April 21, 2021 • 51 mins
Men and women have different sexual desires. And this leads to sexual conflicts. Conflicts, which can create problems in relationships when dating or living together. But why? Evolutionary psychology uses the theory of sexual selection to explain these conflicts.
My guest today, David Buss, will lay out six sexual conflicts that typically occur between men and women due to our evolutionary traits; why men sometimes mistake a smile for a sexual signal, why women tend to file for more divorces or why men statistically cheat more than women.
David Buss often appears among the top 50 most influential psychologists ever to live due to his research on the evolutionary psychology of human mating strategies, conflicts between sexes and the evolution of jealousy, to name a few. Listen along to hear how we can use this knowledge to engage in a healthier conversation between partners.
DAVID TALKS ABOUT
- The theory of sexual selection: Why men and women approach sexual relationships differently
- The six sexual conflicts: what we lie about, why men have a deeper desire for more sexual partners and why we sometimes do bad things to the people we love
- How Tinder reflects modern sexual selection
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Morten Andersen (00:05):
Hello, and welcome to What Monkeys Do. My
name is Morten Kamp Andersen.
And this is a podcast about whatit takes to make a change and
make it stick.
So this podcast is about change,and it's called What Monkeys Do.
(00:25):
And the name reflects that a lotof our psychology is best
understood by understanding howwe as a species has evolved over
millions of years. There arethings that we cannot change, or
at least are harder for us tochange. And only by
understanding what we can andwhat we cannot change, can we
(00:46):
select the best strategies tomake a change. The area within
psychology, which focus on thisis called evolutionary
psychology. evolutionarypsychologists attempt to explain
common human behaviors fromselection pressures in our
environment, you know, likeDarwin. I remember when I was
(01:06):
hooked on evolutionarypsychology, it was when I was a
psychology student, my professorin personality psychology was
replicating a very famous study,he used a couple of students to
ask strangers three questions.
The female students were askedto go up to random men in the
street and ask them three
questions (01:27):
A, would they consider going on a date with
her? B (01:31):
Would they consider to go home to her flat and C:,
would they consider having sexwith her? The male students were
asked where to ask random femalein the streets the same
questions. Now, it probablycomes to no surprise to you the
listener that there weresignificant differences in the
(01:52):
replies from the men and thewomen. 0% of the women asked
said yes to having sex with theman who asked, whereas about 70%
of the men said yes to havingsex with a woman who asked, and
this study has been replicatedall over the world over many
years with the same results. Myguest today can explain why we
(02:15):
found such a big difference. Heis a professor of psychology at
the University of Texas atAustin. He is a true rockstar in
psychology, he often appears ontop 50 lists of most influential
psychologists ever to live. Hisprimary interest include the
evolutionary psychology of humanmating strategies, so conflict
(02:38):
between sexes, the evolution ofemotion of jealousy, etc. He has
authored or co authored morethan 200 peer reviewed journal
articles, he's written manybooks, it's hard to name the
best of those many books, but Iwill encourage everybody to read
the Evolution of Desire. Welcometo you, David Buss,
David Buss (03:00):
thank you as to why I'm delighted to be here talking
to you.
Morten Andersen (03:03):
Fantastic. I am truly excited about this. So in
this episode, we'll talk aboutdifferences and conflicts
between sexes, and about howevolutionary psychology can
explain this and how we can usethis maybe even to make our
relationship better. But first,can you tell us a little bit
(03:24):
about what evolutionarypsychology is and why you have
dedicated your life to thisfield?
David Buss (03:30):
Yes, evolutionary psychology is simply psychology,
looked at through the lens isthe evolutionary theory. That
is, our psychology is housed inour brain and to some degree in
our body and our endocrinesystem. And these are organs
that evolved through natural andsexual selection. Understanding
(03:50):
the causal origins of ourpsychology can inform us about
the nature of that psychology.
Importantly, evolutionarypsychology asks a critical
question that most psychologiststend not to ask or haven't
historically, and that is, whatis the function of our
psychological mechanisms,whatever those mechanisms are,
(04:11):
that is, what are they designedto do? And you can think about
two large classes of problems.
One is survival problems, andone is mating more reproductive
problems. And Darwin originallyfocused on survival problems,
how do you combat predators? Howdo you get food? How do you deal
(04:33):
with parasites and those issuesof survival? What I focused on
and what I've been drawn to isme human mating, which deals
more with the reproduction ordifferential reproduction. And
this was discovered by Darwin inthe pub first post 1871. So 12
years after his classic on theorigin of species, and it turned
(04:56):
out to be a monumentallyimportant discovery. The theory
of sexual selection, ignored bybiologists at the time for
roughly 100 years, but now it'sbecome one of the most important
theories in the field ofpsychology. It deals just in a
nutshell with not differentialsurvival, but differential
(05:17):
mating success or differentialreproduction. And the two causal
processes there are. One is malecompetition. The idea that males
often compete we now knowfemales do as well, but males
often compete with each other inphysical contests, and the
victor, gains sexual access tothe female loser handles off
(05:38):
with a broken antler anddejected and with low self
esteem. The logic is thatwhatever qualities lead to
success in the same sex battles,those qualities get passed on in
greater numbers due to thepreferential meeting access
sexual access to the victorsgame, and then the second
component, so in other words, adifference or reproductive
(05:59):
success is achieved through samesex combat. The second is
preferential mate choice. Thatis, if members of one sex have
some agreement about whatqualities they desire, in the
opposite sex, those who possessthe desirable qualities are
preferentially chosen. Thoselacking the desired qualities
(06:19):
are ignored, banish, shunned, orbecome in the modern lingo,
insults, involuntary celibates.
And so the logic there is thatquality heritable qualities that
are preferentially chosen, ifthere's some agreement, those
increase in frequency over time,and so you get evolution, which
is simply change over time. As aconsequence of preferential mate
(06:42):
choice.
Morten Andersen (06:44):
This theory of sexual selection is monumentally
important, and is theoverarching theoretical
framework for understanding themating systems of all sexually
reproducing species, includinghumans. So the idea is that the
theory of sexual selectionproposed by Darwin explains a
lot of the differences thatthere are between male and
(07:05):
female. And that also explainsdifferences in psychology
between the male and the female.
So different psychologies comefrom this are emotions, such as
jealousy and other emotions comefrom, from this theory of sexual
selection? Is that correct?
David Buss (07:24):
Yeah, that is correct. So sexual selection
explains the vast majority ofsex differences. And I think
it's important for yourlisteners to understand the
evolutionary meta theory of sexdifferences and sexual
similarity. So it's not the casethat men are from Mars and women
are from Venus says that clichegoes, the meta theory is that we
(07:46):
expect men and women to be thesame or similar in all domains,
where they faced the same orsimilar adaptive challenges over
human evolutionary history, bothsexes have to eat both sexes
have to fend off predators, bothsexes have to deal with
parasites, but it's only inthose domains where the sexes
have faced different adaptivechallenges that we expect to see
(08:08):
sex differences. And so it's nota theory of the two sexes are
from different planets for him.
never the twain shall me, thereare a lot of overlap, but there
are some key differences. And asit happens, almost all the key
differences fall in the domainof mating, and things related to
make.
Morten Andersen (08:26):
Okay, and we're probably going to focus more on
the sex differences also,because we are going to focus on
why it is that men tend to domore harm to women from from the
sexual conflicts that arise. Butjust to be clear to the
listener, we're going to talkabout sex differences, but there
is also something called genderdifferences. Can you maybe
explain a little bit about thedifference between sex and
(08:49):
gender and how you use thoseterminologies.
David Buss (08:52):
In the literature, the two terms are often used
interchangeably. And so there'sa lot of confusion about it. And
then some people have arguedthat there's no such thing as
biological sex itself, which, ofcourse, is an absurd perspective
from I mean, we know that therewere two sexes sexual
reproduction evolvedapproximately 1.3 billion years
(09:14):
ago. And so it's a very ancientsystem and the sexes are defined
not by you know, pulling downthe pants and looking at the
genitals, but rather they'redefined by the size of the sex
cells. So as the females are theones with the large, nutrient
rich sex sells gametes, malesare the ones with a small
nutrient poor gametes. And theseare basically little packets of
(09:38):
DNA with an outboard motorattached designed to get to the
A. And so when I talk about sexdifferences, what I'm talking
about is differences betweenmale biological males and
biological females. Now, genderis more often used to refer to
things like gender identity orgender orientation, or Gender
(10:00):
proclivities and there, there's,there's a whole rainbow of
sexual identities andorientations and getting more
and more so everyday. Andthat's, that's perfectly fine.
Morten Andersen (10:11):
But from an evolutionary perspective, when I
talk about sex differences, I'mreferring to biological sex
differences. Obviously, at themoment, there is sort of a
redefinition of gender andgender is is something that is
talked a lot about, andespecially at American
universities, as well. Does thathas that impacted evolutionary
psychology at all? Has thatcreated issues with how you can
(10:34):
work with this or talk aboutthis?
David Buss (10:36):
No, we are, it hasn't affected the research,
you know, the research, it'sbeen an extraordinarily
productive research program,applying Darwin's theory of
sexual selection, and also, thatwe'll talk about later, maybe a
sexual conflict theory to humanthe understanding of human
psychology and behavior, anextraordinarily productive and
(10:57):
said nothing has changed. Interms of the research program,
new discoveries are being madeevery day, using this paradigm,
the way it's affected, I guessit's affected the way that some
people talk about it, it'stalked about a lot more. And
then I get students, somestudents in my class who say,
(11:17):
well, another professor has toldthem that there's no such thing
as sex, you know, and so I haveto do some correcting of the
scientific understandings ofthese things. And, you know, and
I think that there's just a lotof confusion out there around
around these terms. And that'swhy I try to just stay clear on
what I'm focusing on is averageon average differences between
(11:40):
males and females as defined bybiologists.
Morten Andersen (11:44):
Okay, so there are so many interesting angles
to this, and in this episodewill try to talk about and use
evolutionary psychology tounderstand the conflict of sexes
to understand how we can have ahealthy relationship without
having harassing situations. Butfirst, let's try to understand
why there is a conflict betweenthe sexes. But you're in your
(12:08):
book, you say that a startingpoint for understanding sexual
conflict is the realization thatthere exists a battle over
women's bodies. What do you meanby that?
