Latest / The XX Lab / Why Women Compete Differently Than Men with Dr. Khandis Blake | #13

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Why Women Compete Differently Than Men with Dr. Khandis Blake | #13 · The XX Lab

• Sarah: The ratios are changing like 600, 2000 times compared to where they were across that month. And to assume that that's not going to have behavioral effects to me is just crazy. So women who are on hormonal birth control are feeling great about themselves and competitive, or it could be that they're at the sort of basement, right? There's so much more flexibility in terms of what femininity looks like than what masculinity looks like. And I think it's very easy for women to not realize that. People who are assigned to a low income environment want partners who have more financial security and partners who have better jobs. to the XX Lab, where we explore the science and stories that matter to you. Today's guest is someone I've been wanting to talk to since I started this podcast. Who is she? Dr. Candice Blake. Dr. Candice Blake is a senior lecturer in psychology at the University of Melbourne, whose research examines status, attraction, social climbing, gender relations, and the often subtle ways that people compete for resources, relationships, and influence. Her work tackles questions that many of us have wondered about, but few scientists have been willing to ask. In our conversation today, we talk about how status and attractiveness shape our relationships. We talk about whether wealthy women still want to date powerful men. And we go over the results of her cross-cultural study of sexy selfies to better understand the motivation behind everyone's favorite picture type. In this conversation, we dive into the psychology of ambition, social status, female competition, sex hormones, and what decades of research can teach us about the hidden forces shaping our interactions with one another. If you've ever wondered why some women are celebrated while others are criticized for the very same behaviors, or why navigating female social dynamics can sometimes feel complicated, this episode is for you. I'm Dr. Sarah Hill. This is the XX Lab. Let's get started. Dr. Candace Blake, welcome to the XX Lab. Thank you so much. I'm delighted to be here and chatting to you today. Yeah, I'm so excited to have you on because you have done so much interesting research and it's a lot of research that kind of touches on things that women experience in their everyday lives. And I wanna just start out by talking about some of your research on competition. And I wanna talk about competition because... Yeah, I think that sometimes people think, you know, competition, ⁓ boxing match or competition bar fight. And they don't think about the fact, you know, so even within our field of research science, like there's a tendency to have researchers talk about competition as being this male pursuit. Right. And that is not something that that females actually do. ⁓ So is that true? Right. Is it is it true that ⁓ that women are more communal? and that competition is sort of gendered and that it's male, or might there be a little more nuance in competition? Yes, let's start with the big questions. I love it. ⁓ So look, you're absolutely right. I think basically we have a bit of a sexist view about what competition is. ⁓ And if you think of competition like bar fights and wanting to be first in the running race or I don't know. squashing ⁓ all of your competitors to be number one, then people generally tend to stereotype that as male. ⁓ And, you know, there are sex differences and things like communality and wanting to ⁓ be agreeable and get along with everybody. And women do tend to be a bit more like that, but that doesn't mean that they don't compete. We just compete in ways that ⁓ we might not be thinking is competition. But actually when you look at the ways that females compete and that women compete, are like fiercely competitive, just as competitive as men, if not more so in certain domains. We just need to have a better understanding about what competition is. So you said that women sometimes compete for things where they don't even really recognize that they're competing. So like what are some of these things that women are competing for where they don't even really recognize what's happening and like what does it look like? Yeah, so I'll give you some juicy kind of typical examples. Parents competing over their children, making sure that, you know, people just subtly know that your little Johnny is going so well at reading and, you know, is really doing excellent at emotion regulation or, you know, all of those things parents talk about now. ⁓ Sizes of wedding rings, ⁓ indicators of ⁓ attractiveness, beauty. having a luxe handbag, having on some sexy lipstick. All of this can be these more ⁓ female specific ways that women compete. And obviously that is not the only way women compete. I'm giving you some stereotypical examples. Not everyone cares about that kind of stuff, but yeah, these are some common ways, common things that you'll see and you might not be thinking that that's competition. Yeah. And I think that, I think we see this all the time. I mean, I know I certainly did. And when my kids, especially when my kids were younger, it seemed like I encountered this a lot more frequently. Like when they were elementary school aged and like, you know, nursery school, preschool age, I feel like there was a lot more ⁓ ferocity in that type of competition. feel like it got a little bit chilled out ⁓ once women got a little bit ⁓ older. Like my kids are high school college age now. And so, and we'll get to the hormonal pieces of competition, but I think that there's something potentially to that, that like when you're in these peak reproductive years, when your sex hormones are at their highest, that during these years you see more of this fierce sort of competition, although most women wouldn't think of it as competition, For showing the really nice handbag or the really nice car or talking about Johnny and his advanced reading scores. And so what are women competing for? Right. we don't really necessarily even know that we're doing it, but we do like to be the person who has the fanciest car in Carpool Lane. And we'd like to have the nicest bag of the friends or at least one of the nicest bags of all of our friends. We don't want to feel like we have the least nice stuff. Why are we doing this? What are we trying to achieve with this? Yeah. So different ways of answering that question, you know, why are we competing? I think that ⁓ I like to think of it in two ways. The most kind of close to home way is what we're competing for is status. We want to be relative to our peers, because status is always relative to your community. Relative to our peers, we want to be in those top echelons. We may not want everybody to know that we want that because that doesn't always look good. But if people were to say, just be left with the impression and us not having to potentially say it outwardly, for people just to know that we're kind of right up there and well regarded socially and that we are well desired as romantic partners, that we're well desired as a friend, we're well desired as an ally, that there are benefits to having social relationships with us, that's the kind of stuff that I mean when I say status. think that ultimately we are competing for that. So what is status by us? So, mean, because what you're saying totally makes sense to me, right? Like we are competing for status. And I think that even those of us who don't think that they're outwardly, like actively trying to compete for status, if they sit and look at their behaviors and think about things that they've done or purchases that they've made or you know, things that they've said, they can kind of nod and say, yeah, I've probably done that from time to time. Ultimately, what are the benefits of having status? Yeah, like why do we want that? Yeah, why do we care so much about that? So, look, I like to take a kind of big picture view of this because there are many different ways of answering that question. Some people might say, ⁓ well, we're socialized to care about status because, you know, of our history. Some people might say, Not everybody is interested in status. This is a cultural thing. I would say that everybody is interested in status. I would disagree with that view. I do think, of course, that there are social drivers to status, but ⁓ I like to take a big picture view, and that's ⁓ a view that kind of looks at our evolutionary history and looks at the benefits of status, not just to women and men and humans, but to all animals because ⁓ social animals have status. looks a little different to how we're talking about it now. ⁓ And status skewers reproductive success, basically. If you think about evolution like a game of leaving your genes in future generations, status is one of the things that we know is really important to making sure that that happens. So is that as true for humans as it is for other species, do you think? Does research support the idea that that having status as a human, that this is going to lead to better outcomes in terms of reproduction or the success of