction when they commit infidelity. That's an expected sex difference. It's something that pops up in, let's say, quite a bit, since the 80s. Why? Why is it expected? Well, it's funny because the original logic was that it was evidence for the I'm a twitching hypothesis because it's like, oh, if women are usually dissatisfied when they have affairs, that means that they want their relationship to end, right? Two reasons I'm skeptical of this, one,

32:10women often have higher relationship dissatisfaction anyway, a given certain circumstances, they might be more sensitive to cues that the relationship is not going well. There also might just be a difference where they're more likely to express dissatisfaction, even if dissatisfaction levels are in actuality, even between the sexes. That's number one. Number two, and this is more important and more deeply theoretical, which is that infidelity, as we discussed earlier, is a very risky activity. And it is especially risky for women. So, based on Martin Dalley's research, I believe, you might have spoken to?

32:52No, I'm lining up. I would have called him daily, so I'm glad that you fact -checked me on that. It might be daily. It might be daily. I've only read his name. I mean, it's only your industry, mate. I'm speaking to Martin through a combination of Rob Kursban and Steve. Okay. I think he'll be great. Yeah, no, he surely will be. He's written and just some of my favorite stuff has been written by him, but some of his early research basically found that women's infidelity is more likely to result in relationship dissolution than men's infidelity. And so this is a funny way of thinking about this, but in EVSIC, it's pretty common to think of relationship satisfaction as an internal regulatory variable that partially tracks the value of your relationship.

33:48And so if your relationship satisfaction, if you risk your relationship, every time you have an affair, and your relationship satisfaction is low, well, then you're literally risking less than someone who's relationship. Exactly, exactly. And so if infidelity is more likely to result in relationship dissolution for women than men, then the risk is at a baseline higher. And so you should expect that women should be more likely, right, to be attuned to whether they have the infertility discount that comes with relationship dissatisfaction. And so this has been interpreted as evidence for the mate switching hypothesis.

34:40And I think it's reasonable to say that someone who's relationally dissatisfied is more likely to be made switching with their affair And some some people do make switch, you know several women in our sample, but only several said that they were made switching but I Think it's reasonable to assume that they're more likely to be made switching than someone who's really relationally happy But I don't think it's reasonable to do the reverse inference, which is that because they're relationally unhappy they want to make switch. There are plenty of people who are relationally dissatisfied, having an affair, but also want their relationship to keep going.

35:15And that's also quite intuitive to me, this idea that sometimes relationships are unhappy, but you want to stick things out. What do you make of the difficulty that women supposedly have in separating the emotions from having sex with a guy that women will fall at more when they are physically intimate with a man because there is a higher hurdle for this man to get over, that it is her being more risky. Would it not be the case for mate switching that women would be more likely to fall for that partner still, even if it's not, sorry, for dual mating, even if it's not for the purpose of mate switching while they're doing mating, would it not be more likely that they were going to fall for that partner in any case as a sort of a natural byproduct of the feminine desire to be emotionally intimate with someone?

36:13That's very clever. I haven't considered that and I have to think about it more because I mean you're familiar with the mate switching hypothesis but what What Chris is referring to here, I believe, is that there's a one of the flagship pieces of evidence for the mate switching hypothesis is that women are more likely to fall in love with their affair partners than men are. And what you're saying is that women are more likely to feel emotionally entangled with sexual partners in general. And so that also isn't necessarily particularly good evidence. One thing that I will note is that we didn't find that love for a fair partner is coming up much at all, right?

37:00We're talking like 1 -2%. It was sub -5%. Very few people in our sample, men or women, said that they were motivated by love for their fair partner that just didn't come out very much. And so I'm a bit skeptical. I mean, maybe it is the case that women are more likely to be in love with their fair partner, right? But at least in their stated motivations, it doesn't seem to be a big factor in why they had the affair to begin with. And so it might be, even though that's my favorite evidence for the mate switching hypothesis. As you say, it might not have as much theoretical move to it as it seems to at first glance.

37:48And then also, there's an inference involved there where it's like, if they love them, that must be their motivation. And it's possible to be in love with your affair partner and have that be pretty low on the list of why you had an affair. Yeah. Yeah, I remember Andrew Thomas talking about what women say that they want in terms of traits when choosing for sperm donors. So everybody's egenicist, right? Everyone is. Everyone is. Whether you like it or not. And some people are more quantitatively and obviously egenicists if they choose sperm donors, or if they choose a, like if they go through IVF with a donor for either side, I suppose.

38:36And one of the things that I thought was really interesting that Andrew brought up is women who choose sperm donors, it is the only time where the traits that you want in your future child are divorced from the traits of the man that is able to get you into bed to be able to create that future child. So you have this sort of weird territorial cutoff, which is what do I want my future kid to be like without having to jump through the hoop of what is the sort of thing that I find attractive that gets me into bed. So it's kind of a much more sterile controlled environment when it comes to doing that.

39:17And given that with regards to to dual mating, it surprises me that things like personality didn't include in that, given that although you want sexy sun hypothesis, presumably you want likable sun hypothesis.

39:39It's interesting. In our pre -registration, we didn't make specific. I guess one thing that I'll note on the on the eugenics point is that I've heard a lot of people say that, say the same thing of kind of like, its sexual selection is eugenics. I personally do see a difference between individual level, what traits do I want my child to have in the case of embryo selection, in the case of IVF and sperm donation, and then what traits do I want to be high frequency in society at large? That's a good, yeah, you're perfectly acceptable to do that. There's a difference between you know, two B's concern about that gene erosion thing, that sort of scaling up, even though I think it's still largely ethical, that's more of a scaling up.

40:29That being said, the one conversation that I've ever had about embryo selection, I got called an actual Nazi for having. So, but it's okay, I'm over it. I mean, I'm not, I'm not someone who's super into science philosophy, I'm sure that someone's listening and just thinking that I sound like a bit of an idiot, but I will say that I don't see a huge difference between, I mean maybe I'm just thinking about this wrong, but I don't see a huge difference between selecting an embryo and selecting a mate at the individual level, where I would find it, where I would start defining it as and start defining it as, you know, ethically, a warrant to myself would be when people are telling other people what they should do, or when the government is getting involved and trying to adjust, yeah, trying to adjust any top down, trying to adjust the frequencies of genes in the population.

41:27I would see that, I would see that as very, very bad, but at the individual level, I don't really understand, I mean, I also don't really understand and re -off selection, to be honest. It's not my area. I'm an expert in very few topics, so we'll stick to those. But it is interesting, of course. Anything else from the qualitative insights that you learned? Yeah, I think it would be cool to just go over the top three motivations for, oh, actually, can I just ask though, what was Andrew Thomas, what was his actual conclusion on, like what traits did they want from sperm? That's very relevant to the dual mating.

42:10I can't remember. Let me see if I can pull it up. Andrew, the advantage of having 3 ,200 notes, okay. Conducted an experiment where you ask chat GPT for mate preferences. No, I don't actually have it on there. I certainly know that things like kindness were much more prioritized. It seemed to me to be softer skills, if you want to call it that, the soft skills of being a person. I think in their kindness, humor, intelligence, yeah, it was more prosocial stuff, I think, which maybe you would probably be able to predict pretty easily that you can look away from someone's dark triad adjacent personality traits because they're hot or cool or funny or something.

43:16Interesting. It's funny because you know sperm donation, embryos selection, all of these. It's all it's hard to know if it's stated or revealed preferences. It's hard to know where to put it. There was a really cool study from Paul Eastwick and his colleagues Just awesome where they looked at this is very recent I think it's is still in press so it's not even fully published yet But it is fully pure viewed. It's it's gonna be published as is and they looked at what people Say they want in a partner And then they looked at how what they say they want actually predicts romantic evaluations in practice So that stated preferences on one end and then kind of a version of revealed preferences on the other end and There were some kind of funny examples the number one stated preference trait was loyalty That's what people said.

