What Science Actually Says About Men and Women — Evolutionary Psychologist David Buss

35:47So what I can offer is some thoughts on the question and without attaching an undue amount of certainty to those thoughts. So one thing is, So ancestrally, we would have encountered perhaps a few dozen potential mates in our entire lifespan because we didn't have cars, airplanes, Internet or anything else. So you're geographically limited. And now we live in large urban settings. And then the internet with dating sites, they provide us access to thousands or potentially millions of potential mates who live thousands of miles away. They can be in another country and sometimes are. So this is one huge, what we call an evolutionary mismatch.

36:46and sometimes this produces, and I think this is a speculation but a reasonable one, a decision paralysis. So they've shown this in studies. You go to a high-end supermarket and they have these six jams you can taste and then you taste several and then say, oh, I like the with peach or whatever, and you buy one. But they've shown if you give people 24, they taste some and they just can't decide. There's too many, too many to decide, decision paralysis. And I think some of that goes on in the mating world. So you get, well, there's so many potential maids to choose from, and I got matched with this person now, that person, and maybe there's someone just a little bit better, you know, on the next match.

37:36And so I think there's this reluctance to commit to one choice, you know, whereas in ancestral environments, you have just a few to choose from and you choose one and make the commitment. So that's one. Another thing that I think that really skews things is that what you get on the Internet dating profiles is you get photographs and then written descriptions. So I like fishing or I'm into rugby or whatever. I like heavy metal rock, whatever the case.

38:15Francis Foster:It's an interesting woman you're describing. She likes fishing, rugby and heavy metal. She doesn't sound straight is what we're saying. Well, hey, there's assortative matings. Mates for all sorts of interests. So, but I think that what you have is, what happens is the photograph is a visual image that tends to overwhelm all other sources of information. And so people make their decisions heavily based on the photographs. And so physical appearance takes on a much larger share of people's attention than it would be. Oh, it's contrasted with meeting people in real life. There's the thing called in real life.

39:07You've probably heard of it IRL Yeah, it used to happen So, um, but when so when you meet someone in real life There's a whole host of other information. I mean you get olfactory cues which are women are very sensitive to and most people don't know this but women have a greater olfactory acuity than men do and so they can smell things that men can't smell which is why you know men have like a woman walks into a guy's apartment he thinks it stinks or whatever and he doesn't notice anything so but but one of the things that we it's another sex difference that visual information is much more important to men than to women it's important to women but women tend to use all sorts of other senses so olfaction how does the guy sound vocal qualities you know intonation and so forth so none of those can you get from the a palette written description and then an overwhelming photograph now of course when we know the photographs are somewhat deceptive.

40:23You people post photographs that are not truly representative of what they actually look like. They might be old or they might be filtered or photoshopped or there are even websites where you can go to take the best selfie possible to post and then you meet the person in real life that's not what they look like. So I think that this, but all this other information that you can glean from meeting in real life and not just one time meeting because that even provides a very restricted informational window meeting someone over time so when people are thinking about getting serious I I'm not in the advice business but I give them this piece of advice they say go on a vacation together to a place that neither of you have been and you're unfamiliar with and so you have to grapple with novel challenges different culture different you know ways of getting around different food and so forth and so and so you can see how people react to the novel information to stresses and strains you know do they get thrown out of whack by a miner a pebble of a strain or you know can they do they are they resilient do they cope well and adapt well to these different circumstances.

41:49You go for a week or two with someone, then you find out a lot of information about someone.

41:59So in short, it's a long-winded answer to your question, which is a really good one, is that I think there are a number of mismatches between the way we selected mates ancestrally and the way we do through internet dating. I think it's something like 40 % of all people now meet through internet to internet in one form or another um and so uh and uh the other piece of advice i give is to stop messaging just meet the person start out with having coffee together or lunch together and then go from there and if there's some connection that's the other thing is uh a connection or romantic spark or a sexual spark is there a chemistry that you have with each other.