David Buss (12:19):
Yes, well, so this basically boils down to the fact
that women are the morereproductively valuable sex. And
this starts with the sperm andthe egg. So at the from the very
moment of conception, female iscontributing a very large,
nutrient rich egg and the malescontributing to contributing
(12:39):
basically, DNA. And that'sthat's basically it. And so but
this minimum sex difference inminimum investment is a critical
issue. And this was the insightthat Robert Trevor's famous
Harvard biologist, came up within 1972 was what drives these
two components of sexualselection, which sex does the
(13:00):
choosing which sex does thecompeting? And his answer was
relative parental investment, sothe sex that invests heavily or
more than the other sex becomesthe more valuable sex and when
you're the more valuable sex andthe high investing sex, what
that means is that there is agreat penalty tremendous cost
(13:21):
associated with making a badsexual choice or a bad mate
choice. But on the flip side,great benefits to making a good
mate choice for the sex is notinvesting very much good and bad
matrices don't matter so muchrather, it is access to the
valuable member to the to thevaluable other steps that is the
(13:42):
limiting factor for reproductivesuccess. And so what that means
in English is that women carrywith them because you know,
imagine, you know that we'restudying some species and the
female of the species.
fertilization occurs internallywithin her, she incubates that
fetus within her body for ninemonths, she feeds it metabolic
(14:04):
resources, even if there's acaloric deficit, you know,
calories and minerals areleached from the woman's body in
bonds to feed that, that fetusfor nine months, and then
subsequently lactation, thebreastfeeding, so these are
extraordinarily heavyinvestments that massively don't
(14:26):
engage in. And so from a purelyreproductive standpoint, someone
who's willing to do all thatinvesting for your child, that's
hugely valuable. And so whatthat means is that women have
become the limiting resource formen and men tend to compete for
access to that limitingresource. Now, it gets a little
(14:48):
bit complicated with humansbecause we have, you know, I'm
speaking of just simply sex perse, and in particular short term
maintenance strategy when youget to long term mating
strategies, both sexes investheavily. And fortunately, men do
more than the male, you know,and so, and so they invest years
and decades and in theirchildren and protecting their
(15:13):
children and providing for theirchildren and their families. And
when you get both sexesinvesting heavily, you get both
sexes being very choosy.
Importantly, both sexescompeting with members of their
own sets for the most desirablemembers of the opposite sex. So
in long term mating, bothcomponents of sexual selection,
(15:35):
or for both sexes,
Morten Andersen (15:36):
yes, women tend to invest more, and therefore
they are more valuable. Thatmeans that they do more the
choosing, men do the morethey're competing for women.
There are also many otherdifferences. Men are fertile for
many more years than then womenare, and so on. And that leads
to a number of sexual conflicts.
And you have, you havehighlighted six sexual
(15:59):
conflicts, and I just want to gothrough them and also maybe talk
about some examples from some ofyour your studies of how those
differences actually play out.
So let's just go through themand see how those sexual
conflicts look. So the first oneyou talk about is called a
desire for sexual variety. Howis that a conflict,
David Buss (16:22):
desire for sexual variety needs that manifests
itself in many ways, but mentend to desire a wider variety
of partners, sex partners, thanwomen on average, there's
overlap in the distributions,but on average, they do. And
this shows up and things like,how many partners Would you like
to have how many sex partnersjust like that over the next
(16:43):
year, or 10 years, man and manymore than women, but it shows up
in sexual fantasies, you know,with how many different partners
do you have sexual fantasiesabout or even in the course of a
single sexual fantasy episode,men tend to do more partner
switching during the course of afantasy episode. It also shows
up in men tending to let lesstime elapse before seeking or
(17:08):
initiating a sexual encounterthan women, women tend to need
more information about the guy.
And that's why that strangersstudy that you mentioned, women
tend to say no. Would you havesex with me? They said, No, I
need a little more information.
Men, they all the information isright there available to them in
its physical appearance.
Morten Andersen (17:30):
Yes. In one of the studies that you suggested
was that if you ask on average,women, how many sex partners
would you ideally like to haveover a lifetime, they would say
something between four to five,whereas for men, that number is
around 18. So men simply arelooking for more sexual partners
(17:50):
over a lifetime, then, then awomen woman is
David Buss (17:53):
yes, ideally. And so this is, and this will relate to
when we get back to the issuesof relationships, there's a
desire, and that's why I call mybook the evolution of desire, my
first book, but then there'salso it's the expression of
desire in behavior, have thesedesires, they often suppress the
(18:13):
desire it let's say they're in along term committed
relationship, and they don'twant to jeopardize the
relationship. They don't want toincur reputational damage, or
their religion or their code ofmorality prevents them from
doing so. Of course, not always.
But that's why evolutionarypsychologists make a key
distinction between theunderlying psychological
mechanisms and their expressionand behavior. So just a quick
(18:36):
analogy would be people have adesire for foods that are rich
in sugar, fat, salt, andprotein. But let's say we have
we want to get fit, we want tolose some weight, we might
choose not to express thosedesires in our eating behavior
for a period of time. So it's alot easier to prevent the
expression of desire, it's a lotmore difficult to change that
(18:59):
underlying desire.
Morten Andersen (19:02):
Yes, okay. The second sexual conflict is sexual
over perception bias. Can youtell us what that is? Yes, this
David Buss (19:10):
is this is a, an amusing one, but an important
one. And I think one key causeof sexual conflict. So typical
scenarios a woman encounters aman and the woman smiles at the
man and men infer sexualinterest. She's trying to be
seductive. She's trying to flirtwith me. And women will often
(19:30):
say No, I was just being I wasjust being friendly, or I was
being polite. And so men tend toover infer sexual interest when
it's not there. And we thinkthis is it's a bias, but it's an
adaptive bias in the sense thatover evolutionary time missing
out on sexual opportunitieswould have been very, very
costly for men in the currencyof reproduction, reproductive
(19:54):
success, and so men have thisbias to you know, basically
widen the search net and in forsexual interest when it's not
there, in part because thatgives if they perceive that
they're getting sexual signalsthat gives them the confidence
to approach the woman andsometimes they can convert and
(20:15):
initially uninterested womeninto an interested one
Morten Andersen (20:19):
So big because it's the woman, it's the female
that is choosing the male betterbe ready when she's choosing so
therefore having an overperception bias may actually
help him be ready when she'schoosing is that is that how the
analogy goes? Yeah, that's
David Buss (20:38):
Yeah, that's one component and and I think
another component is simply, youknow, base rates if men are
widening the pool. And let's saythat they get turned down by
let's say their sexualperception bias causes them to
try to initiate an encounter 100times while they may get shot
down many times, but maybethey'll get a few hits. And
(21:00):
that's basically what we seeplayed out on dating apps like
Tinder in the modern environmentwhere men, you know, swipe right
on hundreds and hundreds ofwomen, and in the hopes that
they'll get they'll get a fewthat say, yes, women are much,
much more selective, includingsites like Tinder.
Morten Andersen (21:16):
Yeah, I think I think your research using Tinder
is just excellent, because thereyou can really see behavior how
that is played out on, you know,on a market, which is very
related to, you know, sexualattraction, essentially. And
here, you say, well, men justswipe right, a lot more than
female do, which which explainsmaybe some of the sexual
perception bias.
David Buss (21:37):
Yeah, or it's an expression. So is it an
expression of the desire forsexual variety?
Morten Andersen (21:43):
Yes, six different sexual conflicts. The
first one desire for sexualvariety, men simply want more
sexual partners than women. Thesecond one is sexual over
perception bias. Men are quickerto infer sexual signs compared
to female. The third one isdeception. What is that?
David Buss (22:03):
Yeah, well, both sexes deceive on the mating
market. Our research has foundthat they deceive in somewhat
different ways. So men are morelikely, when they're pursuing a
short term mating strategy,they're more likely to express
deeper feelings for the womanthan they actually have. I feel
this true emotional attachmentto feel true love I, I feel a
(22:28):
depth I feel like we under yoursoulmate, they're more likely to
exaggerate, basically finding along term mating strategy. And
these words, in order to pursuea short term mating strategy,
women sometimes to see in theopposite way, sometimes they are
making mark or pretend thatthey're okay with casual sex,
but then try to convert the maninto a long term relationship.
(22:50):
So one example of this isstudies of of hookups on college
campuses, where they asked menand women are what is your ideal
outcome of a hookup? And womensay, Well, my ideal outcome
would be that it leads to arelationship. And men are more
likely to say, Oh, I hope thatthis hookup leads to more
hookups with more or less so sothe sex difference plays out in
(23:13):
that way.
Morten Andersen (23:14):
And you have also looked at at Tinder and
what it is that people lie aboutin their profile, which is also
different between the two sexes?
David Buss (23:23):
Yes, there's a whole hundreds of
researchers have collected onthis site, survey many of them
in my books, but men tend to lieabout their height. So how tall
they are, they tend to add acouple of inches. So American
system that's their five feet,10 inches, they round up to six
feet, they lie about theirincome. And then they lie about
(23:45):
what their mating strategy is.
They pretend that they're moreinterested in the long term
mating strategy. And then theymay be sincere requires only I'm
interested in, you know, a realconnection. Women tend to
deceive about their weight. Sothey tend to shave off about 15
(24:05):
pounds, or I don't know whatthat translates into, I guess,
six or seven kilos. And and thenboth sexes deceive about
appearance in the sense ofposting either old photos or
photoshopped photos that are nottruly representative what they
actually
Morten Andersen (24:21):
look like. So we should meet people before we
have we engage with people.
David Buss (24:26):
Absolutely, that's, that's my number one
recommendation, you know, cutoff the, you know, the internet
communication, you have to meetsomeone. And even to determine
whether there's any of yourchemistry there, you have to
meet the person in person.
Morten Andersen (24:39):
So that was three of the six sexual
conflicts. And essentially, whatwe're saying is that these are
differences in how men and womenapproach the other partner and
in in order to find a mate, andthese are from deep evolutionary
reasons why there are thesedifferences but because there
are the these differences Itleads to conflicts. Let's look
(25:02):
at the last three, and thenwe'll find out what does that do
to us in terms of how do we livewell together? So the fourth one
is mate value, discrepancies,mate value. What is that?