children. ⁓ like, because as they do, and like, for example, one species I think about, and I think about status and the benefits to offspring are hyenas. I don't know if you know anything about ⁓ hyena mating systems, but they're actually really fascinating. And status is transferred through the females. And really the females are very aggressive. Like they're incredibly aggressive. And in part, the reason that they're so aggressive is because their status transfers to their children. And for those that have low status children, they tend to eat at the carcass last. So they're more likely to die because they scavenge off these carcasses. are, yeah, they get the worst food. yeah. Yeah. And so they don't get as much food, et cetera, et cetera. And so with humans, I'm presuming that this is also true then. Yeah, so it depends on how you talk about status, right? So if I'm taking quite a broad view about status, and I mean not just kind of your position in a pecking order or in a hierarchy, ⁓ which can be linked, you know, in a lot of animal species, linked to dominance, right? So if you can literally, physically, you're bigger, you can squash your competitors, then that's going to give you higher status. ⁓ But if we think about status also in terms of your value as a romantic partner or as a sexual partner, your desirability as a sexual partner, your ability to produce offspring, your age, which is related to a bunch of those things, yeah, those things are really important for reproductive success, I think, in a lot of species. Yeah, you know, it's funny because one of the things I've always been interested in is this idea of female status hierarchies, because as noted, there's been so much research that's been conducted looking at the way that men compete for status and the benefits of status for men. And the benefits of status for men are largely believed to be access to women, right? Because we know that women tend to have a preference for powerful men, wealthy men, high status men. And so this is going to open all of these doors in terms of potential mating opportunities. But then when we look at women and men's preferences, we do know from much research that ⁓ women's status per se isn't particularly attractive or unattractive to men. If you ask a man, like if you say like this woman is CEO of this big company, this big public company, or this woman is a fry cook at Brahms or like McDonald's, and then you show the photo and it's the same photo. If she's attractive, men are going to think that she's attractive in either condition. And the high status might even count against her depending on when the man is the CEO himself. He might not like the idea of CEO wife. Yeah, exactly, exactly. And so, you know, we, when we look at female status and like what it actually buys you, it doesn't seem to be buying women the same types of advantage when it comes to like romantic partner choice, right? And as you noted, it might even like detract because for every, you know, unit of increase education and, and, you know, their, their own status, women's mating pool oftentimes shrinks. for the reasons that you noted, and that's that not all men want to be with a woman who's got more status than their own. And of course then there's women's side of things where women oftentimes, although your research suggests there's some wrinkles to this that I'm excited to talk about, but that for women who have a lot of status that they also don't want to necessarily make down, right? And so for women, like being high status in a lot of ways seems like it comes at a greater cost in some ways, right? Where it's like, well, I've just shrunk my pool of mates. I've not only have I not made myself more attractive, I potentially cut off ⁓ partners that would potentially be available to me. And so then what are the benefits? Like where did the benefits to women of having status come from? And this has been like the $10 million question that I've like, I've noodled on this for years. And in fact, early in my research career, when I first started graduate school way back in, you know, 2001, this was one of the questions that was like most, you know, it just like it grabbed me in such a way. And I don't think that I ever came up with a really good answer to it. And so I'm just really curious, like what like what do you what specifically like what like if you sort of connecting the dots like to, know, you have women's status, like how is that buying them or their offspring a better position? Yeah, well, I suppose it So two things, one is it comes back to that point you made about what women's status hierarchies look like. So a woman CEO, for example, ⁓ In a male hierarchy, being a CEO is going to be a high status position. In a female hierarchy, I think it's going to matter, of course, it's going to be higher status than being a fry cook. But it doesn't necessarily mean within a group of women that you are the top dog. I feel sexist now even saying that, there a better way? It doesn't mean that you're, you know, that you're number one. I think that female status hierarchies have a lot to do with your web of relationships. your network of relationships, who feels obliged to respond if you call on them for help, whether they want to or not. And those kinds of webs are not always about wealth, but about the power that you have in the background and the power of those social relationships. look, so I think that's one thing as we need to, you know, caution and be aware of that female status is not necessarily the same as these male typical definitions. But nevertheless, I would take your point that, you know, we have lots and lots of women around the world who are wanting to vie for top positions and money and wealth, and that's important to women in a lot of ways, just like it is important to men. ⁓ So what's going on there? Well, I would think of two things. One is this idea of a sortative mating. So we're more likely to mate with people that share similar traits to us. being able to be part of those social circles, being able to have those conversations, earning that kind of money does get you entry to a certain social class. So it could be partly those effects. And then maybe it's not all about mating and evolution. And then we've got the other kind of social drivers or cultural drivers as well, that this is what we're socialized to believe that this is what success looks like. And a lot of people... are happy with that idea and then act in a way in accordance with that. I think it's really interesting because I think you're right. think that part of the problem, like for me, not being able to find the answer to that puzzle to me, because that always just felt like such a puzzle, this idea of ⁓ female status competition, but then like ultimately, what does it buy you? ⁓ And that part of my problem was probably that I was defining status in a very male sort of, in sort of a male centric way, right? Yeah. Yeah. Because when I think about status, you know, I think about being a CEO, right? I don't think about the first thing I think about that I don't think about is having ⁓ an inter, you know, connected web of really close social relationships. And that might be something that is related to status with women in a much greater way than it is for men. And so maybe if I sort of switch my definition, then it totally makes sense, right? That you have more status, you have these relationships with people who are going to be able to help you out when you need help, like whether it's with, if I'm thinking about this in the evolutionary context in which it evolved, you know, times when you're going through food shortage or when you need help caring for your children, that that way you can be able to get better access to those really important qualities that, you know, do in fact help with survival and reproductive success. And it's interesting you say that. I think for me, when I think about female status within female hierarchies, what I think about is who can I Who can I tell to look after my kids? Basically, and not even like in a they like me way, but in that hierarchy, who can I be like, let's think village, know, think of a stereotypical village life. Who can I be like you? Off you go, after them. I've got to go do this other thing. Who's going to give me resources? Who can I dominate in a sense or maybe through prestige and goodwill, but who can I call on? And if I can call on lots of people and they're going to, ⁓ you know, they're gonna give me what I want in terms of childcare, in terms of resources, in terms of prioritizing what I want, then that to me is high status. Yeah, I think that another way that women compete for status that isn't really talked about too loudly, but I think that women do it ⁓ and your research seems to support that this is in fact the case is through beautification. And that women will try to give the appearance of being physically attractive as a way to get status from men. Because of course you can garner favor from men by being physically attractive. We know that men tend to prioritize cues to physical attractiveness and physical attractiveness itself in their choice of partners. And that they also tend to just like women who are physically attractive even if they're not actively choosing them as a mate. but choosing them as a work partner or otherwise just because men really seem to be drawn to beauty. And so one ⁓ of the ways that women tend to compete ⁓ is by way of physical attractiveness or get access to status. And I wanted to use this as an opportunity to talk about some of your really cool research looking at sexy selfies. And just looking at the way that women, you know, we hear oftentimes about sexualization of women, right? And we think about sexualization of women as being something that men are doing to women, right? That they're sort of the male gaze is creating this platform where women feel like they have to, you know, look a certain way. But in the case of sexy selfies, women are actually self-sexualizing, right? They're making the decision to sort of turn a sexy lens on themselves. And I want to understand a little bit better what's going on there psychologically. And I want to ask you about your paper that you published back in, I think it was 2018. And you looked at, in my notes here, it says 68,000 sexy selfies. from women in 113 countries around the world, right? So this is a lot of selfies that you guys went through. And I want to know after going through 68,000 selfies from around the world. I mean, most of them are from the Kardashians just obviously. 