Hello everybody, welcome back to the show my yesterday is making. Muri is an evolutionary biologist at all the university, a writer and a podcasts. Ter, no one has ever said that they want to be less attractive.
But what does attractive actually mean? What do humans like to look at in other humans and why? Thankfully, signs has some insights to help you understand why you like, what you like.
Expect to learn the role of symmetry in attraction, why the most average faces are actually the most attractive ones. How important muscles wait to hyrax o tattoos, beds, I, color, height and voice, how to work out what is a stated and what is a revealed preference in attraction. And much more, so much fascinating stuff in this episode.
Machain is a beast, his knee deep, bulls deep, in all of the research. And I very much appreciate him and very much appreciated catching up with him. And he is an impressive individual. And I hope that you enjoy this episode. Okay.
I have to tell you, I was just looking on ebay where I go for all kinds of things I love. And there, IT.
was that hologram trading card. One of the rare is the last one I needed for my set, shiny, like the designer hand back of my dreams.
one of a kind ebay habit. And now everyone's asking, oh, just beautiful. Whatever you love, find IT on ebay. Ebay things people love this episode is brought to you by paton. If you're looking for flexible workouts, palatine got you covered summer runs or playoff season mediations.
Whatever your vibe, paton has thousands of classes built to pursue and has something there to adapt with you, whether you need a chAllenge or rest, tell us on has everything you need whenever you need IT. Find your push, find your power. Tell on one pay time dot com.
Meaningless stuff. Why do we gift so much meaningless stuff? Tired of generic gifts and hello, friends, shutter fly allows you to create meaningful photo gifts for your family and friends, whether it's a coy fly blanket, grandma, a stunning canvas print for mom or a mug to make dad smile.
Enjoy forty percent off with code. Make forty at shatteringly dot com and make something meaningful this year. See sight for more details. But now, ladies and gentlemen, please welcome macin Murphy.
Just the attractive bro is like the biggest mean yeah in online day at the moment, what actually makes an attractive face?
Well, there's a couple of things that come up again and again in the literary and is also a couple things that I think men think are very attractive and are surprised when they find out that women don't actually necessarily care about IT. Now that that's not say we will work, get into the weeds, but let's not say that man are necessarily wrong to want to look like that, right? It's just that it's not the attractors component.
So a couple things that come up a lot are averages, right? And that's mathematical average. So having a nose that is of average size, shape and placement. So some people think average, they're like a Normal and it's like a person with a very average looking face, meaning a face that would be the result of a composite of many faces superimposed on each other.
A person with that sort of face would look like a model, right? If you superimpose a set of faces, the face that results from that will be more attractive than any individual in that said, right? And we can talk if you want ah I know they're interest in this sort of thing as to the possible evolutionary and also just social reasons why that might be the case.
A quick two theories, maybe average faces are easier to process right in the processing speed is pleasant. It's like, oh, there's nothing glaring here and it's like out I quite like working at this from evolutionary perspective. That could be that the average four trades are the end result of sexual selection, right? So we're putting the cart before the horse in the sense that the reason that the average knows is the average knows is because there's been so much historical selection on that shapes.
No average knows against.
again, against non average noses. So the reason that it's the average is because noses that are too big cut out. So it's really summers other reason why that side shape and placement is attractive and it's become the average over because we are the end result of previous selection.
So averaging is comes up a lot. Another thing that comes up a lot of syme's, right? Uh, symmetry is definitely attractive, right? H and and its attractive on its zone.
IT also seems to core late with other materials of attractiveness. But symmetry comes out again and again again. If left side your face looks a lot like the right side your face, then you're likely more attractive than you would be if you didn't have that.
And with both of these things with average inss, with cemetery, there are plenty of individual cases where people are very non average traits and are still stunning, right? Uh, plenty of people are highly a metrical. I mean, some of our are considered most, most gorgeous celebrities have a very asymmetrical faces, but these trades you matter a simec.
The standard evo explanation is that this is a signal of, let's say, robust underlying developmental qualities, right, that they we're able to withstand the insults of their environment, right at the very least you know that they don't have some horrible injury to one side of their face or something like that. They didn't have some horrible illness and they don't have uh certain heritable genetic disorders. And this is something that will likely talk about more why? Why do we care about beauty at all? And it's partially because beauty seems to be a signal of underline qualities matter more, such as health, right? So i'll note that these simec studies have mixed results in western populations, right?
So it's like we know that symmetries are attractive, but there's a question of like does that actually correlate with healthiness? And and that's not always the case, but IT IT is the case at the very least that look, if you've had a like i've got a broken nose from boxing, right? That that certainly made me less attractive than I would be if I had straight one.
What does that tell potential mates? IT tells them that something, you know, for some reason I could not handle IT, right? Something went wrong for me at some point.
right? And you know.
certain heritable genetic disorders that presumably wouldn't be excited to pass on to your offspring if you else being equal. Those also go very with high a cemetery and so cemetery like when you see a syme's ical face, it's like, hey you know hey ladies, I don't have those disorders and um I don't have terrific facial trauma, right?
Have you ever seen software belly that you chief channel .
hardly watch anything.
okay, but it's uh very bit channel and he has a fifty million play interview with an in bread family. How to recommend that you go watch?
And one of the first things you'll notice when you see those people is that they have well, I don't know about this family specifically because I haven't seen IT, but they're they look like something has gone right.
Highly acetate, highly non typical like, I mean, one of the guys, his eyes are very, very wide apart, uh, like which there may be the same distance apart from the center of his nose. Who knows that might be symmetrical, but IT breaks the rule of very .
none every yeah and i've also heard, you know I heard doctors privately, you know, use the phrase funny looking kid, right? Meaning like not to make fun of them at all, but like, okay, we don't see anything wrong. But like for some reason this kid looks strange.
Maybe there's something deeper here that should be looked up, but that's that's obviously anette and more a data guy. It's it's interesting the when the anechoic alive um but simply and averages come up with the caviar t that you know some people here that you know this is a sign of health and think that I think that health should be attractive. Let's say i'm i'm not in the short business at all.
It's just called what is what is not. Now I want to talk you us about men. And so one thing that's interesting is that facial femininity and women very attractive, very consistently.
What's femininity .
in your world? Well, there's a few ways to measure up, but basically one way of thinking about IT is you take the average chat of faces of women and the average chat of faces of men, or the aver shot of lots, males and females, right? In this specific case there, there are some differences between gender and sex.
You take the average sets, you know, average faces of males and females. And there's different traits in those groups that are typical. And if someone has has more of those typical traits for one group, they be more master in looking right.
And sometimes you know there are there are other ways of looking at that's just one right and and there are different researchers who are very strong opinions as like what facial mask and actually should be right because some people say, well, you know that that that that isn't you know a typical mae face. But if you ask respondents, they all say it's master in right? So it's like that is a master in face.
Because who decides what's masculine and feminine? We do, right? So facial masculinity is interesting. So facial femininity is very attractive to men.
Men love still typically girly women's faces where they respond very, had a research, al men respond to that quite strongly. Typically facial masculinity, despite all the bigger had means and h things like that and and what we think might be attractive. You know, some studies find that women prefer facial matildy a little bit.
Some find that they prefer facial femininity, some finds no effect, right? Uh, the latest oxford handbook of evolutionary psychology and romantic relationships that's that's the latest review that i'm aware of and they said luck if anything, there's a slight preference for facial femininity in men as well, right? And that's a bit of a confusing result at first he is like, well, facial masini, it's like that there are so many things that are attractive of mt master you know like facial mask than any process fighting ability for instance.
right? Um it's it's probably predicted by you know test astral levels and things that are impressive signals and other contacts. So it's like surely women love you know a giger child type face.
Women love a super masterman face and some super muslim faces like Henry travel, for example, are very tractor to women. I'm not saying that, that is a huge disadvantage or something is just not all else being equal. And one common idea that you'll seen the literature is the masculinity de off hypothesis, right? So if you're made as a woman, right, think about this strategically.
It's like, yes, there's all these perks that come with Masonite, but this is your taking a mates that you're probably going to have to co parent with right now to raise children with them. And so maxing out unlike the super alphaeus de, maybe for a one night stand, right? There's some indication for that. But if you're, you know, looking for hot guys for a long term relationship, A A pretty your boy is more appealing because that might that might covet with traits that are less, less dastardly. Let's say.
heavy brow age also means risky behavior, also means he's probably going to .
sleep with my sister yeah I also means that he might lose his temper at you or you're offspring and cause horrible damage, also means that he might get murder because he can't .
stop mouthing off. That's interesting that um it's exits toward femininity, not just averages in men, whatever the the midpoint between femininity and massacres ity is has that been tested for short term as as as long term? A casual is the mastic .
yes thing? yes. So this makes results on that.
And I also note that the masculine trade off hypothesis is is very much a hypothesis, right? So you know it's tempting to its such a good story, right? That sounds so good that in every paper on this sort of subject, something to talk .
about going to bring up. I didn't realize how fallible scientists to, especially those even in evolutionary psychology, which is very rigorous as regular, has a mean, the reputation crisis or anything like that.
expect the relation of which .
were going to get into. But if you come up with a sufficiently compelling name, god, like the mean, just runs away with that. So yeah.
it's hard. It's hard to let go of the memes, but the mass trade off, I mean, you would predict right, the kind of obvious thing would be okay, they should prefer them for short term meeting and prefer you know less mass in guys for long term meeting. And there's some mixed results on that.
I'm quite sketch of that whole. I think that there needs to be kind of a second round. Um looking into that, it's not a particular area of interest for me, right? I know that there's some expert on facial min like now IT is true, but yeah exactly.
But it's certainly interesting, and i'll just know so that there are some strange things that make the Masonic trade off hypoxic seem like IT doesn't work. Like for example. So what's the most? The most facially masculine and ornament is the male beard, right? Women generally don't go beard. Some do, obviously, but for the most part, that's facial masculinity. One of one is big, bushy hair on the jaw, right? And kind of the worst possible result for the mass trade off hypothesis is that you know we don't see this short term made when when i'm obvious ating, I like the big bushy beard that doesn't come up. In fact, what you see is um big bushy beard is preferred as like a potential copah a potential dad, right, which is the exact opposite of what you'd expect based on the mass the trade off hyper is like he's got a big bushy beard surely that's mister short term but instead it's like, you know not too much about that but he looks like he'd make a great that .
yeah how interesting. IT on average to women prefer bids or not?
Well, I spoke to the world's lead. Well, I I won't go as far as the world's leading expert, but I would say the guy to talk to about beard is barnaby dickson on australia, right? He's got relationships with them with our lab out there. And I spoke him for a couple hours about this and it's it's such a deep literature to get into IT. It's just ectivity that there's so much researcher on IT and it's just it's you think it's simple and you get into IT like this, one of the most complicated areas of psychological scientists, the hair on our faces, right? So I did a podcast with him on on species and I was very interesting.
He said that you could probably he's read every study on the subject, i'm not aware any more analysis, but he said that you could probably draw a line right down the middle and have just as many studies finding that women prefer clean shaven to bushy beards as you would find bushy beards over clean shaven, right? So and this is one of the annoying things about like being on tiktok that i'll see like that recommends me, you know, people who aren't necessarily in the field but love the research and they'll cite an individual study. I saw someone recently, I won't name them.
They have a huge following and they were citing one of barney dicks and studies finding that clean shaved and faces were not preferred to big, bushy beards. And I was like, gabby, if you knew about the context, it's like he's done several of these studies and it's gone both ways. What women do prefer is heavy double. That seems to be pretty consistent. If you shop, yes, you're distance your looks magazine to a take.
This is .
high. Yeah so I would say that I would say that if you think about IT, right and this is partially insights from barney diction and partially kind of the theoretical musings of jeffrey Miller right in in this area.