David Buss (25:14):
I think there are analogs in European countries
and Americans use this crude 10point scale, where the person's
at 10, if they're paying avalue, or an eight, or a six, or
a two or a one, the problem isthat if a person is assessed in
mate value, and they'reattracted to in a, while the
(25:34):
eights not going to be attractedto them, or if the six manages
to convince the eight thatthey're an eight, temporarily,
the eight is more likely tocheat on the six, and the eight
is more likely to dump the sixto leave that relationship. For
someone who's more comparableand mate value. The problem is
(25:54):
that men tend to overestimatetheir mate value on average. And
so you get a lot of men who aresixes but thinks that they're
eights. And that leads them tonot waste a conflict, they
approach a woman who they thinkis within their mate value
range. And the woman says, No,you're not, you're not, you're
not good enough for me. And soand so that can generate
resentment, sometimes hostilitytoward women. Now, not all men
(26:19):
do this. So men who are high onthe personality trait of
narcissism, tend to thinkthey're hotter than they are,
they think they're hot, butthey're not. So not all men
overestimate their mate value,but there's a sex difference,
there were men, on average,think they're higher than they
are.
Morten Andersen (26:37):
So obviously, by this theory, or this part of
the theory, what you're sayingis that if you're an eight, find
somebody who's an eight, becauseif you're finding somebody on a
10, you might let that personin, but that is likely to lead
to that person leaving you atsome point that is a higher
likelihood of divorce, if thereis a big of a range between and
(26:58):
don't go for a six, because youmight feel in your relationship
that you could have done better.
So find somebody at your level,essentially.
David Buss (27:05):
Yeah, absolutely.
It's, it's one of the one of thelaws of mating, you know, find
someone that the equivalent tomate value, that's going to lead
to more happiness and longevityin the long run. Although it's
also true that mate valuechanges over time. It's never
it's not a static quality. Andso someone could get a job
promotion or become a famousmusician, or lose a job or
(27:25):
become a drug addict oralcoholic or so. So there are
changes over time. So what youreally want is someone who's on
the same mate valuetrajectory,that you are not someone who's
exactly like you are at thatmoment. So for long for the goal
of long term happyrelationships.
Morten Andersen (27:46):
Yes. So that was the fourth sexual conflict.
The fifth one is infidelity.
What is that about?
David Buss (27:54):
You know, people when they get married or or
engaged in a presumptivelymonogamous relationship, they
commit their sexual resources toone partner, and people cheat
sometimes not everybody. But youknow, it's nothing like 25% of
women and maybe 40 to 50% of menat some point, there's a bit of
(28:15):
a sex difference, a non trivialsex difference on my head. In
evolutionary terms, this is thediversion of reproductively
relevant resources, someoneoutside of the partnership. And
it's extremely costly. Man froman evolutionary perspective
risks. Getting geneticallycoupled with that is taking risk
(28:35):
investing in a child who is nottheir child, it might be that
the mailman or the neighbor'swomen from women's perspective,
if their partner is unfaithful,she risks losing the man's
investment, commitment, time,attention, resources, all of
which could be channeled to arival woman, and her offspring.
And so infidelity is it's one ofthe leading, it's one of the two
(28:59):
leading causes of divorceworldwide, people are tempted to
do it. I think they do it forsomewhat different reasons. And
the sites for this and in mybook, as well, that men tend to
cheat on average for to satisfydesire for sexual variety. So
the woman who they cheat withcouldn't mine doesn't
necessarily mean anything. tothem. It's just like a desire
(29:21):
for sexual variety. Women tendto tend to cheat when they're
fundamentally unhappy with therelationship and are looking to
see if maybe they can do betterout there on the mating work. So
it's what I call the mateswitching hypothesis.
Morten Andersen (29:35):
And I think there is also something about
having a backup, maybe for thefemale, which is not the same
for the male essentially.
David Buss (29:43):
Yes, yeah. When one woman told me men are like suit,
you always want to have one onthe back burner.
Morten Andersen (29:50):
Yes.
interesting analogy. And numbersix of this sexual conflict is
breaking up. Can you tell us alittle bit about what what that
is about?
David Buss (30:00):
Yeah, well, breakups are, we've studied them in my
lab, they're they're verytraumatic for most people
involved, even the person who'sdoing the breaking up. But often
there is an asymmetry. That isone person wants to break up and
the other person does not. Andso that's a conflict between the
sexes. As a general rule, womentend to do more of the breaking
(30:22):
up, women tend to seek divorcesmore often than men. Of course,
men men do as well sometimes.
But one of the interestingthings about relationships is
that sometimes men are totallysurprised when the woman comes
and says, I want to divorce ifthey don't see it coming.
Whereas women tend to be more intune with the rhythms of the
(30:44):
long term relationship, and aremore likely to anticipate when
their problems and they can seeit coming on average, although I
know some cases where I've beentotally shocked as well. Okay,
fantastic.
Morten Andersen (31:09):
So far, we talked about conflict of, of
sexes. And you have said thatthis conflict is basically a
result of an evolution overmillions of years. Because of
this conflict, men does badthings to women, women does bad
things to men, because of thisconflict. But in your book,
which is coming up next week,you have a book coming out
(31:30):
calling, called When Men BehaveBadly. And in that book, you
state that even though both menand women do bad things to each
other, the really bad things,the really bad things are done
by men towards women. Why isthat?
David Buss (31:46):
Yes, both sexes deceive each other. Both sexes
can engage in unwanted sexualcontact. But the more extreme
the behavior, the more it tendsto be committed by men. So when
you talk about sexualharassment, yes, some women
sexually harass men, but mentend to do it much more often.
(32:07):
Sexual coercion, men do it moreoften rape, men do it more often
stalking. You know, men do itmore often. So criminal stalking
and that 80% men and 20% women,and then of course, Homicide
murder, if an adult woman getskilled, the odds are between 50
(32:28):
and 70%, that she is killed byher romantic partner that is a
boyfriend or an ex boyfriend,husband or an ex husband. And
whereas for men who get killedby women, only 3% are the result
of a romantic partner. And so Ithink that part of it is that
has to do with the some of thethings we've been talking about,
(32:51):
like desire for sexual variety,that women are the more valuable
reproductive resource, and mansometimes go to great lengths to
hold on to, or gain access to towomen. And that's partly what
sexual herassment is about iscurrently what stalking is about
in a season. disturbingly,partly what intimate partner
violence is about. That is, menengage in violence. And this
(33:16):
sounds horrible, but for veryfunctional reasons, to try to
lower the partner self esteem,to try to make her believe that
she is lucky to have him thatmen tend to do this, engage in
intimate partner violence as alatch last ditch effort when
they're losing the woman andthey're doing going to great
(33:38):
lengths to try to keep her andwith these desperate measures.
So I think it's very importantthat women know this knowledge.
So the woman's odds of gettingkilled, for example, by by an ex
are occur mostly within thefirst three to six months after
a breakup. And sometimes, youknow, women are aware of that,
(33:59):
and the guy will say, Oh, boy,you meet with me one last time
for coffee and, you know, andthen I'll leave you alone, and
then they end up dead. So, womenhave to know what these danger
signs are.
Morten Andersen (34:11):
And this is obviously not trivial problems.
I mean, in your book is, youactually state that sexual
violence against women is themost widespread human rights
problem in the world. And also,so one thing is the act itself,
but also what happens to theconsequences. So what happens to
the women so the consequences ofof having endured this so
(34:34):
depression, anxiety, eatingdisorder, intention to suicide,
all of these things that is is aconsequence of these things.
Obviously, this is not a trivialmatter, this is a huge problem.
Can you explain why you thinkthis is is such a big problem?
David Buss (34:51):
Well, the the the psychological Aftermath for
women who are victims of sexualviolence is horrible. I didn't
realize when I wrote the book,how quite how horrible it was.
But in our studies and my reviewliterature, yes, exactly the
issues you point out,depression, low self esteem,
(35:11):
being cut off from socialsupport and kin ties and
friendships and disruption,school disruption of work life.
And I think that it because whatit is what sexual violence
against women, the key componentis that it interferes with the
number one law of female matingstrategy, which is female
(35:32):
choice, that is women's abilityto choose who, when, where, and
under what circumstances she hasset. And men strategies often
interfere with female choice,when that happens, and I think
this has this has a certain longevolutionary history. As far as
we can tell, it doesn't meanthat rape is an adaptation by
(35:56):
the way I talk about that issuein great depth in my book. But
clearly women have been victimsof sexual violence for a very
long time, over evolutionaryhistory, and it has devastating
consequences. And the reason Icall it the most widespread
world human rights violation isfor a couple of reasons. One is
(36:16):
the sheer number of women whoare victims. And this occurs in
every culture, in every ethnicgroup, religious group, whatever
your political orientation, sonobody has no culture or
subculture has a monopoly. Andwe're talking about 50% of the
population. And so even womenwho weren't direct victims often
(36:38):
live in fear of becomingvictims, so curtails their
freedom of movement, theirability to go out at night,
their ability to attend nightclasses, and then secondary
victims, as they're called. Sothe friends, the family members,
the brothers, sisters, of thewomen who are victims, they to
become victims as well,secondary victims. It's the most
(37:00):
widespread in the sense ofaffecting the largest number of
people around the world.
Morten Andersen (37:06):
Some of of the of the worst of and I don't know
if we can say that, but some ofthe worst offenders hit the
headlines. So we talk aboutJeffrey Epstein, Harvey
Weinstein, Bill Cosby, some ofthose people, and you're
absolutely right, they're allmen. Are there any common things
when you look at those kind ofpeople? I mean, do they share
(37:28):
personality traits or anythinglike that?
David Buss (37:30):
Yes, they do. So and this is pretty solid, I document
this in, in my new book, thatwhat's called the dark triad
personality traits. And so theseare people who are high on
narcissism high on Machiavellianism and high on psychopathy, but
also high on pursuing a shortterm mating strategy. So those
(37:51):
four elements when they combine,so narcissism is feelings of
grandiosity and feelings ofentitlement, including sexual
entitlement. Machiavellian isn'tas people who adopt a an
exploitative interpersonalstrategy. So these are cheaters,
defectors exploiters, who arejust looking out for themselves,
(38:12):
and they don't care aboutothers. And then psychopathy,
one of the hallmarks is lack ofempathy. So they don't care
about the victims. They don'tcare who they harm. They're just
implementing their preferences.