65,000 of the 68,000 selfies. But the other 3,000 were real people. Total random sample. Right, so who had the sexiest selfies? and why. Yeah, right. Yeah. So ⁓ just to make sure I'm not misleading people, they weren't all from the Kardashians. That was just a joke. But yeah, so, know, where are this? Where is this happening more? You've probably seen it everywhere. Millions of women are doing it, crimping, preening, pouting in front of their phone cameras, posting these sexy pics online. ⁓ And we found we looked at a couple of things. We looked at what's going to drive this behaviour. And you mentioned the male gaze and The most common view of these behaviors is, as you said, this is something that men do to women. This is something that when women do it, they're doing it because society forces them to do it. They're doing it because they live in a gender unequal world where women aren't allowed to have value for their own right. They have value because of what they bring to men, which is their sexiness, basically. So that's kind of the dominant view. And that view would predict that sexy selfies are going to happen more in places that are gender unequal. And the alternate view, which is the one we were testing and kind of hypothesized was that, you know, there's something more to this behavior. It's not just about women trying to satisfy men. There's actually something intensely competitive about this for women's relationship also with other women. And, you know, one of the reasons that I kind of came up with this hypothesis was I particularly remember in my early twenties, having times where I would go out with my female friends and not having chosen not to like wear my sexy clothes or put too much makeup on. I just wasn't in the mood that day. know, some days I'm in the mood. I like to get dressed up. Some days I can't be asked. don't, I don't want to. And I remember choosing to do that a few times when I was in my twenties and experiencing this like loss of status competition. Like the guys didn't care what I was wearing. Basically they were kind of like, ⁓ there's a chick she's willing to talk to me, right? The women were kind of like bitchy and catty and would give you these looks like, ⁓ you know, I've got to one, I've one upped you. And so my personal experiences throughout that time was like, okay, I have been underestimating how much me engaging in these behaviors is a competitive relationship with other women, right? That partly we're doing it for other women. One thing that I also haven't also noticed is like women do dress up for each other. Like I remember when early on, when I was in that phase of my life when I was going to a wedding or a baby shower, like, you know, or like every weekend, because all my friends were, getting married and having babies. Yeah, going through that stage. Yeah. Yeah. Whenever I was going to one of these like baby showers or like a like a like whatever one of these pre wedding parties are, it's just girls like a bachelorette party. They call it or like a, know, it's kind like a female version of a stag party in the in in in Australia. And I would look good. I would look better than I would on date night. And I remember my husband was like, what is up with that? Why do you look so put together for that? then on date night, you're in sweatpants and a t-shirt. And I didn't have a good answer for him. And so you're saying status competition. Yeah. So we're partly doing this for other women. And I think It's not just like 80 % men, 20 % women. I think it's a big proportion of what drives this is status competition with other women. And if that is the case, what you should see is that environments where we know that status competition is a rife, like environments that stoke those status concerns should have more sexy selfies. And social psychological research has shown that one of the key characteristics of those environments that really make people worried about where they sit is economic inequality. So the prediction was that we should see that sexy selfies occur more in economically unequal environments. And indeed what we did was we tracked all those social media posts and ⁓ we looked at who was posting more in what countries or even what cities in the US. So we did a cross national analysis and then an analysis within the US too. And what we found was that it was happening way more in places that were economically unequal. We followed this up with two things. One was a test of whether we also saw it in spending in beauty salons and hair salons. And we find the same pattern of effects there, which relates to some of the work I know that you've done, looking at the lipstick effect and looking at women's desire to purchase beauty products and use those beauty products as a kind of signal within economically unequal environments. And then we also looked experimentally and found that this was primarily about status anxiety. Women were worried about where they were sitting in the social hierarchy in these economically unequal places. And they were engaging in sexualization, posting photos, buying more lipstick, getting their hair done as a result. So do you think ultimately that it was about status for the sake of status? Or do you think that it's about status for the sake of potential partner attraction? Because as you noted, I did a study back in it was published in 2012. That was the lipstick effect paper. Right. And essentially it was looking at economic recession. So times when economics do become more unequal and competition for resources becomes more scarce. And ultimately what we found. Yeah. And ultimately what we find in our work was that during these times when economic times are tough, that women have a heightened preference for buying beauty products and in particular lipstick, sort of like the lipstick in fact, was found in the Great Depression. And then again, in the big housing crash we had back in 2008 in the US, we saw that cosmetic sales again went up. And ⁓ ultimately what we found was that it seemed to be driven by women's desire to buy things that will make them attractive to potential partners. and ⁓ that it also changed their beliefs about the extent to which men in the environment were going to have access to the kinds of resources that they were looking for in romantic partners. And so we found that ours had kind of an underlying and undercurrent of partner attraction. So women essentially trying to look attractive for prospective mates, knowing that the competition is going to be steeper now that the economy is in the toilet. And we didn't, of course, think that women are sitting around and like, ⁓ heaven's to Betsy, gotta find me a man. But instead, that unconsciously, during times when things are tough and the pool of available partners that's desirable is shrinking a little bit, that women may unconsciously increase their effort in things directed toward attracting partners. And so I'm wondering, with your sexy selfie study, do you think that ultimately, and I think when I think about like why women post selfies, like if I see women with a bunch of selfies on their social feed, I think they're looking for a partner. Is my like reaction is that I think like, ⁓ this person must be looking for a mate. And like, do you think that there is ultimately like, and again, unconsciously, of course, I don't think that most women think like, know, heavens to Betsy need to find me a man. I think that we've kind of evolved. way past that as societally as a gender. ⁓ But I do think that unconsciously there's some processes there where when things get competitive for partners that we may be kind of drawn to these kinds of behaviors. Yeah, I think you're right. In our work, we couldn't distinguish how much the status competition was about finding a mate versus competing for other reasons. ⁓ I think the finding a mate is an important part of it. And to understand that, people need to think