Latest / The XX Lab / Why Dating Apps Make Commitment Harder | #10 Dr. Cari Goetz
Transcript
- speaker-0: You articulated what has been so powerful for me with this lens in a way that I wasn't able to. As women get closer to the age at which their fertility is gonna begin to decline, they may be less restrictive in their requirements for investment before consenting to sex. Is that correct? Welcome to the XX Lab, where we explore the science and stories that matter to you. speaker-1: That's correct, yeah. speaker-0: Doctor Carrie Getz, welcome to the XX Lab. speaker-1: Thank you for having me. speaker-0: Your work really looks at some of the darker sides of human mating. And ⁓ and I think that these are things that ⁓ so many of us, especially ⁓ women who are in the dating market right now, ⁓ are having to navigate. And so I think that it'd be really useful to have your perspective ⁓ and based on your ⁓ extensive relationship history, ⁓ to tell us about some of these things. And I wanted to start by talking about something that It you all coined as mate switching. All right. And I think all of us who are listening have been in a situation where our partner was either trading us out or where we were with a partner and we were thinking to ourselves, might I do better than this person that I'm with? And in plain terms, what is mate switching? speaker-1: So you you hit on the idea pretty well. It's just this idea that we do ⁓ go from one partner to another sometimes, or our partner goes from us to someone else. ⁓ and that could have been for lots of different reasons, right? ⁓ especially pre modern medicine, people would have died. ⁓ and so being able to move on to someone else or possibly ⁓ be aware of potential alternatives would have been good. But even if people didn't die, there might have been really functional adaptive reasons that people would have ⁓ relationships would have come to an end. ⁓ and it would have been better for one partner or the other, or maybe both, ⁓ to be moving on to other people. ⁓ and so that paper was really trying to explicitly think about those contexts and the psychology, right, around that idea of when you might feel a motivation to move from one partner to consider others. speaker-0: Yeah, and in your paper, you all outlined three things that tend to trigger a mate switch. One is a shift in either partner's value, the arrival of someone new or better, or unexpected costs your partner brings into the relationship. What you all call the relationship load. And this is ⁓ I want to kind of stick on this one because this was a term that I'd never heard before, relationship load. But as soon as I heard it, I knew exactly what it was. Right. Because I think that all of us have had a relationship load dropped at our feet. ⁓ and can you tell us a little bit what is relationship load? speaker-1: So we were thinking of this as these sort of unexpected costs that ⁓ come along with being with a particular partner. ⁓ and they can be unexpected for different reasons. ⁓ so it could be something that the partner might have been really good at hiding for a while. ⁓ right. So ⁓ many of us have been in that kind of situation where, you know, you thought certain things about your partner, right? That about their personality, about their mental stability, about their ⁓ work life, about their family life, right? And you had been led to believe certain things. And then after some some amount of time, other information was revealed, right? And suddenly there's costs associated with this relationship that you didn't anticipate. ⁓ But there's also ways in which it can happen where it's not about somebody dis you know being d deceitful, right? And and deceptive. ⁓ Things change, right? So it could, you know, be a partner ⁓ was, you know, able to contribute lots to a relationship. ⁓ it was, you know, you're both mutually contributing, it's great. And then something happens, so that partner not only can't contribute anymore, but now becomes more of a burden, right? ⁓ so ⁓ any kind of ⁓ physical or mental disability, ⁓ something, ⁓ other family stuff is a big one when I talk about this with folks. ⁓ people talk about ⁓ mother-in-laws get a real bad rap, but it's that's often the right, this unanticipated, now I'm embedded in this family network that is bringing these unexpected, unanticipated costs that I didn't realize were gonna be part of this relationship. ⁓ those are just a couple of examples, ⁓ but it it can move on from there. You know, friend networks also, same sort of thing. ⁓ past reputation of a partner that can catch up in some way that you didn't realize, you know, twenty years ago this was their life and it isn't their life now, and you didn't know, but somehow that comes back into play, right? And now that's costly to you because of your association with that partner. And so these are the sort of things we're thinking about with this idea of, ⁓ there's some some load to being in this relationship, these costs to you that you weren't anticipating. ⁓ and all relationships are a balance of costs and benefits. So, you know, our idea when thinking about mate switching isn't that ⁓ people are only gonna stay in relationships if it's beneficial and there's no costs, right? ⁓ but it is about that balance there. And if there is that relationship load that wasn't being accounted for or starts to tip over the benefits, that's the sort of thing that might trigger this mate switching psychology to to be activated. speaker-0: So your research suggests that mate switching is something that will oftentimes like sort like just the idea of potentially being aware of and potentially, you know, curious about alternative mates is something that is less likely to s kind of come online unless one of these areas is kind of being tweaked. If there's a change in the available alternatives, right? So if all of a sudden you have more