Speaker 1: David, Hi, is this better? Yeah, yeah, that's better. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know. You were blurrying and night. Maybe it
Speaker 1: was a weak connection. It was a weak connection. I
Speaker 1: put it on a better connection. Well, I must apologize
Speaker 1: this is very uncharacteristic of me to be so like this.
Speaker 1: I'm trying to fit you in in the middle of
Speaker 1: an extraordinarily stressful move. And it's not your fault at all.
Speaker 1: It's my fault entirely. But I'm trying very hard to
Speaker 1: get you in because I really want to highlight your book.
Speaker 1: And sometimes I take on too sometimes I take on
Speaker 1: too much stuff. And it's hey, no worries at all,
Speaker 1: no worries at all. I appreciate you fitting me in.
Speaker 1: Thanks David. It's really nice to meet you. You're obviously
Speaker 1: a legend in my field, and so it's pretty much
Speaker 1: an honor to talk to you. Oh, thank you, Thank you.
Speaker 1: Ida a legend loved by some, hated by others. So
Speaker 1: perhaps well we can talk about we can talk about that,
Speaker 1: you know. And it's funny. It's not like anyone like
Speaker 1: it's not like people hate you personally. It's so funny
Speaker 1: how we as like a well maybe some do and
Speaker 1: I don't know about that, but I'm saying in terms
Speaker 1: of evolutionary psychology is like, it's like you're a symbol
Speaker 1: of It's funny how people can hate an individual because
Speaker 1: they become a symbol for someone of something. Right, It's
Speaker 1: fascinating how that happens. Well, I'm ready to jump in
Speaker 1: if you're ready. Yep, I am ready. Today, it's today.
Speaker 1: It's great to have David bust on the podcast. David
Speaker 1: is a professor of psychology University of Texas, Austin. As
Speaker 1: one of the founders of the field of evolutionary psychology,
Speaker 1: his primary research focus is on strategies of human meeting,
Speaker 1: particularly the dark side of human meeting nature, including conflict
Speaker 1: between the second is, jealousy, stalking, intimate partner violence, and murder,
Speaker 1: basically the greatest hits of the dark side. David is
Speaker 1: author of a number of books on meeting, including The
Speaker 1: Evolution of Desire and most recently, Why Men Behave Badly
Speaker 1: The Hidden Roots of sexual deception, harassment and assault. David,
Speaker 1: great to chat with you today. Thank you, glad to
Speaker 1: be here in chatting with you. So I want to
Speaker 1: start off by asking you what is meeting it sounds
Speaker 1: like a very nerdy term for sex. Yeah, Well, when
Speaker 1: I first started studying the topic, it was the only
Speaker 1: term that was sufficiently broad to capture the diverse phenomena
Speaker 1: that I was interested in. And in fact, sex is
Speaker 1: only really one part of it. An important part, of course,
Speaker 1: but it's only one part. And actually, when I first
Speaker 1: started getting into it, there is a little bit of
Speaker 1: note of historical background. And I started studying dating cup
Speaker 1: and married couples. I actually thought it would be too
Speaker 1: intrusive to ask them about their sex lives, and so
Speaker 1: I actually didn't. I asked them about everything. I was
Speaker 1: studying everything around sex, the mate selection process, what qualities
Speaker 1: people want in a maid, tactics of attraction, tactics of
Speaker 1: mate retention. But what happened was in these early studies,
Speaker 1: as I interviewed the couples, they said, you've asked us
Speaker 1: about everything under the sun, but you haven't asked us
Speaker 1: about our sex lives. And I had thought it would
Speaker 1: be too intrusive, And so over time I started getting
Speaker 1: more and more into the domain of sexuality per se.
Speaker 1: But of course, still a lot of what I study
Speaker 1: is not doesn't have to do with sex per se.
Speaker 1: But everything around it, that's fair enough. Yeah, So meeting
Speaker 1: is a broad demean It's very very broad to mean yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: and so yeah, And it includes all those things from
Speaker 1: you jumping into the mating pool, tactics of attraction, attracting
Speaker 1: a mate, all the things that go on in a relationship,
Speaker 1: including sexual stuff, and then also getting rid of a mate,
Speaker 1: made ejection tactics, mate guarding tactics, jumping back into the
Speaker 1: mating pool after you've been out of a relationship. So
Speaker 1: there's a lot of interesting human phenomena, in particular because
Speaker 1: with humans we have long term mating as one of
Speaker 1: our strategies. We don't just mean many species they just
Speaker 1: do essentially short term mating. Like even chimpanzees, our closest
Speaker 1: primary relative female comes into estrus, there's sex that occurs
Speaker 1: during that period, and then the sexes are pretty indifferent
Speaker 1: to each other after that, whereas in our species we
Speaker 1: sometimes engage in more prolonged mating that can last a week,
Speaker 1: a month, a year, a decade, a lifetime. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: a very central part of the human experience, isn't it.
Speaker 1: I would say so in that sense I lucked out
Speaker 1: by picking this topic and even after many years of
Speaker 1: studying these different aspects of mating, I thought, you know,
Speaker 1: I really want to branch out and study other things,
Speaker 1: and so I started studying homicide why people kill other people?
Speaker 1: And it turns out most of the motives for murder
Speaker 1: are related, either directly or indirectly to mating. And so
Speaker 1: what I sometimes say is you can run, but you
Speaker 1: can't hide from mating. It permeates so many facets of
Speaker 1: our lives. Yeah, for good and bad. So why, you know,
Speaker 1: why did you go into the field of evolutionychology or
Speaker 1: even you know, you were one of the founders of it,
Speaker 1: Like take me back to the gears preceding evolutionary psychology.
Speaker 1: What were you interested in and how did that morph
Speaker 1: into this new field? Well, well that's that's a big question,
Speaker 1: so I'll have to give you a short answer, give
Speaker 1: me a short answer. Yeah, see that, Yeah, yeah, there
Speaker 1: were When I first got into the field of psychology,
Speaker 1: there was no evolutionary psychology as you as you just mentioned.
Speaker 1: But what I was interested in was was a solid
Speaker 1: theory of human nature. That is, you know, what motivates people,
Speaker 1: what gets people out of bed in the morning, what
Speaker 1: makes people tick, why do they strive toward the goals
Speaker 1: toward which they strive? And so I got into the
Speaker 1: field of personality psychology, which I thought was the closest
Speaker 1: to you know, developing or attempting to develop grand theories
Speaker 1: of human nature, which they did. But when I got
Speaker 1: into that, what I realized is that they different theories
Speaker 1: made certain too had certain two intuitive appeal to them,
Speaker 1: or certain facets did you know, Rogers of Freud, Young, Maslow,
Speaker 1: et cetera, But that they all lacked a solid scientific foundation.
Speaker 1: That is, if you asked the question, well, why should
Speaker 1: we go with this theorist versus that theorist. And so
Speaker 1: it was my search for a solid scientific foundation that
Speaker 1: ultimately led me to evolutionary theory, which is a theory
Speaker 1: about the causal origins of whatever mechanisms of mind that
Speaker 1: we have that are housed in our brain and to
Speaker 1: some degree in our bodies. And so identifying the causal
Speaker 1: origins of whatever mechanisms we have it was absolutely critical
Speaker 1: and I think it's you know, it's been one of
Speaker 1: the things that historically has been absent from the field
Speaker 1: of psychology, the causal origins of and importantly the functions
Speaker 1: of whatever psychological mechanisms we have. And it was I
Speaker 1: remember that this is probably before you were born, but
Speaker 1: it was viewed as unscientific to even pose the question
Speaker 1: what is the function of X or y psychological mechanisms?