42:44And that's hugely important. Well, that is the most important thing. And it's really interesting when you see these apps, because they over-index for pictures and particularly looks, whilst some people may not be photogenic, some people may be incredibly charismatic, some people may be witty, funny, whatever it may be. So I guess my question is this, Is it true about the apps that it's 20 percent or 15 percent of the guys who look great in their pictures, who take all the goals and everybody else is left with nothing? Or is that kind of a misrepresentation of what's actually happening? Yeah, I think it's a misrepresentation.

43:25I mean, there is a skew. I mean, some guys get more hits than others get more attention. But one of the nice things about the modern environment is that there are so many different niches or niches or ways to improve your make value for some people but not for others. So as I mentioned, I don't know, the heavy metal, but some people are into certain types of music. So I know, I'll give you an example. So I know a woman, a friend of mine, who she's trilingual and really values guys who know Russian literature so that she can have in-depth conversations about Tolstoy. Now, if you have those qualities, that will be very high in mate value in her eyes, but irrelevant in most other people's eyes.

44:30But we have many, many of those kind of, you know, what you can call idiosyncratic value systems that can elevate someone's mate value. And so, and then the other aspect of it is that a good mating strategy is not to go where the heaviest competition is. So, if everybody is fighting over the same mate, then you're much better off going for someone who is not at the center of that attention. So, you know, so now, do people struggle on the mating market? Absolutely. You know, there's this phenomenon that the modern word for them is incels, guys that have difficulty attracting women. But that's always been the case, hasn't it?

45:26It's always been the case. Yeah, it has always been the case. And however, in the past, yeah, so we just didn't have a name for them.

45:38Francis Foster:Well, it's that, but also I don't think it was an identity. That's, I think, a big difference with incels is it's not guys who struggle, as I understand it, but do correct me. It's not guys who struggle with women. It's guys who struggle with women so much they give up on trying to find a name. Yeah, yeah. And some of them. And make an identity of discussing it with other people who they found who share that situation. Yeah, right, right, right. Which can result in a misogynistic echo chamber. Jim Morrison of The Doors had the quote of, women seem wicked when you're unwanted. And there's some truth to that.

46:18you know that you know but um uh but you're absolutely right that there have always been incels uh without that identity or or name um but um uh but uh the other thing is so so i have a graduate student now william costello we've had him on the show yeah oh yeah a couple of times oh okay yeah yeah well he's he's studied incels and so he is probably the world's expert and so right now professionally not not and but one of the things that he's found is that they tend to be a bit spectrum II so they have difficulty with social mind reading and so that impairs their ability to have interesting in conversations with women and also some anxiety about it.

47:15So they get dating anxiety or mating anxiety when they talk to women. So, but these are actually conditions that are curable because you have, and one of the things that, I mean, many psychological abnormalities are not curable. So schizophrenia, we can't do anything about. But anxiety, specific anxiety disorders are very, very curable. It's one of the few things that we know if you have snake phobia, flying anxiety, fear of flying. And we're actually looking into mating anxiety and ways to reduce that. because you have these guys who are perfectly reasonable in their mate value, but have this anxiety which inhibits their ability to approach women and have conversations with them.

48:18So they shouldn't give up. These are fixable problems. And it's very interesting now that we're talking about incels because they have the myth of the Chad, which is the myth and that's the terminology for the guy who's really buff really handsome yeah and you know every woman wants him and you go all right okay so there are there are guys who are more popular with women i mean that's just obvious but there is a type of guy online who is high mate value who on hinge or tinder or whatever it may be he can literally go out and have a date every night of the week if he wants. And then they would say that those women would gravitate to those types of men.

49:03So it's those types of men who are getting most of the matches. Yeah. Well, yeah. But for short term sexual hookups, you know, I would say so, you know, this is where sites like Tinder, you know, I wouldn't advise any woman to go on a site like Tinder because they're, first of all, there are 30 % of the men on Tinder are in relationships or married, you know, and so they're looking for short-term hookups, sexual hookups. So if you're looking for a long-term mate, you don't want to go on Tinder. You want to go on a dating site that is more geared toward long-term relationships and compatibility.