44:11It's like what do you want in a partner number one thing loyalty and the number one revealed preference was being good and bad a good lover So there's that I also I took that table from your or from your Twitter. So yeah, they said the first rank was loyalty, but to be fair, that rank does number two. It still ranked as number two. Yeah, that's the other thing is that it only got suppressed a little. The main thing that was shocking was the how much, so it was so much women down. A good lover jumps from rank 12 to rank one. I know, people don't, again, it goes back to what we were saying about the people wanna tell stories in which they're the hero.

44:52It doesn't sound great. If you're asked by a psychologist, you know, what do you want to mate? And the first thing you say is good and bad, you sound quite unhinged. But in practice, that might actually be more predictive of your romantic evaluations than anything else. And it certainly seems to be in the large sample. And then they also found that in general, I think the general gist of that table is that traits, physical traits are much more important than people say. And they're especially more important than women say. So for man and women sexy jumping from number 19 to number six. Yes. Yeah, that's a huge jump Smells good.

45:30That's another just physical trait. Whether you smell good or not. What was that? I know it jumped to like number four, but it was smells good. Oh number 15 to number four attractive number 16 to number eight Yeah, so if you want to contrast what people say they want and what people actually want one of the main things that's going to come up over and over again is that people under state and this doesn't necessarily mean they're lying, it could just be that we don't have perfect insight into what makes us happy, but we understate how important physical attack pills. The black pill was right all along, you just need to smell nice.

46:07Yes, the new black pill just dropped. I smell, smell, smell, smell, smell, smell, smell, smell, So smellmacketing right now. Yeah. Okay. Qualitative, the rest of the qualitative stuff. Yeah, the rest of the qualitative stuff. So that was a diversion, but a happy one. And one that's actually relevant, because in a way, we found the same result. Again, 5 % of women mentioned that their fair partner was physically attractive. And then they were 77 % more likely to prefer their fair partner physically, more to coincidence. But top motivations for women. relationship, dissatisfaction, number one, and a high number one, again, most women mentioned that.

46:48Second place, and second place by quite a bit, only 20%, that's still a 22%. Mentioned that their primary partner was uninvested, and this also illustrates an important point, which is that not all women's affairs are explained by dual mating. It seems that there might be a psychological bias towards the dual mating strategy, but many women had affairs with a fair partners who they perceived as less attractive, right? 77 % more likely is not, you know, that's not an infinite gap. And then one of the reasons that many women cheated, one in five women cheated, precisely because they thought that their primary partner wasn't invested enough.

47:40So if it's pairing good genes and good investment, that doesn't make a lot of sense with for those women. And then the third most popular motivation for women was revenge. So 15 .5 % of women said that they were cheating to get revenge. And then did they say what on? Well, in this case, the 15 .5 % figure is revenge for their partners of fair specifically. So I remember I spoke to a guy who was kind of an unofficial marriage counselor in his neighborhood. And I asked him, you know, why do women cheat in your experience? It's like what you see. And he very flatly said, he said, women cheat when men cheat.

48:25Now, that doesn't seem to be 100 % true, but there's certainly some truth to it in our data in the sense that women were much more likely to cheat for revenge. And you could interpret that as a genuine strategic difference. But since men cheat more than women, women have more opportunity to cheat for revenge. Or the very least they have more opportunity, at the very least they have more opportunity to cite revenge as one of the reasons why they cheated. Whether it was going to happen or not. Yes. What is the state of who cheats more men or women? Oh, that's a pretty open and shut case. Men cheat more.

49:06Men say they cheat more when you ask them. Men say they get cheated on less when you ask them. So women report getting cheated on more and then women who are the third person right so some people might say Well, maybe women are just understating things When you ask you know who's more successful as a mate poacher Women who mate poach tend to have a higher hit rate so There are three people involved in any given affair There's the primary partner. There's the person who's cheating and then there's the affair partner and And you can do studies on anyone of those three groups, and you generally find the same result, which is that the man is generally more likely to have an affair.

49:51In some studies, it's not a big gap, in some cultural context, it's a huge gap, but that would be the overall state of the science there. And so the revenge difference, it may just be downstream of the sex difference in committing infidelity. They have more opportunity to have an affair. What do you learn from a woman's concern about investment from that partner? It's a good question. So this is pretty consistent with, it's not consistent with the dual mating strategy, but it's consistent. And it's actually a really good thing to illustrate that women cheat for many reasons. They cheat maybe for traditional variety based motivations, such as genetic heterogeneity or fertility backup, so some percent of couples are infertile, and so if you're mating with multiple males, you're really lowering the probability that that's going to result in the end of your lineage.

50:47There are many motivations for affairs. Revenge, so having it being an uninvested partner, low investment, I would say that it signals I would say that it signals kind of the traditional upside difference, which is that women's investment in offspring is largely obligate, physically obligate in the sense that women have to go through pregnancy and lactation. This is part of why women seem to be more careful about who they mate with, more choosy. A lot of men complain about, you know, women having high standards for their mates, but really what do you expect, right? Like if you could get pregnant, surely you'd be be pretty careful as well about who you mate with.

51:33So women's investment is partially obligate, whereas men's investment is not morally but pragmatically entirely optional. Men have the option to seduce and abandon mates. You'd expect, given that, that women would be very sensitive to cues that a man might to do some abandon her and really try to avoid that as much as possible. And so if they're in a relationship and they think, oh, my partner is not investing in me, he's not invested. Well, that's a huge signal that he's a low -mainte value mate, essentially. It's like, oh, this isn't going to work. And maybe that's evidence for mate switching, but maybe it's also evidence for breakup or backup or just lowering the cost of infidelity, again, the discount infidelity idea.

52:18I was going to say, you know, this doesn't mean that no woman ever leaves her partner to get into a relationship with the cheating partner. Yeah, reliably that does happen. And also, I'm going to guess that if you looked at the cohorts of women and you were to find the one that said, I was worried about investment from my relationship partner, that would probably result in more likely of a pivot to the new infidelity partner as a new relationship. I'm going to guess that that would probably be predictive of that because like what am I sticking about for if I'm going to have genes and investment and I don't have investment then I might as well try and get genes and investment to get.

53:03Exactly. So the dual mating, it doesn't explain all of women's infidelity certainly and we did see some mate switching in our samples. Several women in our sample were mate switching. I'm wondering whether the era that we were in, in sort of 2017, when we look at the mate switching hypothesis, the dual mating hypothesis feels a bit icky to me. When you think about it, when you think about, and maybe this is just me as a man, but thinking about some guy, male parental uncertainty, raising another man's children, whether this is or is not during a period of oboelectric shift where you're fertile as a woman, it makes me go like, you know, it's a little bit more Machivellian.

53:50It feels like in that way. Whereas mate switching seems to just be, okay, you're monkey branching from one relationship to the other, people have backup mates, people have, you know, their friends, females, friends that are men often tend to have the attributes of the sorts of men that they would get into a relationship with, which kind of has these sort of weird quasi -orbitor backup mate things floating around a little bit. I wonder whether in a post -MeToo world, that was just a bit more... It was a little bit easier to digest, to have something that was a bit less like, oh! I know. I mean, I don't really, in terms of assessing theories, I don't really care about how achy they are or how yeah it just doesn't affect my assessment of the facts I just want to know what's true whether or not it's kind of gross and I would say that the evidence points to this idea that this is a part of human evolution I mean in modern populations quote unquote cuckoldry is quite uncommon you know 1 % 2 % 3 % And those would be the sorts of estimates that you'd get from people who really understand the subject.