Speaker 1: And and I think it had to do with inadequate
Speaker 1: theoretical clarity on what the term function meant. And within
Speaker 1: evolutionary theory, there is a very precise meaning of the
Speaker 1: term function, that is, that is what adaptive problem is
Speaker 1: this psychological mechanism designed to solve, you know, And and
Speaker 1: ultimately all mechanisms are tributary to survival or reproduction, reproduction
Speaker 1: being the more important one, but they're long and circuitous
Speaker 1: roots to get there. So, for example, you know, humans
Speaker 1: have it's been positive. I think is reasonable that humans
Speaker 1: have motives to get ahead in status hierarchies. We evolved
Speaker 1: in small group living. All groups contain status hierarchies position
Speaker 1: and the status hierarchy is linked to access to reproductively
Speaker 1: relevant resources, and so it's reasonable that humans would have
Speaker 1: a motivation to get ahead, to maintain their position, to
Speaker 1: fight off rivals who are vying for the same position,
Speaker 1: and so forth. But you could say, well, what does
Speaker 1: that have to do with survive on reproduction well, as
Speaker 1: it turns out that getting ahead in status hierarchies does
Speaker 1: lead to preferential access to more desirable mates and to
Speaker 1: more mates if you have them. And even in terms
Speaker 1: of survival, like in the Ace of Paraguay, for example,
Speaker 1: a small hunter gatherer group that Kim Hill has studied extensively,
Speaker 1: the people in the group give better healthcare to the
Speaker 1: children of the high status males, so as they pick
Speaker 1: the thorns out of their feet, they are very solicitous
Speaker 1: of And so even in terms of of survival, status
Speaker 1: translates into integrate or survival. So the key point that
Speaker 1: I was making here is that evolutionary theory provides a
Speaker 1: precise definition of what we mean when we say is
Speaker 1: this functional? And just to make one last point on
Speaker 1: this I'm rambling a little bit, is that in the
Speaker 1: field of psychology, Scott as i as I think you're
Speaker 1: probably aware, the term function or adaptive is used. It
Speaker 1: has been used, and is used very loosely in the field.
Speaker 1: So if you read like don't social psychologist, the it's
Speaker 1: adaptive to do x, or it's adaptive to have high
Speaker 1: self esteem, or it's functional or dysfunctional, and really what
Speaker 1: many of these are are kind of informal intuitive appeals
Speaker 1: to what people feel is bad rather than a precise, clear,
Speaker 1: definite mission of what we mean by adaptive or what
Speaker 1: we mean by the evolved proper function from an evolutionary perspective.
Speaker 1: So your point is very well taken. A lot of well,
Speaker 1: some evolutionary biologists as well as others have criticized the
Speaker 1: field of evolutionary psychology is not being up to the
Speaker 1: rigorous standards of evolutionary biology. For instance, some have criticized
Speaker 1: this they call it just so stories. What I wanted
Speaker 1: to ask you is, what are some criticisms of the
Speaker 1: field of evolutionary psychology that you think the critics get right?
Speaker 1: And which ones do you think they really get wrong? Well?
Speaker 1: I think they get most of them wrong. So, but
Speaker 1: what I would say is, like any like any discipline,
Speaker 1: there are good practitioners and bad practitioners. There's the whole
Speaker 1: range of quality of scientific research done in the field.
Speaker 1: And is there bad work and evolutionary psycholic absolutely, is
Speaker 1: their good work? Absolutely? Is there good and bad work
Speaker 1: in cognitive psychology and cognitive science and social psychology. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you see the whole spectrum there, and I think evolutionary
Speaker 1: psychology is no different in that respect. The field of
Speaker 1: evolutionary psychology. It's kind of ironic that you mentioned evolutionary biologists.
Speaker 1: Many practitioners of evolutionary psychology. Indeed, many of the founders
Speaker 1: are evolutionary biologists. So the first president of the Human
Speaker 1: Behavior and Evolution Society was W. D. Hamilton, the founder
Speaker 1: of inclusive fitness theory, one of the most important, if
Speaker 1: not the most important evolutionary biologists of the last of
Speaker 1: the twentieth century. Also George C. Williams, of Richard Alexander,
Speaker 1: Richard Dawkins. There are many prominent evolutionary biologists who will
Speaker 1: or evolutionary psychologists in our basically supporters of the field.
Speaker 1: You know. The the just so story issue is is
Speaker 1: in my view a kind of in some ways a
Speaker 1: silly meme and but in some ways has forced the
Speaker 1: field to be clearer. So the notion that I mean
Speaker 1: this is a term that was coined by Steven J. Gould,
Speaker 1: you know, many many decades ago, and it was used
Speaker 1: actually in his case, not to criticize evolutionary psychology, but
Speaker 1: the field of evolutionary biology. And I think that the
Speaker 1: criticism that that you just sit around and come up
Speaker 1: with some cocktail party speculation. Of course people do that,
Speaker 1: but that's not what gets into the scientific journals. So
Speaker 1: it's not what gets into proceedings of the National Academy
Speaker 1: of Science. So we just published an article on status there.
Speaker 1: And if I sent an article and said, oh, I
Speaker 1: was sitting around having drinks with colleagues and I offered
Speaker 1: this speculation, I'd like to publish it at PNAS, they
Speaker 1: would of course laugh me out. It would get desk rejected.
Speaker 1: So the game is really a science, pure science game.
Speaker 1: You know, does the theory lead to precise predictions that
Speaker 1: have not yet been tested? You go out and you
Speaker 1: do the work, and you test them and they're either
Speaker 1: confirmed or not confirmed or some say falsified. And then
Speaker 1: across from multiple studies you examined the weight of the evidence.
Speaker 1: And in fact, the field of evolutionary psychology and I
Speaker 1: would say mating has really been a success story of
Speaker 1: the field of evolutionary psychology in the sense that it
Speaker 1: has had not only predictive value, that a specific evolutionary
Speaker 1: hypopsies have led to novel discoveries about our mating mind
Speaker 1: that we did know about before. But it also has
Speaker 1: an important quality, uh, namely heuristic value. That is, it
Speaker 1: guides researchers to important domains of inquiry that no other
Speaker 1: theoretical framework or perspective leads you to those domains. And
Speaker 1: so it's uncovered things like the importance of genetic relatedness
Speaker 1: on altruism and helping behavior. It's led to the discovery
Speaker 1: of just why women engage in short term mating. So
Speaker 1: something that that I've studied, uh, you know, which is
Speaker 1: kind of a has been a puzzle and evolutionary puzzle,
Speaker 1: and and so and so it has those qualities predictive
Speaker 1: and and heuristic value again with the qualification that they're
Speaker 1: good and bad practitioners as in every field. Yeah there, yes,
Speaker 1: that's that's a very fair point. You know. Sometimes the
Speaker 1: media will will highlight a really shoddy evolutionary psychology stuy
Speaker 1: that legitimately does tell a justo story to explain some
Speaker 1: study that was found among forty college sophomores. And then
Speaker 1: it's says, now we have a theory of human male
Speaker 1: meeting behavior. Well, sophomore men, I'll tell you are not
Speaker 1: necessarily generalizable to all of male human nature. But they'll
Speaker 1: blow that up and they'll say, you know, see, the
Speaker 1: field of evolutionary psychology is junk. Yeah, right, right, So
Speaker 1: but I mean you could level that you could do
Speaker 1: the same thing in every field, like any phenomenon in
Speaker 1: the field of social psychology or cognitive science. You could say,
Speaker 1: you know, look at this, you know, I mean, in
Speaker 1: many cases in the field of social psychology, there really
Speaker 1: isn't what I would consider a proper theory behind it,
Speaker 1: you know, And as you know, I know you've I've
Speaker 1: listened to several of your really fascinating podcasts, and you've
Speaker 1: talked about the replication crisis issue, and you know, and
Speaker 1: phenomena that get are splashing and get a lot of
Speaker 1: attention but turn out not to be real phenomena, and
Speaker 1: but often there was never any cogent theory behind those
Speaker 1: phenomena anyway. So you know, and I think you know
Speaker 1: a suite of things that we've that I'm referring to
Speaker 1: because you've talked about them on your previous podcasts. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: although I would say that the field that seems to
Speaker 1: have shown the least replication failures is the is my
Speaker 1: field of personality psychology. And now I'm not I'm always
Speaker 1: saying that, you know, not to say that's perfect, but
Speaker 1: I would be very surprised if we find someday, oh, look,
Speaker 1: it turns out that introverts don't exist. You know, we
Speaker 1: didn't replicate that, or like, you know, like or that
Speaker 1: there is no personality variation in terms of neuroticism, you know, like, oops,
Speaker 1: we failed a replicate. There's something about the field of
Speaker 1: personal psychology which is more replical because it looks at
Speaker 1: you know, reliability over time. I mean, that's built that's
Speaker 1: built into the measure. Social psychology is like, you know,
Speaker 1: to hold this cup, does this person feel more warmth?