49:47So maybe for those incels who are resentful about the chads who are getting these short-term hookups, well, you know, that's another mismatch. Again, an evolutionary mismatch. There were, there were, ancestrally, there was no such thing as this large pool of single people. They didn't exist. So, ancestrally, and in almost all hunter-gatherer societies, traditional societies, women get married, all fertile women get married and they reproduce. And so there's not this pool of singles like you have now. Spring is a wonderful time of year Right up until you're standing on a job site At 7 in the morning Wondering why your trousers are already soaked through And your pocket is 6 inches From where you expected it to be True work makes workwear That is actually built around those conditions The T2 work pant has 4 way stretch So you can bend, kneel and climb Without the fabric fighting you A water resistant finish So a shower doesn't immediately ruin your morning And 9 pockets positioned where trade professionals said they actually needed them, not where someone guessed.

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51:51Francis Foster:And we've obviously returned, I was going to say straight, but we returned to the topic of infidelity. Would I be right in saying that cheating is an evolutionary adaptation? Well, the way... Did we evolve to be monogamous, I guess, is what I'm asking. I would say, I would rephrase the question. So the way I would phrase it is, have we evolved a long-term mating strategy? And I would say, yes, we have, as one strategy within our repertoire of mating strategies. So do we have adaptations for long-term pair-bonded attachment committed mating? Yes. Do we also have adaptations for short-term mating?

52:36I would say yes. Do we have adaptations for EPC mating, extra pair copulation mating? I would say yes to that as well. So which particular mating strategy an individual pursues depends on a variety of factors. Mate value, problems in the relationship, and this is actually something we're working on right now, is different forms of infidelity, different forms of cheating. So you have sexual infidelity, which is obvious, but you also have emotional infidelity, and then you also have financial infidelity or resource infidelity. So it turns out I was surprised at these stats. I didn't do these studies, but something like a third of married people have secret bank accounts or credit cards that they have the bills mailed to their office rather than their home and conceal debt or other stocks or resources that they have that they don't want to be.

53:46their partner to share in. So there's financial infidelity, emotional infidelity, and sexual infidelity, and humans do all three.

53:56Francis Foster:And why do people cheat? Well, there are sex differences there, which won't surprise you. So for men, there's going to be generalizations for which many, many exceptions occur. But on average, for men, it's desire for sexual variety. You know, it's something like 70%, 75 % of men, it's an opportunity presented itself. When I was at this conference and, you know, I hooked up with this woman while I was there, it was sexual variety. for women. Sorry, just to pause there, David, is that why when you watch like a movie and see the woman goes to the man, why did you do it? And he goes, it meant nothing.

54:51Yeah. Yeah. And often it does mean nothing. So, so often that is an accurate statement. But, but this is interesting. So, so, so let me just finish on women. Yeah. And then, and then I want to return to this point that you raise here. So for women, women who have affairs, something like one study shows 79 % of them become emotionally involved with or fall in love with their affair partner. And this is very, for men, it's more like 20, 25, 30%. It's much, much lower. This is a huge, choose sex difference and that reveals something fundamentally different about why women cheat versus why men cheat and that is for women it's what i call the mate switching function that is women who cheat and this is going to sound really obvious but it's but it's not uh women who cheat tend to be very unhappy with their primary relationship and you say okay this is Tell me something more obvious than that.

56:04Well, if you look at men who cheat and men who don't cheat, there's no difference in how happy they are with their relationship. And so there's a big sex difference in predictors of who cheats.

56:20Now, men who are perfectly happy in their relationships can cheat. If the costs are low, the opportunity presents itself. the risks are low, the risks of discovery and so forth. For women, it's much more meaningful. And so it's what I call, I think, if you ask the question, why do women cheat? I think the majority do it for mate switching function. Now, it might be there are varieties of mate switching. So it could be she's just, she's really unhappy with her primary relationship and she's looking to see what is my mate value if I were to leave this? How desirable are the people who are attracted to me?