about and understand, what does economic inequality do to a dating market? So when you've got economic inequality, what you have is a small group of people at the top of the distribution. And those people are usually men, because men tend to earn more than women, even in the most gender progressive places, it's going to be men who are at the top of that distribution. Men also tend to be at the bottom of the distribution. ⁓ But where you have economic inequality, what that means is you've got this environment that if women happen to attract one of those men, there are potentially large, quite large rewards for that. I mean, that could be your ticket, right? That's the big prize. So in these economically unequal environments or in these other, it may not be necessarily the inequality, but also those other cues that are indicating that ⁓ if you happen to secure a man at the top of the distribution, then you're in a really good position relative to others. That's going to incentivise behaviours that will put you in the best position to attract that kind of man. ⁓ But that's not the only reasons why status is going to be important in these economically unequal places. I mean, we might like to pretend that we don't live in this kind of society, but beauty pays, beauty sells. You you mentioned some of those effects before, but we know that people who are more physically attractive, they are perceived to be better people, even though that's not necessarily true. We have that perception, this halo effect, that they're better in lots of other ways. They're more likely to receive promotions. People even remember their faces more. So it has all of these kinds of social effects that we might like to think we've transcended. But in reality, these cognitive processes are so subconscious. You have to work really hard not to see someone who's attractive and have this kind of more positive thinking. thought about them. So, you know, it's not just about mates. There's benefits to being attractive in all sorts of ways and not just socially, but also financially. You can make big bucks from a good sexy selfie. You know, if you want to go down that path, we joked about the Kardashians before, but you want to talk about someone who's capitalized on their attractiveness to make millions. Kim Kardashian is a really good example. Probably so are the other sisters, but I'm not cool enough with pop culture to remember all of their names. But you know, there's big benefits. So not just men, also economic and social benefits to beauty. Yeah, for sure. I think that's a really good point is that it's like in a lot of ways for a woman and again, as you said, like I would love to say that we have moved past this culturally, like as a species where women are no longer getting these big benefits or huge costs for not investing in beauty. Right, but alas, that's where we are, is that there are a lot of benefits that come particularly to women for being physically attractive. And so in a lot of ways, investment in physical attractiveness is good business sense. And you know, it's funny because I actually had a conversation with a man ⁓ who was saying something about somebody who had a relatively low paying job. and how she was spending all this money doing things like getting manicures. And I was like, you're being really judgmental about something that's actually really good business sense for a woman. Because if you're a woman... like one of the best things, sadly, and again, you I didn't make the rules in the world, folks, so, you know, don't throw tomatoes at me for this one. But the rules in the world are such that women do get benefits from physical attractiveness and investment in beauty is oftentimes, whether we like it or not, something that's rewarded for women. Yeah, look, that's exactly right. I would completely agree with that. And I would add that, you know, when you do see a woman doing this, it's easy to kind of think of her as some kind of vacuous, narcissistic victim of the patriarchy. I think it's far more complicated. ⁓ Attractiveness is a very strategic game. And ⁓ you can choose to opt out, right? But there's costs to doing that as well. ⁓ And it's also not so simple as just always making sure that you're the most beautiful in the room because that can get the wrath of other women as well and negative repercussions and backlash against that as well. So it really does require a lot of thought, a lot of money and a lot of investment. And yeah, I personally think there should be tax breaks for this, but I have a feeling that the governments are not going to go for it. But yeah, I resent the amount of money women have to spend on beauty. I'm like, this is ridiculous. Yeah, so just another reason why in the US we need a female president because I yes, it's time to get it's time to get some some tax breaks for for Botox. I'll be the first one to sign up for that bill. Great. So you have a new paper that just came out that I'm really excited to talk to you about. It suggests that changing economic times and we're living in these changing economic times because the changing economic times I'm talking about is the times where women have increased access to resources or money of their own. Right. So through most of human history, women were incredibly dependent on men for resources, you know, and ⁓ protection. I mean, those were kind of the two big things because women are the ones who bear the cost of reproduction. So women are the ones who are pregnant and they're the ones who care for young babies and they have to lactate and they're all of these things. And during those times, For most of history, that meant that a woman was kind of out of commission for a while. Like she wouldn't be able to go and get access to food and she wouldn't be able to run away from a tiger or a bear because she's cumbersome ⁓ as you are when you're largely pregnant. so most of our history as a species was spent dependent on men for protection and provisioning. We are now at a time when women are going to college at higher rates than men. Women are graduating from college at higher rates than men. Women are entering the workforce in larger numbers than are men. Women are going into graduate programs at a greater extent than men, medical school, law school, business school. mean, it's just like women are starting to kind of take over the world when it comes to jobs and financial security. So what does this do to our partner choices? Because for a very long time within the field of evolutionary psychology, which you and I both publish in and consider to be ⁓ one of our intellectual homes, there's been a lot of research for a very long time now that finds that women have a heightened preference for partners who have at least as much education. wealth and social status as they have themselves. In other words, that women are hypergamous. And it's been argued that women have this preference because we've inherited it from our successful female ancestors, right, who would have benefited from having a desire for partners who have access to all of these things because it would have helped with provisioning of offspring. Because again, throughout most of our history, women wouldn't have been able to go out and get all of the resources necessary for survival ⁓ when there were very pregnant and caring for children and soon after childbirth, et cetera. And so this actually provided women with a real advantage. And you have some new research that is really kind of pushing on the boundaries of this a little bit and asking the question about the extent to which women's preference for partners with more resource, more education, more status might be flexible depending on a woman's own access to resources. And I want you to tell us a little bit about this research. And whether it's telling us, do successful women still want successful men? Yes, great. Yeah. So this was a paper that we just published this year. This was led by my graduate student, Mack and Murphy. ⁓ And it was a really exciting paper. And basically it was a big experiment. So we got about 600 people, men and women. They were from a range of countries and they were randomly assigned to an online society. But what we did tell them was that there were different versions of the online society. And in each version, the amount of money that men earned compared to women changed. So in some societies, men and women earn about the same. In other societies, men earn a little bit more or next one a lot more than women. And then in other societies, we were able to do the reverse. So women earn a little bit more or a lot more. basically what we doing was manipulating the gender pay gap. And what we wanted to see was that if people's ideal preferences for what they wanted in a romantic partner changed depending on the gender pay gap in their society. ⁓ And we measured their preferences for an ideal partner in a bunch of different ways. We looked systematically at how people had done this in the literature and looked at things like, essentially, do you want a partner who's attractive, who's young, who's old, who's rich? Does it not matter? So we could understand, you know, does the economic kind of background of your society shift your preferences for ⁓ a rich