But if you think about IT, like from a signaling perspective, maybe IT does maybe IT makes sense in a modern context that have you double is the best signal because on the one hand it's like i'm signal these main traits like I can grow a big bushy beard, right? Uh, you know the beard does seem to you know add some facial constr, right? It's kind of a coincident but IT but IT is interesting and do ally that IT follows the same.
The makeup does women, right? Uh, the hair grows stickers, you know, around the joy and chen, which you know obviously having a nice joline is is Better than not so you get some of that boost from the facial hair, right? But then you also show like i'm actually know what is what does have you stop show? It's like i'm regularly maintaining that. yes. So I have access time, access control.
access to I I was thinking I was thinking about the my trip to thailand, which had had a couple of years ago and I got that any go on um and I was I was thinking about when I saw the girls behind the counter who make the faces lighter. So where is i'm from newcastle in the northeast to be U. K.
Girls make themselves orange. yeah. What is that signal? Its signals. Look at all of the spare time I have. I can afford to go away on a holiday.
I can go to malea or magala for mobile or ever, and I can catch your time and lie by the pool because I have lots of spare time. I'm the sort of person that spend the time outside. I'm into fitness and health and all the rest of IT.
No one knows it's come from a bottle and make a room. The converse is true in thailand because the indigent labor's that work in the fields get the time you have most. So they count a signal by saying, I don't ever inside yeah, I have a White collar job.
I'm inside. So I think that with the stubble total bro science had on here, but yes, its signals could grow a beard, chooses not to. why? Well, most people that lead, especially now, and I will get on to this, like cultural mediation, I suppose, which is interesting.
But especially right now, many jobs, many jobs where you have an overbearing boss, may have an, and there is this sort of vestige of, you should be clean shaven when you go to work. My dad still has that. My dad gets clean shaven before he goes to work, that you have been grained.
And he was one of the things that you do. So it's kind of a motive account signal is like the red sneak to refer to as the red sneaker er effect as well that um the more money that you earn the more casually the address you know like the guy with seventeen letters after his name just says, just call me jim. Where is they do that precisely? That's dr. Murphy.
See then the parenthesis oaks on. Oh, so so if you're not a real snob, then you deliniates fact that your degrees from oxford as opposed to other Prices, do you have any letter?
So you're telling me that my international marketing masters and your oxford, whatever is evolutionary fucking in psychology degree, are of equal footing. Is that what was in?
It's the so actually say a yes.
yeah, yeah. It's actually .
worth noting because I often called an evolutionary psychologist, and I it's true that, I mean, i'm A P H D student at the psychology department at the university melbourne, but a boston university. I did biological anthropology, oxford, I did cognitive and evolutionary. And so I had to take a lot of outside courses. I understand the field very well, but I also have some kind of just basic is just some basic theoretical comes with some of the what would not to get myself in trouble, but not even not even calms. Let's just say that I think that there, there, there are more flexible approaches such as behavioral ecology that can yield more insights. And what you are talking about right now with the, I mean, very good hypothesis, right? It's not it's not my area, but those are those are very good and would really fit in to the behavioral college 的 支持 of okay, in a cultural city ecological context where being ten signals that i'm you know that i'm working in the fields and I don't really want to signal that, then maybe lightnings does make sense, right?
Everything's culturally mediated here because we have ecotricity.
the because presumably if you were up north, we're working in the fuel doesn't make you ter when the matter as much, right? And a whole lot of women's beauty signal, it's very interesting to me that so much of women's beauty signalling seems to be signaling that they don't work, right? Carrying a handbag that is like IT is just as to have a you like a club, right just constantly holding something is is very inconvenient.
Long nails right IT makes IT even using a keyboard is tough with those no IT is difficult. Um uh having you know a long kind of hair that gets in the way and dresses that you couldn't spring. Uh it's interesting.
And then men's clothing, I think this is maybe changing a little bit and there's definitely some cultural contacts where this isn't true. But a lot of a lot of male fashion, like good male fashion, is incredibly practical. Typically, uh, if a, if a man starts, you know, having too many pockets, even he starts little, a little ridiculous .
cantal tilt. The internet is obsessed with IT. What is the literature site? Do I need to have hunter eyes of a?
Well, I mean, it's i'm not aware of any specific literal and can to tell him. So there's someone whose is really duggin to what makes attractive eyes. There are some things that clearly make an attractive eyes, such as having, you know, very a what they call, I believe, a limbo ring, I prince, that correctly, the dark ring around the color people respond to that, the light White, right?
Having that really clear, sara, uh, people seem to really respond that both of those are probably accused to health, although that that still it's a putative indicator. It's it's still being looked at eye color, very interesting. Basically, if you run a survey in the west, know what eye color is, exist, a lot of people will like and generally your finds that people say all I love blue eyes, right? IT doesn't really come out in studies that there are strong eye holler preferences.
Uh, there there seems to be a frequency dependent selection effect. One of my old mentors, alex wall SHE, looked into this and and IT does seem that, you know, if you're the only blue eye e guy in the room, then you look Better than if everyone has blue eyes, right? And if you're the only Brown eyes got in the room, you look Better than if everyone has Brown eyes and so on.
But which might maintain, I color diversity. Cantle tit is interesting. I so there's definitely lot of literary that i'm aware of on ice but cantle told seems to be a bit of a me. I'm sure that there some sure that there some research on this uh that i'm just not aware of, but anio tally people seem to respond to IT.
And that said though, um i've become kind of acutely aware of IT and there are plenty of again to come like the averages and cemetery, there are plenty of famous actors who are you know considered gorgeous by women who have a negative cantle to you have a positive cantal tale. So or the reverse, which ever one's the bad one, they've kind of slog nice. yeah.
Why our faces so important? So there are many ways to display your lack of genetic mutation, or your fitness, or your robustness from the environment thus far in your life. IT seems like an awful lot of what we do is centered around the face.
Why do we have a particular high degree of sensitivity and fine and ability to decision when IT comes to the face? Why is so much of what we do? Why is IT not the hands?
Why is IT not the arms body shape will get on to waste high ratio. All that stuff, like those things are important. But everybody knows that there's been a person whose may be not been in the best shape ever, but just has a gorgeous face guy or girl. And you like.
fuck t yes.
I mean, you know, they could do IT IT in the gym.
but that yeah, that's interesting. I mean, i'm i'm not sure that there that there anything I mean, we see that bodies become more important than faces for short term and faces become more important than bodies for long international. And there's a huge you know how to conversation with ten rental about this.
And I was like, why why would that be the case? Because as you say, both should be indicators of the same putative you know underlying fitness and caters. I think that one thing that I would like to bring to this episode and kind of leave people with in this context and others is it's typically thought, and I think that this is in some context the right way to think about IT.
But it's something we thought that beauty is a component of your mate value, right? So it's like you've got your personality, you've got the things you do, you've got the resources, you've got your willingness to invest at. The beauty is one of the list of things that bring to the table. But really, I think a Better way to think of IT is that beauty is and this i'm certainly not unique in thinking this way.
Beauty is a shortcut signal of your mate value, right? And so with facial attractiveness, right, one of the themes that's been coming up in every conversation we've had about this today is that it's signaling underlying qualities that are may be more important and the same thing with bodily attractive this as well. And if you think about IT, it's like some of the things that some of the things that we do, it's like you can say you can feel hard done by.
And I totally understand that, that it's like why do people with you know where where more facially attractive people, where where we think that we have Better personalities, that sort of thing. But to an extent, it's like, well, if two people walk into a room and one of them, you know their hairs while styled wild room, right, they've got the perfectly manicure stable or theyve got makeup that's been stalled perfectly. There are their outfits on point and everything's just working.
It's like then the other person comes in and they've literally put in no effort theyve got bad heads or they are makeup a mess or their there they're not you know doing them after their nails are aren't terms, they are clothing shit, right? It's like if you're looking at those two people all also being equal, if you have to make a guess like who's gonna a Better husband and father, who's can be a Better wife and mother, right? The person who is willing to do these extra things in order to socially signal the person was the access, time and resources to devote to those things.
I don't think it's that I don't think it's there are probably quite conscientious, right? They are going to suffer reliable elderly yeah so I would say to the basic question of why, why do faces matter? It's the same reason bodies matter.
It's the same reason that style matters. It's a signal of qualities that matter more to us. I mean, we think of beauty is this extremely shallow thing to care about and to extend IT is fair enough, but to another extent, the reason that we care about building the first places.
because IT often signals deep, the reliable signal. So got me thinking the way you were talking about how specifically facial attractive in this, some beauty is kind of an aggregate of a bunch of other things that contribute .
to that yeah and they .
still made in the same way as a bank count for especially for a man, is an aggregate of a number of other things that he does. And so is having a good body for men and women, perhaps the slightly different reasons for a man IT might be something like a dominance, a aggression.
But it's also all the things like reliability, orderly, ss ability to over campaign, that kind of sexy agency, uh, a reliability, consistency, smarts to be able to actually understand what they doing. And as with everything and I I love I love the fact that we started with the averages because Fishery runaway is basically what giga chat is, right? It's just this inside, like the most mosquito guy, had the most mosquito son, had the most moscow a son, had the most mosquito son.
Then you end up with, give a child. But what you actually look at is, for most people, there are traits that are good in moderate doses. And if you overshoot them, the same thing goes for the woman who's dold up nice that someone put off IT in that the outfit works with the hair, with the makeup, with the nails, with everything else.
But if you come in your completely cake, what looks like you're trying too hard looks like you might be compensating. Yeah, the same thing goes, the same thing goes for the man. Well, we a little bit of muscularity, but the absolutely jacked out of his mind, body, body.
But what does that signal? Maybe a signals some sort of inner insecurity. Maybe this guy is trying to compensate for something. Maybe he's only gona live for another ten years. Whole of I had very concerned about his state of his mental held, all of these different things. So the average us that we're talking about with regards to the face composition, and I do love that idea of like just processing speed, it's like, yep, eyes, nose, mouth yet that looks .
all and we can fall .
in love with the people's imperfections in a way but their imperfections, i'm going to guess, are almost always within a particular bound of this is average. But yeah um I like the fact that there's a goldy ox zone for most of these things. Some people love real muscular guys, and some people real love more out of skinny guys. A very complicated .
conversation. I think I want to be careful about, again, conflating mathematical average inss with trade average inss, right? So with muscularity, it's a little we don't see this preference for average muscularity, right? So we see a preference for average facial side shape placement of trades, right? But with muscular ari, it's more complicated.
I mean, do women like muscular man? Yes.
yeah, yeah. I mean, some some don't, right. But but there there's a variety of convergent for and so i'm not speaking i'm not time like all women prefer muscles and also as as you noted that as muscular as possible is optimal right in this and is also possible that you know a certain degree of muscularity is sexy in some contacts, but all right, like the bodies that our popular in pornography might not actually look that great in real life, right?
There's something about like the kind of super stimulus of like a super muscular lean dude um or someone who's you know how their body done to to extreme degree that might work on camera but not you know uh in the real world but any case musculars y there is a recent met analysis that just called publish on this or I believe I just got publisher might be still in the kind of public uh awaiting review sphere but certainly certainly the results are out. Uh, and they looked at kind of all the studies on predictors of mating success in all these different ways. And IT just sort of is the case right in the sense that regardless of what people say is attractive and what isn't, men who are muscular have hired main success than men who aren't right.
Men who are more bodily masculine in general seem to have higher mating success. And so there's a couple of different reasons why that might be. I mean, the first thought is pretty obvious.