Speaker 1: You know, like, and then we'll say, well, this is
Speaker 1: always going to be the case. Well that's that's riskier.
Speaker 1: It's riskier, yeah, yeah, and and and yeah and and
Speaker 1: the more counterintuitive, which has been you know, one of
Speaker 1: the favored tendency in the field of social psychology. The
Speaker 1: more counterintuitive, the more important it seems, and more flashy.
Speaker 1: It's like your grandmother couldn't have told you this, and
Speaker 1: it's it seems like it's those counterintuitive things that seem
Speaker 1: the least replicable. But but yeah, I mean I was,
Speaker 1: as you know, I was trained, As I mentioned, I
Speaker 1: was trained in personality psychology also, and there I would
Speaker 1: the domain of mating and in particular the work that
Speaker 1: has been most influential of mine. I've been very happy
Speaker 1: with how replicable it is. So it is even people
Speaker 1: who don't like the theory and who don't like, say,
Speaker 1: the discovery of sex differences, they're still able to replicate
Speaker 1: the results in their laboratories. And so sex differences and
Speaker 1: may preferences, sexual jealousy, predictors of retention, tactics, even some
Speaker 1: recent stuff. So there there are there's a group of
Speaker 1: evolutionary psychologists that have devoted their labs to replicating and phenomena,
Speaker 1: and in some cases they're not replicable. But I've been
Speaker 1: very pleasantly surprised that the findings coming out of my
Speaker 1: lab are so you know, it's that's and I mean
Speaker 1: it's something I train my students on. I don't know
Speaker 1: if you you train your students on this, but is
Speaker 1: like you don't want to you don't want to go
Speaker 1: for the short term game, you know, because ultimately if
Speaker 1: you do some study and then turn you know, so
Speaker 1: what I I've always done. I was trained at Berkeley,
Speaker 1: which was very much of an empirical tradition, where that
Speaker 1: was theory didn't matter at all. What you wanted was
Speaker 1: solid empirical findings and so and so that was kind
Speaker 1: of core to my training. And I want to do
Speaker 1: enough studies so that I am confident of the results
Speaker 1: of those studies before I publish, you know. And that's why,
Speaker 1: like one of my most well known studies, of the
Speaker 1: thirty seven Culture Study, I wanted to do it and
Speaker 1: as many cultures as I possibly could. I didn't want
Speaker 1: to do it on forty college sophomores, you know, because
Speaker 1: I knew no one believe it, and I wanted to
Speaker 1: assure that it was solid in my mind before putting
Speaker 1: out there in the public domain. Yeah. Yeah, And when
Speaker 1: I look at that research. Also, sometimes I look at
Speaker 1: David Schmidt's research and I look and see just the broad,
Speaker 1: expansive nature of it and the attempt to replicate it.
Speaker 1: Maybe evolution psychologists are held to a higher standard, sometimes
Speaker 1: unfairly perhaps, or maybe fairly because the stakes might be
Speaker 1: higher in terms of the topics they are studied and
Speaker 1: the implications of them. I don't know, but it does
Speaker 1: seem like sometimes, you know, it's like you can do
Speaker 1: a study where you replicate something in like virtually every
Speaker 1: culture on the earth and basically almost every human and
Speaker 1: then people like that's a just so story, you know,
Speaker 1: it's like, what else do you want from us? Are
Speaker 1: you doing that anyway? I'm being a little bit cheeky,
Speaker 1: But do you see my point? Yeah? Yeah, No, I
Speaker 1: absolutely do see your point. I mean, I'm perfectly fine
Speaker 1: with evolutionary psychology being held to a higher standard. I mean,
Speaker 1: I think all fields should be held to high standards,
Speaker 1: but I'm perfectly fine with that. And I think that
Speaker 1: partly as a result of the criticism that is generated,
Speaker 1: it has forced people to adhere to a higher standard,
Speaker 1: at least in many cases. So I'm quite comfortable with that.
Speaker 1: The other sort of related thing is that sometimes it's
Speaker 1: not just the theory. Sometimes people don't like the findings
Speaker 1: and so for and I don't either, you know, so,
Speaker 1: for example, the you know, the fact that men tend
Speaker 1: to prioritize physical appearance and physical attractiveness in maating more
Speaker 1: than women do, although women do as well, and that
Speaker 1: women prioritize the resource acquisition abilities. I don't necessarily like
Speaker 1: that finding. I don't like the finding that there are
Speaker 1: sex differences in desire for sexual variety, which actually gets
Speaker 1: us into the new book. I think it's it would
Speaker 1: be nice if the sexes were identical on average in
Speaker 1: their desire for sexual variety, how many partners you want,
Speaker 1: amount of investment prior to sex, etc. So the findings
Speaker 1: coming out are not necessarily finding that I'll like, which
Speaker 1: is sometimes what people think. They think that if you
Speaker 1: find something that somehow you think that you're endorsing it,
Speaker 1: or you think it's a good thing or morally respectable,
Speaker 1: or some kind of view that you're trying to promulgate,
Speaker 1: which is simply not the case. I mean, if that's
Speaker 1: the case, I'm in trouble because I mean I've studied
Speaker 1: sexual harassment, sexual coercion, murder, stocking and everything. If I
Speaker 1: thought these things were good, well I never would have
Speaker 1: written the book. I mean, I study these things because
Speaker 1: I precisely the opposite. I think that there their ills.
Speaker 1: Sexual violence toward women broadly speaking, is a horrible problem
Speaker 1: that's worldwide. I actually view it as the most why
Speaker 1: it spread human rights violation period in the world, in
Speaker 1: the sense that it affects every women in every ethnic group,
Speaker 1: every culture, every political system in every culture around the
Speaker 1: world affects half the population. And of course it affects
Speaker 1: more than half the population because it affects all those
Speaker 1: people who care about potential victims of sexual violence, which
Speaker 1: are the mother's brothers, fathers, uncles, etc. And it also
Speaker 1: affects even the women who are not who manage to
Speaker 1: avoid any kind of sexual violence, which from an evolutionary perspective,
Speaker 1: is bypassing female choice. That it affects women because they
Speaker 1: have to engage in defensive behavior to avoid becoming a victim,
Speaker 1: and so it's very costly even for those women who
Speaker 1: have not personally been victimized. So anyway, that's that's really
Speaker 1: sexual violence forward women is the broad umbrella of the
Speaker 1: topics that I talk about in my new book when
Speaker 1: men behave badly because things like sexual deception in the
Speaker 1: dating market, intimate partner violence, stalking, sexual harassment, sexual assault,
Speaker 1: all these things are things that try to bypass female choice,
Speaker 1: strategies that mainly use to try to bypass female choice,
Speaker 1: and so they all fall under this broad rubric of
Speaker 1: sexual violence toward women. Yeah, I was going to go
Speaker 1: piecemeal through a lot of what you just said, So
Speaker 1: but that was a good general review of your of
Speaker 1: the whole book. Yeah, you do. Know you start off
Speaker 1: and you make it very clear in the diroduction of
Speaker 1: your book, you said, my hope is that this knowledge
Speaker 1: will then if it everyone who has suffered from sexual
Speaker 1: conflict and who cares about its victims, and that it
Speaker 1: will ultimately help us to reduce the occurrence of sexual
Speaker 1: conflict and heal the harm it creates. Was that, I mean,
Speaker 1: I don't I don't think that was the goal. Like
Speaker 1: when you originally went in the field, I mean, I
Speaker 1: feel like you were just interested in the science of
Speaker 1: this stuff and in understanding the truth. I maybe it's
Speaker 1: somewhere along the line it start you started to get
Speaker 1: more interested in uh in in in the practical aspect
Speaker 1: of it. Yes, yeah, No, that's a that's a that's
Speaker 1: a very fair characterization, that is And in some ways
Speaker 1: this is something that I regret about myself and has
Speaker 1: to do with my own personal development in the field
Speaker 1: that I've historically used to fancying myself as a pure
Speaker 1: scientist and kind of even look down with some scorn
Speaker 1: about people who that's the David Buss I know, that's
Speaker 1: the David I saw it each Bess and then I
Speaker 1: read this book and I'm like, who's this David Bussy. Right, Well,
Speaker 1: there's people change over time. And it was partly in
Speaker 1: the process of doing this research and writing the book
Speaker 1: that caused this shift, because I thought, well, this is
Speaker 1: these are major, major problems. Even in the United States.