potential desirable alternative mates available, that this might be something that increases your vulnerability. Or if ⁓ your hidden relationship load is unveiled, right? Every that your partner meets your crazy family. Right. So I really have been spending a lot of time recently thinking about online dating. And so based on your research on mate switching, do you think that there's something to this? Do you think that the modern dating landscape where people are swiping and have this constant availability of, you know, possible partners that this is making it more difficult to date because people are just less willing to sink in and sort of commit because they have all these alternatives available. speaker-1: You know, I always think about the evolved design of some of this psychology, right? And you know, it evolved in an environment where if you were perceiving options, it's because they were real options, right? If they were real people, the pool would have been much smaller, right? The number of folks you're choosing between that are potential options, right, could be in the single digits, maybe dozens, right? But much smaller than what can happen now if you open an app and in an hour you can swipe through. many more options than than you know ever before. And there's one cool study where what they did is they they had three groups just picking between ⁓ four options, four profiles. In the next group it was 32 options and the last group was 64 options. The small group where you only had four choices was four, right? They were doing this kind of ⁓ looking across all of the different characteristics and looking at the person as like a whole person. But when you have 32 or 64 or even more options if you're talking across all day, every day over the weeks, ⁓ you can't do that. You you just you you aren't cognitively capable of sort of keeping in your mind holistically all of these people. And so people were using an elimination by aspect strategy. So what they did is they would sort of pick a trait and be like, okay, like intelligence, okay? And I'm just gonna go through and I'm gonna eliminate the ones who who don't meet some bar that I've set for this, right? And so this is one thing I think about that the actual sort of cognitive strategy people are using to pick mates in this online dating environment might be very different than the selection strategy that people used for a long time and people would use if they had a much smaller choice set. They asked people how happy they were at their choice. They were less happy when they had more options. Mm-hmm. So the people who were picking and made their choice out of the four were happier with their selection than the people picking in out of thirty-two and sixty-four. And when given the option to reverse their choice a week later, they were more likely to do it in the thirty-two, sixty-four conditions. speaker-0: That's fascinating. It's also consistent with I was I was talking to ⁓ Andrea Meltzer, who's at Florida State, and she has some research that is done, it's a longitudinal study of ⁓ married couples. And she finds that when the couples met online, that they tend to have less satisfaction within their marriages. And I think that there's it's probably because that their idea when they're thinking about their mate or their partner. is comparing that partner to what they believe to be the availability of these alternative mates, like a thousand other people, thinking that while, you know, ⁓ he or she doesn't l unload the dishwasher all the time and, you know, this person leaves their socks around and this person doesn't meet every one of my, you know, emotional and psychological needs. And therefore, you know, there's all these other ones available. And because that was how they came into the relationship, was through that process, right? ⁓ that this may ultimately even color their have a lasting impact on their satisfaction within their relationship. Which is speaker-1: Fascinating. Yeah. That's so cool. And looking at it with like the married couples in that longitudinal way, like that's that's really interesting. And I think th there, you know, there might be something there. I haven't seen research exactly on it yet. But even just engaging in the apps and the dates, sort of what you were saying, you know, changing your idea of what potentially could be out there, right? You know, if you're in a space where, you know, you've you've limited your options or it is limited just based on the environment you're in, right? You kind know that was my choices, that was the set. I made a choice. I'm not sitting here thinking, well, there is more potential out there if I wait. Right. Right. But with, you know, the worlds we live in now, so many people, you know, society so big, our ability to ⁓ connect with people who live very, very far away from us, right? The options do just feel endless. And so that comparison specter is always there of, ⁓ but but this other person might actually, you know, unlove the dishwasher. Right. ⁓ and that would massively change my happiness. ⁓ and so ⁓ I that, you know, makes a lot of sense to me. ⁓ and so it's it's something I worry about. But you know, of course, these are all averages, these are all trends. So we always meet people, you know, there's wonderful people who have wonderful relationships where they met people online. Yes. ⁓ but I do think, you know, knowing about these trends and these averages I think is important. speaker-0: Don't have control over how other people consume the dating apps. I mean, you know, I can't control how ⁓ you know, prospective partners ⁓ swipe or don't swipe. ⁓ but we do have control of ourselves. And so I'm wondering, do you think that there's anything that people can do? Like if we have women who are listening and they're looking for a partner and they're on the apps, are there things that they can do on