It's like maybe guys with muscles are just sexy, right? And there are individual studies where it's like you show women bunch of bodies and you're like who's hottest in this crew and it's like a guy who's more muscular than average and leaner than average, right? Not stayed ready body builder, but certainly like were pretty high standard, right?
There's all the studies that don't show that. But there are other ways in which there are other ways in which muscularity can help you to compete for mates without making you more attractive. So one root by which this could be the case, there was a really interesting study might already read.
I'm sure one of your guys IT might have been him. IT was the framework y study. So they studied a bunch of a frag boys all email this to you afterwards because you're going to like reading IT.
They said a bunch fat voice, and they had them ready each other on like, who would role who basically, like, who would be the best fighter? Who is the most intimidating? That sort of question.
I came up with the scale items they used, and then they had women rate the fat boys as lit. yeah. how? How are these guys? Yes, and really weird result.
How hot. The women said the guys word didn't have IT wasn't a strong predictor of the male made success. Now mating success is very hard to measure.
They they measured by number of mates. So will talk about this morning. Second, but at least in that study, with those measurements, the intimidation factor was Better, right? There was Better than being hot. IT was Better to be scary than hot.
And so one potential idea is that if you're a super ject scary dude and you're talking to a girl, the bar, everyone else is like that, that may well will be his wife like i'm like, i'm not going anywhere in this situation. She's off limits. Where where if you're a super screwing guy who is, you know, frail, maybe, maybe, maybe not.
That's one idea, but another idea, and this is, I think, another likely hypothesis, Frankly, is that, and IT, this goes back to the masterly trade off thing that were talking about earlier, is that maybe the traits associated with cruel muscles are also the same traits associated with aggressive pursuit of short term, right? And so measuring made a success with number of mates in that case, right? They didn't look at how good looking, where these girls, how intelligent with these women, how high mave value in general were these women, right? Didn't look at that.
I was literally just, how many people have you slept with, which say what you will. I mean, that's an indicator of something. It's IT, but IT might not be that much more than an indicator.
Then you're not an insel right after that. It's like if you if you're at least at the very minimum level of attractively to engage in short term meeting, and that's not a particularly low level, right? That is at least medium, surely. But IT, once you're at that level, if you want to in a modern mating market, you can have you could have a one night stand every week. So it's like a IT might not be that great indicator.
but IT is interesting. What about weight? B, M, I, body shape for women?
Well, I note briefly on B, M, I for men, IT is interesting there. There, there was a dating up data set where IT indicated that the best B, M, I to be as a man was about twenty seven right um and it's it's just hard to know how to interpret that because twenty seven could mean like jack.
there's many ways to reach twenty seven B M. But the floor in B M, I as a rule.
yeah, that's kind of what I wanted to introduce that is that B M is a great measures of weight, poor height because that's the only thing that is right. It's not it's not a great measured of health. IT certainly tells you something.
It's not a great measure of musli certainly tells you something but IT is interesting. So I mean word speaking in a western context and this is um I just know that this is what's going to happen. I'm going to i'm going to talk about the actual findings from the anthropogenic or on attractive body shapes and and a bunch of people in the comments are going to talk about how i'm pandering to women. And i'm a sam and i'm just trying to make .
people feel Better in front.
Take some steam out that you know silly response.
I I don't know whether you saw I got to interject, I don't know what if you saw that me, you William costolo and Alexander date site got lumped into a new term. Do you see this? We were given a name.
I don't tell me.
so he's the problem. And if you want to create a name to, like, bring people in a kind of octavius as someone, you can't make the name sound cool.
What are they? Was intellectual .
manner sphere?
Oh no, no.
What part of the intellectual manufacture the academic .
is that most of my I can't really fit into that is most my following is women so that's so i'm just you have .
to take me out fortunate get .
to choose the intellect sphere is yeah what a what a huge error to the point what to .
think that I am interesting .
of the yeah I think you are clearly very sharp guy who knows literally Better than many, Better than many maaster students, Frankly. But .
pope.
body shape. B. M, I, yeah.
So this is, in a western context, quite low bea ise, or attractive to men, right? I'm not denying that at all, right? For the most part, in in in an industrialized context, generally right among wealthy groups of people, right? Or historically wealthy, where starvation is a problem yeah there there there is a lot of evidence that men prefer lighter body weights, right? But if you take a more broad view, IT doesn't this is not and this is this is going to get into some of the reservations I have about just jumping to psych as the tool to use.
His people have come up with these f sight theories for, like why women, wife in or women are, you know, a Better choice and then it's like, okay, well, we didn't evolve in like a modern western media, a hyper wealthy, at least historically unlimited food at the growth y restored on the street situation, right? We evolved in a pretty you know probably unstable, probably relatively scarce environment. We can say that. And so if you look at you know more traditional societies, often times, often times plump er is Better, right where it's literally women with more body fat or considered sex year.
right to be up to a limit.
Yeah, but you'd be shocked. I mean, if you look at, for example, uh, and this is this is a clearly more traditional society, is society that historically has dealt with more resource scarcity than urban japan. But if you look at, say, the south africa's zou, you'll consistently find bs up to thirty eight being considered very attractive. And in the west, we've like that is a very heavy person, right? Just Frankly, right.
So what what's going on there? Well, one thing to notice first is that tons of women's, tons of women's evolved sexual signal is conspicious fat deposits, right? We're the only primate that has the rounds of fat deposits on the breast, right? For example, we have conspicious fat posits on the bucs as well, especially in women, right? And on the hips, right? So fat, to an extent in women is clearly works as a sexual signal, right? There's something desirable there.
And IT seems that right in, in, within, in, within cultures contacts, there's some evidence that within cultures at least, people who are enduring more stress in scarcity tend to opt for heavy or mates, right? Men tend to opt for, have your women and those who are in a period of abundance, right? They ve got lots of resources.
Resources tend to opt for relatively lighter mates. Another piece of evidence for this right can be forced. That's within cultures, ross actioned. We can also see this evidence across time, right? For example, american playboy folds, right? They become heavier when the economy goes down, and they become lighter when the economy goes you up.
Yeah.
that's a real result. And i'll send the P, D, F. another.
What's the before you get into that, what's the proposed mechanism? What do you think going .
on to to make to use me, I I set up front. Imagine you're in an environment where calories are either absent or unstable, right? So you're in a situation works like I know either I don't know food right now or I don't know if i'm going to have food next month.
Your brain is trying to determine who you should make with it's doing it's doing calculations behind the scenes saying who's mate value in this society logical context is desirable and to the theory, right? And this this certainly isn't my theory. I'm i'm not presenting IT as such.
But the theory from this tradition of research, the the environmental security hypothesis proposes that in the conversion forms of evidence, which will discuss and already have discussing any sense proposes that if you're in that situation, it's like, okay, who's going to be feral if there's a famine or who's can be full during a famine, right? Who's going? Who is able to obtain calories, right? So women engage in tons of chloric acquisition, and in traditional environment, often times more than the men, in fact, despite, you know, western conceptions of this.
And so because they are doing, you know, they're gathering tubers and to an extent engaging hunting as well, but mostly gathering, right, gathering fruits, not barriers, all the statical things. And so you're looking around, you're in the situation where you're literally hungry and it's like who's who's sexy right now. And then a woman who is clearly advertising that he can obtain calories, survive a famine and stay feral, right, during periods of scarcity, right? Because low body fat is associated with infertility after a point, right? It's it's an incredible suppression. Well, that that woman is going to be more attractive than the woman who looks like if anything goes wrong, she's going to die right now in a western context where you not necessarily in thinking that right, where that's that's not an issue.
Well, then you might be concerned with things like status, right, signaling that like you can afford to go to the gym that sort of think then you're going be concerned with things like youth, right? Having IT, you know, youth and lets say no parity, write the state of not having had kids yet, right? Which is signal by incredibly sfbt body, right? And so maybe you make sense in a resource abundant context to prefer that, but in a resource scarce context, which is where most of our evolved psychology occurred, uh, we see, we see the, we see that heavy.
Your mates seem to be preferred. Now the evidence for this, and i'll just wake up very, very quickly within cultures, IT seems that those who are, you know, on the, on the lower end of things, resources wise, tend to prefer have your mates across time, right? IT seems that the media that men consume of a pornographic media, the women get heavier when things are going poorly economically.
And they get lighter when things are going well. So that's across time within cultures. Now let's talk about within individuals.
There is a very funny study where they literally they showed up at the university dining hall and the genius study, to be honest, and they're like, okay, you guys about to have dinner, which these you, what wait, do you think is sexy? What body type do you think is? And they found that before dinner, the men preferred heavier mates than after dinner.
Right now we've got within person's evidence, within cultures evidence, and across time evidence. And then we've got this very know, we talk about flashy theories that that do well. We ve got a great story as well.
So you were asking about B, M, I. And it's attractiveness, women. Yes, it's true that in, you know, a western context and maybe broadly in an industrialized context, this is more attractive, but that doesn't mean that that's the default state of our species.
And you know plenty of men prefer women with with more curvaceous figures. I mean I I honestly I remember um I think did did you recently have Jordan Peterson on yeah I remember correctly tly. I remember when he you know had the goal to tweet. Not attractive with the picture of the plusieurs l who has a hip to way to ratio of like point seven and incredibly a feminine symmetrical average face and it's like maybe not to you, but to most men throughout history, that would be one of the highest mate value women that they ever in country.
If we entered a recession next week, then I might get a little bit, might a little bit .
attractive yeah I I I that SHE SHE I an talking about any specific women you know that certainly not it's not a certainty my style to talk to comment on like specific women's bodies but like IT was one of those glaring examples so it's like, okay, well, you know dog Peters, you're clearly not aware of this lecture yeah.
So couple of interesting. The first of either name to this is IT like the economic mediation of female B. M.
I, the environmental security hythe's. But you know, the last IT started getting research on IT about twenty years ago. Then, you know, I just they just had a few home runs and then I was like, OK, that seems be true, right um but again, it's this is the different from behavioral ecology.
Evolutionary psychology is the evolutionary psychology. If you read one of their literature use on fitness, you'll just read about how you know not you know not kind of character anybody, but you'll often read stuff about just wife in this, our psychology evolved for thinness. And then if you read someone from a more behavioral colosse standpoint, it's like, well, in as much as we have a default today, IT seems to be towards you know slightly heavier right then is current, but we don't really have a default states flexible based on the environment. And and that's yeah that's pretty little ball.
So male preference for female body size over time as uh engaged by B M, I has tends to its malleability and very is based on our .
social ecology and a varies on the individual level as well. Like if you are if you grew up in a stressed resource deprived environment, then yeah, you're probably going to prefer .
a bigger woman as you grow up.
Yeah, probably, I wondered, evident that would .
be fascinating to see. How long is in prints. Just how malual are you? Is there a period during your formative views if you are in poverty during your teenagers? Uh, does that lock in a particular time that would be faster?
And so this is why I love behavior colored, because they actually, they do something called the pic, where they say, you know, everyone else can handle the mechanisms, will just figure out what's going on, what the relationships between variables are. So they come in like kind of cowboys and just get the relationships done and then leave the means.
But IT is interesting as like you could have a cultural adaptation where it's like cultures over time figure out oh you know preferring lighter or have your woman makes a lot of sense, right? Or you could have individual level developmental mechanisms, right, where it's like during development, your brain builds itself differently. And then you can also have these immediate cues, I mean, the hunger study, where it's literally before versus after dinner, come on that your brain in me within an hour, changing your make preference is based on how hungry you wall at the moment.
I mean, no two are areas that I got fascinated by last year, candies, Blake, sexy south study, right? Which is women responding to the local society economic environment by beautification, and and sort of posting a photos with, I think, SHE used to like instagram or something .
to kind of reverse and he was .
twitter that was one. And then just all of the sex ratio stuff yeah, like we like plants respond to our local ecology. Uh, so you are this the first time have even heard the word about behavioral ecology.
behavioral ecology logy.