Speaker 1: I think it's twenty seven to thirty percent of women
Speaker 1: will experience intimate partner violence. Just to take one example,
Speaker 1: A fifty nine percent or ballpark will experience sexual harassment
Speaker 1: at some point. So why shouldn't the basic science inform
Speaker 1: and help to solve some of these widespread social problems.
Speaker 1: And the answer is that it should. And this is
Speaker 1: like even I've gone into I'm teaching at the University
Speaker 1: of Texas now, but I think this has occurs everywhere
Speaker 1: throughout universities. Just as an example, they have sexual harassment policies,
Speaker 1: they have sexual harassment training materials, they have a college
Speaker 1: freshman orientation where they inform women. But when you go
Speaker 1: through all these materials, they're not at all informed by
Speaker 1: the science of these things. And I think that, I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm going to be yeah, well, I'm going to be
Speaker 1: approaching our university specifically, but we're also going to be
Speaker 1: developing websites to help victims of these things because there
Speaker 1: are a lot of misinformation out there, and we've done
Speaker 1: this for stalking. So with a former student of Mind,
Speaker 1: Josh Duntley, we did develop a website called stalkinghelp dot org,
Speaker 1: which is basically a website that contains scientific information and
Speaker 1: then practical information about where victims of stalking can go
Speaker 1: to find help. And ideally we'll get to the point
Speaker 1: where we have these help sites for all these things
Speaker 1: in them a partner violence, sexual harassment, sexual assault, and
Speaker 1: so forth. That's really great. So why are women and
Speaker 1: men so seemingly at odds with each other right now
Speaker 1: in this cultural moment? Well as you would probably argue
Speaker 1: throughout the course of human evolution, but a lot of
Speaker 1: issues that maybe have been swept under the rug are
Speaker 1: coming into white more now, I would say, in our
Speaker 1: cultural moment than ever before. What do you think is
Speaker 1: the explanation of this? And you know, what are the
Speaker 1: standard explanations, and then how do you think, like an
Speaker 1: evolutionary approach can offer additional explanation? Yeah, well, so good questions,
Speaker 1: big questions, So to deal with them in the order
Speaker 1: in which you ask them if I can remember. So,
Speaker 1: sexual conflict originated with the origin of sexual reproduction itself,
Speaker 1: so we're talking about somewhere between a billion and two
Speaker 1: billion years ago. So sexual reproduction itself. Once you have
Speaker 1: two sexes evolving and sex being defined, bi evolutionary biologist
Speaker 1: says according to the size of the game meats. So
Speaker 1: the sex cells that males are defined as the ones
Speaker 1: with the small gam meats, females with the large nutrient
Speaker 1: rich game meats in the human case, sperm and egg.
Speaker 1: And so once you have this sexual reproduction, what's optimal
Speaker 1: for the male will in certain conditions differ from what's
Speaker 1: optimal for the female. And so there's what I call
Speaker 1: this zone of conflict where you have adaptations in one
Speaker 1: sex designed to influence or manipulate the other to be
Speaker 1: closer to its optimum, and then counter adaptations in the
Speaker 1: other sex to resist those manipulations. And very much like
Speaker 1: predators in prey, which is a between species coevolutionary arms race,
Speaker 1: what conflict between the sexes is it results in what's
Speaker 1: called sexually antagonistic coevolution, which is very much analosis to
Speaker 1: the predator and prey coevolution where it just and it's
Speaker 1: been happening, as I said, for let's say conservatively a
Speaker 1: billion years and then and then of course over the
Speaker 1: entire course of human evolutionary history. And so to take
Speaker 1: one example, it is often the case because females biologically
Speaker 1: invest more, starting with the the the nutrient rich egg,
Speaker 1: but also with the internal female fertilization, the nine month pregnancy, lactation,
Speaker 1: et cetera. Because females invest obligatorially so much more than
Speaker 1: males to produce a single child, it's often in female
Speaker 1: interest to be to be very choosy and discriminating and
Speaker 1: discerning about who they have sex with and who they
Speaker 1: mate with and a Whereas from a male perspective, because
Speaker 1: of that minimum minimum, lower obligatory investment, it's sometimes beneficial
Speaker 1: to initiate sex sooner, more frequently, etc. Than is in
Speaker 1: female's interest. And so you have this in this example
Speaker 1: of this zone of conflict where and it's a zune
Speaker 1: of conflict that results in a lot of sexual conflict.
Speaker 1: So now your other question was, well, why now, from
Speaker 1: a cultural standpoint, why are these things so prominent now?
Speaker 1: And I think that, I mean, I don't have a
Speaker 1: definitive answer for that. I think they have become prominent
Speaker 1: at different points in our cultural evolution. So, for example,
Speaker 1: it is not recently, but several decades ago that laws
Speaker 1: got changed to make marital rape rape. So it used
Speaker 1: to be the case, if you go back thirty or
Speaker 1: so years in the United States, rape was defined as
Speaker 1: rape of someone who was not your house and it
Speaker 1: was viewed as an incoherent concept, rape of spouse. It
Speaker 1: doesn't make any sense, and many countries in the world
Speaker 1: today still have that it is literally not rape because
Speaker 1: the husband is entitled by law to sexual access to
Speaker 1: the wife's body whenever he wants, in whatever way he wants.
Speaker 1: But now so there was a cultural shift so that
Speaker 1: in every state in the United States, marital rape is
Speaker 1: a crime and it is against the law. So these
Speaker 1: cultural shifts, so the current manifestation like with the Me
Speaker 1: Too movement and the attention given to sexual harassment, and
Speaker 1: the attention given to very prominent, high status, wealthy men
Speaker 1: who have used their status and wealth to evade the
Speaker 1: consequences of their illegal action. So Bill Cosby, Harvey Weinstein,
Speaker 1: Jeffrey Epstein, and many other that are just I mean
Speaker 1: almost every week, it seems like a new one is
Speaker 1: coming to light. And I think that, you know so,
Speaker 1: But even with sexual harassment, there was a in the
Speaker 1: nineteen nineties, there was with Clarence Thomas and Anita Hill.