and successful partner? ⁓ And it was really surprising, given what you've said about hypergony, because I'm very much, you know, you've summarized that literature perfectly, and that's all the work that I've understood hypergony to be about as well, is that women, you know, want to marry out. But what we found is that these preferences are really strategically flexible. They're not set in stone. So in general, poorer people want richer partners. So no big surprises there. Regardless of gender, people who are assigned to a low income environment want more financial security and they want partners who have more financial security and partners who have better jobs. Is that true for men and women? men who don't have lot of money? ⁓ interesting. Were they making any trade-offs? it just like, because I think that if I don't have money, I mean, I'm always going to say, well, yeah, of course I want somebody who's got money. But are they having to make trade-offs between the extent to which they're prioritizing wealth versus other things that we know that men tend to prioritize, like physical attractiveness? Yeah. So there wasn't a trade-off in terms of those other behaviors. So ⁓ even though preferences for money shifted, Men still prioritise beauty more than women did and women still preferred slightly older partners. So beauty and age are these two preferences that vary in that sex tip typical way. So we still found the preferences for those traits stayed the same. It was just the preferences for traits that are indicative of your partner being able to earn a lot of money. When women were the primary breadwinners, their insistence on needing to marry up just vanishes. But when men are doing worse off compared to women, they then are wanting to marry up. So it's like both sexes are wanting to do this when it is sensible from a financial perspective. Now, do you think that that is in any way an artifact of the experimental design where you're not, because you didn't, people aren't making trade-offs, right? You're just telling them that like, you know, either you don't have a lot of money or you do have a lot of money and in here to what extent do you want these types of qualities? and they're not having to like pick attractiveness or resources. Which in the real world you do. Right, the real world you do. And so I wonder, do you think that that could have potentially influenced the results? potentially, and the reason I asked this is, and I think it was a beautifully done study. What I really loved about it was that it was, you were experimentally manipulating resource access, right? And that's something that most of the research that's been done. looking at partner preferences, with respect to income, when you're looking at how much your own income influences your preferences for others. Most of that research has been cross-sectional. And so I really appreciated that it was experimental. I think it was a really excellent study. But I do wonder, as I was reading it, it seems so inconsistent with experiences of people that I know who are in the mating market right now, where there's women, you know, who are kind of following the beat of the drum that the evolutionary psychologists are out there, you know, playing, which is this idea that, you know, women have a heightened preference for partners who have ambition, industriousness, access to resources, and that if they have those things themselves, that they continue. to have a preference for that with some research even finding that there's a positive relationship with that, right? Where women who have access to resources and have a high education actually ⁓ have an even greater preference for these in their mates. And I know a lot of ⁓ women who are very educated who are struggling in the dating market right now, particularly because they're having a hard time finding these men because they have these... you know, these degrees and they've got these really great jobs and they're hoping that they're going to find a partner that is at least as successful as themselves and they're having challenges with that. And there is a lot of research when you look at the marriage rates, I marriage rates are down pretty significantly. And there's a lot more in particular single women. And in fact, there's a really great book by ⁓ Rebecca Tracer is called All the Single Ladies, which is I love the title and check that out. Yeah, ⁓ it's a really great book. and it's just, yeah, and for women, I encourage you to read it. just think it's really interesting. you know, I think that, yeah, I'm just curious, like, how do you circle the square? Like, what do you think is, what are the conditions in which income and education, and maybe it's that the things matter differently, right? So maybe its income doesn't actually matter that much, but ambition, does, right? Or income doesn't matter that much, but education does. Like what do you think maybe is responsible for some of the ⁓ nuances of this that can account for the fact that ⁓ what you found in your research, which I, like I said, I think it was such a nicely done study, doesn't always square with women's experiences. People's experience. Yeah. Yeah, I get what you're saying. And I mean, I think that's the One of the things that motivated the study was this kind of cultural concern of that if women keep on having these preferences, then they're going to basically ⁓ not have a chance on the mating market, right? Because they're not going to adapt their preferences. ⁓ So I think there's a couple of things we need to keep in mind. You're right that we weren't able to, you know, to some extent, this is not very ecologically valid in the real world. You do have to make trade-offs. We weren't able to model that in our outcome at all. ⁓ But the other thing I think, so I think what can we take away from the study? Well, we can take away that ⁓ if you're just able to look at income preferences in these economic environments that, or for all intents and purposes, if you're worse off economically than the other members of your gender, that you are going to want a more economically secure partner. And that's going to happen regardless of whether you're male and female. So that's gonna happen in the moment when you're in that situation. But I think, and I haven't thought about this until you started, you mentioned what you said that. You know, one of the things that I think women need to be thinking about is forecasting, right? So if you are forecasting that, well, yeah, but at some point I'm going to be out of the labour market because I'm going to be having babies and, you know, needing to have someone who can support me there, then of course, those preferences for high income may be pretty sticky, even if you do earn enough money yourself, because you've got that uncertainty. So I could see that that could be case. ⁓ But I think there's also a, and I don't know of any research on this, this is just what I've seen to have noticed is there seems to be an adjustment of mating standards and whether people adjust or not is an individual difference thing. So some people choose not to, and then some people also remain single. And some people try to get what they want for years and years and years and then potentially a biological clock or some other internal clock starts ticking and they go, right, I'm going to need to adjust my standards here because I've been trying to seek a partner that has XYZ for the last 10 years and it's not working out. So which of these things really matter and which am I going to hold onto and which aren't I going to hold onto? And that kind of adjustment I think is an important part of what's going on here in terms of our mating psychology. It's really interesting because I think that there's really something to this idea of child having and caring where women who do not want to have children, I'm wondering whether or not these preferences are, whether these women are more willing to make adjustments. Yeah, more flexible with their main preferences, just simply because the thing that I often hear, ⁓ and as you were speaking, it was reminding me of this. from women, especially high earning women who are feeling ⁓ that they want to find somebody who's got at least as much education and earning capacity as they have themselves is about children. And if they want to take time off when they have a child and spend some time, you know, focusing on childcare before going back into the workplace, that they want to be able to feel like they have that choice. And that, know, and yeah, and so I do think that that continues to be a motivation for women who want to have children where I think a lot of us, I mean, I know I was very much this way before I had my children. I didn't know the extent to which I was going to feel pulled at home. You know, I didn't know because you don't know, you know, it's like before you have a baby, you have no idea what you're going to be because I never thought I mean, I'm not somebody who like loves to play with Play-Doh and blowing bubbles. You know, like I never had these. you know, ideas of myself, these romantic visions of myself making, you know, little bento boxes with, you know, themed lunches and all of that. Like that's not really my