So the first time i've ever done IT. But IT seems to be blending two worlds that i'm pretty fascinated by, one being the more behavioral economic side, the roaring suddenness of the world. And the other being the evolutionary psychology.
the David buses, the world. yes. So it's actually about, is all this evolutionary psychology in terms of its application to humans and what? okay. So so can this play is my supervisor, right? That's that's my mentor that and he is a trick.
great hat, great studies.
an incredibly smart woman who is one of the only people in the human evolutionary sciences who agree with about everything, right? Like I like is one of the reasons that I chose her as my supervisor when I was not figuring out after oxford, like who I going to do A P. H. D. With, is that we got on phone calls and I was like, i'm going to finally someone .
who did we just become best friend?
Yeah yeah. So I was like, just agree. Agreement, agreement. And you have also spoken to rob Brooks is my coastal visor. So you're slowly making your way for my entire lab or that we've probably the highest percentage of Chris Wilson s .
and appearances. That's not what I mean, David, buses are of Williams.
our lab smaller. So that's why .
I said present higher .
and highest action. Only one who .
was the guy that did the body to move stuff as he did, can't send me him that he was on the show.
No, no, yes. Was a, well, i'm not even been joking. So I attend their weekly love meetings literally every day.
Who was the was time? Have IT?
Was rob the guy that did video games?
Yes, so he he's into some of the tacky guys in halo three. Was that rob?
I think no way .
we get to the but so this what I want you to get to um B M, I interesting for women flutters over time. We respond to the local ecology. We respond across life within situations as well. Yes, what about waste to help ratio.
waste to hit ratio? Well, this is another one that's interesting, right? So I just spoke to burn me dicks about IT, and I feel like i'm getting myself in trouble.
I will make a note about this is an audience that has had every evolutionary psychologist I ve been able to find that, educated that. But that's worse .
because i'm about saying another thing where you maybe i'm pushing back against other site and maybe in a lot of and I will note that a lot of evolutionary psychologists do actually think about things more of behavioral ecology way. I almost.
despite that.
this maybe a try yeah. And so what behavioral ecology is? So evolutionary psychology just work.
IT is the intellectual child of cognitive psychology and evolutionary biology at that time in history, right? And there's, and I would say that most evolutionary psychologists have been psychologists who learned biological stuff later, right? Behavioral ecology is, we call a human behavioral colored, but it's really just like behaviour.
Ecology is a standard powerful tool for studying animals. And this is to reapplying the same tool, the same set of principles to humans, right? So it's not really it's all it's in some ways it's similar.
In some ways it's more complicated. uh. And the the fields can complement each other in a lot of ways. They certainly inform each other in a lot of ways.
And there some individual evolutionary psychologists who have done incredible work that is very consistent with behavioral college, like dalian Wilson, the classes, homicide studies with income and inequality in chicago, fascinating and very big behavioral code. Ask you want to ask my waste shame and and I want to say that I love evolutionary psychology ah. But if you open an evolutionary psychology textbook, you'll generally read that it's a universal preference that men like this very.
you know no point six. Is that the yeah .
seven yeah point six eight sure. And it's interesting because we see that in, you know, westernized college students, you'll see an even more stream, you know closer to came CD asian type ratio, right? But if you go to and this is you know this is still kind of its nason stages is possible that this turns out not to be true.
But there is this other idea that it's like, well, maybe in a maybe in a super rich western environment that makes a lot of sense, right? But I was speaking to borne dixon, right? Who is the beard guy who we mentioned earlier.
And I just ask him about this selves. Like there anything on variation? Like I know there's A B M, I thing, but what about this was this was off podcast.
I was like, what about the ways to hybrid your stuff? And he was saying that he has some indicative evidence that may be an environment where women are doing more physical labor. That super wide hips, which makes IT harder to run, harder to jog, harder to do athletics.
I mean, if you look at like incredible female athletes, they often do they often do have relatively masculine zed bodies. Um maybe a more master in figure in women is preferred as well. So it's like the waste to hyperrational IO stuff.
IT makes sense what it's attractive, right? It's like IT signals network as we discussed, right? IT becomes harder to maintain, you know, this coca cola shape after you've had children.
Unfortunately, right? IT become IT becomes more difficult. You age as well. And so IT could be an honest signal to what we might call future reproductive potential, right? IT also might be an honest signal .
fertility. There's more mixed results on that. I've seen a lot .
of mixed results on hy association with tilt. So people in a modern context, but IT is legit and then which is possible, right? Um and then there's other people who say, no, that's just a bad idea, right? But but IT but IT is true that it's like women who are you know who have the most quote quote future reproductive potential and are feral, right?
Um women in the early twenty years that site are generally going to have this you know crazy waste hip ratio and IT becomes harder to maintain after theyve had more kids, harder to maintain after the yard. So so IT does kind of make sense. That is like OK.
That's a signal. Again, it's to go back to like signaling underlying qualities. Um IT does make sense that that's that that's kind of what what happens there.
But then if you think about IT more broadly, again, just stepping back and plenty of evolutionary psychological accounts are just correct and they're certainly huge contingent to people who think that they're always compatible with the recover gy. But this would be an area where it's like, well, maybe that's not represented of our ancestry actually. Maybe there is actually we have a more modest preference in context where you know women are working all that and you have to choose .
someone like I don't know I guess just what I I guess that the um whether IT was west african, south african study that you looked .
at look at .
the me him but for a thirty eight B M, I was the .
one that oh ah out of the a that i'm going .
to guess that those women aren't going to be shaped like snowman. They're going to be shaped with probably a awful a lot of positive in the ash and really, really big boobs. Um so even within that, I would be very interested to look at how does wants to hyperactive mediate that B M I, because bigger goals that are bigger in the wrong areas can look less sexy than bigger goals that are bigger in other areas, right in the same way as the dude.
Exactly as he said, twenty eight. B M I like is that twenty seven? B M I for yeah is IT all in the gut or is IT all on the shoulders? It's very different. You can move the the body shape around.
Yeah I I mean that that's a very good point. I and with that study, i'll know that is that I was up to thirty eight because you were asking the context of a limit like when does that is that has become a problem and that would be a very minimal extreme example, right?
Um but then there there there are some groups actually another thinking about IT where IT IT was just basically like there there some groups historically where the heavier the bride is, the higher the bride right? Yeah I right yeah so it's like it's this whole this whole of you again going back to the whole like not attractive thing. It's like speak for yourself.
Well, I mean just to ad but yeah.
I agree with you that there's going to an international action with ways to take tio and the original it's unna that you mention the original evolutionary sycom gy studies on this which were like what's attract a female body. They are using drawn figures, which isn't great, but they made a matrix of, like, heavier and curvier. And they're like, oh, the healer doesn't seem to matter as long as curve.
Interesting that what I would be predicted that that the heavy can increase, you get, how would you say like more letter .
does .
more buffer with heavy as long as curvy is retained him and the reverse wouldn't true.
Yeah, it's probably just just we're not only talking about this because a lot of the things that you are saying are very likely true, but also so excited to men in the sense that it's like B, M, F thirty probably is still sexy if you've got big shoulders, wide arms. But again, if you're shaped, if you've got super stinting arms, twink legs and you have a huge pot belly, I understand living to and feeling those other things you do doesn't matter, but that's just a different thirty.
everyone that listens to this point. So so the interesting thing that was thinking about that to just I don't you want to seen this because you don't you not as terminally online as I am sports illustrate just had to let like a shit one of its staff go Jordan retweet his old tweet um I I think that .
he fossil like a khanda if, well, you know actually I I thought I was such a rude thing to say about a woman that I didn't didn't fuck with that anyway. But you know what .
role is high place in attracting men and women for men and women?
Yeah, it's interesting. Well, I think that lets lets get men out of the way, but let's get the and since .
just like the blue pilled cock that you are, let's get men out of the way and get onto women. We're .
in well, this is this is one of the things that I say where people like he's black pill and it's like OK that's i'm so big if .
if you can manage to thread the needle between all of the pills at once if you can be bigoted cked in the same podcast, that means you .
doing something and you've .
managed to do .
both so far yeah what a disaster that yeah so as long as you as as long as extremist some both sides and you know reasonable people uh so well, hi actually, I think that I don't think i'm going to say anything surprising every inch that if you're a shorter guy, every inch that you add and this is based on a couple of different data sets, are not just looking at one study here.
Uh, you know, looking at things like just women stated preferences, women in speed dating studies, women in dating up swiping right, dating up filters as well as response to, you know, online ads for, you know like I am single like so there's a bunch of different evidence that women like a very tall man who is not too very tall, right? So if you graphed women's height preferences, IT would look kind like a Candy cane, right? Where it's like if you're if you are very short, then adding a few inches really increases your attractiveness like the difference between being five four and five eight.
That's a big deal, right? That's that's going from, uh, a bit of a problem to actually probably not that much a problem. Then IT starts to taper off around six foot one, right? So it's like you're getting every inches sick and then around six four and search table off, which is hilarious because you know the average height of american man, I thinks about five nine and on dating apps, I think it's about six one off to double check that which is just ridiculous. High inflation is such a disaster. I'm considering getting blight extensions .
just because light flame ah and whole fallah the two Melody .
of twenty yeah so the once you get to around six forth one, you start to get kind of diminishing returns per inch and that seems to settle down around six fo three, six, three to six five there seems be about you know, even IT doesn't seem like being maybe six for five years is Better.
Maybe it's not, but IT doesn't seem that give a deal whether you are six for three or four, six, five, then around six foot, six foot, seven, six, four, eight, that's when it's like, okay, this is definitely not optimal, right? This is not ideal. But again, so IT comes down, but you're still Better off being like basketball player all than being five ten, right? And it's interesting because this this data converges with a very funny anette experience. I know one of the only men ever to lie about his hide on the dating APP to make himself shorter. H, he's six foot six, and he claims that these six of five.
because he's like six, six, be honest, like looking up, if you're a five foot six six, yeah. Like, what do you know about anything over six feet tall? You can't even reach six feet tool. Like, you don't know what's up there. You can.
you can get up there. Well, one thing that one thing that is interesting now is that it's not so a lot of people think and this is the intuition is like they want a man who's total themselves and it's like they want a man is older than average. So it's not that they're looking up and saying, oh, that's that's a lot taller than me is that they're looking at you and looking .
at the guys around you. That's all of my cking friends super night .
yeah so ten and a half. I think technically.
if I was posting on a black pill form. But all of my friends, my house made six four. Another one of my friends is six four. Another one of my friends is six .
two over after use, the dating up on six foot four shown up and stilt fuck IT.
All right. So that's for men. Hi, I saw, and i've cited this a bunch, that the average preference in difference between men for women is twenty one cento me to taller, and women for men is sixteen cento me to shorter. This .
hold is a similar .
sounds.
yeah, but I believe that was actually a speed dating study that your reference thing, if you're talking about the same one where I was like what height was optimistic, they interpreted as a ratio, right, where men prefer somewhat shorter and women prefer significantly taller. Men's preferences are are kind of more interesting than women, but there are also so much slighter that is almost not worth talking about them.
But we can um IT seems to be that men prefer women who are about average I or maybe a moderate amount short of themselves. I can not clear why. And I think that a combination of factors, it's a slight preference, but I would say that the combination of factors make IT such that tall women and I said, this is someone who's dating a uh h absolutely lovely, very beautiful, but also very tall woman at all. Woman, I think have artist just on the made market from a hyper.
I called IT the goal problem.
Yeah, heard you said that I was at candles.