And when you combine that withshort term mating strategy, it's
a deadly combination. So thepeople you mentioned, like
Harvey Weinstein, excellentexample of that Jeffrey Epstein
clearly had high and dark triadtraits. And you're absolutely
(38:38):
right. Where are the women thatare hitting the news for
sexually exploiting all the menthat, you know, there? There
aren't. So not that women don'tsexually exploit men sometimes,
but at the scale that we'retalking about, men have a pretty
exclusive monopoly on.
Morten Andersen (38:58):
And I guess, obviously, talking about those
people in the dark triad. Imean, hopefully, they they're
not so many of those in theworld. But some of the things
that I read in your book I wassurprised about and and which
may go to a also a length ofexplaining why there are so many
women who are harassed is that,for instance, if you ask people
(39:20):
how harassing is this, and yougive them a number of options,
so for instance, staring at achest, how harassing is that? Or
talk about your sexualexperience? Well, then men will
say, well, that's not veryharassing at all. Whereas women
will say, well, it actually is.
So there seems to be adiscrepancy between what act
actually is harassing for theother person.
David Buss (39:45):
You're absolutely right about that. And, and this
is another key cause ofconflict. Because when men
engage in these acts that womenperceive as harassing men think
oh, like, it's no big deal.
What's the big deal? I was, youknow, she had a nice body. I'm I
just felt like looking at it andsaid, there's this disconnect.
And I think part of it is thatwe are stuck in our own sexual
(40:05):
psychology. And so with the onlyway we can know no other minds
are one way in which we knowtheir minds is we infer that
other sexual minds are similarto our own. Hmm. And consulting
your own personal intuitionsabout the sexual minds of
others, if it's the other sex isa mistake, because the sexual
(40:28):
psychology of men and womendiffer different fundamental
ways.
Morten Andersen (40:35):
And also, you've researched stalking, I
think you mentioned that beforeas well and just are so
surprised about the number ofhow many people have experienced
stalking. So I think youmentioned that 19% of people in
high school have actuallyexperienced stalking. Now,
stalking can be a physical,physically following somebody,
(40:55):
but it can also just be stalkingsomebody on social media
breaking into a phone orsomething. What have you learned
about stalking in your research?
David Buss (41:04):
Yeah, well, that's, that's a great great that you
bring that up, because that's avery new form of stalking, cyber
stalking. And it's only nowgotten the attention of
lawmakers who are starting tostrain to criminalize it. In
most places around the world.
It's not it's not criminalactivity. But I think that
that's going to change. So cybertechnology has enabled people to
(41:27):
implement conflict between thesexes and in ways that are
historically unprecedented. Andit's extremely disturbing. I'll
tell you one, one more that hascome up recently is I can't
remember it's called it's likecalled Deep fakes or something
like that, where people canliterally take a someone's
photograph, place photograph oftheir face, and they can
(41:48):
implanted on a sex video tapethat is not them. And everyone
and then posted on the internet,and of course, is extremely
traumatizing to the victims,most of whom are women. So this
new technology is allowingsexual harms in a way that we
never really had before.
Morten Andersen (42:08):
Yes, with using deep, deep fake that you can
take a picture of a womanwearing a bikini, and then it
can remove the clothes, and itwill show how she looks like
without any clothes, and thenposting that, obviously to to
harm her on social media. And asyou rightly say, that is men
mainly doing that to to women.
David Buss (42:30):
Right, right. And that's something I do talk about
in the book is revenge porn. Andso men who are served by women,
or rejected by women, often arethe ones who are doing that
revenge porn.
Morten Andersen (42:43):
Yes.
Evolutionary Psychology isessentially taking the Darwin's
theory of sexual selection. Andthen from that, inferring six
sexual conflicts that there arebetween the sexes, so
(43:06):
essentially saying that thereare more similarities between
men and women. But on someareas, there are differences.
And this relates to the sexualselection theory. And these
conflicts essentially leads toconflicts in a relationship or
between men and women. And I'dlike to get to the point now,
where we we talk about how thismight relate to for the
(43:29):
listeners. So What Monkeys Do isa podcast about change. So I
want to talk a little bit abouthim the end about how we can use
this knowledge, to say somethingabout how men and women can
engage in a conversation withthat knowledge in engage in a
conversation about making theirrelationship, marriage, whatever
it is, as healthy as possible.
Do you have any, from yourresearch? And your many
(43:52):
conversations? You've probablybeen asked this many times
before as well, to have you haveyou got any advice for for for
relationships with thisknowledge?
David Buss (44:02):
Yeah, Yes, I do. I guess you can divide it up into
two things. So one is, and thiswas actually a question posed
recently on on Twitter, what isthe single most important
decision you can make in yourlife? And what I say is, it's
the selection of a long termmate, that that affects just
about everything else in yourlife. Not that matings always
(44:24):
best to lifetime, of course,they doubt their breakups,
divorces and so forth. Butselecting the right long term
mate is absolutely critical.
We've mentioned in one elementthat in our conversation, which
is selecting a mate who'ssimilar and mate value, or who
has a similar mate valuetrajectory, and I think that's
critical. Second, I would go foravoiding the dark triad. So
(44:46):
avoid mates who are excessivelynarcissistic, manipulative,
Machiavellian or psychopathic.
You want to pick someone who isinterested in a long term
mating. Not someone who wants toplay the field and express their
desire for sexual variety.
personality wise, we also wantto select someone who's
(45:08):
emotionally stable. emotionalstability in our research is one
of the key causes of conflictwithin married couples, then
once you're in a relationship, Ithink it's important to be open
and honest in terms ofcommunicating. Because as we
talked about males and femaleshave different psychologies in
different sexual and matingpsychologies in some ways, and
(45:30):
an honest communication aboutthat can do do wonders. Because
otherwise, if you just think,well, the other person is
exactly like I am, then you'realways going to be frustrated
when they don't behave exactlylike you are like you want them
to behave. And so I think honestcommunication about that. The
other thing I would recommendis, is been to pardon the self
(45:52):
serving is to read my book onThe Evolution of Desire and Why
Men vs. Women Behave Badly.
Because I think that gives theinsights and in Why Men Behave
Badly. I devote a whole chapterto the issue of coping with
conflict, because conflict willemerge in all relationships.
(46:14):
I've never encountered a singlemajor shift that with black
comp, any conflict, the issue ishow you cope with it. And there
are effective strategies ofdealing with it in any effective
ones. And so I would encourageyour listeners to read that
chapter in the new book.
Morten Andersen (46:30):
Yes. And I think this is an important part
because obviously, outlining thedifferences in between men and
women does not justify what mendo to women in terms of
harassment. But I guess what oneof your main point is that in
order to create the beststrategies as a society, for
(46:51):
dealing with these harassments,and and and these things that
men do to women, we need tounderstand the fundamental
reasons, evolutionary pressuresfor these conflicts to arise in
the first place. And then we cancreate strategies and laws as a
society to combat that. And Iguess that also works in a in a
(47:13):
relationship, I suppose, is byunderstanding the underlying
drives that may be different forthe for the men and for the man
and the woman in therelationship may be the first
step in understanding how do wethen deal with it?
David Buss (47:26):
Yes, absolutely. And just to give one concrete
example, one man told me thatafter he read my book, he it
caused him to be more faithfulto his wife, because he found
himself in a good relationship,if you felt felt attracted to
other women. And when he wasattracted to other women, he
(47:47):
thought, well, maybe I'm not inlove with my wife anymore. After
you read my book, he realized,Oh, that's my evolved desire for
sexual variety. It doesn't meanI don't love my wife, I still
love her. But it's that evolveddesire for sexual variety that
helps me to stay faithful to mywife.
Morten Andersen (48:03):
Yes. So if one of our listeners is in a
relationship, or in a marriage,and it's going really well, but
then you're like, you're saying,well, there's likely going to be
sexual conflict, because thereis in most relationships, and
the best way to combat that isactually, first of all to
understand the evolutionaryreasons and the drivers for
(48:26):
those conflicts, because thenyou can tackle it through
communication and having thatunderstanding.
Unknown (48:32):
Exactly. Perfect.
Morten Andersen (48:35):
Great. That was all I have for this interview at
this has been a reallyinteresting interview. I have
I've read your new book, it'scoming out next week. And I will
encourage listeners to to readit. I said in the beginning that
I will encourage everyone to, toread the the Evolution of
Desire, I still mean that. Butyour new one is actually really
good. And it has a lot of up todate, examples and also using
(48:58):
social media and your researchusing Tinder and so on. I think
this is truly fascinating. Andthen I think it has a very
critical eye on there is toomuch harassment for against
women, and we need to dosomething about it. But ignoring
our evolutionary drive willprobably not solve the problem
then. So I want to say thank youvery much, David for for taking
(49:21):
the time to speak with me. Ireally enjoyed this.
David Buss (49:23):
Thank you. It's been a delight tochat with you.
Morten Andersen (49:25):
Fantastic.
What a great interview. I tookthree things away from my talk
with David. One. A lot of ourfundamental psychology, or
fundamental emotions can beexplained by sexual selection.
(49:47):
Darwin's natural selection isprobably pretty well known but
his other theory about sexualselection is probably more
important. It explains why thereare differences between men and
women. When, and why we haveemotions such as jealousy and
desire. And this is important toknow because we have evolved
(50:08):
over millions of years. And thisis probably one of those things,
which is hard to change to sexdifferences leads to sexual
conflicts. David has identifiedsix sexual conflicts between men
and women. They range fromsexual variety to sexual over
(50:28):
perception bias, what we lieabout infidelity, and so on. And
because of these conflicts, mendo bad things to women, and
women do bad things to men, weall try to do what we can to get
the best mating partner we can.
But the really bad things arealmost always done by men,
(50:48):
sexual harassment, sexualassault, stalking rate, all of
that is mainly done by men. Andthree, we can use this knowledge
to make our relationship better.