57:08Or it might be she meets someone at work, falls in love with him and switches to him. Or after years of an unsatisfying relationship, the affair gives her confidence that she can do well on the mating market and causes her to exit the relationship. And it's actually, I'm not recommending this, but it's, quote, effective as a way of exiting in the sense that it's one of the two leading causes of divorce worldwide is sexual infidelity. So have sexual infidelity and it gets revealed, which often it does over time. If it lasts for any amount of time, then men don't like that. getting back to that paternity uncertainty issue.

58:04And so, it's a pretty cool study done by a former student of mine, Barry Cooley is his name, where he analyzed the episodes of this, it's known, it exists, but a reality show called Cheaters. And what they did is they had, if you suspected your partner of cheating, you could call them up and they would put a detective on your partner. And so then if the detective spotted your partner going into the no-tell motel, then the detective would call and say, hi, we've discovered your partner just walked in with another person into the no-tell motel. Do you want to come down and confront them? And so what he analyzed is the verbal interrogations of people who confronted their partners as they're walking out of the no-tell motel.

58:57And what they found is that, what he found is that the first thing men want to know is, did you fuck him? Did you have sex with him? First thing women want to know of their husbands is, are you in love with her? So there's this huge sex difference. Because women are more forgiving. They don't like it at all, but they're more forgiving if it is a doesn't really mean anything. But if the guy's in love with another woman, that's going to signal that he's going to defect over the long term and devote his resources and commitment to another woman. But that must make women quite paranoid, really, because in a way, if someone really cheats on you because of love, you go, right, well, maybe I didn't care enough.

59:51Maybe I wasn't sympathetic enough. Maybe I didn't do enough. Maybe, you know, I just wasn't a good partner. But you can be the most amazing partner in the world, and he's still going to go off and shag someone else. That must put you in a state of paranoia, doesn't it? Well, the comedian Chris Rock said, men are only as faithful as their opportunity. So I think that's an exaggeration. You know, there are men who could cheat but remain faithful for moral reasons, for religious reasons, because they don't want to jeopardize their relationship. So, but yeah, you can see that sometimes with, well, an older example would be the actor Hugh Grant, who had a long-term relationship with Elizabeth Hurley, who was at the time one of the top models in the world, regarded as gorgeous, beautiful, sexy, et cetera.

1:00:57And he was found having sex with a hooker in Los Angeles in a car. And people are just like totally baffled by it. It's like, why you have Elizabeth Hurley drop-date gorgeous, and why would you have sex with a prostitute in Los Angeles? And, you know, of course, he didn't have an explanation for that, but we do. You know, it's just simply someone who's different, that desire for sexual variety, which is, I view it as evolution has played a nasty trick on men. So this is not a good thing for men, because what it means is that we have these desires that can never, never be successfully implemented, unless maybe you're Mick Jagger or a king or an emperor or somebody like that.

1:01:51Francis Foster:But there must be variation within men. So with female infidelity, as I understand it, the single biggest predictor is happiness in the relationship, right? If a woman's unhappy, the risk goes up significantly. What about for a man? There must be, you know, is it he's a cheater, as in like he's just born to seek sexual variety more than other men? Or is there... How... If you're a woman, how do you sort of go on? He might be into this. Yeah, well, that's a good question. And there are, I think, several factors that contribute to it. One is there are individual differences among men. So some men are more novelty-seeking.