thing. Another form of female female competition, by the way. Yeah, no, 100%. Yeah, no, 100%. The lunchbox competition is steep. Man, know, Instagrammed that one day. I was like, what is this whole world? You can lose hours looking at these perfect lunchboxes. No, I know. No, that's like a real thing. That's like a real. That's a real thing. That and like the and the car seats and the strollers. And yeah, there's so much that happens with female female competition when you have young children. And yes, the lunch thing is a real thing. And I never imagined myself cutting out, you know, stars out of cheese or whatever. But I did know that I didn't know how I was going to respond to motherhood. And I did know that I wanted to have the if I decided that I wanted to for example, take six months off or take a year off. Because here in the US, of course, we don't have the opportunity to take six months off. And so I did want to at least feel like I wouldn't be living in a box on the street if I decided I wanted to spend six months, take six months off or a year off to do the parenting thing before returning to work. so I do think that there is, I do think I'm probably not alone in that. And I think that that probably influences, particularly for women who want families to still continue to have that ⁓ heightened preference because in some ways the world is like it's both very different from what it was for our distant ancestors, right? But then in a lot of ways it's still the same. Yeah, because we're the ones who have the babies and the lactating and so on and so forth. And I want to ⁓ ask you about hormones and competition because our conversation, you know, we're talking about the competition that goes on with mothers of young children ⁓ and the lunch box and the, you know, and then the monogram backpacks and the whole thing. And then I've been there and I'm glad that my children are older now, because as I noted, like, I really think it chills out as you get older. And this reminds me of you have this really lovely body of research looking at the relationship between women's sex hormones and competition. And when I think about the difference between the amount of competition that goes on between elementary school moms and then high school college age moms, it's very different things. And one thing is you're not a set, after your kids are in high school, you already know all of these people, so you're not having to make a big splash on the scene with your really nicely monogrammed backpack and really complicated lunch. But at the same time, but I also think there might be something with age that as women's sex hormones begin to decline, that the need to feel competitive with other women may wane and it may decrease. I want you to, I'm wondering if you can one, weigh in on my crazy hypothesis about differences in competition among moms. or what me and my friend Christina Durante call mom petition. And then also kind of tie this into what you know about women's sex hormones and the way that they influence competition. Yes. So yeah, I love this kind of body of work and these investigations. Yeah, I think we just need to know a lot more about women's menstrual cycles and their fertility in general and how that influences them. As you said, I've done a bunch of studies looking at how fertility influences competition in women. And these have largely used a citizen science project that I run called the Daily Cyclodary. ⁓ And in this study, have, I think we have something like two and a half thousand women now, something like that. And 25,000 observations from about 25 countries. around the world. And what we do is we look at how things like assertiveness, competitiveness, confidence, and even some personality traits, how they change across the menstrual cycle. And do those changes across the cycle correspond to variation in sex hormones at particular times of the cycle? So for example, when you ovulate around mid cycle, we know that your estradiol is high and your progesterone is low. Estradiol and progesterone are these two sex hormones, which are really governed by the cycle and really important to reproduction. ⁓ And we find that particularly around that mid cycle ovulatory phase, women experience this kind of fertility boost to their confidence, to their assertiveness, to their ⁓ agency, their willingness to kind of go and achieve their goals. They also just feel better. Their wellbeing is higher, they're overall more happier, less irritable. ⁓ So, you know, there's this kind of mid cycle peak in these behaviors. ⁓ And one of the interesting and perhaps to some extent concerning things we find is that hormonal birth control acts as a flattener for these. So, you know, when you're on hormonal birth control, by virtue of how hormonal birth control works, what it's doing is it's changing those natural rhythms because those natural rhythms are the things that are going to get you pregnant. So hormonal birth control is, you know, mostly flattening those out. And ⁓ because of that, what you see is that these natural cycles of peaks to confidence and peaks to agency and peaks to competitiveness ⁓ don't happen for hormonal birth control uses. So for a woman who's naturally cycling, as you noted, you get this waxing and waning of their two primary sex hormones, right? With estrogen peaking right near ovulation, as you were saying, mid-cycle. And then during this time, you get these really beautiful increases in... sort of agency and just feeling good about yourself and feeling confident and being able to go out and compete in the world. And then for women who are on hormonal birth control who don't ovulate, right? Whose hormones are kept relatively flat that you don't find those peaks. I'm curious about where they fall though, because you know, one way that they could be flatlined is that they just feel fabulous all the time, right? So women who are on hormonal birth control are feeling great about themselves and... and competitive and ready to go out and take the bull by the horns and watch out world. Or it could be that they're at the sort of basement, right? Where they're more at the lower end of the curve. Where do they fall on these types of qualities? Okay, so for the things like agency and competitiveness, hormonal birth control users fall lower on average. So women on the pill have a lower competitive drive. They have a lower interest in competition. So it's not just that they don't experience the fluctuations just as a group compared to naturally cycling women. They have less competitiveness in general. caveat to that is, you know, these aren't massive effect sizes. So whenever I talk about this, I always worry that people are going to ⁓ get really alarmed and go, ⁓ my God, we need to get rid of the pill. Women will be better off if they don't have access to birth control. And yet, no, not what I'm saying. Birth control, very important. And also I would say Very important for women's agency, being able to have control over your reproduction. But nevertheless, we do see that there is this drop in the desire to compete and being interested in competition on hormonal birth control. Even if that drop's small, I still think it's meaningful. Yeah, and as you noted, I mean, there's no bigger way to take away a woman's agency than to give her an unplanned pregnancy that she doesn't have any capacity to manage. So yeah, think we are on the same page. We totally agree hormonal birth control is important. And when we talk about these different types of psychological and behavioral effects that you get with hormonal birth control, it's always important that you take it in the larger picture of which you consider the trade-offs and costs and benefits. And of course, there's a lot of really important benefits that come from hormonal birth control, including the fact that it will prevent an unwanted pregnancy. But this being said, For a woman who has an alternative way of preventing pregnancy that is not hormonal, I want you to think about a woman, you said that these effect sizes are pretty small, but I want you to imagine a competitive athlete. So here's a woman who's a competitive cyclist or a competitive swimmer, and she's looking for a fractional increase advantage on her A half a percent matters. Yes, half a percent matters. And so for a woman who does some sort of a competitive sport or a competitive musician or competitive singer, like whatever it is, do you think that they should at least think about whether hormonal birth control makes sense or not, depending on what their competitive goals are, if they have an alternative way to protect themselves from pregnancy? Yeah, interesting question. It depends the reasons why they're on the pill. So if they're just on the pill for the pregnancy, then yeah, I would probably say maybe try and investigate some other options just so you can experience them. And maybe you find that experiencing them, you know, makes no difference to you at all. Fine, then, you know, that's okay. People will react differently. But I do think it's worthwhile trying to engage in that pursuit of self-knowledge if you're in that position. ⁓ But if you're on the pill for, I don't know, let's say you're on the pill because you get really terrible acne. and