their end ⁓ to change the way that they're consuming potential mates? ⁓ to sort of decrease the probability of falling into this trap. Because I do think that this is another one of these like traps of modern living. And there are so many of them, right? I mean, there's so many different traps that we can fall into in life. And and one of them is this ⁓ idea of devaluing individual options, including mates or partners, ⁓ because we think that there's all these different ones available. And so we think that this one, you know, probably is a not as good as what we could get if. we know because there's so many other alternatives. Like d do you have any recommendations for a strategy for consuming dating profiles that might actually get us out of a mate switching mindset? speaker-1: Yeah, I've I've thought about this and none of this, I I haven't tested any of this. ⁓ but one I think is the self imposed limits, right? And I think if there was ways to do this in certain apps where it was like you get ten choices a week. Mm-hmm. That's it. Right. And you can think about those ten choices and maybe try to connect with one of those ten. If you decide none of those ten are good, fine. But that's that's the ones you're thinking about this week, right? and I think that might help reset. some of this a little bit, right? To to then be able to better evaluate through those options and not feel like, but maybe let me check for the next thing. ⁓ I certainly think when people do first start dating somebody or being in a relationship early on, ⁓ I think it's important to shut a bunch of that down. not be going back and because especially in those early days where you're learning things and you're not sure, ⁓ it's that's when it's it's even more tempting to to I haven't invested much yet, right? there might be something better out there, right? ⁓ I think it's funny. This is the sort of advice that comes up for lots of choices. So I've seen it ⁓ for things like house buying, right? When people buy a house and they feel ⁓ house buying remorse right away, right? After ⁓ they tell people you've got to get rid of all the emails from Zillow and whatever that are showing you all the the options you didn't pick or you could have, because it's the same thing. You have to spend the first year in your house. pretending those don't exist. So you can like love your house and r and I think it's the same thing with dating a little bit, right? That you have to impose that limit because the world isn't going to do it for you. It's just going to keep, you know, firing all that at you. speaker-0: Yeah, and and and the research on the paradox of choice, which is the the rese the phenomenon that that that ⁓ that Carrie's describing is so robust. I mean, just essentially that the greater the number of options that you're given, the less satisfied you are with any potential choice. I found this even when I was growing up, ⁓ you know, we had cable TV, like we were like one of the houses that had cable TV, but it still only had like 30 channels. And now, I mean, there's so many channels, like I can't ever find anything to that I wanna watch because I feel like I can't commit to any show because there's too many that are available and so I just don't watch T V and I guess in some ways it's given me better it's given me better ⁓ habits for my leisure time, but ⁓ but speaker-1: I was gonna the way to bring value to a relationship is to be the ⁓ entertainment decider, right? To be the person that stops you from spending 30 minutes flipping through all the Netflix options and all the crime options and the Hulu options and the Apple TV options and be like, we're just gonna watch this because we wanna watch it, okay? speaker-0: Yeah, well I mean for me, like I remember I do remember growing up, I mean, it was like it wouldn't matter what it was, right? It's like if there was like a movie on on a Saturday afternoon, it like I would I was just gonna watch it. It didn't matter because that was like the only thing that was on. And I would sit and my intent my attention would be fully engaged. And now it's like if something is on, it's like there's also my phone and then there's also, you know, and I can't get even get myself to commit to ⁓ a TV show and I'm glad I'm not on dating apps because that would right. That would that would make things even ⁓ that that would be a terrible ⁓ state for me because I know that I would very much fall prey to the the paradox of choice. ⁓ and that I'd be in a constant mate switching mentality. speaker-1: Absolutely. Yeah. And there was a real shift in the sort of technology dating world when it went from kind of online dating that was through websites versus apps on the phone. Because you could still be separated when it was and if you look at the literature on this, you can s it it it gets at this because people have been using the internet for dating for decades, right? But it wasn't always the apps and the phone that it was always with you and you could always you could be sitting there waiting in line at the coffee shop and pull out your phone and start swiping, right? Right. That's what you do now. There was a while where s people were still meeting online or remotely, people that weren't necessarily that close to them, but it was you had to sit down and send them a message. At that time of day you were gonna sit at the the computer or the laptop and do that. So there was it it imposed a little bit more of that, ⁓ I'm gonna dedicate some time to this and make a choice and I can't just do this all the time or be laying in bed at night, you know, doing this. And that can just happen so much now. ⁓ speaker-0: Yeah. speaker-1: And and it's it's I I think ⁓ you know, for the for the the data on you know, online dating and app dating you can see the the change in s in some of speaker-0: Yeah, that's so fascinating. I want to talk about your