Speaker 1: There was a huge amount of attention to sexual harassment,
Speaker 1: and then it kind of died away. And then with
Speaker 1: the Me Too movement, prominent actresses coming forward, you know,
Speaker 1: and these are people who can't be dismissed, you know,
Speaker 1: coming forward and saying that Harvey Weinstein did this and
Speaker 1: to so many victims, and this is one of the
Speaker 1: and so I think that I think that it's actually
Speaker 1: very good, it's salutary. Some think that it's gone too far,
Speaker 1: but I think that it has brought attention to high status,
Speaker 1: high resourcemen who have been able to get away with
Speaker 1: these sexual crimes for many, many years. And that's one
Speaker 1: of the qualities, and I talk about this in the
Speaker 1: book to some extent, with both sexual assault and sexual harassment,
Speaker 1: is that it's not all men who do it. It's
Speaker 1: a subset of men who have certain personality characteristics, and
Speaker 1: it's a subset of men who are serial harassers and
Speaker 1: serial assaults like Harvey Weinstein. Or Bill Cosby or Jeffrey Epstein,
Speaker 1: and women know this, but it hasn't received enough scientific attention.
Speaker 1: Is that women in the workplace, a new woman will
Speaker 1: come in and other women will say, oh, just be
Speaker 1: careful not to be alone with this guy, because he
Speaker 1: tends to have wandering hands or whatever. And so it
Speaker 1: kind of highlights the fact that it is not all men,
Speaker 1: and what you have is a small number of men
Speaker 1: who are committing a large number of acts of sexual
Speaker 1: harassment and sexual assault. And that's why it's especially important
Speaker 1: to identify those men, to identify what characteristics they have
Speaker 1: personality and mating strategy, and also the circumstances in which
Speaker 1: they're able to commit these commit these crimes versus the
Speaker 1: circumstances which inhibit them from doing so. And that's one
Speaker 1: of the things that I has also been somewhat of
Speaker 1: a shift in my thinking in the book is trying
Speaker 1: more fully to integrate individual differences combined with social circumstances,
Speaker 1: combined with evolved proclivities in males, all to bear into
Speaker 1: an integrated framework to understand these forms of sexual violence.
Speaker 1: And that hasn't been done in the past, at least
Speaker 1: not to a great degree that that is the field
Speaker 1: of evolutionary psychology. And this has been one of my
Speaker 1: criticisms coming out of an individual difference tradition has historically
Speaker 1: ignored individual differences and focused pretty much exclusively on species
Speaker 1: typical characteristics. And that's fine, but we have to recognize
Speaker 1: how profound and important these individual differences are. Well, you're
Speaker 1: preaching in the choir. I completely agree. I'm an individual
Speaker 1: differences researcher, and that's what I tried to bring to
Speaker 1: the table of evolutionary psychology. In whatever contribution I made
Speaker 1: to the field, I hope you know it is the evolution.
Speaker 1: It's the individual differences aspect. For instance, I have published
Speaker 1: papers in the evolution of intelligence. You know, why did
Speaker 1: the G factor evolve? You know, these kinds of questions. Okay,
Speaker 1: so tell me about the bad boy paradox, because I
Speaker 1: think our listeners, you know, that's what they really want
Speaker 1: to know. They're okay, all this mumbo jumbo. Why do
Speaker 1: I keep following for the bad boy? You know? Can
Speaker 1: you talk about some of the research on the dark triad,
Speaker 1: which is an area I've studied as well, and I
Speaker 1: just by the way, I just recently proposed there's a
Speaker 1: light triad, so maybe we should talk about that later,
Speaker 1: but talk a little bit of it. And I think
Speaker 1: light triad people could be attractive too. But can you
Speaker 1: talk a little bit about why the dark triad is
Speaker 1: so attractive? Yeah? So, well, first, maybe for listeners who
Speaker 1: might not know, briefly, mention what the dark triad are.
Speaker 1: So dark triad is a narcissism, machiavellianism, and psychopathy are
Speaker 1: the three that have been called the dark triad. With
Speaker 1: narcissism just quick call mark of a sense of entitlement,
Speaker 1: including sexual entitlement, grandiosity, feelings that you are so special
Speaker 1: that the rules don't apply to you, et cetera. Psychopathy
Speaker 1: one of the hallmarks is lack of empathy. So most humans,
Speaker 1: most of us have an empathy circuit where you know
Speaker 1: if someone gets harmed, if a child falls down, if
Speaker 1: a dog gets run over by a car or hit
Speaker 1: by acquir we feel this empathy. And whereas those low
Speaker 1: on ps those high on psychopathy don't. They might laugh
Speaker 1: if a dog gets hit and so and then Machiavellianism
Speaker 1: has to do with those who pursue an exploitative social strategy.
Speaker 1: So these are cheaters, deceivers, viewing high mac people view
Speaker 1: others as pawns to be used and manipulated like pawns
Speaker 1: on a chessboard, for their own instrumental gains, very selfish gains.
Speaker 1: And so so you have this high dark triad and
Speaker 1: when you combine it with the dispositional pursuit of a
Speaker 1: short term mating strategy, this is a very this is
Speaker 1: a deadly combination. So these guys who are high on
Speaker 1: dark triad, high and short term mating are most likely
Speaker 1: to be the serial sexual as or serial sexual assaulters,
Speaker 1: et cetera. Now, why are some women, I would say
Speaker 1: some women not who women are attracted to these guys.
Speaker 1: First of all, they often play a good game, so
Speaker 1: they can be very charming. They often display cues of
Speaker 1: high status, so for example, they take risks and command
Speaker 1: the attention of the group. And that's one of the
Speaker 1: cues that we use to evaluate status is the attention structure.
Speaker 1: The high status people tend to be those to whom
Speaker 1: the most people pay the most attention, and so high
Speaker 1: dark triad people often command attention. And then the other
Speaker 1: is they are often risk taking, and women are attracted
Speaker 1: to risk takers. In part because those who take risks engage.
Speaker 1: We take animals at their own words, so to speak.
Speaker 1: That is, those who take risk we think can afford
Speaker 1: to take risks. You know, if you're skydiving or you know,
Speaker 1: motorcycle riding, that you that you have the physical and
Speaker 1: psychological capabilities to successfully engage in these risks without without harm.
Speaker 1: And so there are many qualities that are attractive, okay,
Speaker 1: but these hygdark triad guys are disastrous as long term mates.
Speaker 1: They might be very exciting for short term mating, but
Speaker 1: they're disastrous as long term mating. They are more likely
Speaker 1: to cheat on the woman, more likely to dump her,
Speaker 1: more likely to engage in multiple relationships simultaneously while deceiving
Speaker 1: each one about you know who thinks that they're in
Speaker 1: a monogamous relationship, uh, and they're very good at seduction
Speaker 1: and abandon them. So it tends to be younger women
Speaker 1: who are most attracted to these so called bad boys.
Speaker 1: As women experience some of the harms associated with being
Speaker 1: involved in bad boys and mature, they tend to grow
Speaker 1: out of this being attracted to bad boy phenomenon. So
Speaker 1: so experience is sometimes very very useful. Sometimes a hard lesson.
Speaker 1: Now you mentioned that that there it exists dark triad women,
Speaker 1: but they have there's a different flavor to them, like
Speaker 1: I feel like there's a different They use different, as
Speaker 1: you would say, meeting strategy tactics. Yeah, well so hydro
Speaker 1: I triad women. One of the tactics they use is
Speaker 1: they use their sexuality for instrumental gains. So, for example,
Speaker 1: they might use sex to flirt with the boss or
Speaker 1: even I actually know cases like this, sleep with the
Speaker 1: boss in order to get favorable treatment. I hope you
Speaker 1: don't know about that personally, I know, I help you
Speaker 1: write the boss. No, no, no, I've never been the boss,
Speaker 1: but no, but I know of cases in academia where
Speaker 1: I know one case where a woman who is particularly
Speaker 1: high on the dark triad slept with the chair of
Speaker 1: the search committee and succeeded and got the job. So
Speaker 1: obviously I won't mention any names involved in this. So
Speaker 1: they use sexuality to get ahead, but they also engage
Speaker 1: in mate poaching, so they have no qualms, no moral
Speaker 1: qualms about sleeping with their friend's husband for example, or
Speaker 1: a boyfriend, either just often for just short term gain
Speaker 1: or in some cases trying to glor them away for
Speaker 1: a longer term relationship. So there, if you ask who
Speaker 1: does the mate poaching, it's high dark triad women. High
Speaker 1: dark triad men also do that. They don't have any
Speaker 1: compunction about trying to seduce their friend's girlfriend or wife.