the pill manages that, then ⁓ if these alternative birth control methods are going to inflame your acne or inflame some other issue that you deal with, then the overall net benefit might be better to stay on the pill. So I think you've got to take into account all the motivators that women have for being on the pill ⁓ and then... judge that against the alternatives. But if it's just a case of all the alternatives are likely, my body will probably respond fine to other options. I would probably try other things. I really would. I'd just give it a go, ⁓ do it for six months or so and see, do you experience any difference or not? Yeah, I think that that's really great. I think that's really great advice. Like, do you think, is there differences in, because I remembered some of the, I've already forgotten a few of the things that you said. So you said that competition changes, ⁓ confidence changes across the cycle. You should also find status driving. Does that, have you looked at that? Does that change across the menstrual cycle? I, yes, we did. So we looked at, ⁓ so there are two kinds of ways that people look at status, status driving. One is this idea of, and we were kind of hinting at this before and we were talking about, you know, are we talking about status in terms of I'm at the top of the hierarchy and I can step all over the people below me? Like I'm dominant. You know, that's one way that psychologists talk about status. And then this other way we talk about status is to do with prestige. So this is like being respected, being well thought of, being able to achieve the same outcomes because people want to ⁓ give you what you need because they have this heightened respect for you. So that's the more prestige pathway. ⁓ And we had a look at whether fertility affects women's status driving in particular. through this more dominant route or through this prestige respect-based route. And we found the significant effect where women are at their most fertile, they're seeking status through prestige, but not necessarily through dominance or intimidation. So what is that telling us? Well, it's telling us that when women are fertile, they wanna be admired for their skills and their competence, right? They don't necessarily want to intimidate others. They don't necessarily wanna be seen as aggressive. which I think is a fairly smart strategy. We know that the prestige pathway to success is the better pathway. If you can opt to do it, it's better than the dominance pathway. know, people don't generally, they don't like dominant individuals. ⁓ But yeah, so we see that fertility really affects this. That's so interesting. And so then presumably we would find that to also be lower in hormonal birth control users, right? So I don't know if you've, I don't think you've studied that specifically. But given just the mechanisms, if you're hypothesizing, mean, I'm assuming that you're at least hypothesizing that the changes that are happening near high fertility are the result of the changing. Yeah, are changing as a result of estradiol or estrogen peaking and that this is something that's related to prestige seeking. And that then you would get again, lower levels of that in women who are ⁓ on hormonal birth control also. ⁓ That's right. Yeah. And also potentially in women who are paramedicoposal or going through menopause, right? Because again, if we're hypothesizing that the prediction is that you get these types of changes as a result of high levels of estrogen, that as these hormones begin to decline, that you might also begin to see a decrease there. Yeah. I'm less certain about the life cycle changes and how going through animals. perimenopause will influence these outcomes. I'd love to investigate it. ⁓ I think you probably know a bunch more about me, a bunch more than me that I do about this, but my understanding of hormones in perimenopause is that they can just be all over the place, right? You know, when people look at estradiol and progesterone, ⁓ they often can work in tandem. So it's not just about one being high, it's also about what the other hormone is doing. And there are physiological reasons for this. as well. So I think it's going to depend on the balance of what your hormones are actually doing. ⁓ I think the ⁓ degree of change or reactivity could also be relevant. if your hormones are changing quite dramatically cycle to cycle, or even day to day, there's spikes, there's drops, there's spikes, there's drops. If you're going through that kind of pattern, I think that's going to be relevant as well. So ⁓ perimenopause question, I think That's a really worthwhile question. It's one that I would find hard to speculate on. Yeah, the reason I was asking is my intuition is that especially when estrogen levels begin to decline, that you'd begin to see decreases in female sort of competition and, you know, and this sort of status striving. And I would predict this just based on the lower levels of estrogen. But then it also is consistent with I mean, my own experiences in seeing the effect of age on these types of behaviors in, you know, like the PTA meetings at an elementary school are a lot more intense than the PTA meetings at the high school. Right? And it's not because the kids have different needs because high school students are just as needy as elementary school students. And in some ways, they're more needy. because they're just a disaster. They have all these hormones and no frontal lobes and it's just a mess. And so ⁓ I think that just based on my own observations, and this isn't even necessarily women who are in menopause, it's just women whose hormones levels are declining because we're all aging. And I've also heard from women who are going through and are all on the other side of menopause, how freeing it is. to not feel competitive the way that they used to, which I think is so interesting. And I think that's really interesting to think about that in terms of what it tells us about the role of women's ovarian hormones in terms of this competitiveness that sometimes sort of bubbles up to the surface in relationships between women. And ⁓ so I think that there's, ⁓ as you noted, I mean, there's still a lot to be learned about this. ⁓ but I think that there's something really to it. And I do think that as we begin thinking about some of the reframing of menopause, because there's so much conversation around it now and trying to better understand this time in women's life, is understanding what some of the benefits are of being on the other side of fertility, because I think that so many women do more than that as a loss. And if we can understand some of the benefits that come from that, including less of the feeling, the need to cut cheese into little stars, you know, to go in your child's lunchbox and not feeling like, ⁓ like you need to, you know, be ⁓ dressed to the nines when you go out with your girlfriends for wine, that there's some real, there's a real benefits to being able to turn the dial down a little bit. Yeah, look, I'm with you. I think I agree that there's, that there's definitely these benefits to not feeling like you have to compete all the time. exhausting, right? Like it's your on your, judging people, you're kind of reading the room, you're figuring out how to position yourself in the hierarchy that may be not too high, but definitely not too low. Like all of this takes up so much mental energy, not to mention as we as we discussed money and time. And I do think the that the psychology of those post reproductive years is really relevant and really important. I'm less resolved on how the hormones affect that psychology. It's plausible, like you've mentioned. mean, nothing you've said is to me on face value, implausible at all. But it's also one of those tricky ones of how do you separate the post-reproductive part from the hormone part? mean, obviously you could try to that experimentally to some degree or quasi-experimentally. But yeah, I think that one of the things that I'm left with is this perplexing kind of thought about, well, do we ever stop status competition? And, you know, from the things you mentioned, it's like, to some extent, people say that, they're not competing in that way. But my kind of intuitions about human nature is that status is always relevant and always something that we fundamentally care about. We might just shift what that status looks like. Like maybe we feel more comfortable now with our position in the hierarchy in terms of our children or in terms of those ways that we used to compete previously when that status hierarchy was uncertain. know, maybe that hierarchy is more stable now and we are instead competing in other ways. ⁓ I'm not sure, but yeah, someone should find out. love that. I love that idea. And it certainly resonates with my own experiences dealing like when I think about older people, so people who are well past menopause. There does seem to be some kind of like competition that's going on between like what's happening with their grandchildren. And I think that so it could just be that, you know, it's just a competition wrapped up in it. Yeah, exactly. It's just wrapped up in a new outfit. As we close our time here, I want to ask you, I'm going to ask you just sort