55:04That would be of a one to three percent men raising a child that they are unaware is not their genetic offspring. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. One, one, two, three percent kids of kids are, you know, you are not the father type situation. But the male sensitivity to parental uncertainty though has to exist for a reason. Yeah, exactly. If it never happened exactly, we wouldn't, how could we have, how could we have such concern with paternity certainty if there was no paternity uncertainty to be concerned about? That's number one. Number two, the modern percentages are based on their base in a cultural context where infidelity has been highly suppressed socially and they're based in a technological context where we can choose through contraceptives and what not who consciously who you have kids with to some extent there's much more control over it.

56:12If you look at populations with less contraceptives, well then you start to see rates of 5 % 10%, among the HIMBA, 48%, really high rates of extra pair paternity. So, some evolutionary psychologists have said, oh, dual mating isn't true because it happens at such low rates. And it's like, well, first, reconsider that, you know, 2 % number in terms of the 15 % of women who have affairs, reconsider it as a hit rate, as opposed to an attempt rate, And then also reconsider it in the sense that that's not nothing over millions of years right from an evolutionary time scale, but also it's not necessarily relevant to our understanding of our ancestry given that we have contraceptives now and we really didn't then.

57:04What about men's motivations? What did you learn from them? Yeah, men's motivations.

57:14I guess I actually do want to say one more thing on the Iki point because I think that there is a, and then I'll talk about men's motivations right after I'll just go straight into it. I guess one issue from outside evo -psych is this idea that the dual mating hypothesis is somehow, or the mate switching hypothesis, or any of these, that it's somehow sexist to talk about the evolved psychological influences on human sexual behavior. The first thing that I would say to that is just that the evolved psychological influences on men's sexual behavior are also very unfavorable. The portrait that you can paint of men's behavior using evocyc is downright dastardly.

58:00It's full of deception. Men's affairs just as much variety as possible, completely emotionally detached. We've talked about the seduce and abandon strategy. All of this is very ugly. And it's important that we have, if we want to reduce ugly behaviors, it's vitally important that we have a good understanding of what's actually happening instead of deluding ourselves that other influences are at play, more comforting ones. Another thing is that the primary advocates for the dual mating hypothesis, I mean, the senior author on our paper, Candace who you've spoken to, she has a gender studies degree.

58:35Everyone on our paper is a feminist, right? We all believe in gender egalitarianism. And some of the chief advocates for dual mating, Elizabeth Pillsworth back in the day, Marty Hazelton even today, these are women and feminists who are interested in this topic. So the outside evo -psych view that it's like, oh, this is like some kind of anti -woman agenda. Now, we're just interested in what's true, what's false. and we're trying to take the politics out of it as much as possible so you can just buckle down and do good science. Yeah, we can talk about modulations. It certainly, um, it doesn't paint women in a particularly flattering light, but we're talking about infidelity.

59:14Like, you know, you were talking about the other girls. And most women don't cheat. But what this, what this does show, I think, uh, if you do get pushback, more pushback, saying, this is unfair, this is you trying to control women's sexuality, this is you painting them as McIverlian and all the rest of it, I think that what that betrays is the typical social expectation and interpretation of women's behavior, which is that sexually women are not the protagonists, that they are almost always responding. It's actually low -key, quite a sexist perspective on women, that they don't have agency to go and chase down a new partner.

59:54You know, it's the same people that will tweet You're too good for him Bay, you know like remember remember your value queen whilst also saying no, no, no, no, no Women and other ones that initiate women should never be the ones that so on the sofa. It's such a it's such a low like it's such a midwit take from people that pretend to be egalitarian between the sexes It's not it's not it's like the soft bigotry of yes male expectations It's, yeah, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's so based such a good point. It's incredibly patronizing how everyone's happy when you talk about men's evolved psychology.

1:00:36But then as soon as you talk about women's, it's, it's, it's almost as if the whole story is about men. And this is something that I see a lot in kind of public discourse is that, you know, If you label everything as the patriarchy, let's say, well, then you're basically saying that men are the only ones with their hands on the wheel. That's a pretty patronizing view of women. Our lab views women and men both as active, sexual strategists. That's a much more... I mean, politics aside, it's just a much more accurate view. I mean, it would be weird if women weren't active sexual strategists. But also, you know, I think it's even less flattering to just say, you know, to just pretend that women are always acted on as opposed to active agents in their own rights, actually.

1:01:31But I think I think I can't tell if we're being woke or anti -woke here. We're doing something. We're doing something that will be acute. I'm sure that will be accused of being both. Yeah, the last five minutes of our conversation is gonna be a Rorschach test online. So we'll see. Dude, I've been using that all the time. Two memes that I'm yet to write into existence. One being an ideological Rorschach test. So a good example of this was Trump getting shot in the head. That was an ideological Rorschach test. That was either on one side, the Dems trying to take down the candidate that was going to win through purposefully stopping the secret service from protecting him, or that was Trump attracting crazies in a world where he's enabled everyone to have a gun.

1:02:20And like he was just pick, and the other one, the other meme being a thinking in super positions. So you have these two worlds that both exist at the same time and they collapse down into one. And it's interesting to see, you know, we talk about, okay, so are you saying that women don't have agencies, actually? No, of course they do. Of course we need to, in fact, they need to have more. It's like, right, okay, so you're saying that they can make choices when it comes to their own infertility. Yes, okay. And you would surely expect that they would make strategically prudent choices. I mean, what's the alternative?

1:02:47Let's go to the culpable. They're going to culpable for this thing. Yeah, it's so funny. Okay, men's motivations, what did you learn? Yeah, that was a rich segue. This now feels relatively light weight by comparison. But again, top male motivation is relationship to satisfaction again, but it's at relatively comparatively more frequency, comparatively lower frequency. That's the sense that I'm using relatively here. So about a third of men, about 30 % said that they were dissatisfied. About 16%. So significantly more than women said that it was because they had an attractive a fair partner. And about 14 % of men said that it was motivated by sexual desire.

1:03:40And here, again, I just want to note that the qualitative data is qualitative. And so it's subject to these reporting biases, it's subject to these interpretation biases. Are we really meant to believe that only 14 % of men's sexual affairs are motivated by sexual desire? I mean, that, And surely it was part of it for much more men. It's just that it's not particularly flattering or self -flattering to talk about those things. And so men are going to be wants to report that at a lower rate because it seems a little inappropriate. That would be my interpretation of that. But it is interesting that there's a sex difference there.

1:04:19And that actually was something that's consistent with the mainstream evotakes on infidelity. that men's infidelity is somewhat more sexually driven, directly sexually driven, than women's infidelity, because for men's infidelity, the only benefit really is sexual. That's the mainstream take. It's not my take. I think that men in women both cheat for lots of reasons. Some men in our sample were made switching. Some men in our sample had an affair because they wanted a new girlfriend. That happened at a similar rate to women as well. Well, what was the rate of men saying that that partner wasn't invested?

1:04:55I think it was 5%. That's interesting. We're going to get on to talking about jealousy shortly, but just to kind of round this out, what are the exoplanets, the unspoken ghosts and sort of potential orbiters of infertility, hypotheses, is there anything else that's still lurking out there in the ether that isn't dual mating, mate switching? Oh, yeah. Yeah. Multiple investors is the elephant, has to be the elephant in the room. I mean, there's a few elephants in the room. One that I think you've talked to, Jeff Miller, have you? Yes. Yes, sometimes, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I've actually seen clips.

1:05:40So Jeff Miller had a hypothesis that didn't really get hardly any attention, which is that part of the affairs that we have are to gain information, right, to calibrate our own mate value to gain skills in seduction. And that theory is largely been brushed off, but it did pop up quite a bit that I can actually check the percentage here. It wasn't nothing. You know, about one in 20 people said that they were cheating for some variety of information acquisition, right? What, like, do you mean information acquisition? Are they fucking spies? What's going on? So, for example, one woman said that she wanted to, basically, wanted to obtain skills in seduction.