Speaker 1: So that's that's one thing. But the high dark triad women.
Speaker 1: The reason I focus more on men than women in
Speaker 1: this case is that it is men who are engaging
Speaker 1: in the more severe forms of sexual violence toward toward
Speaker 1: in this case toward women, as the men who are
Speaker 1: more likely to beat up their partners. Stalking, criminal stalking,
Speaker 1: eighty percent of the stalkers are men, and often these
Speaker 1: are stalkers have mating related motives. Sexual harassment, vast majority
Speaker 1: of sexual harassers are men. And then and then when
Speaker 1: it comes to sexual assault, of course it's like ninety
Speaker 1: nine percent plus that are that are men and so
Speaker 1: and so that's why I focus more. Although I talk
Speaker 1: about dark Triad women, I focus more heavily on dark
Speaker 1: Triad men because they're the ones who engage in the
Speaker 1: more severe forms of sexual violence. Yeah, no, and rightly. So.
Speaker 1: I was just wondering because I wanted to ask, are
Speaker 1: dark tried women and dark tried men attracted to each other,
Speaker 1: like when like when they meet each other, do they
Speaker 1: tend to like subconsciously at least get attracted to each other. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a good question. I don't know the answer to
Speaker 1: that in terms of empirical work that's been done on it.
Speaker 1: I just have anecdotal evidence because I know some women
Speaker 1: who are high on this dark triad and and characteristic
Speaker 1: of the himachiavelianism of using you know, exploitation as a
Speaker 1: social strategy. What they tend to do is is in
Speaker 1: their in their mating is is to use like one
Speaker 1: guy for his resources, another guy to provide a kind
Speaker 1: of secure, stable backup mate. Uh, you know. And so
Speaker 1: I haven't noticed in my personal observations and the tendencies
Speaker 1: of dark triad when men cooking up with dark triad men.
Speaker 1: But as you know, assortment for similarities is one of
Speaker 1: the law laws of mating, although for personality characteristics that's less.
Speaker 1: So assortment coefficients tend to be highest for intelligence and
Speaker 1: political orientation and religiosity and things like that, and there
Speaker 1: is positive assortment for personality, but it's it's at a
Speaker 1: lower level. Well, yeah, you've done terrific work on what
Speaker 1: do people look for in a meat and regardless of
Speaker 1: the personality. I really liked that. I like because I'm
Speaker 1: a creativity researcher, and you found that creativity is up there,
Speaker 1: you know, what people look for in a meat and
Speaker 1: as well as compassion. You know, in all this dark
Speaker 1: side talk, we can we talk about humans have the
Speaker 1: capacity for compassion and for overriding these instincts for self control.
Speaker 1: I mean, does don't men have don't men have self control?
Speaker 1: You know, they may they may have these and I know,
Speaker 1: I know obviously you know you would say they do.
Speaker 1: But I think it's important these kind of discussions to
Speaker 1: if someone is not familiar with the field and they're
Speaker 1: just listening to this stuff maybe for the first time,
Speaker 1: to just outline the naturalistic fallacy as well as make
Speaker 1: clear that evolutionary evolve instincts doesn't mean we didn't also
Speaker 1: evolve overriding h you know, self control functions as well. Absolutely, yeah, absolutely,
Speaker 1: and even in the you know, the starkest case of
Speaker 1: this in my own research has to do with homicidal
Speaker 1: ideation or homicidal fantasies, which most people have had at
Speaker 1: one point or another. But most people don't go out
Speaker 1: and kill, you know, it's very, very statistically, extremely rare.
Speaker 1: And I think actually that's one of the functions of
Speaker 1: scenario building of this sort is to inhibit that. Because
Speaker 1: people have homicidal fantasy, usually about someone who's wronged them
Speaker 1: in some profound way. In the case of women, that's
Speaker 1: guys who have raped them, they have homicidal fantasies about
Speaker 1: these guys. But the scenario building that people do when
Speaker 1: they experience homicidal ideation almost in very released the conclusion
Speaker 1: that no, this is not a good strategy to pursue.
Speaker 1: It's not a good way to solve the problem. And
Speaker 1: so I think it actually does serve that inhibitory function,
Speaker 1: which may seem ironic to some, that homicidal fantasy is
Speaker 1: actually an inhibitory mechanism, you know, in most cases. But
Speaker 1: the other issue, so I agree with you totally. We
Speaker 1: have to have these self control mechanisms and also superordinate mechanisms.
Speaker 1: So just as it's like if we have desires for
Speaker 1: calorically rich food that might be bad for us, if
Speaker 1: we're trying to lose weight, or if we're trying to
Speaker 1: eat healthfully, we might override those you've all taste preferences
Speaker 1: for a different goal, you know, for a more healthy goal,
Speaker 1: And so we have to We have different underlying desires, goals,
Speaker 1: and motives at any one point in time, and so
Speaker 1: we have to sequence that suppress some allow you know,
Speaker 1: circumstances to dictate which ones get expressed when and so forth.
Speaker 1: But importantly, I think there profound individual differences in this
Speaker 1: and so the Like an example, there are some actors,
Speaker 1: as you know, who have been called out for sexual harassment,
Speaker 1: in some cases sexual assault. But you think, like on
Speaker 1: the lark Light Triad issue, like Tom Hanks as an actor,
Speaker 1: could you imagine him engaging in this bad behavior? And
Speaker 1: I think the answer is no, you would predict he's
Speaker 1: he's he's he would never do that. You know, he
Speaker 1: just doesn't likely doesn't have those impulses that need to
Speaker 1: be inhibited to begin with, right, So so I think
Speaker 1: that you never know what he probably has freaking fantasies,
Speaker 1: you know. No, I hear, I hear you. I get
Speaker 1: your point. I think it's just just a meta comment
Speaker 1: on the field. Reading your book, there's such a there's
Speaker 1: a whole lexicon of it's like a whole different language.
Speaker 1: You know that you calling these things. You know, you've
Speaker 1: got meat poaching, then you got meat insurance, you got
Speaker 1: you got I mean you know all these you know, strategies, tactics.
Speaker 1: It's I mean, you're so ensconched in it, David, I
Speaker 1: mean you you've worked in this field for how many years?
Speaker 1: These terms, and but like for the general public, like
Speaker 1: it's it's really actually getting up to speed on a
Speaker 1: whole new language. Yeah well and I think that yeah, yeah, well,
Speaker 1: thank you for pointing that out. I mean, the term
Speaker 1: bait poaching didn't exist until I think I was the
Speaker 1: first one who used it back in ninety four. But
Speaker 1: the thing is, it requires a new lexicon, a new
Speaker 1: scientific lexicon, because many of these phenomena have not been
Speaker 1: studied before. So even like with another take a slightly
Speaker 1: different example, mate retention. So in the insect or non
Speaker 1: human animal mating literature, there's the term made guarding, so,
Speaker 1: which is what a lot of male insects do. They
Speaker 1: made guard. They try to get the female and guard
Speaker 1: her prevent other males. But when I started studying this,
Speaker 1: guarding seemed to narrow a term, and so I use
Speaker 1: the term mate retention because in long term mating, it's
Speaker 1: not just a physical guarding, but it's also things like
Speaker 1: the lighter things like providing a mate with resources or benefits,
Speaker 1: or trying to embody do things that satisfy your mate's
Speaker 1: desires that are part of mate retention. And these are
Speaker 1: don't really neatly fall onto the narrow category of make guarding.