I said that I I shell that theory. I've only come up with two cool names and all of evolutionary psychology, tall goal problem and male Edith yathrib, but shit at science, greater mean. Yes, I I played toward my strength.
I'll have to talk to you afterwards until you some of the series are working on .
testing and problems about nomics. Not about height.
Yeah, I heard to talk about IT in that context, but IT works in terms of height because, well, two things happen, right? One is that and IT might be similar to the social economic situation, although the one thing that's interesting, right, and it's worth kind of as a supplement to the modeling work. So kind as is modeling work, obviously super cal study, very interesting.
But then it's like more richer women are more married in less divorce. More educated women are more married in less divorce than less educated. And so it's like this whole kind of meme of like, oh, careful not careful, ladies, the richer you get, the harder it's going to be for you to day.
It's like, okay theory, fine modeling, fine practice. They're doing Better than the rest of women. I would be very .
interested to look at that longer students over the next ten years. I think it's going .
to get even Better for them. And the reason I think that is because what we're in is that women are becoming more and more willing to date hypoglycemia. So we're seeing much more of these patterns where women who are super educated or like, you know what sexy plummer, sexy firefighter.
let's let's have have you look at the relationship outcomes for those relationships, longevity.
satisfaction. Well, this is something we can talk about as well. I mean, in in the west, we see that there is that these know these relationships for the women make more you maybe you are more likely to have issues but there's a real question of like is that just I mean this would be my first gut reaction is is like what they can they feel they can leave well I mean.
look so this is um I love the those .
the two ideas, right it's preferences or they feel that they can live so I love .
the total goal problem. I think that that explains an awful lot from and the reason that I came up. But that originally was I wanted to explain to educated and or wealthy women that was strugling to date, that they won't personally cursed that their preference on average, for men that are as wealthy or more and as educated means that IT amounts to a diminishing return. If you're standing at top year on hierarch is very difficult to look at above across the next one, especially when that one is slowly kind of you sipping .
and sipping and yeah coming .
less educated because I see correct. That being said, there's some pretty scary stuff that i'm sure that you've seen increases in domestic violence. Ds have been going up in line with the decrease in hypogeum estate. So that would suggest that perhaps men whose partners earn more than them that they are concerned and no longer financial prisoners may be resorting to a cost inflecting ting as opposed to a benefit of forty mating strategy.
Ah I mean that's extremely depressing and that's a horrible thing to hear .
and not aware of that data and this .
is something that just kind of flag up front is that a lot of especially just kind of internet characters are very willing to speak at length about subjects that they know incredibly little about and well you know quite a bit through talking to people and you're also you know this is kind of your role is that you're bringing on experts and then asking .
the questions that you .
make a one of I I wouldn't say .
that at all.
You're being humble, yes, but that's that's why you're popular is that you have a nap for as a smart guy, obtaining enough information to ask the questions that everyone's wondering, right? But there's but there's i'm not talking about you at all, but there is a real tendency of people who are only internet IT is just, you know, pick out one finding here, one finding there, and then just speak out length as if they've got all the interest of the world's problems.
And the truth is that, like an academia, if you haven't spent a year reading about something, your knowledge is basically zero like that. That's like entry level is once you have been thinking, mulling over and reading the literature, um the idea of getting straight up to speed on a subject that's very they are very unlikely to have the right contexts for IT. And so with questions like this, it's like i'm known an expert in domestic violence. I'm known an expert in uh you know hygeia first is hypoglycemic comes and although so so so even though i'm from a broad theoretical standpoint, as someone who looks at things from behavioral ecology point of view, i'm very optimistic that our nature, our cultural norms will naturally change to accommodate shifts in gender quality just .
to inject tid. Do you think that women's preference for society omics competent men is sufficiently malleable for that to me and I think to a lot of the guys and to give the the guys on the internet that are talking about this news, you if IT was being spoken about in a less sort of katanga, is additionally al way. I think what they would try to say is something like women's preference for social, economically successful men is so ingrained.
IT is such a fundamental part of that code of attraction. I don't believe that this is something that they are going to be able to reprogram. And I would say that largely like i'm in that camp to to a degree um I would say that IT is a kin and equivalent to men's preference in terms of strength, men's preference for youth and fat.
I think that that is the equivalent and fundamentally online. Just again to get matter for a second. This is the debate.
The debate online typically is you have a preference. That preference is wrong. I have a preference.
My preference is right. Your preference can be changed. My preference should not. Yeah, that's the way that the discussion online gets presented. But I think I I think i'm right. I think that I speak, you know, my favorite place and is a shame you leaving this week because we could have done on sad today favourite place for dating a mating research. SOHO house pool in Austin SOHO house pool.
It's you know three and half thousand dollars a year for a membership so that like has a pretty good selection effect for the kind of people that go there. And I just sit by the pool and listen to the checks talking and just wonder over and say, hi girls, how you want talk to me about your current dating experiences and they'll say, I know i've got to a degree I do this thing. I work in marketing, I work in sales, I work in this thing.
I mean, a what's happened with with your dating life at the moment? I'm really, really strugling why you strugling? What are the things for you and a lot of the time i'll say, okay, how well do you what's your income? What's your education level? And a lot of the time they are struggling to find men that they feel at that level. So give me your thoughts on, uh, ability to nudge preference for hypoglycaemia men's ability to not private for youth comfortin ity.
And I know that the world hym is internet me some happy to use IT in this context please never hear IT in academia. I mean we say hiper goni right but I per gami that stuff about typically and it's also narrowly to like status right um but we'll use IT just didn't kind of a broad sense of of meeting up social economically A. Your asking is IT flexible. How my.
how my bel is women's preference for social economically as our most successful mates?
Okay, flat answer, we will see, right? Because the the the weather there is no for all the internet chip chat. H, and I think that a lot of the guys who are resistance this, it's not actually about the they don't care about the meeting successful or women.
They they give a fuck like they don't care about women having trouble dating. What they care about is they don't want women have much resources, is meant right that that makes them uncomfortable with friends, their status, their sense of manhood. It's era and they're masking that is like, oh, women, you'll have some much trouble dating if you get rich. But reality, they they just take to see women make money because again, the flat reality is, is that women who are more educated right are more married and less divorce than women who are less educated .
right does the same the same thing .
holds the wealth. Do you know i'll have to check, although yeah I think I think I am pretty confident and saying that the but again, it's it's not it's not a show in my area. In terms of how flexible is, there is some indicative evidence that an individual level, it's flexible in the sense that women who have decided that they want to be the primary breadwinner, right, they tend to, in their mate selection, care about good dad qualities right, and sexiness, right, how much money they make that's non necessarily that's interesting .
because i've see i've got some data that i've been throwing around with David, uh, that suggests that women's preference for business economic success over and above their own increases as.
yes, this is intent to be the bread winner. right? not.
right. not. But what's the determinant of that? What's the IT intends to be .
the breadwinner?
Is that going to be a switch that people that girls flick? I know now .
i'm going to be the winner, quite confident that humans can. I just think that humans are incredibly untypically plastic creatures.
Well, this is the behavior of logic.
And you coming out, yeah, it's just that. I mean, I see that you know, you could look at all of human history seventy years ago and say a women just will only marry men or more educated. Then you look at modern s in europe.
And it's it's I think that it's possible that will also see some shifts on the male side of things. I mean, there there are plenty of the plenty of cultures were men actually. Do I mean the basic of of sexe difference? You're right. I'll put a flag down here to say that is true, that across cultures, men have stronger beauty preferences and women have stronger resource preferences. But the fact that the degree of difference varies suggest that there is potential for ecological lability. And we're only now just entering into a face where it's even possible to do the experiment like we're doing the experiment and will see how a place for Better all the and I think that probably Frankly, I think you probably will be for Better, I think IT to be fine.
Yeah I mean, he's another thing that kind of doesn't get doesn't get brought up and a lot online. You look at the um increasing divorce rates and yeah I think common of both controller has an awful lot to answer for. I think that in many ways IT was a very dangerous piece of technology to throw around.
Although IT also opened up an awful lot of a opportunities for women. Nobody talks about the fact that the success of marriage success are lower. Divorce rates at ata, uh, was very heavily in part due to the fact that women were financial prisoners of their husband.
Like, if you don't have any resources and you don't have any education, and you got two kids or no kids, five kids, where are you going to go? Yeah, we are gonna. Yeah you know you are you are literally a financial prisoner.
One of the thing you are talking about um like create isn't stuff online and this works for friends as well. But i'm playing with this idea and I had um a four four questions that you can ask to gage the honesty of other creators. But IT also works for friends too.
So first question, when was the last time that you heard them change their mind on something? Second question, did they primarily identify out groups as a mode of bonding that in group together? Number three, how often do they admit mistakes? Genuinely not performative, vely publicly is an advantage? And number four, do they want to hear alternative points of view for reasons other than knocking them? That four step process identifies pretty much like.
if all about the correct.
if you put the guys that I don't I just don't enjoy the content or I don't want to be friends with them, that all of those questions they answer in the in the the negative so um he is very interesting it's very very what what mths if you could clean house? What myths would you like to get rid of from the meeting and dating world? What's being bestialized the most OK in your opinion?
Well, the most mean one is definitely body on this idea that the idea that, you know, historical promise guity is a predictor of bad outcomes and long term relationships pretty well validated by a under studies. It's just that .
is the same buses a uh, David quoted a number times.
right yeah this so that we see that the idea that it's like, yeah, if you're someone who loves casual sex and love slept around, you're going to have a harder time I don't think he takes a rocket scientist to figure out that of that type of person is gonna a harder time in an an oris life marriage, right? If that's what they love doing, right? And and .
partly x yeah.
it's a social xul and that can partially be measured with you know the past sexual partner you have with the important cavy out that there's a huge difference between you know a one hundred year old boy whose you know just showed up as fresh from in your college and is somehow slip with ten girls in the first week and you know a thirty two year old man who's had, you know, if you failed relationships, if you you flying and so on and and is got to the same number over a longer time period in different context. But this idea that like body count is associated a court and court body count as as the term is is associated with negative relationship about comes as true, right? At least with based on the available evidence.
The optimal number is about four. I think it's three for women .
terms of people lef. Ces.
it's like it's a very, very spread. The king, yeah like I think the same zero is as desirable able as like twelve yeah .
it's something like that IT might even be less. It's like zero starts here and then he goes up for a second and planets, right? So it's like between a few and several.
Between a few and several is hot. Then after that, it's like, what are you doing? And before that, it's like, why have you done anything but it's worth knowing. So you ask about means to destroy.
It's like this idea that this is only important for women and that this that this doesn't have any effect on men sleeping around or IT doesn't indicate anything about men's likely personalities that IT doesn't make much logical sense, right? I'll talk about these like airbender means using studies on other animals that have nothing do with humans. But it's like we see the same effect in men, right? So men who have higher body counts and men who are more social, actually unrestricted, generally have all the same negative outcomes.
But the difference is that a man who is sexually promiscuous is not seen as that's not neck .
in itself is not the cultural the cultural is surrounding IT. But there's U S. A means to delete and it's like, look, I think that there's a great argument to be made that maybe sleeping around isn't great, right? That I think that there's a you can say IT from a societal level, this might not be good for people and you can say an individual level, this might not be good for people.
And you could write, you know uh uh a great little essay that that makes all the right points and i'd be like, well, you know, that makes little sense but if you say only for women, well then you just sound like you're a sexus, right? Because it's like all the same points you could make would be makable about men and all they have is these trit analogies about, know a key that opens many locks. It's like a look at the data.
You seen the same effect in men and women, but you're only talking about women. And then also, just from a societal perspective, it's not what I would call an exported idea, right? If you can recommend if you if you're making like a recommendation to people culturally and it's contradictory and its execution, it's not a good recommendation, right to say men have fun sleep around. Women don't like the only way that's mathematically possible is if those men are sleeper with each other, and that doesn't seem to other automatic.