David said that our single mostimportant decision we can make
(51:09):
is the selection of our longterm mating partner. And if you
are in a relationshipunderstanding that we can have,
so to speak, in sexualconflicts, due to evolutionary
pressures, is very important forus to understand because by
understanding that, we can thencreate coping strategies, so men
(51:32):
desire more sexual partners thanwomen do now, but it's up to men
to suppress this desire andunderstand that this is mainly
biological rather than any otherreason, and therefore should not
follow this design. David has afantastic research. He's a great
writer, but also a fantasticspeaker, you should check out
(51:53):
his excellent TED Talks. Theyare truly fantastic. Until next
time, take care
Hello, and welcome to What Monkeys Do. My
name is Morten Kamp Andersen.
And this is a podcast about whatit takes to make a change and
make it stick.
So this podcast is about change,and it's called What Monkeys Do.
(00:25):
And the name reflects that a lotof our psychology is best
understood by understanding howwe as a species has evolved over
millions of years. There arethings that we cannot change, or
at least are harder for us tochange. And only by
understanding what we can andwhat we cannot change, can we
(00:46):
select the best strategies tomake a change. The area within
psychology, which focus on thisis called evolutionary
psychology. evolutionarypsychologists attempt to explain
common human behaviors fromselection pressures in our
environment, you know, likeDarwin. I remember when I was
(01:06):
hooked on evolutionarypsychology, it was when I was a
psychology student, my professorin personality psychology was
replicating a very famous study,he used a couple of students to
ask strangers three questions.
The female students were askedto go up to random men in the
street and ask them three
questions (01:27):
A, would they consider going on a date with
her? B (01:31):
Would they consider to go home to her flat and C:,
would they consider having sexwith her? The male students were
asked where to ask random femalein the streets the same
questions. Now, it probablycomes to no surprise to you the
listener that there weresignificant differences in the
(01:52):
replies from the men and thewomen. 0% of the women asked
said yes to having sex with theman who asked, whereas about 70%
of the men said yes to havingsex with a woman who asked, and
this study has been replicatedall over the world over many
years with the same results. Myguest today can explain why we
(02:15):
found such a big difference. Heis a professor of psychology at
the University of Texas atAustin. He is a true rockstar in
psychology, he often appears ontop 50 lists of most influential
psychologists ever to live. Hisprimary interest include the
evolutionary psychology of humanmating strategies, so conflict
(02:38):
between sexes, the evolution ofemotion of jealousy, etc. He has
authored or co authored morethan 200 peer reviewed journal
articles, he's written manybooks, it's hard to name the
best of those many books, but Iwill encourage everybody to read
the Evolution of Desire. Welcometo you, David Buss,
David Buss (03:00):
thank you as to why I'm delighted to be here talking
to you.
Morten Andersen (03:03):
Fantastic. I am truly excited about this. So in
this episode, we'll talk aboutdifferences and conflicts
between sexes, and about howevolutionary psychology can
explain this and how we can usethis maybe even to make our
relationship better. But first,can you tell us a little bit
(03:24):
about what evolutionarypsychology is and why you have
dedicated your life to thisfield?
David Buss (03:30):
Yes, evolutionary psychology is simply psychology,
looked at through the lens isthe evolutionary theory. That
is, our psychology is housed inour brain and to some degree in
our body and our endocrinesystem. And these are organs
that evolved through natural andsexual selection. Understanding
(03:50):
the causal origins of ourpsychology can inform us about
the nature of that psychology.
Importantly, evolutionarypsychology asks a critical
question that most psychologiststend not to ask or haven't
historically, and that is, whatis the function of our
psychological mechanisms,whatever those mechanisms are,
(04:11):
that is, what are they designedto do? And you can think about
two large classes of problems.
One is survival problems, andone is mating more reproductive
problems. And Darwin originallyfocused on survival problems,
how do you combat predators? Howdo you get food? How do you deal
(04:33):
with parasites and those issuesof survival? What I focused on
and what I've been drawn to isme human mating, which deals
more with the reproduction ordifferential reproduction. And
this was discovered by Darwin inthe pub first post 1871. So 12
years after his classic on theorigin of species, and it turned
(04:56):
out to be a monumentallyimportant discovery. The theory
of sexual selection, ignored bybiologists at the time for
roughly 100 years, but now it'sbecome one of the most important
theories in the field ofpsychology. It deals just in a
nutshell with not differentialsurvival, but differential
(05:17):
mating success or differentialreproduction. And the two causal
processes there are. One is malecompetition. The idea that males
often compete we now knowfemales do as well, but males
often compete with each other inphysical contests, and the
victor, gains sexual access tothe female loser handles off
(05:38):
with a broken antler anddejected and with low self
esteem. The logic is thatwhatever qualities lead to
success in the same sex battles,those qualities get passed on in
greater numbers due to thepreferential meeting access
sexual access to the victorsgame, and then the second
component, so in other words, adifference or reproductive
(05:59):
success is achieved through samesex combat. The second is
preferential mate choice. Thatis, if members of one sex have
some agreement about whatqualities they desire, in the
opposite sex, those who possessthe desirable qualities are
preferentially chosen. Thoselacking the desired qualities
(06:19):
are ignored, banish, shunned, orbecome in the modern lingo,
insults, involuntary celibates.
And so the logic there is thatquality heritable qualities that
are preferentially chosen, ifthere's some agreement, those
increase in frequency over time,and so you get evolution, which
is simply change over time. As aconsequence of preferential mate
(06:42):
choice.
Morten Andersen (06:44):
This theory of sexual selection is monumentally
important, and is theoverarching theoretical
framework for understanding themating systems of all sexually
reproducing species, includinghumans. So the idea is that the
theory of sexual selectionproposed by Darwin explains a
lot of the differences thatthere are between male and
(07:05):
female. And that also explainsdifferences in psychology
between the male and the female.
So different psychologies comefrom this are emotions, such as
jealousy and other emotions comefrom, from this theory of sexual
selection? Is that correct?
David Buss (07:24):
Yeah, that is correct. So sexual selection
explains the vast majority ofsex differences. And I think
it's important for yourlisteners to understand the
evolutionary meta theory of sexdifferences and sexual
similarity. So it's not the casethat men are from Mars and women
are from Venus says that clichegoes, the meta theory is that we
(07:46):
expect men and women to be thesame or similar in all domains,
where they faced the same orsimilar adaptive challenges over
human evolutionary history, bothsexes have to eat both sexes
have to fend off predators, bothsexes have to deal with
parasites, but it's only inthose domains where the sexes
have faced different adaptivechallenges that we expect to see
(08:08):
sex differences. And so it's nota theory of the two sexes are
from different planets for him.
never the twain shall me, thereare a lot of overlap, but there
are some key differences. And asit happens, almost all the key
differences fall in the domainof mating, and things related to
make.
Morten Andersen (08:26):
Okay, and we're probably going to focus more on
the sex differences also,because we are going to focus on
why it is that men tend to domore harm to women from from the
sexual conflicts that arise. Butjust to be clear to the
listener, we're going to talkabout sex differences, but there
is also something called genderdifferences. Can you maybe
explain a little bit about thedifference between sex and
(08:49):
gender and how you use thoseterminologies.
David Buss (08:52):
In the literature, the two terms are often used
interchangeably. And so there'sa lot of confusion about it. And
then some people have arguedthat there's no such thing as
biological sex itself, which, ofcourse, is an absurd perspective
from I mean, we know that therewere two sexes sexual
reproduction evolvedapproximately 1.3 billion years
(09:14):
ago. And so it's a very ancientsystem and the sexes are defined
not by you know, pulling downthe pants and looking at the
genitals, but rather they'redefined by the size of the sex
cells. So as the females are theones with the large, nutrient
rich sex sells gametes, malesare the ones with a small
nutrient poor gametes. And theseare basically little packets of
(09:38):
DNA with an outboard motorattached designed to get to the
A. And so when I talk about sexdifferences, what I'm talking
about is differences betweenmale biological males and
biological females. Now, genderis more often used to refer to
things like gender identity orgender orientation, or Gender
(10:00):
proclivities and there, there's,there's a whole rainbow of
sexual identities andorientations and getting more
and more so everyday. Andthat's, that's perfectly fine.
Morten Andersen (10:11):
But from an evolutionary perspective, when I
talk about sex differences, I'mreferring to biological sex
differences. Obviously, at themoment, there is sort of a
redefinition of gender andgender is is something that is
talked a lot about, andespecially at American
universities, as well. Does thathas that impacted evolutionary
psychology at all? Has thatcreated issues with how you can
(10:34):
work with this or talk aboutthis?
David Buss (10:36):
No, we are, it hasn't affected the research,
you know, the research, it'sbeen an extraordinarily
productive research program,applying Darwin's theory of
sexual selection, and also, thatwe'll talk about later, maybe a
sexual conflict theory to humanthe understanding of human
psychology and behavior, anextraordinarily productive and
(10:57):
said nothing has changed. Interms of the research program,
new discoveries are being madeevery day, using this paradigm,
the way it's affected, I guessit's affected the way that some
people talk about it, it'stalked about a lot more. And
then I get students, somestudents in my class who say,
(11:17):
well, another professor has toldthem that there's no such thing
as sex, you know, and so I haveto do some correcting of the
scientific understandings ofthese things. And, you know, and
I think that there's just a lotof confusion out there around
around these terms. And that'swhy I try to just stay clear on
what I'm focusing on is averageon average differences between
(11:40):
males and females as defined bybiologists.
Morten Andersen (11:44):
Okay, so there are so many interesting angles
to this, and in this episodewill try to talk about and use
evolutionary psychology tounderstand the conflict of sexes
to understand how we can have ahealthy relationship without
having harassing situations. Butfirst, let's try to understand
why there is a conflict betweenthe sexes. But you're in your
(12:08):
book, you say that a startingpoint for understanding sexual
conflict is the realization thatthere exists a battle over
women's bodies. What do you meanby that?