Speaker 1: And so that's why I think a novel scientific lexicon
Speaker 1: is is in many cases warranted here. So yeah, fair enough.
Speaker 1: Just to just to close the circle on the bad
Speaker 1: boy paradox, I wrote a book with Glenn Gear called
Speaker 1: a Meeting Intelligence Unleashed, and and I really looked into
Speaker 1: that whole literature on bad boys, the evolutionary psychology bad Boys.
Speaker 1: I have a whole chapter on that. My reading of
Speaker 1: the of the literature and total and my own attempt
Speaker 1: at the synthesis is that you know, women like these
Speaker 1: tender defenders. You know, it's not that they actually like
Speaker 1: the asshole, it's that the asshole traits sometimes come along
Speaker 1: for the ride. Or not only that, but you know
Speaker 1: they'll like someone who you know has a very strong
Speaker 1: personality can defend them. You know that that will stand
Speaker 1: up for them, will protect them, you know, and uh
Speaker 1: uh and and so it's not it's not exactly that
Speaker 1: they are attracted to the asshole traits, but it's just
Speaker 1: that some of these kinds of you know, aspects, these
Speaker 1: characteristics can very easily turn into assholey behavior. Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah, no,
Speaker 1: that that's fair enough. And yeah, it's a it's a
Speaker 1: very cool book. I like that whole whole idea of
Speaker 1: mating intelligence spect I think it was, yeah, Glenn edited
Speaker 1: a book or this was like there was one that
Speaker 1: was kind of for more, Yeah, mating and audience with
Speaker 1: Jeffrey Miller, and then and then I this is when
Speaker 1: I was in grad school. I reached out to Glenn
Speaker 1: and I said, hey, you don't know me, but I
Speaker 1: this is one of my first books, I said, I
Speaker 1: ever written wrote. I said, hey, Glenn, do you want
Speaker 1: to write a popular book with me about that? Because
Speaker 1: I loved it. I actually wrote a chapter in that
Speaker 1: edited book on humor, the role of humor and made selection.
Speaker 1: I wrote that with Jeffrey Miller and yeah, and Glenn
Speaker 1: and I turned it into a popular book afterwards. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: very cool. Yeah. You know one other thing I just
Speaker 1: wanted to loop back to the topic of inhibition and
Speaker 1: self control mechanisms, and this has to do with one
Speaker 1: of the What I think is that one of the
Speaker 1: most important sex differences, which is I've mentioned, is the
Speaker 1: desire for sexual variety. So and men just have on
Speaker 1: average higher levels of this. They desire a larger number
Speaker 1: of partners after less time has elapsed, and so forth.
Speaker 1: So men can walk down a city block and spot
Speaker 1: half a dozen women over the course of just a
Speaker 1: few minutes and have sexual attraction to those women. Now,
Speaker 1: if all of those desires were expressed in manifest behavior,
Speaker 1: we would live in a crazy, chaotic, antarchic, anarchic, anarchic
Speaker 1: and violent culture, and we don't. And in fact, most
Speaker 1: men inhibit the even if they're trying to attract a
Speaker 1: woman for a short term sexual encounter, they inhibit the
Speaker 1: direct expression of their sexual interests for that short term goal.
Speaker 1: That is, they often deceptively give off long term signals.
Speaker 1: They give off a nice guy signals, high investment signals,
Speaker 1: high commitment signals, high emotional involvement signals, UH in order
Speaker 1: to achieve a short term mating goal, and so and so,
Speaker 1: even in the service of short term mating, men often
Speaker 1: inhibit the expression of their uh, the sexual desires that
Speaker 1: they have. It's just called acting cool man, that's it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: be cool, don't be don't be so like, you know,
Speaker 1: don't come across so needy. What do you, uh, how
Speaker 1: do you feel the fact that you have a whole
Speaker 1: cottage industry of so called pickup artists who are using
Speaker 1: your book and the premine principles of evolutionary psychology to
Speaker 1: seduce women and sometimes you know, trick them. How do
Speaker 1: you feel about that? Well, well, I've looked into this
Speaker 1: and I've I've had conversations with people in that community,
Speaker 1: in the pickup artist community, and I think there's there's
Speaker 1: a whole range. So there are some like on the
Speaker 1: what I would say, on the better side, that are
Speaker 1: that are trying to train men just to be better
Speaker 1: quality men, better quality mates, in order to attract women.
Speaker 1: And so there's like and that's you know, most sort
Speaker 1: of honest courtship and improving your value as a mate.
Speaker 1: And then at the other end you have the sort
Speaker 1: of deceptive, smarmy, underhanded tactics, which which of course I
Speaker 1: think I find abhorrent. So so so you have the
Speaker 1: whole range. There just like you have the range of scientists,
Speaker 1: you have the whole range of picker versions. But I'm
Speaker 1: not sure that. I mean, I know that they occasionally
Speaker 1: cite my book, I haven't looked into them enough to
Speaker 1: know whether they cite it accurately or not. Like this
Speaker 1: whole concept of nagging, for example, like that the way
Speaker 1: to you know, you kind of like try to undermine
Speaker 1: the woman's self esteem and as a way of displaying
Speaker 1: your high status. I don't I don't see that as
Speaker 1: anchored in any way in evolutionary psychology. Yeah, I don't
Speaker 1: know what the evolutionary basis for nagging is. Yeah, uh,
Speaker 1: other than a motivation to maca ailianism to other than that,
Speaker 1: you know, Yeah, you know, I I did bring up
Speaker 1: the naturalistic faulcy earlier, but I think it's really really
Speaker 1: important for us to define that for people who've never
Speaker 1: heard of it. It kind of the naturalistic faucy like
Speaker 1: and under standing that really can quell a lot of
Speaker 1: criticisms of the field. I think, Yeah, so, well, there
Speaker 1: are multiple fallacies there. There's the you know, the if
Speaker 1: it exists, then it ought to exist, So there is
Speaker 1: ought fallacy, which of course is not which is a
Speaker 1: fallacy because it's like if you, and it gets back
Speaker 1: to an earlier point that we discussed about, if you
Speaker 1: study a phenomenon, that means somehow you endorse it. So
Speaker 1: the example I use in the book is like, if
Speaker 1: you're a cancer researcher, you're trying to study cancer to
Speaker 1: eliminate it or cure it. You're not studying it because
Speaker 1: you think cancer is a great thing and you want
Speaker 1: to promote it. And so I think the same is
Speaker 1: true here. I think that people, also getting back to
Speaker 1: the naturalistic fallacy, think that if something has evolved, then
Speaker 1: it must be a good thing. And then a related
Speaker 1: one is that if it evolved, you can't change it.
Speaker 1: So that what I call the interactability fallacy. And so
Speaker 1: I think if you and that's why in the book
Speaker 1: I I hope I take great pains to h and
Speaker 1: I did. This is actually going back to the very
Speaker 1: first book that I wrote, trying to dispel some of
Speaker 1: these myths. But they're very they're very persistent. So even
Speaker 1: after people have been exposed to these fallacies, they still
Speaker 1: tend to commit them. You know, So even intelligent professors
Speaker 1: that I talked to have you know, explain X evolved
Speaker 1: and they think, oh, therefore we're doomed not to change it. No,
Speaker 1: I think that in the case of sexuality, I think
Speaker 1: it's more difficult to change evolved desires than it is
Speaker 1: to change their expression and behavior. Getting back to that
Speaker 1: inhibition point, So you might not be able to change
Speaker 1: men's attraction to novel women who have certain cues, but
Speaker 1: you can change their expression of that their sexual desires
Speaker 1: in behavior, like, for example, in the workplace, where it's
Speaker 1: inappropriate to express those sexual desires. And that's really what
Speaker 1: sexual harassment laws and policies are all about, is trying
Speaker 1: to inhibit those So and if I didn't think change
Speaker 1: was possible, I wouldn't have written this book, you know.