What's the truth about women being more picky or discriminatory than men when IT comes to physical attribute.
physical, trying to h god, okay, well.
this is funny and easy, simple.
I thought, I thought you were in trouble few times with everybody, but it's this one's interesting because. Alright, IT is true that I would say that women are more selective. Like most you know, this is a pattern that we see across most animals, right?
That female animals are more selective and in as much as women overlapped female mammal. And you 跟 他, you're going to see that effect. And so women do seem a little more selective about who they made with.
You've mentioned David bus a couple times, right? Those classic studies of like walking up to someone on a university campus that I mean, you know even if it's a really sexy guy going around, like, hey, want to go back to mine, right? That is some ridiculous number of men say yes, and some tiny number of women do.
So women are. And there are multiple ways measures. I know that kind of a silly study, but IT does seem that women are more selective and they are meeting right. And so you know you it's not particularly surprising that women want a higher percent tile right of the meeting market that men do on a lot of trades.
And good look seems to be one of them in the sense that men, I would say that most men are attracted to most women, right? And most women are attracted to a subset of men, right? So there's a different, sir, and this is going to bring in, you know, a real funny insight from Alexander, a mutual friend, which is like, well, what if let's start back here? What if men just are less sexy than women, just the average? Because there is no rule that the gender average has to be equivalent, right? Like some people say, oh, it's a logical, it's illusion inside.
Well, there's no rule like man. The average man is tolerant than the average woman. There's no rule that the average man can also be less hot than the average and its infant.
Would you just a question here? I don't quite understand how you would compare female attractiveness or hotness to male try so two .
ways you can do IT, right? So the ic thing, all the first basic things notice is track. This is a perception, right? So when we say that when we're looking at a study .
and we say the really determines the length.
well, well, to an extent, I mean, but okay, so we can say empirically that apples taste Better than cardboard because when we survey the humans who are the determinants of taste, the average humans s says the apple takes Better than the carboy haven't run that study. But i'm pretty sure the p value be significant with facial attractor ss and bodily attractive. This all these things, it's measured the same way.
It's just kind of apple's cardboard thing. It's like, yeah it's like, sure there you know people have different tastes, but on average, right there is so much overlap, right? It's like, beauty is the of the beholder shore, but most belhomme ers are seeing vega the same thing.
And so there there's nowhere really to go there in terms of men being is IT possible that men are less attractive than women on average. It's like, well, if you ask women right to, like, look at couples and say, who's hard of the guy of the girl theyll say, I think the girl is actually the hot one more right. But then if you ask men, the same thing happens, right? So men and women agree that women are hot, right? And so it's like, by whose standard and whose opinion is there some like objective, you know, things to notice there.
Another thing that people structure with is that there are some studies that indicate that women find most men less sexy than average. And some people like, oh, that's a perceptual bias, right? IT must be and it's like, well, most men are less wealthy than average because some guys are super wealthy and most guys are no moderately poor me.
Media.
yeah, exactly. So it's like it's entirely possible that we're living in the world of kind of zero and once in a sense where it's like most men are completely unforced able, let's say, and then some small subset .
of guys are just .
gloriously attractive. And if that's the case, then so two things that really important on this that that I really just wanted put into the conversation. Yes, women find a smaller subset of individual. Women generally find a smaller subset of the opposite sex physically attractive than men do. But women also put a lower priority.
As you said earlier, women also put a lower priority on looks in general, right? So it's like good news, bad news, right? It's like, sorry, fellows, most of you probably aren't looking at good to women on first contact. Good news that doesn't really matter that much compared to if you were a woman in that same state does .
many ways to win.
yes. And women are more willing to compromise on their beauty standards than men. IT seems.
yeah, what I mean again. And this is where the black pills philosophy does come true to some degree. And I think that it's it's A A culture which is born out of men who see themselves as genetic.
That s right. They see themselves as completely unable to get a woman because they have fAllen below a thresh hold. That is impossible.
L M S, right? But l is first, look, yeah, money status. So they believe that theyve fall in below a particular net. Now there is an argument about where that net is. And it's like if you're not above six out of ten, six out of ten as being often rated by other men, not by other women. But i've said this before that a man's ability to change his mate value is significantly more malleable than a.
That's the conventional wisdom. Uh, uh, I think that it's can I say something kind of just a little controversial is just the idea that women or might be working harder at IT than they get credit for, right?
So one quick example, one of the coolest studies of the past, who certainly of the of this decade, in my opinion, uh, marter coals enormous, ninety three country study on something like ninety three thousand participants across the world measured all of the things that they do to enhance their physical attractiveness and how much time they spend on IT. And it's like all over the world with some variants, right? And we can talk about that because, again, very interested in how society logy affects this sort of thing. But with some, with some variance accounted for, women are spending much more time, significantly more time on their looks than men.
five times, three times.
about half an hour more per day, right? So it's like, so a lot of.
so there's this idea.
this idea that, like, men can do this idea. And this is accounting for everything, right? So this is including the time in the gym. This is including the time you spent picking and outfit. This is including the time you spend on my fitness pal, figuring out, like macro s for the day, all of IT together, right?
The time you spent doing your hair at at a lining up, the lovely heavy stuff to control the face, whatever all of that together, women are spending more time. So there is this conventional wisdom of like, oh, men can men can do more than women to adjust their mate value. And it's like maybe we're seeing a final product where women have already put in so much more work.
It's like imagine if imagine how much harder that would be to compete as a man to like upgrade yourself if every man and accept you suddenly spend an extra half hour a day on their looks like even if that was just gym time, it's like all my god, everyone to and i'm less hot by comparison so this idea that there is more runway for men, it's like might be I I be more open to saying that is a modern western economy. There's more routes, right in the sense that it's like, okay, i'm not the hottest guy, but boy, I can know I I can computer signs and maybe maybe phya. Honestly, there's huge this huge we don't talk about that.
There is variance between individuals as how much muscle you can. There are all people who just can't look a certain way and it's like hit the jimi o and like, well, they can hit as much as they want. They're still skinning. And there's not a lot of sympathy for that because we like to think you know, people who have muscles like to think like all that is just hard work, but a lot of us just vaguely are lucky, right? I know a lot of guys were jack don't work.
That heart is on saying I have a couple of things that the super response and just absolute like group hyper play hyper now and I also .
know guys who is like theyve never to buy call on their life and y've got like sixteen and dorms just flat. And it's like that you can if you're starting with twelve and strong. So anyway, i'm getting off track. But this idea there's this kind of conventional wisdom of like men, you have more kind of upward trajectory space through hard work. But then there's the other question of like, okay, well.
women are already working .
really well or like think about just how much time IT takes to get ready to go to work as a woman versus a man. It's like if you've lived with a woman, then you know it's like I were going out to dinner.
I'm going to be going .
looking i'm yet if you're a man, it's like going to be looking my best in fifteen minutes, five minutes in the shower, five minutes on my hair, right, maybe shaving my face and i'm out the door looking as good as I can look that day, right?
For a woman to go from her zero to her ten in terms of effort, it's like IT often takes a lot of time because we have these cultural technologies that they that are used in our in our society such as such as you know these additional hair products to sea. And so I think that yeah, I think that there's a real question there, but i'm not giving an answer. I'm kind of playing devils advocate. I might agree with you, but that's that certainly the conventional wisdom. So I am .
probably being to talk to me about discrimination around hacha.
discrimination around hair color. Well, you love evolutionary psychology, so I want to just give you the basic evil cyc. You, I even though.
don't fuck, throw me in with basic bitch. I'm fledged behavioral ecologist at the moment. I'm slowly.
This is my new cool thing. My new shiny toy. Is this area? Well.
you spoken to a lot of people. Who would you maybe at a conference, maybe depending on the conference, say their ecc or behavior and that would certainly be me like I just depends .
on who i'm talking to you. Like I use evolutionary theory and think about humans.
Yeah exactly. And a psych is the is still .
the queen in .
this equation I H best .
last I don't know .
because you are .
a bitch.
you actually yeah so in any case um will have to do a study design on your talk girl stuff well because .
because of some of these I got my first location .
by David .
and William .
got for the male.
Yeah that I did i'm at meaning i'm not good science. You do the science do the science fucking nods ah i'm going to come up with the name.
And what's funny is that the part of the reason of sight has been so successful is that David bus is amazing at, meaning people don't talk about IT, but like, he has a neck. So much of the words that we used in this conversation, I are actually terms coined by him all, all these little like putting mate in front of everything, like all that little stuff like that, mostly, if not his invention and his promotion.
everyone stand strained from like .
a buttery and philosophy. Yeah, is that you can you can start sounding really science, cy.
which is really what everyone wants.
Yeah and you can also, and also here's the other thing is that a lot of people who are in the scientific based coin terms, but their terms that nobody can use because they don't make sense, I say the word made preferences immediately know exactly what that there's is no confusion at all anyway.
what we discrimination OK.
So look, there's variation, right? And the some studies shows different effects, but the standard evo theory is is actually quite simple and seems to fit at least with folk wisdom, right, which is that men will prefer d on average, all those being equal, relatively light hair colors because hair darkies throughout life until IT terms gray or White, right? And so lighter hair colors signal youth, and they're also some potential evidence that women's hair might dark in during pregNancy as well.
So we're going back to youth. And Oliver ity right being signal by relatively light hair. And in the western context, this would be relatively light for our very diverse population where we have everyone from you know very noted people to to um just all sorts of people, right? As so we have very light hair colors on that distribution.
We see that you know a huge percentage of american woman there's one study words like forty percent have experimented with lightning their hair ah there's this effort right uh where where where it's it's trying to IT seems to an extent respond to this male preference for lighter hair that might be downstream of an ancestral signal of youth in military yeah not not fertility. So the term elliptic is the state of having not yet had children in biology. And the reason that that would be attractive is and is not attractive in all animals, but in our species.
Where were monogenic airbender, theod, MPI? yes. So theoretically, it's like you want to this is this is going to sound like a crazy term.
But the optimal mal mating strategy for humans is often, you know, if you if you're in a evolutionary informed psychology classroom, you'll hear people use this phrase, which I mean a sounds psycho for saying, but it's called monopolizing a woman's reproductive years, right? Uh, where it's like you're spending you're trying to meet someone and then spend that those twenty years with them where you're able to reproduce them the entire time, uh, because that if if if everyone is pairing up anode mousy as is the case in most um human sizes and cultures, and that's kind of where line up up now on the other end, kind of for the same reasons, women seem to fer somewhat darker here, the whole all dark and handsome. That seems to that seems to play we spoken a little bit about tall, just Better fighters, you know, able to defend themselves.
But um dark seems to may be come from a signal to age. There is some dispute of some studies have found that men don't actually for a letter hair, but uh, I am very immemorable to the idea that they do just because and there might be some frequency effect, exposure effect, there's definitely a cultural effect. But that seems to be part story.
What about age gaps? What about them? Well, do men actually lock in twenty one year old old once they hit twenty one, and then just one twenty one year old for the rest of time?
no. In terms of physical attraction, ess, there does seem to be, you know, a probable thing in the early. But if you look at mens, you know dating up filters, for example, they'll tend to filter out extremely Young woman once they get older. But they do want increasingly wide age job as they get older. red.
Is that not just because that's what they think .
that they can get totally?
I don't forty five else getting a twenty one old seems unrealistic and might be a bit I so like, yeah, let's put in twenty seven well yeah.
I might be a bit icky is gonna you know that's that's part of, like, part of mate value is like, what does this mate signal to other people about me? so.
Why would women prefer an old mate?