1:06:32She didn't phrase it that way, but it was like, I wanted to be able to do this. I wanted to have this ability. And so that's kind of a, that's a reason for infidelity that's strategically legitimate where it's like look I don't really know my own mate value or I don't really know how to get guys or I don't really know how to get girls And that's a very important life skill. It's gonna be important throughout my life. Let me go work on it, right on the side that I Wouldn't expect it to be the main motivation for infidelity, but it's a motivation You can imagine someone who is you know, let's say a college student.

1:07:05They're in their first big relationship their halfway through college and they realize, huh, I actually don't really know what I'm doing still, dating. And I'm going to have to date my whole life, right, until I get married, at least. So let me go get some skills here. I said this about people who get into a marriage with the first person that they ever have sex with. And it's kind of like being with your first type of therapist, I'm doing therapy at the moment. And a lot of people, it's the first time I've ever worked with someone for this long in person, et cetera. People go, what's your therapist like?

1:07:34I go, I think she's great, but I don't really know, because I've got nothing else to compare it to. And it's kind of the same with that. And I suppose you just don't know, could I do better? Could do any better? Is this really the best that I could do? Yeah, so there could be some mate value calibration that comes from engaging in infidelity to some degree. Multiple investors is worth talking about because that's most of the theories that we've been talking about for women's infidelity have been quote unquote, quality -driven theories. The difference is what qualities are being searched for. So again, mate switching is best overall whole package, whereas dual mating is the best combo deal.

1:08:15But both are quality -motivated. Multiple investors is a very interesting hypothesis. It seems to be the primary explanation of infertility among the Himbabwe of Namibia. And it's essentially that if a woman can't get enough resources from one man, well then she can obtain supplementary resources from additional mates on the side. So this wouldn't be a quality -driven hypothesis. It would be a quantity -driven hypothesis. It's just that the quantity, or not necessarily a quantity -driven, but it's quantity of resources. And that could translate to quantity of mates. I would have to talk to Shells about it.

1:08:52But it's a very interesting hypothesis and I think it does happen. We didn't find a lot of evidence for it in our sample unless you take the uninvested primary partner as evidence for it. Like, oh, this guy's not invested in me. Let me go get some investment somewhere else. But very anecdotally, I have at least heard of people having maybe a kind of sugar daddy character on the side who it's like he's not particularly attractive, but you need to pay rent at the end of the month. So this is something that you engage in. So I don't think multiple investors should be expected to be at high frequency in high SES countries and in high SES individuals.

1:09:39But in situations where resources are scarce, that could be very well be the main reason that women have affairs to obtain additional resources. Do you know the Wizard Liz? Do you know that YouTube channel? No. Right. So her channel's huge, but just has not come across my radar until recently. She's got six and a half million subs on YouTube, huge, hugely engaged Instagram as well. And she regularly does videos basically explaining how to get the princess treatment, which is how to make your man, a man, pay for your entire life. Pay your bills, buy your car, pay your tuition, and show the young look after, treat you like a princess.

1:10:26And if I was to speak to her, I would be very, I would be very, very interested in asking sort of what are the motivations for that, what do you think about using multiple partners, like really trying to dig in. She's like super duper famous. And it's, you know, it's kind of tangential to this sort of boss bitch thing, but it's done in a very different sort of a way because obviously it's not focusing on financial independence and not needing a man. It's a more, someone say Maccavelli and manipulative version of this to get the guy to pay for those things of everything that you should be showering gifts that it's very important that you're showering gifts that you should set the tone.

1:11:05She uses, I was watching this video from yesterday, she says that you should lie to every new relationship that you're in and say that the guy in the previous relationship spoiled you because men will only work as hard as they feel like they need to beat your previous boyfriend. So basically, if your last boyfriend beat an abused you and never cared for you, your next one will just think, well, if I just don't beat an abuser, then I'm better. So it's a very interesting, like super interesting. I'll send you some of the videos once we've finished up. But yeah, I'll be interested to see if men start taking on that strategy because this is the first period in history where it's viable to be, you know, a boy toy or a...

1:11:47Dude, I'm an aspiring fucking trophy husband. Have been for a very long time. Unfortunately, you've got too much money for that. I still have hope. I'm still hoping for an arrest to step out of somewhere. Okay, so what about the role? How does this fold into your new sort of perspective on this? How does this fold into the discussion around jealousy about sex differences in jealousy, about why men and women get jealous, its evolutionary function, etc? Well, I mean, this is what's funny is that the dual mating hypothesis is more consistent with the the evolutionary psychology literature on jealousy.

1:12:32I mean, it's quite conspicuous to me, but it doesn't seem to have been acknowledged generally. It's something that we've touched on earlier, which is just that if, so okay, well, to give everyone the download, if they don't have this information yet, on average, it varies the degree of the sex difference, the size of the sex difference varies, And then it also varies what people care about, right? So there are plenty of cultures where everybody cares more about sexual infidelity or everyone cares more about emotional infidelity. But the general difference is that within a culture, on average, men will be relatively more concerned with sexual infidelity and women will be relatively more concerned with emotional infidelity.

1:13:16And that makes sense if dual mating is the concern because men aren't protecting against a woman leaving them for another partner, they're protecting against the potential that they will be quote unquote, cockled it, right? They don't want, they're more upset by sexual infidelity because men can be cockled it where women really, at least not in the same way, right? Euphemistic way maybe, but not in the literal sense. On women's end, we've talked quite a bit about investment. They're going to be chiefly concerned or not chiefly necessarily, but they're going to be more concerned than men with losing investment because women's investment is more obligate.

1:14:00Men's investment is more not morally but pragmatically optional. And so that's really the landscape in terms of sex differences in jealousy. It pops up everywhere it's looked for. And I will note though that some people have taken it. Some people have have exported this F -Sike finding and said that like, oh, women don't care at all about sexual infidelity. Their main concern is emotional infidelity, as long as it's just sexual, it's fine. That's not what that doesn't pop up. Women are very upset by sexual infidelity. And then also, on the other end, men are very upset by emotional infidelity.

1:14:39It's just that relative to one another within a culture, you'll generally find the difference in that direction. And this makes sense under a dual mating view because men are paranoid about getting cuckled it. And then it also makes sense from a traditional kind of what what women stand to gain from relationships in the view that it's like, well, if he is invested in her emotionally, then he might go off and raise her kids instead of mine. And maybe he's not invested in me. A. Men have paternity uncertainty. Women have investment uncertainty. That's how I summarize it. a consequence of this being accurate, dual mating, being the leading infidelity theory would be more men being cook -olded, and, cessually, is that right?

1:15:32Yeah, and I think it's very reasonable to think that that happened quite a bit. I mean, if you look at even like rural American populations, I've seen higher numbers like close to 10 % in terms of estimated. Like if contraception is low and infidelity is high, you're gonna get a lot of men raising kids that aren't theirs. That doesn't happen a lot in modern America, in modern Britain, in modern Australia, where there's contraception and strong social norms against infidelity. We don't really see a lot of that. So it's not really something to worry about in a modern context, but in ancestral context, I would say that this would be a real worry.

1:16:17I will also note that there's a great new paper, relatively new paper from, again, Berkshell's called the Cuckoldry Conundrum, which is just pointing out that sometimes, our conception of Cuckoldry isn't necessarily exportable in the sense that, and this might it sounds strange, but sometimes you know that a child isn't yours, but it still makes evolutionary sense to invest in them. So for example, among the Himbab, there's tremendous status to be gained and social cloud from being a good father to your wife's affair partner's children. So that's pro -social in some ways. Yeah, so it's like you would be because and you got to keep in mind that You know, they've probably played both sides of the field here So they've probably got they probably got eggs and other nests themselves to use a metaphor And so it's kind of it's kind of in everyone's best interest to be like, you know Let's just invest in the kids that are in our nest.