of like some short and sweet ⁓ questions where you can just give me your kind of rapid fire answers. First is like what finding from your own research has been most surprising to you? ⁓ I think that hypergenic one that we talked about, Macken's Murphy's paper on ⁓ make preferences adjusting in the same way for both sexes really surprised me. That wasn't what I would have predicted. ⁓ It was interesting how we kind of had to make sense of that and challenge our own perceptions because this is what science does. You may not find what you expect and then you need to... look at that objectively. So I think that one really surprised me and it made me a bit more optimistic, I suppose, in terms of how I thought of things before. So yeah, that one was a big surprise to me. I've got to say that it also made me feel optimistic because I had been a little bit doom and gloom about, ⁓ you know, this what David Buss sometimes calls the mating crisis, this idea that, you know, women are finding themselves in a situation where they feel like they can't find a suitable partner. And so I felt hopeful after reading that paper as well. that was nice for all of us. What is something that based on all, and this doesn't necessarily need to be on your firsthand research, but based on things that you have been exposed to through the research that you've read, in addition to the research that you've conducted yourself, what is something that you think that women misunderstand about men? ⁓ gosh, I think that... women misunderstand or, yeah, think that women miss, or they just don't have a lot of access to. ⁓ all of the competing pressures that men deal with in terms of wanting to, ⁓ wanting to provide, wanting to ⁓ do well, wanting to look good in front of other men, wanting to keep their partners happy. Like I think that there is a ⁓ world of pressure upon men. ⁓ I think that men are, quite burdened by restrictive and traditional views about what masculinity is and what it means. And even if they see that, there's not a lot of social or cultural room for them to have alternative expressions of masculinity. That's changing a little in the younger generations now. But I think that there's so much more flexibility in terms of what femininity looks like than what masculinity looks like. And I think it's very easy for women to to not realize that. You know, it's really, I love that you said that and I think that it's so true. And even you see this even in the most subtle, seemingly meaningless ways. So just to give you an example, like it's okay if I name my daughter Charlie, right? I cannot name my son, Susan, right? It is okay for my daughter to wear pants and skirts. it's not okay for my son to wear pants and skirts, right? So it's like the norms around femininity are so much more fluid and flexible and around masculinity, it's like so narrow. And I think that women, think, and you know, we want our partners to be communicative and share their emotional states. But then many times what happens with men when their partners do this is then their partners get anxious and upset. because they're expecting and they're relying on their male partners to be stoic and strong and stable. And so, yeah, I mean, there's so many ⁓ of these ways that I think men shoulder a lot more than we talk about culturally. And I think that was a really great point. What belief about dating is widely accepted but wrong? So like, what is something that we believe? And I guess maybe it's just about the women in the, like not being able to find a mate now that they're getting, you know, good jobs and access to resources of their own. ⁓ But do you have any other dating myths? One dating myth that I see is these, which I just think is completely wrong, is these conversations that women have it harder or men have it harder. Right? Like people talk about dating and they're like, ⁓ well, women have it harder for all these reasons. And, you know, we've got to be beautiful and we've got to be kind, but we've also got to be a gentic and then, you know, we've got to have good jobs, but we've got to be good mothers. And then we've got to manage both. And like all of that is true, right? To some extent, but it's not that those things are invalid, but ⁓ men have a whole range of pressures on them as well. And so I think the, the argument in general, that one sex has it harder is just, I just think it's completely wrong. think both sexes have it hard. Right? Everyone's got it hard. We've just got it hard for different reasons. completely agree with that. think that that's great. What's one thing you wish every woman knew about competition? Well, I wish that they knew that the menstrual cycle affects their competition. Yeah, I really do. And I would want them to get attuned to their own body and to think about how their menstrual cycle is affecting them, not just in terms of competition, but in general. I think that the medical world has really socialized women to believe that they're not, that our psychology is not cyclical, that our health is not cyclical, that we are essentially female versions of men who don't have these cycles. But we do. Our reproductive years are very, it's completely cyclical. And some of the hormones that we're talking about here are changing 600, the ratios are changing like 600, 2000 times compared to where they were across that month. And to assume that that's not gonna have behavioral effects to me is just crazy. ⁓ The more and more research that is looking at women's cycles is telling us that they're affecting a range of different things. There's calls in medical fields now to say that women's that women's health in general is actually cyclical, that patterns and symptoms of suffering, not just mental illness, but just physical symptoms of all sorts of things are affected by the menstrual cycle. ⁓ And I think women... I think we would be in a better position if we knew that, if we understood that, if we were investing in that, and if women were able to try to understand the cyclical nature of their bodies and their psychology, rather than assuming cyclical meant somehow weaker or ⁓ less able or ⁓ wrong. I love it. Preach. I think I love that. the last chapter of my new book, The Period Brain is actually entitled something to the effect of the future of science is female and hormonal or maybe it's sex differentiated and hormonal. But it's essentially this idea that we need to take that seriously. We need to take biological sex seriously when we're doing research and understand that the way that male bodies and female bodies. respond to things is gonna be different and that women aren't just men that are smaller with some lady hormones, right? And that it like fundamentally changes the nature of the way that our bodies respond to everything, know, ranging from our cardiovascular system to our immune system, to our stress response system, and so on and so forth. And so it's like there's differences like between the sexes in terms of the way that our bodies respond to things, but then also for a female body, that the way that the female body responds to things is very much hormonally mediated. And there's research now that shows that you get differences in, for example, the cardiovascular system across the menstrual cycle. You get differences in the respiratory system across the menstrual cycle. You get differences in the immune system and inflammatory profiles across the menstrual cycle. And so the way that science has been done historically has been just to ignore women's hormones and just try to control for them. instead of actually studying them and study how, for example, women's bodies might respond differently to surgery and vaccines depending on where they are in the menstrual cycle. But ultimately, that's where we need to go. We need to go in that place because there's no way, mean, knowing everything that I know, there's no way that it doesn't influence that. doesn't, that it's not going to influence the way that you respond to a vaccine or the way that you respond to surgery or the way they respond to medication or the way you respond to PTSD therapy. I all of these things are probably going to be influenced. maybe even in clinically meaningful ways depending on what's happening with the menstrual cycle. I could ⁓ completely with you. can't wait to read the book. ⁓ But yeah, I think it's just so critical to ⁓ health in ways that we have really not been paying enough attention to. And I cannot wait for things to progress in that direction. Thank you so much, Candice. This was just such a fun conversation and I know that the listeners are absolutely going to enjoy it. Where can people find you and read your work and learn more about you? Yeah, so I'm at the University of Melbourne, which is in Melbourne, Australia. ⁓ I have a web page there which has my papers on it. Google Scholar is a really good one to find out the things that I'm publishing. And yeah, that's the best way. All right, excellent. Thank you so much for being here and thanks everyone for listening. And that's it for today's episode of the XX Lab. If you want more, subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. And if you're enjoying the show, a rating or review helps other people find it. See you next episode.