Well, this is the thing, is that in countries so women have, we talk about women being more selective, more selective party holds more power in terms of who gets together, right? But how is in business as well, the person is more willing to walk away from the negotiating table and has more of the things that the other person wants anyway, I don't need to explain that. That's pretty simple.
But in countries where women are free to choose, they tend to choose men who are slightly holder, not super holder. So we're talking like two to four years, right? And that seems to be reduced now where it's like age of creating smaller and smaller and IT could be again, like we talk about ability.
It's like let's talk about my ability in a context where you're completely dependent on man for his resources. Maybe a guy thirteen years old, older is the best because he has more resources, right? But in a cultural context where you have your own money, right, it's like I don't want the deteriorating sperm.
Me let me give you a counter example. In a society where you, on average, are performing those who economically, the men who are around you at your age bracket, yes, one of the best predictors of wealth is age is age.
And yet we still see that women who who have these options and have the freedom to choose, choose very small edge gaps. And this is the thing is that if you ask men what you they tend to want pretty age gap pointing downward ard.
But if you ask women what do you want? They say, oh, I want, you know, a few years old maybe then if you see what women actually do, what do they get? They get a few years older maybe, right? And if you look what they do on dating, right.
they filled out much OK. Because, again.
think about this, right? It's like if you, if you once a very simple thing that really everyone in the audience should understand about sexual selection is that we're looking for indirect benefits and direct benefits.
And if you focus too much on either of those but indirect benefits that who do you want to have your kids, right? Who do you want the offspring genetically to be with, right? And then direct benefits that who do you want to raise your kids in the species like ours? But also, who do you want to take care of? You, help you out, be compatible with? You eat a right? And if you focus too much on either of these, then you miss the entire picture.
So thinking, you know, about direct benefits, sure, older is Better, right from the direct benefits perspective, of course, you know, the older man is going to have more money, more status that can be able to take care you Better in the modern economy. But from an indirect t benefits perspective, sperm equality declines every year, right? Men, man met that the signals of quality, right? Those decline every year.
You become all that facial attractive in the signal that goes away, right? Those signals of underlying genetic health, those go away, right? The muscularity that goes away. So there's a real baLance here where it's like in a inner culture with very high gender inequality and where women don't have control of their own resources. Maybe or you there's debate as to why this varies.
But but the fact of matter, the underlying fact the matter is that in cultures where women have their own resources and are free to choose their mates, they choose men were slightly ordered themselves. And that seems to be to get like a little bit of the direct benefits, but mostly maintain the direct ones. And there might also be to be one hundred and fair, there might also be a direct benefit.
Having made your own age in the sense they'll actually be around to raise your own kids, there's a reason that women generally aren't falling over you know, sixty old men. It's like, who is human children? They take a long time to take care of. That's not necessarily the best work. Now around talk to .
me about taboos.
Uh, well, I mean, I wish I want to told me in high school, but I I doesn't that women care about them very much. Uh you know women perceive tattoo man is more healthy, masculine.
dominant IT set a healthy yeah and .
IT might be just because it's like it's more like to be a genera. But the more you know evolutionary coherent one, the one that's like really complicated is like, well, a tattoo is exposing yourself to a high infection risk and it's like I can I can handle that.
I I don't say anything that's true, but IT is interesting that you know there are some immune markers that are higher in men who are heavily at so and that could just be because it's like you go into attack you and that makes you really sick. You're probably not going in another one. And so guys are a heavily tat. It's like bounce is often, but you know those are attractive traits and yet women don't seem to find tatoes more attractive then not uh and so the question is like, and most of this is polish data. IT probably varies between cities and cultures and societies.
And but IT would definitely vary in japan.
Yeah right? There is any huge cultural contacts there, right? I mean, there there are some countries on earth for this amount. Attacks would make me look like some kind of criminal houses.
Totally wasn't allowed to go in the bats in japan when he went the the public bat. You given one packed up thing and he's like the four too full sleep like stuff on his back and he's like, fucking, i'm gna do with this like he is two hundred and fifty pound like that's gonna t he didn't cover a nipple. So yes, women interpret men more healthy, more masculine.
Yes, dominant ant, there's all these trade office.
It's like because you asked them, it's like, okay, do you think it's like digitally modified photos? Do you think the ones with tattoo s are harder than the ones without a couple thousand women about that? And the result was that it's like, yeah, he's healthier, probably more master and probably more dominant probably but he's not more attractive and it's like, why and he goes back to the house and trade of thing.
This is actually kind of good evidence for IT. Is that there? Like, well, I don't think he's going me as good of dad. I don't need to be as good of a husband.
tattoos. What about women with tatooed for men?
Well, that's really interesting and there's actually a cleaner story. So there is a fascinating french study and it's one of the most ecologically valid studies really that i've ever read, not to over flatter IT, but it's just usually when you do a study, right, you do IT in a lab setting or you do IT digitally or you do a survey and you just don't know whether whether it's going to translate, right.
But what they did was they did real world human mating behavior, where they took a book of woman and they sent him out to the beach in the bikini. And we're just like read a book for hours and we're going to have how many approach you. And every time approaches you, we're going to you know someone run up to be like stop.
We're going to study to reset the timer. So it's not you know, people thinking he is the boyfriend, whatever. I'm not sure why they did that method. That's that's and sometimes they sent these women out with fake tatoes on, and sometimes they sent them out without.
And they found that with fake tattoos s on women got approached substantially more, right? And they're like, huh? This goes against the lab studies that show that men say they don't like tattoos, right? So this is kind of an interesting little problem, right? what? What's going on here? And then they asked men on the same beach, it's like, you know, what do you think, that girl? right? And they didn't find that the tatoes made them hotter, but they did. The men did say, I think that that woman would be more likely to say yes to a day with me, right? So the anticipation was basically like, these women are .
more open to 呀。
你 have been a sexual signal, they didn't measure that. But the idea, yeah, but I could be that, could be that. And IT could this openness on its own.
openness to new experiences? Like, no, no, wasn't openness.
like psychological trade openness? IT was literally like, I think that this person would be willing IT was just the basic question of, like if someone walks up until on the street, is he more likely to say fuck off for.
say yes and they thought yes, right? But the outcome that they are looking for is a social xuan unless they saying, hey, why don't we go for a coffee? I'd love to learn tattoo you .
like what here's the thing is that it's not all I mean, it's interesting. It's not it's they could easily be approaching to ask for a date they don't want to get rejected. But the but he does highlight highlights two things.
One is that not all beauty signaling is about signals attractiveness, right? So sometimes you don't want to look more beautiful, you anna, signal underlying personality traits like it's like if you if you want to look, I don't know if you like IT might make sense if you're if you're a woman whose whose interested in short term meeting, maybe you would make sense to deck your body out in cool tatoes to be like, hey, you know more, you know more socially liberal probably and more you know, interested in with taking yeah more venturous ata, yeah so I think I think the social social is totally fair, fair estimate. But the basic idea is like it's not that tattoos make women more attractive. If anything, they make them less attractive. But IT is a signal of like, as we say, like openness to go on a date with a guy that the'd matter.
What have you seen the studies on women wearing chicken neck laces?
This is the lt.
Pretty little. A K. yeah. Both men and women rate that women is probably having had more previously more tatus. We have the it's interesting .
that you said society ual, because they probably banging on now that I think of IT because there is some research indicating that people with tatoes have higher social sexuality. I mean, this can be outliers, of course, and there can be people who don't fit that pattern. But yeah, maybe, you know, having tattoos is like that.
Not only do I have tatoes, I probably have casual sex. And people learn that through, you know, cultural reinforcement and life experiences. Then when they on the beach they like, maybe this person would be more approvable.
What is that to know about stated reveal preferences when IT comes to attraction?
That's an incredibly deep question. Well, you've been very interested in beauty today. And I think one place to start would be that people, if you ask them what matters most in a mate, I mean, the jury still out.
But if you ask people what matters most in the mate, they're generally not gonna looks right. They are going to say, I want someone who's honest, who's loyal, who's kinds. These are the bus studies and other replication sense, right? But then if you do an experiment, like a speed dating experiment, is the hot person wins, right?
If you do with in yet study where it's like photos, biography, the hot people win, generally at least past a certain pressure. Ld, and so there's this kind of tension there where it's like, OK, okay. So we've got all this data showing that people say that they care more about personality traits than looks.
And then we ve got all this data looking at what people do, and they seem to care more about looks than personally. One exception to this, which is interesting, is that international NER correlations of attractor. Ss, right? Those tend to disappear at least one study after nine months of knowing someone before the date.
Meaning that i've phrase that terribly because I I can see the the confusion, if a couple knew each other for nine months or more before they started dating, each partner's physical attractiveness does not predict the others, which is a strong signal that attractiveness, physical trafton ess, was not a huge factor in their decision to date each other, right? Because in most couples, apartment correlations of attraction iss are you know similar to self rating and other ratings of a train. They're pretty significant, right?
What's the mechanism, the e things going on, where this nine months window seems to change something?
Personality, accumulated information about personality, pushing out physical attractiveness as a determinant of meeting.
But when you, but when you don't have enough time, you you've met somebody a couple of times. So whatever, you use much more uh, easily accessible cues with physical .
indicators of value. So and this this is a particularly controvert to think about beauty. The you know, this is Stephen in luda review article on this.
They titled that physical indicators of partner quality, right? And not there. They weren't using that only for beauty. But that's one way of saying beauty, right, is that you're looking for someone who is high mate value. And when you just meet them, you know ninety five percent of the information you have is there looks and after nine months, five percent of the information you have, let's say, made up numbers, but lets say is there looks and so IT doesn't factor into your decision as much.
And so if you are know, if you meet someone at a bar, right, if you meet someone at a pub and you the first interaction you have is securing a date, well, then you probably both make each other, others looks rescues, right? That's kind of the only thing that makes sense, right? But if you met someone as a co worker and you were working together for a few years, and then after, you know, a blossoming ing friendship became something else, you're like to know what let's let's actually get drinks this way, right? How much that looks factor into that decision, right? It's hard to say. And in this study.
apparently not all interesting.
at least not measurably let you .
say that keep dig deeper into the state and reveal preferences thing because I think a lot of the time it's kind of like the god of the gaps for people that want to make arguments for and against A A A lot of the the theories it's like, oh yeah, I mean, you know, people say anything in surveys and my lived experience yeah yeah, yeah says something else .
yeah and and there is no as A I as someone who thinks about things from a behavioral ecology lands, even though, you know, the the two studies i've done are both, you know, there were very ethie, Frankly.
But I do think about issues, pretty behavioral ecologically in the first world of that is behavior, right? Watching what people actually do, right? Evolutionary psychologists really like looking at state preferences, right? The favourite tool of an evolutionary psychologist is a questionnaire, right? It's often said. And then other scientists, like economists and behavioral ecologists, like looking at what people do. So there's stated preferences what people say, and then they reveal preferences what people do.
But my personal opinion is that you need to look at both, right? There's no joke economy, a funny person, you go economy unreal, right? And nobody y's morning because his reveal preference was to die, right? It's like what people do is constrained by the vice tudes of life, right? The chance happening is the limitations of one's own position. And so when we see that, so sometimes it's it's like, okay, well, I don't see a reasonable way where your decision was constrained. And so the fact that you chose to go on a date with the hottest guy at the speed dating event instead of funniest guy tells me that you probably do .
care about hot tss more. What's what's the use of state preferences then? So really measure them against the .
divergence from reveal. That's that A A great, great question. I'll give you a couple examples where I think state preferences ces become a factor.
Men say they want larger age gap and they get right. And IT makes sense where the constraints coming from because women are the selectors. Typically, they select more, at least, and they say that they want smaller age gaps and then the smaller age gap happens.