1:17:21It's a free for all it's a pull Well, this is kind of like the human equivalent of the Why female chimps made with multiple males because the risk of infanticide gets reduced, because each male is uncertain about whether or not that child might be his. I'm not sure if that's even true, but it seems to me, this seems to be a more kind of, yeah, socially enforced equivalent of that. Yeah, I would call that a tangentially related hypothesis, for sure. I don't know how high, and this is something that you should talk to Martin Dalley about, actually, as because he's his Cinderella effect book is just the truth about Cinderella.

1:18:02So yeah, that's such a fun one about in fantasy side and humans. I say fun. Oh my gosh, don't clip that. Ruthless. But yeah, interesting. I really did mean it when I say I don't care how gross the theory is. I just want to know if it's true. But I don't know how much in fantasy side has actually played a role in humans, but it's kind of funny. And this actually relates back to the political conversation we were having earlier, is that some of the initial theories from Sarah Herty on women's infidelity in humans were related to paternity uncertainty. And hilariously, given that, you know, this is something that Louis Bichaud pointed out to me, which is that, you know, in the 70s, 80s and 90s, these findings on women as sexual straddle strategists, dual mating, paternity uncertainty, creation, these sorts of things.

1:18:53They were championed at that time as feminist ideas and pushed back upon by right -wing people who wanted women to, you know, they had this archaic view of women as passive and, you know, not engaging in the sexual marketplace as active agents. And now, today, we have the complete political reverse where it's the same set of scientific findings, but it's the super feminist groups that are saying, oh, that's just not true. Da, da, da, da, da, they're kind of acting like the old right wingers. And it's the really misogynistic groups, such as, you know, the tail end of in cells and such, who are holding up these same findings and saying they're great.

1:19:37So I think that that's better evidence than I've heard for anything that these facts are, facts are neutral. And if you have an agenda, you can collect a set of facts and spin them in a way that fits whatever agenda you like. The same findings that today we call sexist were originally championed by feminist scholars and that's just the way the cookie crumbles. Well, the horseshoe is very horseshoey and it ends up being a total fucking circle eventually. Yeah, it's more like a merry go round in the history of this debate. The same, the same sexual findings that were considered liberal are now considered conservative.

1:20:21And if you give it another 20 years, it'll probably flip back. Back around. Meanwhile, we're just going to keep our heads down and try to figure out what's actually going on. What are the predictors of infidelity? How can you tell if someone's going to cheat? Okay, there's actually a long list here. The most obvious one would be have they cheated on a past partner. Once a cheater, always a cheater, this lines up with our folks' psychology. It's not exactly true in the sense that many people cheat on one person and then never cheat again, but it's true enough, let's say. So there is one longitudinal study from Kaila Nopp that found that if someone had cheated in their last relationship There were three times more likely to cheat in their next relationship.

1:21:07Have you got any idea what the base rate is? Oh the base rate of infidelity. Yeah, it's difficult to find in dating couples. I'll say two things that I'm quite confident in. I would say that about a fourth of marriages will encounter infidelity at some point in their lifespan And I would say that about half of people, maybe a little more than half in men, a little less than half in women, but somewhere floating around that kind of mid -range, not like a super majority or a super minority, will cheat on somebody at some point, but that doesn't mean that they'll cheat on you specifically in one relationship.

1:21:48So for example, there are plenty of people who cheated on their college boyfriend or college girlfriend, and then they never cheat again for the rest of their lives. But given that most people have several relationships, and also given the data showing that most people report getting cheated on by somebody at some point, I would say that the inverse is also though it doesn't logically necessarily follow, I would say that it is likely that about half of people will cheat on somebody at some point. But I would love to see better data on that. Unfortunately, the really good data has been collected on marriage and married couples.

1:22:19And again, I would say that I would say that a conservative and reasonable estimate would be about a fourth of marriages will experience infidelity and it's usually going to be the man who does it. Okay. What else? Someone was a cheater in the past. That's a pretty good predictor that there might be in future. What else? Yeah extraper interest we are naturally quite sensitive to extraper interest We notice it so people tend to notice if their boyfriend is constantly checking other girls out That seems to predict infidelity empirically. I believe there's even a study where they tested, you know, how long a man's eye is lingered on other women.

1:22:55And that was predictive of infidelity, which is kind of funny. And, you know, extra -pair flirtation, that sort of thing. I would be attuned to that. There are people who are, let's call it laser -focused on their partner. And then there are people who, you know, you go to the social event and they just want They just want to talk to all the hot guys or all the hot girls and they kind of think that probably doesn't doesn't Goad well. Narcissism is another thing to look out for. That's another thing that I think people find quite intuitive. And a general history of and I don't say this in like a loaded way, but a general history of promiscuity, I would say it would be something to look out for.

1:23:40Like if you're a woman and you're choosing between two guys and one guy, he's slept with over 100 women. He loves going to the club. He loves having one night stands. He rarely has long -term relationships. And the other guy has had like two long -term girlfriends and has never had casual sex. If you're choosing between those two guys, which is more likely to cheat on you, I think it should be obvious, but it is statistically backed as well that the guy who has the more of a history of monogamy is going to be more faithful in practice. So that, I mean, I've given you like five things there. So I think that maybe four, I'm not sure.

1:24:22That's quite a bit. I seem to remember a line from one of David's books, maybe the evolution of, I can't remember, where he said that the single biggest predictor of extramarital sex is premarital sex. That's probably true. That's probably true. I love that line. I'm stealing it, but it's, uh, I'll have to check it. Yeah. I just wonder, I wonder how true that is. I wonder whether it's, whether it's the case, you know, is it, is it just sociosexuality all the way down? Oh, yeah. That's such a driving force that the person who wanted to have a novelty in their and in their 20s, how much of that is setting a particular type of habit, you know, damaged goods, how much are you damaged goods?

1:25:11How much of you've set some sort of lifestyle routine versus how much is this like a natural outgrowth of you and your nature as a person, you know what I mean? Yes, I completely agree. I think that it is possible. I mean, I don't find it completely implausible, this idea that it's like if you practice having one night stands over and over again throughout your 20s, maybe in your 30s, it'll be hard for you to not do that when the opportunity arises. But I also think it's plausible that as you say, and this would be my, this would be what I would think is that it's sociosexuality all the way down.

1:25:48So it's like if you want novelty and you're just holding yourself back from it, I'm not sure that that actually will. Maybe the ritual of doing that will help you in a marriage, but maybe it won't. Also, maybe you want those things, you want to be sexually unrestricted, but women just don't like you. And so when you're married, the first time that you get the opportunity, maybe that's the first time that you take it as well. So I would say that if someone is, I think that, yeah, it's kind of, human seem to exist partially on this spectrum. And it's a construct, but it's a useful construct of sociosexuality.

1:26:27Some people are quite, let's say unrestricted. They like to have sex without love. They like to have sacrilegial sex. And some people are quite restricted. And the people who are more restricted, the people who don't have sex with people who don't love them, the people who would feel uncomfortable getting naked in front of a stranger, those people are probably gonna be more faithful to you. And I think that's pretty reasonable. And I think, you know, for all the internet discourse, I know that every podcast, I wanna put like a moratorium, like a ban on body count because I've talked about it before so many times.

1:26:57But yeah, I would say that body count is a kind of a dull proxy, but it probably is a proxy for likelihood of committing infidelity, at least in the studies that I've seen. Yeah, I suppose the reason the body counts an interesting discussion, the reason that it comes up so much is it's such a low resolution rough hue and signal in the same way as saying your bank account shows how hard you work. You know, it's just this sort of odd, singular figure that you can compare. Everybody has one. Everybody has one. Everybody has a bank account. How much money's in your fucking bank account? How many people have you had to say?