Speaker 1: I mean, getting back to that earlier point that we
Speaker 1: talked about. I think these everybody would agree these are
Speaker 1: bad things, intimate partner violence, sexual harassment, sexual assault, and
Speaker 1: that we want to eliminate them, and a deeper understanding
Speaker 1: of their causes, the men who do these things, the
Speaker 1: conditions under which they do them is critical to eliminating
Speaker 1: their occurrence. So that's probably a more long winded answer
Speaker 1: than you wanted. For the naturalistic fallacy, What are your
Speaker 1: thoughts on the naturalistic fallacy? Oh, I think it's very
Speaker 1: important for people to recognize that nature in our our
Speaker 1: self as genes are not necessarily in are the best
Speaker 1: interest of the whole organism, you know. Like my own
Speaker 1: research is on well being and self actualization of our
Speaker 1: highest potential, you know. And it's sometimes reading some of
Speaker 1: this evolution of psychology literature, it feels like we're far
Speaker 1: away away from our from the high talking about the
Speaker 1: highest potential of humans. You know, you open up, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, uh an evolutionist, an evolution's cology textbook, like
Speaker 1: your textbook, and it's like the greatest hits of the
Speaker 1: dark side, you know. And that's why I really like
Speaker 1: Glenn Gear's new work and positive evolutionary Psychology. Actually wrote
Speaker 1: the forward to his new book that he wrote on
Speaker 1: positive psychology with Nicole Webban. I believe, yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: so and yeah I agree, and I like his work
Speaker 1: as well. But wouldn't you agree that that? Okay, So
Speaker 1: here here's the way I would put it. So, every
Speaker 1: human has a limited time and energy budget, and we
Speaker 1: have to allocate our time and energy to different endeavors.
Speaker 1: And the fact that there are these dark sides that
Speaker 1: women experience sexual violence, unwanted sexual attention, et cetera. Means
Speaker 1: they have to allocate time and energy to dealing with
Speaker 1: those and fending them off and grappling with them, and
Speaker 1: so eliminating some of those these darker phenomena would free
Speaker 1: up time and energy to devote or positive, positive aspects
Speaker 1: of positive psychology. I completely agree. I mean, that's that's
Speaker 1: why I think of it in terms of a hierarchy
Speaker 1: of needs perspective. Yeah, that's you know. My my new
Speaker 1: book on UH is on UH. You know, I revised
Speaker 1: Maso's hierarchy of needs, and I try to put a
Speaker 1: lot of it on an evolutionary foundation and and the
Speaker 1: whole you know, like like chapter one is all about
Speaker 1: all the you know, deprivations and when you live in
Speaker 1: environments that are harsh and unpredictable, you know, that causes
Speaker 1: our our focus to go right towards that and UH
Speaker 1: and activate certain evolutionary instincts that really hold us back
Speaker 1: from self actualization. So I think we're right there on
Speaker 1: the same page. I think that the dark side and
Speaker 1: the light side, though, that those research literatures need to
Speaker 1: be integrated, you know, so we can have a fuller
Speaker 1: picture of what humans could be. I guess that's what
Speaker 1: I would so so on that. What is your view
Speaker 1: of the light side the light triad? Is it just
Speaker 1: the opposite of the dark triad? Or is it it
Speaker 1: has different elements. We went into it with the research
Speaker 1: question is the light side just simply the reverse coded
Speaker 1: items of the dark side, And we found empirically that no,
Speaker 1: in fact, there's a point five correlation. It's not we're
Speaker 1: not talking. We're not saying that everyone who has low
Speaker 1: dark triad traits will necessarily have high light triad traits.
Speaker 1: You know, it's something else. And the three aspects we
Speaker 1: discovered are Kantianism, which was our cheeky reversal of Machiavelianism,
Speaker 1: which is, you know, constant chirogorical imperative, you know, is
Speaker 1: treat people as ends and to themselves, not means as
Speaker 1: an ends, not means to an ends. But humanism was
Speaker 1: a new one, a new facet that wasn't just merely
Speaker 1: the reverse coded treating every individual with dignity, worth and
Speaker 1: respect and faith in humanity, which is, do you have
Speaker 1: a general orientation in the world that you think that
Speaker 1: at heart humans are basically good kind of a worldview,
Speaker 1: and we found these three really coher together to this
Speaker 1: higher order factor. Okay, okay, very cool. I just I
Speaker 1: think my own curiosity and maybe listeners would be interested
Speaker 1: in this as well. So I was friends with Chris Peterson,
Speaker 1: who was one of the founders of the Positive Psychology
Speaker 1: movement and unfortunately passed away early. But he had these
Speaker 1: I think twenty four character traits. What how does your
Speaker 1: does his system hold up or was he over extending
Speaker 1: or didn't have a solid empirical basis given what you
Speaker 1: know now about the light triad, how do how do
Speaker 1: you view this and hear system? Yeah, so we actually
Speaker 1: looked at the correlation between the light triad and in
Speaker 1: all the character strengths the twenty four that Chris Peterson
Speaker 1: and Martin Seligman proposed, and you know that that research
Speaker 1: holds up quite well. There. You can actually go on
Speaker 1: the via Character Strengths Survey website and take the test
Speaker 1: and find out your character trengths. The point is that
Speaker 1: people who score high in the light try it tend
Speaker 1: to be very oriented towards this particular class of character strengths,
Speaker 1: which are self transcendent character strengths, so love, wisdom, they
Speaker 1: tend to behind wisdom, gratitude, hope, uh and and you know,
Speaker 1: things that are very compassionate oriented. So you know, there
Speaker 1: are better, better angels of human nature, right that that
Speaker 1: exists alongside what you've studied predominantly in your career. I
Speaker 1: think that you've done a great service. I mean, you're
Speaker 1: you're a legend in the field, and I just you know,
Speaker 1: I want us to be able to integrate into a
Speaker 1: full picture of what humans are and what they could be,
Speaker 1: you know, yeah, yeah, well, thank you for that. And
Speaker 1: I think it's a it's a worthy goal and important
Speaker 1: to recognize that what has evolved in humans is this
Speaker 1: whole spec sectrum of adaptations, of psychological adaptations, some of
Speaker 1: which are you know, nasty and brutish, and some of
Speaker 1: which are benevolent, altruistic, cooperative, benefit conferring, etc. And we
Speaker 1: have to recognize that we, each of us have all
Speaker 1: of these within us to some degree. And it's not
Speaker 1: just so That's why sort of painting human nature is
Speaker 1: either sort of intrinsically purely good and corrupted by civilization
Speaker 1: and bad parenting and bad cultures, or humans is intrinsically
Speaker 1: bad and have to be you know, tame. Both of
Speaker 1: views are wrong, and we have this whole collection of
Speaker 1: adaptations that vary in their functions, valence, and the degree
Speaker 1: to which they're expressed. And I'm all for suppressing the
Speaker 1: nasty ones and bringing out the better angels of our nature. Well,
Speaker 1: that came through at and cleer David in your new book.
Speaker 1: I'm really glad that you're moving in this direction. I
Speaker 1: really am. The world needs it right now. Thanks so
Speaker 1: much for coming on podcast today, David, and all the
Speaker 1: best with the rest of your book tour. Well, thank you,
Speaker 1: thank you, And it's been great talking to you and
Speaker 1: intellectually enlightening and informative for me and hopefully for your
Speaker 1: audience likewise, and I'm sure it will be. Thanks for
Speaker 1: listening to this episode of The Psychology Podcast. If you'd
Speaker 1: like to react in some way to something you heard,
Speaker 1: I encourage you to join in the discussion at the
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