David Buss (12:19):
Yes, well, so this basically boils down to the fact
that women are the morereproductively valuable sex. And
this starts with the sperm andthe egg. So at the from the very
moment of conception, female iscontributing a very large,
nutrient rich egg and the malescontributing to contributing
(12:39):
basically, DNA. And that'sthat's basically it. And so but
this minimum sex difference inminimum investment is a critical
issue. And this was the insightthat Robert Trevor's famous
Harvard biologist, came up within 1972 was what drives these
two components of sexualselection, which sex does the
(13:00):
choosing which sex does thecompeting? And his answer was
relative parental investment, sothe sex that invests heavily or
more than the other sex becomesthe more valuable sex and when
you're the more valuable sex andthe high investing sex, what
that means is that there is agreat penalty tremendous cost
(13:21):
associated with making a badsexual choice or a bad mate
choice. But on the flip side,great benefits to making a good
mate choice for the sex is notinvesting very much good and bad
matrices don't matter so muchrather, it is access to the
valuable member to the to thevaluable other steps that is the
(13:42):
limiting factor for reproductivesuccess. And so what that means
in English is that women carrywith them because you know,
imagine, you know that we'restudying some species and the
female of the species.
fertilization occurs internallywithin her, she incubates that
fetus within her body for ninemonths, she feeds it metabolic
(14:04):
resources, even if there's acaloric deficit, you know,
calories and minerals areleached from the woman's body in
bonds to feed that, that fetusfor nine months, and then
subsequently lactation, thebreastfeeding, so these are
extraordinarily heavyinvestments that massively don't
(14:26):
engage in. And so from a purelyreproductive standpoint, someone
who's willing to do all thatinvesting for your child, that's
hugely valuable. And so whatthat means is that women have
become the limiting resource formen and men tend to compete for
access to that limitingresource. Now, it gets a little
(14:48):
bit complicated with humansbecause we have, you know, I'm
speaking of just simply sex perse, and in particular short term
maintenance strategy when youget to long term mating
strategies, both sexes investheavily. And fortunately, men do
more than the male, you know,and so, and so they invest years
and decades and in theirchildren and protecting their
(15:13):
children and providing for theirchildren and their families. And
when you get both sexesinvesting heavily, you get both
sexes being very choosy.
Importantly, both sexescompeting with members of their
own sets for the most desirablemembers of the opposite sex. So
in long term mating, bothcomponents of sexual selection,
(15:35):
or for both sexes,
Morten Andersen (15:36):
yes, women tend to invest more, and therefore
they are more valuable. Thatmeans that they do more the
choosing, men do the morethey're competing for women.
There are also many otherdifferences. Men are fertile for
many more years than then womenare, and so on. And that leads
to a number of sexual conflicts.
And you have, you havehighlighted six sexual
(15:59):
conflicts, and I just want to gothrough them and also maybe talk
about some examples from some ofyour your studies of how those
differences actually play out.
So let's just go through themand see how those sexual
conflicts look. So the first oneyou talk about is called a
desire for sexual variety. Howis that a conflict,
David Buss (16:22):
desire for sexual variety needs that manifests
itself in many ways, but mentend to desire a wider variety
of partners, sex partners, thanwomen on average, there's
overlap in the distributions,but on average, they do. And
this shows up and things like,how many partners Would you like
to have how many sex partnersjust like that over the next
(16:43):
year, or 10 years, man and manymore than women, but it shows up
in sexual fantasies, you know,with how many different partners
do you have sexual fantasiesabout or even in the course of a
single sexual fantasy episode,men tend to do more partner
switching during the course of afantasy episode. It also shows
up in men tending to let lesstime elapse before seeking or
(17:08):
initiating a sexual encounterthan women, women tend to need
more information about the guy.
And that's why that strangersstudy that you mentioned, women
tend to say no. Would you havesex with me? They said, No, I
need a little more information.
Men, they all the information isright there available to them in
its physical appearance.
Morten Andersen (17:30):
Yes. In one of the studies that you suggested
was that if you ask on average,women, how many sex partners
would you ideally like to haveover a lifetime, they would say
something between four to five,whereas for men, that number is
around 18. So men simply arelooking for more sexual partners
(17:50):
over a lifetime, then, then awomen woman is
David Buss (17:53):
yes, ideally. And so this is, and this will relate to
when we get back to the issuesof relationships, there's a
desire, and that's why I call mybook the evolution of desire, my
first book, but then there'salso it's the expression of
desire in behavior, have thesedesires, they often suppress the
(18:13):
desire it let's say they're in along term committed
relationship, and they don'twant to jeopardize the
relationship. They don't want toincur reputational damage, or
their religion or their code ofmorality prevents them from
doing so. Of course, not always.
But that's why evolutionarypsychologists make a key
distinction between theunderlying psychological
mechanisms and their expressionand behavior. So just a quick
(18:36):
analogy would be people have adesire for foods that are rich
in sugar, fat, salt, andprotein. But let's say we have
we want to get fit, we want tolose some weight, we might
choose not to express thosedesires in our eating behavior
for a period of time. So it's alot easier to prevent the
expression of desire, it's a lotmore difficult to change that
(18:59):
underlying desire.
Morten Andersen (19:02):
Yes, okay. The second sexual conflict is sexual
over perception bias. Can youtell us what that is? Yes, this
David Buss (19:10):
is this is a, an amusing one, but an important
one. And I think one key causeof sexual conflict. So typical
scenarios a woman encounters aman and the woman smiles at the
man and men infer sexualinterest. She's trying to be
seductive. She's trying to flirtwith me. And women will often
(19:30):
say No, I was just being I wasjust being friendly, or I was
being polite. And so men tend toover infer sexual interest when
it's not there. And we thinkthis is it's a bias, but it's an
adaptive bias in the sense thatover evolutionary time missing
out on sexual opportunitieswould have been very, very
costly for men in the currencyof reproduction, reproductive
(19:54):
success, and so men have thisbias to you know, basically
widen the search net and in forsexual interest when it's not
there, in part because thatgives if they perceive that
they're getting sexual signalsthat gives them the confidence
to approach the woman andsometimes they can convert and
(20:15):
initially uninterested womeninto an interested one
Morten Andersen (20:19):
So big because it's the woman, it's the female
that is choosing the male betterbe ready when she's choosing so
therefore having an overperception bias may actually
help him be ready when she'schoosing is that is that how the
analogy goes? Yeah, that's
David Buss (20:38):
Yeah, that's one component and and I think
another component is simply, youknow, base rates if men are
widening the pool. And let's saythat they get turned down by
let's say their sexualperception bias causes them to
try to initiate an encounter 100times while they may get shot
down many times, but maybethey'll get a few hits. And
(21:00):
that's basically what we seeplayed out on dating apps like
Tinder in the modern environmentwhere men, you know, swipe right
on hundreds and hundreds ofwomen, and in the hopes that
they'll get they'll get a fewthat say, yes, women are much,
much more selective, includingsites like Tinder.
Morten Andersen (21:16):
Yeah, I think I think your research using Tinder
is just excellent, because thereyou can really see behavior how
that is played out on, you know,on a market, which is very
related to, you know, sexualattraction, essentially. And
here, you say, well, men justswipe right, a lot more than
female do, which which explainsmaybe some of the sexual
perception bias.
David Buss (21:37):
Yeah, or it's an expression. So is it an
expression of the desire forsexual variety?
Morten Andersen (21:43):
Yes, six different sexual conflicts. The
first one desire for sexualvariety, men simply want more
sexual partners than women. Thesecond one is sexual over
perception bias. Men are quickerto infer sexual signs compared
to female. The third one isdeception. What is that?
David Buss (22:03):
Yeah, well, both sexes deceive on the mating
market. Our research has foundthat they deceive in somewhat
different ways. So men are morelikely, when they're pursuing a
short term mating strategy,they're more likely to express
deeper feelings for the womanthan they actually have. I feel
this true emotional attachmentto feel true love I, I feel a
(22:28):
depth I feel like we under yoursoulmate, they're more likely to
exaggerate, basically finding along term mating strategy. And
these words, in order to pursuea short term mating strategy,
women sometimes to see in theopposite way, sometimes they are
making mark or pretend thatthey're okay with casual sex,
but then try to convert the maninto a long term relationship.
(22:50):
So one example of this isstudies of of hookups on college
campuses, where they asked menand women are what is your ideal
outcome of a hookup? And womensay, Well, my ideal outcome
would be that it leads to arelationship. And men are more
likely to say, Oh, I hope thatthis hookup leads to more
hookups with more or less so sothe sex difference plays out in
(23:13):
that way.
Morten Andersen (23:14):
And you have also looked at at Tinder and
what it is that people lie aboutin their profile, which is also
different between the two sexes?
David Buss (23:23):
Yes, there's a whole hundreds of
researchers have collected onthis site, survey many of them
in my books, but men tend to lieabout their height. So how tall
they are, they tend to add acouple of inches. So American
system that's their five feet,10 inches, they round up to six
feet, they lie about theirincome. And then they lie about
(23:45):
what their mating strategy is.
They pretend that they're moreinterested in the long term
mating strategy. And then theymay be sincere requires only I'm
interested in, you know, a realconnection. Women tend to
deceive about their weight. Sothey tend to shave off about 15
(24:05):
pounds, or I don't know whatthat translates into, I guess,
six or seven kilos. And and thenboth sexes deceive about
appearance in the sense ofposting either old photos or
photoshopped photos that are nottruly representative what they
actually
Morten Andersen (24:21):
look like. So we should meet people before we
have we engage with people.
David Buss (24:26):
Absolutely, that's, that's my number one
recommendation, you know, cutoff the, you know, the internet
communication, you have to meetsomeone. And even to determine
whether there's any of yourchemistry there, you have to
meet the person in person.
Morten Andersen (24:39):
So that was three of the six sexual
conflicts. And essentially, whatwe're saying is that these are
differences in how men and womenapproach the other partner and
in in order to find a mate, andthese are from deep evolutionary
reasons why there are thesedifferences but because there
are the these differences Itleads to conflicts. Let's look
(25:02):
at the last three, and thenwe'll find out what does that do
to us in terms of how do we livewell together? So the fourth one
is mate value, discrepancies,mate value. What is that?