1:27:34Yeah, I would say that it probably isn't predictive. I mean, I think there was one, actually I won't quote it because I don't remember the exact stats, but you know, like, I think it's pretty intuitive that if you're, if you got one person who's only slept with one person before you and another person who's slept with a hundred, who is more likely what they're gonna cheat on you with the third person they've slept with or the 101st You know, I think it's pretty intuitive. What are some of the common signs that the person is cheating? Signs that a person is actively cheating

1:28:07I mean a lot of these aren't literature -backed, but you do hear them from you know, relationship counselors and relationships psychologists and things like that. I I don't think that you should be, I don't really have prescriptive claims. In my personal life, I wouldn't really want to be in a relationship where everyone's snooping on each other's phones all the time and accessing each other's technology. But conversely, anecdotally, you do see it a lot where people who get cheated on, they say that their partner became very digitally secretive, very protective of their phone, they leave the bathroom, leave the room, and they are sure to take their phone with them right, never leave their phone unlocked, never let you use their phone for any reason.

1:28:54I would say that that would be something that would be somewhat suspicious. I suppose there are plenty of reasons why someone might be digitally secretive that aren't infidelity, but it's also hard to imagine carrying out a full blown affair in a modern context without keeping digital secrets. That would be very stone age in nature.

1:29:19I would say that, yeah, I mean, signs that they're actively cheating are much more difficult because we don't have as much research on it. Well, by virtue of the people who are actively cheating and trying to conceal it, so who's going to blow the Tom Cruise mission impossible mission whilst it's still underway? Yeah, exactly. So, yeah. Yeah, do you want to take part in my study that'll completely expose you to unnecessary very risk in your secret operation. But I would say that cautiously, millions of years of evolution has prepared your brain for this moment of detecting partner and fidelity, potentially.

1:30:09Maybe it's only tens of thousands of years. It depends how deep monogamy goes in our lineage, but point being, I would say that trusting your gut to some extent is probably wise. If you think something's fishy, there might be with the caveat that you got to look at your personal history. If you know that you're someone who's just morbidly jealous, you're really oversensitive to that sort of thing, then play a cautious hand. I was going to say there's thousands of people right now who are like vindicated. Well, just the people who are adamant at all times that something's going wrong. There was this interesting study that I saw on Cypost, the top four behaviors that signal commitment within relationships on social media.

1:30:56Number one, deleting dating apps. Number two, ignoring flirtatious messages. Number three, indicating relationships status online. And number four, unfollowing potential alternative mates. Research has found that individuals with high attachment anxiety reported significantly higher levels of discomfort, worry and jealousy when imagining their partner interacting with an attractive alternative on social media. This confirmed that such scenarios are particularly distressing for anxious individuals. Interestingly, the partner's high commitment behaviors on social media successfully increased perceived partner commitment and the perceived devaluation of alternatives, regardless of the participant's attachment style.

1:31:31However, these behaviors did not significantly enhance feelings of security or relationship satisfaction for anxious individuals as hypothesized. This suggests that while explicit commitment signals are important, they may not be sufficient to fully alleviate the deep -seated insecurities and fears associated with attachment anxiety. You have to send me that. That's very cool. I would also say that it's modern, but that doesn't mean that it doesn't have some evolutionary routes, this broadcasting that you're in a relationship on social media. What it reminds me of most is I spoke to one of if not the leading experts on Gibbons on my podcast species and we were discussing monogamy and Gibbons so Gibbons are our closest socially monogamous relatives and one thing that they do is they sing duets together.

1:32:27And part of that function, I mean, it's got many functions, but part of that seems to be to broadcast the pair bond to basically say the the given pair will sing a duet, say, hey, everybody just so you know, we're still dating. It's the relationship status update on Facebook. Yes, exactly. And so whenever I see someone just kind of put up, you know, their girlfriend posts them and then they share the story or vice versa, it's kind of like, it's kind of like you're doing a given duet in the sense that you're both signaling, hey, everybody alternative mates were in a relationship. So there's no end to end we're doing well.

1:33:03So that sort of thing, it has its roots, I would say, in a very basic evolved desire, even if the behavior itself is not evolved, obviously. We are, there's no selection on Instagram posts, at least not yet. Yeah, that would be safe. But what have you learned about what counts as cheating? There's that there's that there's major variety. I mean,

1:33:35I mean, it's hard to know because a lot of this is from the gray literature, but some, I mean, if you're in an open relationship, for example, even sleeping with someone else is not necessarily cheating. So, and then on the other end, some people who are in very, let's say, sexually restrictive relationships would say that pornography is cheating, or that even fantasizing about other people is cheating, or that light social flirtation with other people is cheating. And there's a huge spectrum as to what's considered cheating, what's not, what's considered just disrespectful versus full blown affair.

1:34:11For what it's worth, our study only looked to the study that we spent the first Half -hour or so discussing today. We just looked at sexual affairs and it's possible that if we you know Women are more likely to engage in emotional affairs than men based on the existing data that we have on that subject And it's possible that purely emotional affairs are more geared towards made switching that would make sense towards to me Oh That is interesting Yeah, like none the what is the function of non -sexual emotional affairs like where a woman is you know day dreaming about her co -worker crush, but isn't actually acting on that.

1:34:43Or a man. You're blowing my mind. You're blowing my mind because this, you chose a particular bar to classify infidelity and by design, that bar would lend itself toward the dual mating hypothesis more than it would lend itself toward the mate switching hypothesis. That is correct. However, I will also say that cheeky. It's not cheeky. I wasn't rooting for the dual mating hypothesis. If anything, I was rooting for the mate switching hypothesis, but tried to stay as emotionally neutral as possible. I was surprised by the results. And I'll also say that to give the devil what's due, advocates the mate switching hypothesis, they do think that they or they did think, maybe this research will change their minds, that the primary function of women's affairs, sexual affairs is to obtain a new mate.

1:35:42So the sexual affair test, I think, was a fair one. Because look, we're looking at extra paramating. We're not looking at extra -pair flirtation, which can have you even more functions. I mean, sometimes you'll flirt with someone who's not your partner, or one will flirt with someone who's not their partner, just because they want to be more popular at work, or they wanna get a raise, or they want the airport. They want going through the airport to be slightly smoother. That's literally, I was about to say, If I want a second lotus biscoff on a delta or something, I'd better hope that it's one of the female air hostesses that comes around because if it's that miserable looking bloke with a beard, I've got no chance.

1:36:16If I'm bloating my eyelashes on the right way at some lovely lady, then maybe I get a second bisket. Yeah, I mean, I'm just, I'm so fascinated by that, by what constitutes cheating and the sort of emotional infidelity versus sexual infidelity. It's a term we haven't used but monkey branching sort of for one relationship to another. Yeah, the slang for made switching. Yeah, where you are sort of dipping your toe in just how invested is this person? Just how funny is this person? Just how good are the, how good does he smell? Before we get to how good of a lover is he? How good of a lover? Yeah, before we get to that.

1:36:54So I'll ladder up all the way before I get to that one. And it's also, I suppose the thing from a Yeah. Operational perspective for one of a term that makes it sound less like a military fucking undertaking. It allows more culpable deniability for anybody. Did you sleep with him? Look, I haven't even touched anybody. Yeah. Darling, I've never touched anybody. It's like, well, that's not that's not safer. Yes, it's a much safer, yes, form of an emotional affair is much safer. And so you're insulating yourself against the costs while you're engaging in it. I think that makes a lot of sense. I will also say that one of the strengths of the mate switching hypothesis is that because it is about sexual affairs, it's also about emotional affairs, but because it is about sexual affairs, is that it acknowledges something that's true that Helen Fisher actually said this to me, she said, you learn a lot about someone between the sheets, right?