1:02:32some men are higher on what we call socio-sexual orientation they're more short-term oriented and will cheat if the opportunity arises and there are other men who would not dream of cheating even if the opportunity so um uh just to give an example um oh here here uh is an example again from older time but there used to be this act for the younger generation this actor called paul newman um every and in his heyday he was like viewed as the uh uh i don't know who would be the modern analog brad pitt or maybe he was too old now uh but um he was drop date gorgeous jason momoa

1:03:21Francis Foster:sorry jason momoa would probably be the okay yes yeah he would be he would be the perfect example in the modern day era. So, but he was asked once, so Paul Newman met and married Jillian Woodward, another, an actress, and they were married for 50 years, and he never, as far as we know, never cheated on her. Even he had a million opportunities to do so. And he was asked by a journalist, why do you remain faithful given you have all these opportunities and he said, he said, why eat hamburger out when you have steak at home? And that was his answer, you know, so I have this. I'll pause it there. Sometimes you've had a few drinks, you just fancy a hamburger.

1:04:14Well, you're out to yourself, right? Yeah. So, but anyway, that was, and that made him even more attractive to women. He was so loyal and faithful to her. So, same with another example is Jimmy Carter, former president of the United States, who said in an interview that he had lust in his heart and that he had committed adultery many times in his heart, but never in actuality. and probably could have. He's a very high status guy. And as you know, many presidents have committed adultery in the past, going back to JFK. But there's this discrepancy, and this reveals the difference between our desires and implementing those desires in our behavior.

1:05:10And Jimmy Carter, I think, was a very religious person, and he also was very dedicated to his wife and so it would violate his um religious beliefs his sense of morality and so so i think there are to get back to your question large individual differences in men in their um willingness to act on their desire of sexual variety i think the desires still exist in most men, but some men inhibit their desires. And then as Chris Rock said, some men don't have the opportunity. And David, let's talk about the dark side, particularly of male sexual desire. Why is it that men stalk? Why is it that men are abusive, by the verbally or physically?

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1:07:27Just let them know and they will refund you 100%. Here's what you get when you go to buyoptimizers.com slash trigger and use code trigonometry. One, 15 % off your entire order. Two, you get a free bottle of Masszymes, buy Optimizers best-selling digestive enzyme added to your order automatically when you use that code. That's a$20 product free on top of your discount. Go to buyoptimizers.com slash trigger, use code trigonometry and grab it before it's gone. Yeah, I think there's an evolutionary answer to that, and that's basically both of those things, stalking and abuse, are unfortunately mate guarding functions.

1:08:14So let's take these one at a time. So abuse, whether it's physical or psychological abuse, and both are important, they're designed or have the effect of lowering the woman's self-perceptions of her desirability. And sometimes it literally lowers their desirability if she has bruises, scars, black eyes, and so forth. And so men tend to do it when there's a mate value discrepancy. And it has the effect of lowering the woman's self-perceptions of her desirability so that she feels sometimes even lucky that this guy is still with her. And some women even interpret the abuse as a sign of his love for her, that he's so in love with her that he will do everything possible to keep her.

1:09:14So that's a dark side that the abuse has its function. And stalking similarly occurs when there's a mate value discrepancy. And the typical scenario is that the woman dumps the guy and he doesn't want to get dumped because he realizes consciously or unconsciously that there is no way that he's going to be able to attract a woman of equivalent mate value as the woman who has just dumped him. And in our study, we did a study of 4 ,000 victims of stalking. And that's one of the things we found is the stalker has much lower mate value than the victim of the stalking. And so the mate value discrepancies predict that.

1:10:01And so these guys think, well, she was with me once. Maybe I can get her back. And yes, because when you look at that behavior, you were also, I was reading one of your studies. And you were saying that stalking is a very good predictor of violence and their murder, isn't it? Well, yeah, I wouldn't say a very good predictor. It statistically increases probability of. So, yeah, so I think criminal stalking, I mean, it should be taken very seriously, you know, and women should do. And one thing that women should realize is that the first three to six months after the breakup are the most dangerous times for women of being murdered by the ex.