David Buss (25:14):
I think there are analogs in European countries
and Americans use this crude 10point scale, where the person's
at 10, if they're paying avalue, or an eight, or a six, or
a two or a one, the problem isthat if a person is assessed in
mate value, and they'reattracted to in a, while the
(25:34):
eights not going to be attractedto them, or if the six manages
to convince the eight thatthey're an eight, temporarily,
the eight is more likely tocheat on the six, and the eight
is more likely to dump the sixto leave that relationship. For
someone who's more comparableand mate value. The problem is
(25:54):
that men tend to overestimatetheir mate value on average. And
so you get a lot of men who aresixes but thinks that they're
eights. And that leads them tonot waste a conflict, they
approach a woman who they thinkis within their mate value
range. And the woman says, No,you're not, you're not, you're
not good enough for me. And soand so that can generate
resentment, sometimes hostilitytoward women. Now, not all men
(26:19):
do this. So men who are high onthe personality trait of
narcissism, tend to thinkthey're hotter than they are,
they think they're hot, butthey're not. So not all men
overestimate their mate value,but there's a sex difference,
there were men, on average,think they're higher than they
are.
Morten Andersen (26:37):
So obviously, by this theory, or this part of
the theory, what you're sayingis that if you're an eight, find
somebody who's an eight, becauseif you're finding somebody on a
10, you might let that personin, but that is likely to lead
to that person leaving you atsome point that is a higher
likelihood of divorce, if thereis a big of a range between and
(26:58):
don't go for a six, because youmight feel in your relationship
that you could have done better.
So find somebody at your level,essentially.
David Buss (27:05):
Yeah, absolutely.
It's, it's one of the one of thelaws of mating, you know, find
someone that the equivalent tomate value, that's going to lead
to more happiness and longevityin the long run. Although it's
also true that mate valuechanges over time. It's never
it's not a static quality. Andso someone could get a job
promotion or become a famousmusician, or lose a job or
(27:25):
become a drug addict oralcoholic or so. So there are
changes over time. So what youreally want is someone who's on
the same mate valuetrajectory,that you are not someone who's
exactly like you are at thatmoment. So for long for the goal
of long term happyrelationships.
Morten Andersen (27:46):
Yes. So that was the fourth sexual conflict.
The fifth one is infidelity.
What is that about?
David Buss (27:54):
You know, people when they get married or or
engaged in a presumptivelymonogamous relationship, they
commit their sexual resources toone partner, and people cheat
sometimes not everybody. But youknow, it's nothing like 25% of
women and maybe 40 to 50% of menat some point, there's a bit of
(28:15):
a sex difference, a non trivialsex difference on my head. In
evolutionary terms, this is thediversion of reproductively
relevant resources, someoneoutside of the partnership. And
it's extremely costly. Man froman evolutionary perspective
risks. Getting geneticallycoupled with that is taking risk
(28:35):
investing in a child who is nottheir child, it might be that
the mailman or the neighbor'swomen from women's perspective,
if their partner is unfaithful,she risks losing the man's
investment, commitment, time,attention, resources, all of
which could be channeled to arival woman, and her offspring.
And so infidelity is it's one ofthe leading, it's one of the two
(28:59):
leading causes of divorceworldwide, people are tempted to
do it. I think they do it forsomewhat different reasons. And
the sites for this and in mybook, as well, that men tend to
cheat on average for to satisfydesire for sexual variety. So
the woman who they cheat withcouldn't mine doesn't
necessarily mean anything. tothem. It's just like a desire
(29:21):
for sexual variety. Women tendto tend to cheat when they're
fundamentally unhappy with therelationship and are looking to
see if maybe they can do betterout there on the mating work. So
it's what I call the mateswitching hypothesis.
Morten Andersen (29:35):
And I think there is also something about
having a backup, maybe for thefemale, which is not the same
for the male essentially.
David Buss (29:43):
Yes, yeah. When one woman told me men are like suit,
you always want to have one onthe back burner.
Morten Andersen (29:50):
Yes.
interesting analogy. And numbersix of this sexual conflict is
breaking up. Can you tell us alittle bit about what what that
is about?
David Buss (30:00):
Yeah, well, breakups are, we've studied them in my
lab, they're they're verytraumatic for most people
involved, even the person who'sdoing the breaking up. But often
there is an asymmetry. That isone person wants to break up and
the other person does not. Andso that's a conflict between the
sexes. As a general rule, womentend to do more of the breaking
(30:22):
up, women tend to seek divorcesmore often than men. Of course,
men men do as well sometimes.
But one of the interestingthings about relationships is
that sometimes men are totallysurprised when the woman comes
and says, I want to divorce ifthey don't see it coming.
Whereas women tend to be more intune with the rhythms of the
(30:44):
long term relationship, and aremore likely to anticipate when
their problems and they can seeit coming on average, although I
know some cases where I've beentotally shocked as well. Okay,
fantastic.
Morten Andersen (31:09):
So far, we talked about conflict of, of
sexes. And you have said thatthis conflict is basically a
result of an evolution overmillions of years. Because of
this conflict, men does badthings to women, women does bad
things to men, because of thisconflict. But in your book,
which is coming up next week,you have a book coming out
(31:30):
calling, called When Men BehaveBadly. And in that book, you
state that even though both menand women do bad things to each
other, the really bad things,the really bad things are done
by men towards women. Why isthat?
David Buss (31:46):
Yes, both sexes deceive each other. Both sexes
can engage in unwanted sexualcontact. But the more extreme
the behavior, the more it tendsto be committed by men. So when
you talk about sexualharassment, yes, some women
sexually harass men, but mentend to do it much more often.
(32:07):
Sexual coercion, men do it moreoften rape, men do it more often
stalking. You know, men do itmore often. So criminal stalking
and that 80% men and 20% women,and then of course, Homicide
murder, if an adult woman getskilled, the odds are between 50
(32:28):
and 70%, that she is killed byher romantic partner that is a
boyfriend or an ex boyfriend,husband or an ex husband. And
whereas for men who get killedby women, only 3% are the result
of a romantic partner. And so Ithink that part of it is that
has to do with the some of thethings we've been talking about,
(32:51):
like desire for sexual variety,that women are the more valuable
reproductive resource, and mansometimes go to great lengths to
hold on to, or gain access to towomen. And that's partly what
sexual herassment is about iscurrently what stalking is about
in a season. disturbingly,partly what intimate partner
violence is about. That is, menengage in violence. And this
(33:16):
sounds horrible, but for veryfunctional reasons, to try to
lower the partner self esteem,to try to make her believe that
she is lucky to have him thatmen tend to do this, engage in
intimate partner violence as alatch last ditch effort when
they're losing the woman andthey're doing going to great
(33:38):
lengths to try to keep her andwith these desperate measures.
So I think it's very importantthat women know this knowledge.
So the woman's odds of gettingkilled, for example, by by an ex
are occur mostly within thefirst three to six months after
a breakup. And sometimes, youknow, women are aware of that,
(33:59):
and the guy will say, Oh, boy,you meet with me one last time
for coffee and, you know, andthen I'll leave you alone, and
then they end up dead. So, womenhave to know what these danger
signs are.
Morten Andersen (34:11):
And this is obviously not trivial problems.
I mean, in your book is, youactually state that sexual
violence against women is themost widespread human rights
problem in the world. And also,so one thing is the act itself,
but also what happens to theconsequences. So what happens to
the women so the consequences ofof having endured this so
(34:34):
depression, anxiety, eatingdisorder, intention to suicide,
all of these things that is is aconsequence of these things.
Obviously, this is not a trivialmatter, this is a huge problem.
Can you explain why you thinkthis is is such a big problem?
David Buss (34:51):
Well, the the the psychological Aftermath for
women who are victims of sexualviolence is horrible. I didn't
realize when I wrote the book,how quite how horrible it was.
But in our studies and my reviewliterature, yes, exactly the
issues you point out,depression, low self esteem,
(35:11):
being cut off from socialsupport and kin ties and
friendships and disruption,school disruption of work life.
And I think that it because whatit is what sexual violence
against women, the key componentis that it interferes with the
number one law of female matingstrategy, which is female
(35:32):
choice, that is women's abilityto choose who, when, where, and
under what circumstances she hasset. And men strategies often
interfere with female choice,when that happens, and I think
this has this has a certain longevolutionary history. As far as
we can tell, it doesn't meanthat rape is an adaptation by
(35:56):
the way I talk about that issuein great depth in my book. But
clearly women have been victimsof sexual violence for a very
long time, over evolutionaryhistory, and it has devastating
consequences. And the reason Icall it the most widespread
world human rights violation isfor a couple of reasons. One is
(36:16):
the sheer number of women whoare victims. And this occurs in
every culture, in every ethnicgroup, religious group, whatever
your political orientation, sonobody has no culture or
subculture has a monopoly. Andwe're talking about 50% of the
population. And so even womenwho weren't direct victims often
(36:38):
live in fear of becomingvictims, so curtails their
freedom of movement, theirability to go out at night,
their ability to attend nightclasses, and then secondary
victims, as they're called. Sothe friends, the family members,
the brothers, sisters, of thewomen who are victims, they to
become victims as well,secondary victims. It's the most
(37:00):
widespread in the sense ofaffecting the largest number of
people around the world.
Morten Andersen (37:06):
Some of of the of the worst of and I don't know
if we can say that, but some ofthe worst offenders hit the
headlines. So we talk aboutJeffrey Epstein, Harvey
Weinstein, Bill Cosby, some ofthose people, and you're
absolutely right, they're allmen. Are there any common things
when you look at those kind ofpeople? I mean, do they share
(37:28):
personality traits or anythinglike that?
David Buss (37:30):
Yes, they do. So and this is pretty solid, I document
this in, in my new book, thatwhat's called the dark triad
personality traits. And so theseare people who are high on
narcissism high on Machiavellianism and high on psychopathy, but
also high on pursuing a shortterm mating strategy. So those
(37:51):
four elements when they combine,so narcissism is feelings of
grandiosity and feelings ofentitlement, including sexual
entitlement. Machiavellian isn'tas people who adopt a an
exploitative interpersonalstrategy. So these are cheaters,
defectors exploiters, who arejust looking out for themselves,
(38:12):
and they don't care aboutothers. And then psychopathy,
one of the hallmarks is lack ofempathy. So they don't care
about the victims. They don'tcare who they harm. They're just
implementing their preferences.
And when you combine that withshort term mating strategy, it's
a deadly combination. So thepeople you mentioned, like
Harvey Weinstein, excellentexample of that Jeffrey Epstein
clearly had high and dark triadtraits. And you're absolutely
(38:38):
right. Where are the women thatare hitting the news for
sexually exploiting all the menthat, you know, there? There
aren't. So not that women don'tsexually exploit men sometimes,
but at the scale that we'retalking about, men have a pretty
exclusive monopoly on.