1:37:54There's a lot of mating relevant information that is obtained through having sex with someone, how conscientious they are, how much they care about you versus themselves, how athletic they are, you get a lot of information. Is cheating heritable? Have you looked at that? The behavioral genetics of cheating? Yeah, I mean, everything's heritable. I'm not a behavioral geneticist, but there have been studies on the subject and it shows that, you know, I mean, genes code for proteins and regulatory molecules that build and operate your brain, it would be bizarre if genes had no influence on any behavior.

1:38:32Like for a behavior to have zero genetic input would be peculiar. And there hasn't been a ton of research on this, but there have been, you know, some twin studies, some candidate gene studies and candidate gene studies are always a little, a little more questionable, but the twin studies, I find that study, I'm, again, I'm not a behavior geneticist, I do find that study design quite persuasive and those indicate that yes, cheating is heritable. Hey, talking about a gene embryo selection, I imagine if he could, I'm gonna select for a scoundrel chad of a son. You're gonna have to ask him, I'm gonna have him just absolutely decimate Stockton on Tees in the Northeast of England.

1:39:12Well, the reason that that's, I mean, that's very funny, but I suppose the reason that that is, and the reason that I think, I don't know why embryo selection's coming up so much, but I guess the reason that I think that this whole project might be a little unlikely is that the things that the genes that affect one's propensity to cheat, it's not going to be one cheating gene. It's going to be thousands of genes that each do hundreds of different things, right? In all likelihood, at least by my understanding, it's going to be like, you know, the influence of one gene that has a tiny effect on risk taking propensity.

1:39:47Another gene that has a tiny effect on sociosexuality. Another gene that has a tiny effect on honesty, right? They're just all these genes that have tiny effects on things that are good in some context and bad in others. And so in order to genetically adjust someone's probability for it, like what does someone who has a zero percent of the cheating genes look like? Maybe they're all of the right. Maybe they're super boring. Yeah. Have you seen this new, I think it's Jacob or Jacob Fort examining the fraternal birth order effect and sexual orientation insights from an Eastern European population?

1:40:25Jacob Fort and colleagues examine the fraternal birth order effect, why by men with more older brothers and more likely to be gay, this seems at least slightly relatively robust. Analyzing data from Croatian Slovakia, they find that the fraternal birth order effect exists for lesbians too. Women with more older brothers are more likely to be lesbian. Strange. I mean, it's so not my area, but very interesting. Fascinating, dude. I thought that was so so cool. I mean, you know, I had Dr. James Cantor on the show and he's just he's spicy and lots of people really don't like him. I, for his area, uh, parasexuality is that it, uh, um, the one where it's like all sorts of weird sexualities.

1:41:13Uh, he is, he's just the best. And, uh, he, he taught me very much. He's, he's gay and he taught me a lot about the birth order effect. But the fact that it occurs for lesbians too, I thought it was interesting. Yeah, a bit, a bit confusing. And also, I, I would just love for there to be like a really, this is something that I don't know if we'll ever get it because it might not be adaptive. But it would be so cool to get an adaptive story of homosexuality that works. But at the end of the day, it just matters what's true. And I just, I haven't heard, I haven't heard an website story that the only one makes a lot of sense and two actually has good data behind it.

1:41:53It's also not my area. I can't give you the data, but I can give you one that's got a good story. So if, as a, but it only works as guys, it really doesn't work as, for females. And this female thing throws a huge spanner in the wrench, the works of it, which is, if you have had multiple males go through the same woman, your mum, it is likely that the sex ratio is going to be skewed toward men, which makes it less likely that you, as a man, are going to be able to find a female mate. And so you become a kin helper essentially and invest in your brother's offspring. I think so. Yeah, I mean, that's again, very interesting.

1:42:37Doesn't fit with this new finding on absolutely totally fucking. Why would the lesbian? No, no, no, no, no, we need more of you. Like we really, the men, all of your brothers, well, maybe not your brothers. Yeah. It seems more of a, it seems more of a, I think that it seems like more of a spandrol. Like, that would be the sort of hypothesis where it's like, there's selection. Like, I've heard, again, this is so in on my area, but, you know, I've heard stories about maybe that maybe certain strong selective biases, select for genes that also, you know, at a low dose, they're, they lead to certain things that are very selectively advantageous.

1:43:15But if you get a high enough dose of them, then you become purely same -sex -tracked and the buck stops there. I guess my favorite hypothesis that might have been true in our ancestry just doesn't seem to be particularly true now Would be this idea that would be this kin selection idea that it's like in some circumstances Because we see this in other animals in some circumstances It makes more sense to invest in your kin's offspring than your own offspring because they share 50 % of your your kin Born basically to be an alloparent and you've got born to be an alloparent early warning sort of detection system about the sex ratio and then downstream.

1:43:52Yeah. Okay, so I met an evolutionary biologist who liked that and he called it, I don't know if this is his name, but it's such a funny one. He was gay and he called it the Rich Gay Uncle Hypothesis. No. And I was like, huh, it kind of is true. And I looked it up and it's like, oh yeah, gay guys do tend to make more money and they do tend to invest a lot in their nephews. I was like, this is kind of cool, but it doesn't seem to be, it's, again, it's just hypothesis and I actually don't think it's true. I think it's more likely that not everything is explicable by evolutionary side. I mean, I wish it was fun, but it's fun, which is, which is, that's the root that's a psych's biggest hurdle is that it's so fun to come up with stories that we tell too many and so you have to be very conservative with your hypotheses and test them rigorously.

1:44:33We've spoken about repeat

1:44:39people that are consistently being cheaters, the culprits, what about people that are repeatedly victims? Is there such a thing as a repeat infertility victim? Some people always get cheated on, other people manage to sail through completely smooth? If I'm remembering correctly, in the Kaila Nop study, people who were cheated on in their last relationship were twice as likely to be cheated on in their next relationship. And some people hear that and they think of it as like, oh, that's just lightning striking the same spot twice. Oh my gosh. But the truth is that lightning does tend to strike the same spots because there are things that affect the probability of where lightning hits.

1:45:26So this isn't victim blaming, but it's possible that someone is very low skilled in make guarding, let's say. They just don't do that effectively and so they consistently get cheated on. Or another thing, like we often see that people are attracted to narcissists, we know that narcissism co -varies with infidelity. And so if you're someone who finds, you know, super cocky guys really sexy, well, you're going to pick those guys over and over again, and then you're going to end up picking, you're picking a trait that co -varies with infidelity and so you become repeatedly victimized to it. Again, not victim blaming, just stating the reality that sometimes people's strategic decisions have an influence.

1:46:03Another possibility though is that this is based on self -reports, right? Did you get cheated on in your last relationship? Did you get cheated on in this one? And it's plausible to me that some people are too suspicious and overreported infidelity or some people are just really good at catching cheaters like they've got a skill there. And so, you know, everyone, maybe the rate of getting cheated on is relatively evenly distributed between the two groups, but the groups that gets cheated on a lot are constantly catching it. I mean, and you know, it's plausible to me that, you know, if you're someone like myself, for example, who wouldn't go through their partners found, right?

1:46:44I would just feel like that was like a gross thing to do. I mean, I can certainly imagine circumstances. I'm not going to say I've never done it or that there wouldn't be circumstances where I could, but just that it would generally that would be something that I would find very aversive. There would need to be some really legitimate reason. Well, then maybe I'm more vulnerable to infertility, but I'm also just more vulnerable to not noticing it. So there is this effect where people who get cheated on in the past are more likely to get cheated on in the future and people who haven't been cheated on in the past are less likely to be cheated on in the future.