1:10:53And it's typically when the guy realizes that it's permanent. It's a permanent break and that there's no way she's coming back. When that sinks in, that's the danger sign for women. And let's talk about the flip side of it, because one of the things that we don't really talk about, we talk about male violence and towards women, of course, we should. And, you know, it's horrifying that women have to go through this, but we talk about it less about female violence to men. So what do we know about that? Yeah, well, what we know is that there is female violence to men, to their mates. It's typically less extreme.

1:11:38And so I think there right now, there didn't used to be any. There's one in the country, one shelter for battered men in the country. That's up in Dallas. Whereas there are thousands for battered women. And so that tells you something about it. So women do sometimes abuse their partners physically, but it typically does less damage.

1:12:10Francis Foster:And I imagine the number of victims will be incomparably small, right? Is that fair? Yeah, the number of victims is smaller. Now, some argue it depends on if you get, sometimes there's mutual abuse where you get, they'll get into a physical confrontation where one will slap the other, the other will slap back or hit and hit back. And so you get some of that. And so if you simply count up the number of acts of violence, the sexes are actually not that wildly discrepant. But in terms of the damage done, the damage done is much greater to men. And it's also predictable. The other predictor of it is if the guy suspects an infidelity or discovers an infidelity.

1:13:02That's a big predictor of abuse. And even more disturbing, perhaps, is if the woman gets pregnant. By another man. if she gets pregnant, and there's a suspicion that it's not his. And in those cases, something like 50 % of the physical blows to the woman are directed toward her abdomen, toward her pregnant belly. And so it seems like, not consciously, but an effort to terminate arrivals offspring. Wow. That's horrifying. Yeah, it is truly horrifying. But again, if we're ever going to have any success at solving these problems, we have to understand the circumstances in which they occur. Because when we talk about an issue such as rape, we interviewed a gentleman called Luke Gittos, who's a lawyer, who said that rape is an act of violence as opposed to a sexual act.

1:14:16But if you look at it through the lens of evolutionary psychology, and maybe I'm wrong, push back on it. I mean, it can serve an evolutionary purpose of, you know, I want to impregnate this woman. She won't let me. Therefore, I have to do what I have to do. Yeah. Well, so here you have to look at it, whether it's really a... people are confused about is it sex or is it violence. So from a woman's perspective, it is violence. From a man's perspective, it's often about sex. So why did you do this? Interviews with convicted rapists, they say, well, I wanted her sexually and I knew there was no way she was going to have sex with me voluntarily and so I forced myself on her.

1:15:08And so from a male perspective it is often about sex. From a female perspective it's about violence because it is an act of violence and so there's been a muddle of that. Is it sex or is it violence? Well, according to who? And it matters greatly whether you're asking a man or a woman. There is debate in the evolutionary uh among the evolutionary scientists about whether rape is an adaptation whether we have adaptations to rape or whether it's we don't whether it's a byproduct of other things like desire for sexual variety the fact that men have a higher sex drive than women and um and other things like that.

1:15:56So, and it hasn't been resolved. And I myself, I don't have a strong opinion about whether there are adaptations to rape or whether it's a byproduct or not. And it's kind of unfortunate, it's such a loaded topic that you can't do, you can't really do research on it. And you certainly can't get any funding to do good quality research on the topic, because it's so politically loaded. But that's quite, look, I understand why that may be that attitude. But you look at the number of women who have been raped or suffered sexual violence. This is an important topic. And if we can get to the bottom of why it happens and pull it apart, we might be able to protect women.

1:16:44Yeah, exactly. That is my position exactly. But it's such a loaded political issue for many that they inhibit the act of research into the topic. So even though it absolutely could benefit women if we knew more about it.

1:17:05Francis Foster:David, it's been great having you on the show. We're going to ask you some questions from our supporters in a second. But before we do, in the main interview, our final question is always the same, which is what's the one thing we're not talking about as a society than we really should be? Well, that's a hard one. What's the one thing we're not talking about? Well, we've talked about some of the things that most people are not talking about, and rape would certainly be one of them. But I think, I guess what I would say is, and this is partly you know maybe touting my own work but I've always been intrigued by understanding the darker sides of human nature and they include the things we've been talking about abuse rape murder and why people do stalking why people do these things and so So, but I think most people avoid these more, the darker sides of human nature.