So it's like, that looks to me like dooling preferences, but IT heads and the woman's preference one out. And he went with time. Yeah, exactly.
yeah. Ah yeah. The men might want a woman seven years Younger, but he ends up with a woman three years Younger. And the you asked woman and say, the preferences is three years older and that's what I got. And like, oh, that seems to be a case of doing preferences that makes perfect sense.
Another one would be, and this is really interesting, is that we see in these stated preference studies that men don't care that much about ambition, about resources, you know, how you enough, whatever career he wants, you know, I don't really care about our education. Then you look at what man actually do, and it's like you very most educated men with educated women, right? Most rich men, or with women from the same. So you, I can make background, even if that women individually isn't making as much money, right? The same strategy.
sphere classes wise. This just when I just the ISO Alexander video, maybe a year, year in a bit, go and he was talking about, do men trade wealth for locks? Do wealthy guys get with good looking women? And IT actually seems that most partners pair off.
Yeah, good looking people get with good looking people. Rich people get with rich people. And there are these, you know, status for resources trades, or resources for look trades.
And these trades do seem to happen more men to women, right? But overall, it's like you just look around even it's like, oh yeah, you know, people who have college degrees, ten to date people have college degrees. People who are super hot, ten to date people are super hot.
No, that's a state diversity of real preferences problem. Because you ask the guys, do you care? And they said, not really.
And then you look at what they did and they ended up seeming to care, right? And so now we've got, uh, a case where we kind of have to look at the whole picture. And i'm not saying that I took closed question like the age gaps one seems pretty raight forward to me.
This would be an example of that being a little more complicated, right? So the age eps one seems straight forward in the state preferences are probably accurate direction just because of the totality of the evidence. And in the looks question, IT seems to be the reveal preferences probably are more indicative. Looks probably do matter quite a bit, at least when you're getting to know somebody and then for something like this now and now, what's a little more tRicky isn't IT because maybe men care more than they say, right?
Um I certainly don't relate to the idea of not caring right? Like I feel I I might be buy because internally, like you know i've i've always always got quite a bit of education and I can't at a personal level, I would rather all else being equal date a woman whose very educated right that would just I can like, I like so my my girlfriend's a scientist, right? And so it's fantastic for me that when i'm having trouble, you know, sorting something out, I can talk to her about IT and he gives me, you know, coherent, helpful advice.
Be beyond beyond just having a fucking in research, a system. Yeah, you get to have sex with. What you also have is somebody that understands .
your passion. Yes exactly yeah it's not just IT has a utility beyond uh beyond just probability where it's like, well yeah it's super helpful just in emotionally in the sense that is like understands yeah exactly. So I think that there are probably a lot of men who have you asked them on a pennon paper said, and again, this is probably my bias.
I think there are a lot of men who it's like they're educated, their doctors and lawyers, whatever. And you say, do you care about education? And they say, no, I date anybody. Then in practice, they're on the date with a woman who doesn't have the same education .
with them in their board, right? Because they're not they're .
just not in the other though, and i'm going to get full. This is totally possible. And maybe even more likely is that men actually don't care that much about you know money in status and women in education. They actually don't. They they're towing the truth when they say they don't give a shit and it's not they don't say that the same h they say that matters.
It's just not top is just not doesn't matter to them as much as the matters to women in the questionnaire dies and then in the behavioral studies, that doesn't seem to be as much for at least go to some scholars. It's also possible that it's just exposure an opportunity. It's like if you're a male lawyer, right, you spent the last eight years of your you prime you you know getting educated.
I'm round educated women so it's like who did you happen to date? Who did you happen to marry educated women because of those with the women that you happens to meet based on who is in your local environment? So I am open to both possibilities. I think that if you really want to understand him made, you don't want to say something is blunt, as watch what they do, not what they say, right?
Even though, for the most part, I am more interesting than what people do and what they say, I think that if you really want to understand you and made in behavior, you want to take a step back, relax and say, okay, what do people want? What do they end up doing? And what's the most coherent explanation I can build based on .
the combination of this? Have you had to look at gregory clock work? He is a demographer. I suppose he has the behavioral genetics background. He wrote a book called for whom the belt curve toes, which is a fucking phenomenal title, and he has track .
also putting the phrase belka in the title.
should be know that that he he likes, he likes to sort a gLance of the body of a certain things. I really appreciate IT, the fact that, again, same as employment, actually a little bit more kind of like.
have you had what a smart guy, phenomenal guy and is a really sweet guy as well.
fucking super sweet counter signal? I mean, did if you're going to do behavior genetics and be really accepted even slightly by the mainstream, you need to do the counter signal thing, right? You need to be overly not liable.
But like kind of plastic and and so like gently soft. Sofi, not saying that this prety determined, but I was pretty disposed. I'm not saying, like it's caviar, caviar, caviar. Uh, page hardon, right? You know, page, uh, wrote the genetic lottery OK she's the only well known public facing behavioral geneticists that ardently from the left .
as far as i'm aware in he doesn't bring .
his politics into a much but she's like outward like the these of my politics are so fascinated greg clock last gregory, i'll send you the epsom tracked the social status of people via a very complex system of surnames in the U. K. Like seven hundred years.
And he found that people, the social status is genetically determined, that over time, you may assortative, vely or unassorted timely. Make yourself out of your social class either down or up, but give people enough time and their family for a type is more important. Yeah, that's what they go back to this sort regression to your find typical mean that make sense. I mean.
it's faster. I will say though that again, i'm going have to kind of plant that I haven't spent a year on flag .
in the sense .
that it's like i'll send you A A thing that i've read you i've read i've read a couple releve books on behavior genetics. I read plume's book I spoke to plumb for a few hours. I've read several articles on IT, but I really am not a i'm just not and I understand the behavior genetics of infinite quite a bit, but I just don't i'm i'm known an expert on i'm just known an expert on IT not can pretend today and there's you know there's a lot of even academics who will come on shows like this and just be like experts on everything they asked about. And it's like what I know that you're not an expert and .
everything science is lame, bro. Science is real really but you did I, you know, I I have this like rule that I told from Douglas murray, which is Normal ize saying, I don't have an opinion on that. Yes.
I don't know. Yeah.
like that is, again, you know, what was the last time your favorite content creator said that they don't know would be a fifth a greg fifth question to ask like just because your great in behavioral ecology, infidelity make preferences and attraction, doesn't mean that I should believe what you say about geopolitical strategies to fix the problem with .
the middle yeah yeah. So based so true and I I will you know one thing that i'm happy to to to be proud of is that on every single podcast, every done, i've said no more than once. There has never been a time where i've gone on a podcast just come through yes, yes, yes. I know that I know that it's always you know, at a point where i'm like I haven't study .
at a few times, there is A A degree. And I think i'd probably say that i've had maybe second only to record a Lopez a. I've had more evolutionary psychologists on this podcast, and pretty much anybody else.
And what I do like when that heavy at comes in, and you know the boundaries of whatever somebody is talking about, but then they go. But that a bit of fun to let to populate about the mechanism, you could say. And it's like luck. We don't know what's going on here. His some cool is because that's the fun bit.
The fun bit of evolutionary theory and presumably of behavioral ecology as well is going like why does that happen? Well, given what I know about the way the humans work and give what we know about the environment, that they, that's I A play with a couple of mechanism. And that that for me is like, is the best stuff.
I fell in up with this subject when I read the moral animal by Robert ride, that books from nineteen ninety three, dude, and you can read IT today in the some of and that would like, I got just silly IT holds so much fucking y water still now phenomenal read in one of my top five books of all time steps illian s um April in the universe also in the it's just brilliant and um I loved learning about evolutionary psychology, first of because IT helped me to understand me. You help me understand why I am the way I am. What are the mechanisms that are driving me? Why do I feel that way about these things? Oh, this isn't some weird, quite of my psychology.
This is like the source code that I built on. And this is a, and this is what i'm trying to do a lot of with the show, which is luck. If we open up the hood of our preferences, of our fears, of our dreams, of the ways that we think about ourselves, about courses of our competencies, if we do that, IT makes you feel less alone, unless personally cursed, and less inside of your own head.
Very wise and flattering words about evolutionary psychology, a way in mostly to agree evolution. Psychology was my first love in science, my closest mentor's of boston university, where anthropologists, but they came like Carolin hot chem SHE was shoes from my teachers, one of my professors, and SHE came straight from sand. Barba, right? The meca of epytus. And what I loved about ephah was that, while cultural anthropology and to extend other disciplines emphasize what makes us different, evolutionary psychology emphasize what makes us all, all the same. They would call IT the psychological unity of mankind, right, are shared nature as a species.
And I think that evolutionary psychology, well, you know, well, I think that on some questions, there are Better tools now after, you know, after learning more about the field, Frankly, at oxford and its alternatives, while my opinion is kind shifted on IT, I still maintain that they're right about so many things and that their their big wins are some of the biggest in psychology ever. I mean, it's incredible that uh that you know buses, original make preferences stuff holds up what, nearly half a century later, and that you can still basically find the exact same, the exact same results by running the exact same study. I mean, you want to talk about a replication crisis that's awesome ah but again, for things like understanding the complex interplay between culture, environment and nature to determine who we find sexy and who we don't, i've come to just think that that evolution psychology is part of the picture.
And .
yeah, you also need you also need a deep understanding of sociology. Well.
ultimately you which many.
which many evolutionary psychology half of course i'm not critical anyone.
the human behavior isn't occurring inside of a fair day cage, right? People are influenced by what we studied before, like to very obvious ones beautification. Uh, in relation to local socioeconomic and inequality and the sex racial hypothesis, right? To just two effects, the cut, yeah. In common.
equality and sexy fascinating yeah .
and you right OK both of those are like you pretty hard core at least uh every evolution of psychologists will be familiar with yeah .
exactly and that's a huge that's a brilliant point because that's a very behaving ecologically compatible like those two fields would .
not disagree yes. So you go, okay, well, in this like I need to do more work because this is literally the first time I ever heard the worlds behavioral ecology. But I maybe i've had like some point before. It's the first time properly I need to look at to the field mall, but. The way that I could see if you're right with the way that your field looks at the world functionally IT will be Better at predicting behaviour?
yes. So one, yes. So there are cases is where you test them against each other like you could test, test them against each other.
Where is like, this is what we should do. This is what humans should do. This is what their preferences are. But that in a, you know, p dish, confined box 3 box friday, if you're not in this thematically seal blab, what happens?
Will you are intrinsically fused with the culture and with the precise positions of what you think and your assumptions about yourself and about the world, and about your place in the world, and about what are the people think of you? Perfect example of this. Twenty years ago, every girl wanted to say gamp. Now it's like when the the .
economy is great, do .
i've really, really enjoyed this and very glad you could come through. We have we have literally like five more episodes to do. And I look forward to finding some ungodly dly time for one of us when you get back to australia to run this back again.
But really glad he came through and stopped off in aun. Where should people go? They want to keep up today with everything that you do. A massive on tiktok. You've got fantastic podcasts as well.
Where should people go? They want to check you. Well, there's um I guess there there are few things that are were flooding the first for my kind of social media presence uh I would be good to just google my name and follow IT.
And then in terms of the actual work i'm doing, so there's academic work which which i'm going to keep everyone a rest of, and then there's also some corporate work as well. Frankly, where are you know, you've met him today. So we're working on an APP cold couple and you can go to just a flag, flag this right, the I O slash, if you're in a relationship, right, and you're looking to improve your relationships.
And this is nap, where both partners download. And we're going to be bringing some of the science that we talked about today into the APP to help improve couples and uh, help them last longer. No, did appreciate you.
You're o youll started really, really good. Glad that we connected. And I hope you continue going and I hope that we .
have more conversations.