1:47:16So winners keep winning and losers just lose more, right? That seems to be the case, but it could be a detection bias. it could be a, as you like to say, a skill issue, just not good at skill issue, man. Yeah, not good at detecting it or not good at picking mates or, you know, but it's an interesting phenomenon. I'd love to do more research into it, but it's not my research. So that's fascinating. Yeah. It's the consistent themes that you find throughout your life if they continue to come up, have to have something to do with you. Maybe it's you. Yeah. Yeah. How's that something to do with you?

1:47:52And maybe it is that you're unbelievably good at detecting, but given that not everybody cheats all the time, maybe it's that you're good at picking cheaters. Maybe that's your skill. I think the most likely explanation is that you're attracted to traits that co -vary within fidelity. So if someone says to me, why does everyone cheat on me? The first thing that I would ask in a less callous way, why do you keep dating cheaters? Yeah, what is it that you're predicting? Yeah, what are you attracted to that's causing this problem? Because if you think narcissistic bad boys are super hot, well, problems solved, maybe not.

1:48:29And if you're... You know, sure. Yeah, miss... Yeah, Sherlock Holmes over here. I've solved it. And vice versa for men if you're attracted. You know, if you're a man and you're attracted to really dark triad, kind of sexy flirtatious women, you know, maybe... Maybe that's maybe maxing out on that. And it could also be a prioritization issue. So let's say you're the sort of guy who puts physical attractiveness above all else. You don't pay attention to personality. It's just who's the hottest girl that likes me? That's who I'm gonna date. And then it's like, why do they all cheat on me? It's like, well, maybe you should have considered shared values, shared goals.

1:49:09But you weren't selecting for loyalty. Yeah, you didn't select for loyalty. So a bit of a skill issue, but we won't victim blame too much. What does this new study, this new insight? How does it inform your perspective on how natural and natural infertility is? Are ancestral mating strategies sort of monogamy versus monogamy versus serial monogamy versus polygyny? Does it sort of adjust your worldview at all? No, but I'm so glad you brought this up. One thing that I will say is that again, I want to emphasize that my study is just one study and I look forward to more research Hopefully research using the same paradigm where we look at actual People who have had affairs and that try to investigate women's infidelity more and then also that even though the top line conclusion is a You know a pre -registered win for the dual mating hypothesis best case scenario and worst case scenario for mate switching We also found that some women made switch and women cheap for a variety of reasons including obtaining additional resources, getting revenge, etc.

1:50:17How does it affect my view? Really not that much. It definitely affects. I thought that made switching would be much more common and I found David Buses' arguments very eloquent and persuasive for the made switching hypothesis and I'm a huge fan of David Buses. So I I thought that maybe this would be a win for the Mate Twitch Compalysis. I was kind of surprised it wasn't. So I guess it changed my view in that sense. But it didn't change my view as to whether we're naturally socially monogamous mammals, because most socially monogamous mammals engage in extra -paramating, and most have some degree of extra -paratunity.

1:50:55So the idea that we, a socially monogamous mammal, also engages in extra -paramating, and and also has some degree of strategic evolution in the context of extra -payer paternity, neither of those things were particularly surprising. A lot of people hear the word monogamous, so the way that folks at home use the term monogamous is different from the way biologists use monogamous. Generally, when we talk about monogamy, we are distinguishing between genetic or sexual monogamy and social monogamy. And most species that are labeled monogamous are only socially monogamous. So there's some degree, you know, plenty of them don't cheat, but many of them do.

1:51:39One example, and this would be a very unethical study to perform in humans, our closest socially monogamous relative, the Gibbons. There was a study in the 1990s, the scientist named Reichard, he or she, I can't remember. they went out into the field and just watch Gibbons having sex and tried to tabulate how often was it with the primary partner and how often was it cheating and a full you know 11 to 12 % of the time it was not the primary partner right so that's not that's not 11 to 12 % of Gibbons cheating that's That number of gibbons, that's gibbons having sex with other partners at that rate.

1:52:27So usually with the primary partner, but very often times not. So, some people are going to hear this and think naively because they don't have, and this isn't, you know, this isn't, there's nothing wrong with this, but because they don't have the kind of biological anthropology context, they might think, some people might think, Oh, Mackin's infidelity research suggests that humans aren't naturally monogamous. I would say on the contrary, it's completely consistent with us being socially monogamous. And given that, again, most women do not execute a dual mating strategy in this way. Most women get their genes and parenting from one partner, both in terms of their psychology and the psychological mechanisms, undergirding their behavior and in terms of their actual behavior.

1:53:21But in any case, some of you are going to hear this and think, oh, this means we're not naturally monogamous. It's consistent with us being socially monogamous. It's just a question of how sexually monogamous we are. Fastening stuff, man. It's so interesting. I think I'm going to throw a little bit of money into the ring that there's something missing with the way that the studies are being done for ovulatory shift, that it seems too unlikely to me that we could have all of these converging and it would be so useful for ovulatory shift to happen for it to not actually have an effect. Because it seems to me that each time that it comes up, it sounds really cool and it's sexy explanation and then it doesn't replicate or there's something in the data that does whatever.

1:54:17And it just, to me, seems like such an obvious mechanism for evolution to take advantage of, you know, the original pill, the original, the original pill, the original contraceptive control for women, concealed ovulation with behavioral change that occurs during that period of time. No one knows, maybe not even her. And it would just be, I don't know. I also feel the exact same way in the sense that I think that maybe more sophisticated study designs that look at partner qualities and look at relationship qualities as mediators, maybe those end up validating the ovulatory shift hypothesis, but I will note again and emphasize that the dual mating hypothesis does not need ovulatory shifts.

1:55:00For example, one might intuitively think that in monogamous relationships, right, fully sexually monogamous relationships, it would only make sense for a woman to have sex at ovulation because sex has risks and that's the only time she can get pregnant. But instead, we see that there are benefits to having sex outside of the cycle, outside of that part of the cycle, and it's possible that there are benefits to having sex with one's a fair partner outside of that part of the cycle as well in terms of seduction in terms of may acquisition. I mean, it's funny. I was talking to a couple of ovulatory researchers at a conference and one of them said off -handedly, but it was so clever, they said, we'd have more success testing a weekend weekday shift hypothesis, because so much more cheating happens on the weekend versus the weekday.

1:55:46And that really puts the, that really puts the cycle shift effect sizes into comparison. It's not like, it's not like humans are werewolves and depending on what part in our hormonal cycle, there's like noticeable changes. Humans part of being human, part of the defining characteristics of our species or the suite of defining characteristics, is that we exhibit remarkable sexual stability across the cycle. And even if we exhibit dual mating, it's not inconsistent that that stability translates to infidelity. Hell yeah, Mac and Murphy, ladies and gentlemen, dude. Chris Williams, I really appreciate you.

1:56:22You're worked fascinating. I love the fact that you can communicate it this while. And I'm excited to see what you do next. I will be seeing you in Australia in only a couple of months time when I'm out there for my tour. So are you still gonna be there? Stop. I've got tickets to your Australia concert of sorts. Oh yeah. I'm gonna come out and play the banjo. So if anyone is going to Chris's Melbourne show, that's it's gonna be, I'm sitting in one of the regular seats. It's gonna be a very easy opportunity to meet me as well. I'll be doing an unofficial meet and greet in the in the aisle. Where should people go?

1:57:01Do they want to keep up to date with your work? Podcasts, all of the things. Where'd you want them to go? If you Google my name, everything comes up. My podcast is Species. The app that I have for couples is coupling. And I've got a course on human evolution. If anyone wants to learn about those very good, highly recommended. I bought it, gone by it, if you want to learn more about this. Thank you, Chris. And so there's a few ways to get more time with me, but all of them can be found through Google. Oh yeah, Macon, I appreciate you, man. Chris, I appreciate you. Thank you so much for having me back home.