Morten Andersen (38:58):
And I guess, obviously, talking about those
people in the dark triad. Imean, hopefully, they they're
not so many of those in theworld. But some of the things
that I read in your book I wassurprised about and and which
may go to a also a length ofexplaining why there are so many
women who are harassed is that,for instance, if you ask people
(39:20):
how harassing is this, and yougive them a number of options,
so for instance, staring at achest, how harassing is that? Or
talk about your sexualexperience? Well, then men will
say, well, that's not veryharassing at all. Whereas women
will say, well, it actually is.
So there seems to be adiscrepancy between what act
actually is harassing for theother person.
David Buss (39:45):
You're absolutely right about that. And, and this
is another key cause ofconflict. Because when men
engage in these acts that womenperceive as harassing men think
oh, like, it's no big deal.
What's the big deal? I was, youknow, she had a nice body. I'm I
just felt like looking at it andsaid, there's this disconnect.
And I think part of it is thatwe are stuck in our own sexual
(40:05):
psychology. And so with the onlyway we can know no other minds
are one way in which we knowtheir minds is we infer that
other sexual minds are similarto our own. Hmm. And consulting
your own personal intuitionsabout the sexual minds of
others, if it's the other sex isa mistake, because the sexual
(40:28):
psychology of men and womendiffer different fundamental
ways.
Morten Andersen (40:35):
And also, you've researched stalking, I
think you mentioned that beforeas well and just are so
surprised about the number ofhow many people have experienced
stalking. So I think youmentioned that 19% of people in
high school have actuallyexperienced stalking. Now,
stalking can be a physical,physically following somebody,
(40:55):
but it can also just be stalkingsomebody on social media
breaking into a phone orsomething. What have you learned
about stalking in your research?
David Buss (41:04):
Yeah, well, that's, that's a great great that you
bring that up, because that's avery new form of stalking, cyber
stalking. And it's only nowgotten the attention of
lawmakers who are starting tostrain to criminalize it. In
most places around the world.
It's not it's not criminalactivity. But I think that
that's going to change. So cybertechnology has enabled people to
(41:27):
implement conflict between thesexes and in ways that are
historically unprecedented. Andit's extremely disturbing. I'll
tell you one, one more that hascome up recently is I can't
remember it's called it's likecalled Deep fakes or something
like that, where people canliterally take a someone's
photograph, place photograph oftheir face, and they can
(41:48):
implanted on a sex video tapethat is not them. And everyone
and then posted on the internet,and of course, is extremely
traumatizing to the victims,most of whom are women. So this
new technology is allowingsexual harms in a way that we
never really had before.
Morten Andersen (42:08):
Yes, with using deep, deep fake that you can
take a picture of a womanwearing a bikini, and then it
can remove the clothes, and itwill show how she looks like
without any clothes, and thenposting that, obviously to to
harm her on social media. And asyou rightly say, that is men
mainly doing that to to women.
David Buss (42:30):
Right, right. And that's something I do talk about
in the book is revenge porn. Andso men who are served by women,
or rejected by women, often arethe ones who are doing that
revenge porn.
Morten Andersen (42:43):
Yes.
Evolutionary Psychology isessentially taking the Darwin's
theory of sexual selection. Andthen from that, inferring six
sexual conflicts that there arebetween the sexes, so
(43:06):
essentially saying that thereare more similarities between
men and women. But on someareas, there are differences.
And this relates to the sexualselection theory. And these
conflicts essentially leads toconflicts in a relationship or
between men and women. And I'dlike to get to the point now,
where we we talk about how thismight relate to for the
(43:29):
listeners. So What Monkeys Do isa podcast about change. So I
want to talk a little bit abouthim the end about how we can use
this knowledge, to say somethingabout how men and women can
engage in a conversation withthat knowledge in engage in a
conversation about making theirrelationship, marriage, whatever
it is, as healthy as possible.
Do you have any, from yourresearch? And your many
(43:52):
conversations? You've probablybeen asked this many times
before as well, to have you haveyou got any advice for for for
relationships with thisknowledge?
David Buss (44:02):
Yeah, Yes, I do. I guess you can divide it up into
two things. So one is, and thiswas actually a question posed
recently on on Twitter, what isthe single most important
decision you can make in yourlife? And what I say is, it's
the selection of a long termmate, that that affects just
about everything else in yourlife. Not that matings always
(44:24):
best to lifetime, of course,they doubt their breakups,
divorces and so forth. Butselecting the right long term
mate is absolutely critical.
We've mentioned in one elementthat in our conversation, which
is selecting a mate who'ssimilar and mate value, or who
has a similar mate valuetrajectory, and I think that's
critical. Second, I would go foravoiding the dark triad. So
(44:46):
avoid mates who are excessivelynarcissistic, manipulative,
Machiavellian or psychopathic.
You want to pick someone who isinterested in a long term
mating. Not someone who wants toplay the field and express their
desire for sexual variety.
personality wise, we also wantto select someone who's
(45:08):
emotionally stable. emotionalstability in our research is one
of the key causes of conflictwithin married couples, then
once you're in a relationship, Ithink it's important to be open
and honest in terms ofcommunicating. Because as we
talked about males and femaleshave different psychologies in
different sexual and matingpsychologies in some ways, and
(45:30):
an honest communication aboutthat can do do wonders. Because
otherwise, if you just think,well, the other person is
exactly like I am, then you'realways going to be frustrated
when they don't behave exactlylike you are like you want them
to behave. And so I think honestcommunication about that. The
other thing I would recommendis, is been to pardon the self
(45:52):
serving is to read my book onThe Evolution of Desire and Why
Men vs. Women Behave Badly.
Because I think that gives theinsights and in Why Men Behave
Badly. I devote a whole chapterto the issue of coping with
conflict, because conflict willemerge in all relationships.
(46:14):
I've never encountered a singlemajor shift that with black
comp, any conflict, the issue ishow you cope with it. And there
are effective strategies ofdealing with it in any effective
ones. And so I would encourageyour listeners to read that
chapter in the new book.
Morten Andersen (46:30):
Yes. And I think this is an important part
because obviously, outlining thedifferences in between men and
women does not justify what mendo to women in terms of
harassment. But I guess what oneof your main point is that in
order to create the beststrategies as a society, for
(46:51):
dealing with these harassments,and and and these things that
men do to women, we need tounderstand the fundamental
reasons, evolutionary pressuresfor these conflicts to arise in
the first place. And then we cancreate strategies and laws as a
society to combat that. And Iguess that also works in a in a
(47:13):
relationship, I suppose, is byunderstanding the underlying
drives that may be different forthe for the men and for the man
and the woman in therelationship may be the first
step in understanding how do wethen deal with it?
David Buss (47:26):
Yes, absolutely. And just to give one concrete
example, one man told me thatafter he read my book, he it
caused him to be more faithfulto his wife, because he found
himself in a good relationship,if you felt felt attracted to
other women. And when he wasattracted to other women, he
(47:47):
thought, well, maybe I'm not inlove with my wife anymore. After
you read my book, he realized,Oh, that's my evolved desire for
sexual variety. It doesn't meanI don't love my wife, I still
love her. But it's that evolveddesire for sexual variety that
helps me to stay faithful to mywife.
Morten Andersen (48:03):
Yes. So if one of our listeners is in a
relationship, or in a marriage,and it's going really well, but
then you're like, you're saying,well, there's likely going to be
sexual conflict, because thereis in most relationships, and
the best way to combat that isactually, first of all to
understand the evolutionaryreasons and the drivers for
(48:26):
those conflicts, because thenyou can tackle it through
communication and having thatunderstanding.
Unknown (48:32):
Exactly. Perfect.
Morten Andersen (48:35):
Great. That was all I have for this interview at
this has been a reallyinteresting interview. I have
I've read your new book, it'scoming out next week. And I will
encourage listeners to to readit. I said in the beginning that
I will encourage everyone to, toread the the Evolution of
Desire, I still mean that. Butyour new one is actually really
good. And it has a lot of up todate, examples and also using
(48:58):
social media and your researchusing Tinder and so on. I think
this is truly fascinating. Andthen I think it has a very
critical eye on there is toomuch harassment for against
women, and we need to dosomething about it. But ignoring
our evolutionary drive willprobably not solve the problem
then. So I want to say thank youvery much, David for for taking
(49:21):
the time to speak with me. Ireally enjoyed this.
David Buss (49:23):
Thank you. It's been a delight tochat with you.
Morten Andersen (49:25):
Fantastic.
What a great interview. I tookthree things away from my talk
with David. One. A lot of ourfundamental psychology, or
fundamental emotions can beexplained by sexual selection.
(49:47):
Darwin's natural selection isprobably pretty well known but
his other theory about sexualselection is probably more
important. It explains why thereare differences between men and
women. When, and why we haveemotions such as jealousy and
desire. And this is important toknow because we have evolved
(50:08):
over millions of years. And thisis probably one of those things,
which is hard to change to sexdifferences leads to sexual
conflicts. David has identifiedsix sexual conflicts between men
and women. They range fromsexual variety to sexual over
(50:28):
perception bias, what we lieabout infidelity, and so on. And
because of these conflicts, mendo bad things to women, and
women do bad things to men, weall try to do what we can to get
the best mating partner we can.
But the really bad things arealmost always done by men,
(50:48):
sexual harassment, sexualassault, stalking rate, all of
that is mainly done by men. Andthree, we can use this knowledge
to make our relationship better.
David said that our single mostimportant decision we can make
(51:09):
is the selection of our longterm mating partner. And if you
are in a relationshipunderstanding that we can have,
so to speak, in sexualconflicts, due to evolutionary
pressures, is very important forus to understand because by
understanding that, we can thencreate coping strategies, so men
(51:32):
desire more sexual partners thanwomen do now, but it's up to men
to suppress this desire andunderstand that this is mainly
biological rather than any otherreason, and therefore should not
follow this design. David has afantastic research. He's a great
writer, but also a fantasticspeaker, you should check out
(51:53):
his excellent TED Talks. Theyare truly fantastic. Until next
time, take care
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