1:18:13And I think that one of the things that evolutionary psychology does is it says, yes, we have this large collection of psychological adaptations for good stuff and for bad stuff. So for cooperation, for altruism, for helping, and all the good side of human nature, but we also have adaptations to do some nasty stuff, ranging from gossip to malicious behavior toward people we don't like, ranging all the way up to killing. and warfare is another one. So I think evolutionary psychology gives us a handle on the complexity of our nature. And this has been a perennial debate going back to the philosophers like John Locke and others.

1:19:09Are humans fundamentally good, but corrupted by bad society or capitalism or culture or are humans fundamentally bad? And I think we're both. You know, we have good elements and bad elements to our psychological nature and both need to be understood.

1:19:35Francis Foster:I suppose it raises the question of what is it that activates those predilections, right? And that's perhaps where culture and morality come in and religion too. Is that right? Yeah, yeah. I think that's well put and certainly one way to phrase it because all adaptations, you know, almost all adaptations just reside within our brains in a dormant status. They are quiescent until they are activated by external circumstances of one sort or another like a mate value discrepancy or a mate poacher hitting up on your partner or Cues to a partner's infidelity. It's always these external circumstances that Activate a subset of our psychological mechanisms and then keeps others quiescent.

1:20:29So So yeah, I think that's...

1:20:32Francis Foster:Well, what you're talking about is circumstance, but what I'm talking about is what... So there's three men in the room around the table. What determines how we act if we discover that our wife is cheating is we've been exposed to the same circumstances, but we might act differently based on the values been taught by parents, the cultural values of society we live in, the religion we follow. Yes. the other things I'm trying to think off the top of my head. And that's kind of an interesting area because it's a way of regulating these things that are latent in our brains, as you're saying. Yeah, yeah.

1:21:10No, I think that's right. And, you know, that's another interesting suite of topics of religion and morality and group norms and the degree to which they play, they have an influence on activating or deactivating some subset of our psychological adaptations.

1:21:30Francis Foster:Yeah, because sorry that I'm delving into as far as I am, but I think it's interesting because what it really makes, I think that's the way you've explained it, which is we have these adaptations in our brains and they're sitting there waiting to be triggered, we might say, or activated. That really puts a lot of emphasis, at least as I think about it, on creating values and social structures that regulate our behavior in those environments. Yeah. That sounds like that's really important. Yes. And if we don't do a good job of that, we're going to end up with people, otherwise decent people running around doing terrible things because they haven't been prepared to avoid those pitfalls once those things are in place.

1:22:15Yeah. Yeah. I think that's right. Right. Although I would say that there are, I think, elements of our morality that are part of our evolved psychology themselves. So fairness, for example. So like if you, you know, they have these economic games where that's, I give you a hundred dollars and you can give, you know, it's up to you how to distribute the hundred dollars. You can keep Keep 99 for yourself and give one to your partner. You can split it 50-50. And people show in these one-shot economic games that people who, say, get$1 on that, they decline the offer. And so if the person declines the offer, nobody gets anything.

1:23:01But they will decline it, even though from a purely economic perspective, they should take$1 because it's$1 or nothing. But they don't. And the reason is because we have an evolved sense of fairness and we don't want to develop a reputation, a social reputation as exploitable. And so if we are willing to accept unfair offers, we will develop an exploitable reputation. And so that's bad. So I think that fairness is just one example, but I think that we have evolved standards of morality that are part of our evolved psychology and not just externally imposed by religion or parental instruction.

1:23:47Francis Foster:All right, head on over to triggerpod.co.uk where David answers your questions. What traits humans consider attractive are most clearly linked to evolutionary psychology and why is that trait seen as evolutionarily better by human beings?

1:24:18We'll see you next time.