research on sexual exploitability. And I want to talk about this because I think that it's a really important topic for women to know about because I think that a lot of times, in and I I don't mean this in a pejorative way, but I think that we can be kind of naive, you know, and I I'm one of these people who can be naive where I tend to think that everybody has really good. intentions and I tend to assume the best of everybody and I tend to be pretty optimistic and think, you know, that ⁓ nobody would ever do anything bad to me and that everybody says, you know, whatever it is that they say is what they actually mean. And ⁓ and this doesn't end up to always be true. And ⁓ and and exploitability is the extent to which somebody is assessing whether you are somebody who can be exploited. Right. And so that means that this that people are actually making judgments about the extent to which they can take advantage of you. And so yeah, I wanna I wanna l talk a little bit about this research because ⁓ I think that it's really not, I mean, it's something that most people don't spend any time thinking about. I think. I mean, most people, right? And so first I wanna know what got you to ask the research question about sexual exploitability, and then I want you to explain. What it is and then we can kind of walk through it things from there. speaker-1: So there was sort of two routes that got us to the question. One was the the good scientist theoretical side. And the other side is also good science scientists, but it's sort of the observations in our daily world side of things. ⁓ that, you know, bottom-up kind of approach of, ⁓ we're sort of seeing this around there. What do we think this is? Right. Mm-hmm. And the ⁓ so the the theory kind of side of it. ⁓ there's, you know, been a lot of work in evolutionary psychology, talking looking at ⁓ cooperative relationships and how people cooperate with each other and the psychology that we might have to work mutually together and provide benefits to each other that then give benefits back, and then we can get what we want that way by cooperating. ⁓ but there's, you know, the other way to get at something you want to get, which is to take it from people. ⁓ without their help, right? ⁓ exploiting them. And so some of there is, you know, sort of a bigger literature starting to think about that. Well, what is the psychology we have that might sometimes be less about cooperating with people to get what we want, but might be more about exploiting people, right? And deciding who to exploit and what we should exploit them for. And so this is a very broad idea of exploit. It's not just talking about sexual exploitability, but it could be for anything, right? ⁓ anything that you want that somebody else has or has access to. ⁓ And so in thinking about that idea, the the people I collaborated with on this, we started thinking specifically about this case of sexual access, right? And men being able to get sexual access to women. And there's sort of the same distinction, right? There's a way in which it can be done cooperatively, right? Where both men and women, there's a mutual interest here, right? It's mutually beneficial. ⁓ and there's psychology for that, for attracting mates in that way, displaying your best qualities, ⁓ doing things to to make that mate feel good and want to be with you, building that relationship together and then getting those mutual benefits. ⁓ but then there also might be this other ⁓ class of of behavior, right? ⁓ and this other part of ⁓ psychology, particularly in men, where trying to gain that sexual access ⁓ without ⁓ ⁓ it being a mutually beneficial situation, right? And through exploitation. And our use of the word exploitation here was much broader than what you see in some of the other literature that uses the term sexual exploitation. Oftentimes that literature is really focused on things like sex trafficking, really explicit the, you know, ⁓ very much sexual assault, right? And we were actually thinking of the term even more broadly that When we're talking about you know, initial courtship or people meeting and there might be some deception or some pressure or even what somebody might be perceiving themselves as doing as seducing, right? ⁓ that that actually maybe should fall under the same umbrella because in the end, the outcome might be beneficial for the seducer, the ⁓ that person, and not beneficial for the ⁓ person who is on the receiving end, usually a woman. ⁓ and so we kind of were thinking of a much broader idea about what psychology that motivates sexual exploitation might look like. That it might not just be about kind of the worst version of it that we think of, but it might include ⁓ some of these strategies that are, I'm gonna use air quotes here, more benign, right? But still have the outcome of ⁓ you know, a sexual encounter occurring that a woman didn't want or wasn't what she was expecting or wasn't beneficial for her. speaker-0: Right. So you're saying that essentially that many people when they're talking about sexual exploitation, they're talking very narrowly about yeah, sex trafficking or sexual assault. And you're you're looking at this more broadly because you're saying that you can essentially get exploitation that happens at the, you know, sort of the l capital, you know, capital E exploitation, which is, you know, the trafficking and the assault, but also even just, yeah, like like lying about your interest in a long-term relationship, right? Or pretending that you are deeply, you know, into somebody to try to get them to consent to sex, ⁓ when ultimately then you aren't. And ⁓ okay. And so so we're talking broadly about those things. And and and another thing I wanted to just ⁓ quickly head off at the past before we continue the conversation further is that you're doing this research not to pre like create a how-to guide right for men. ⁓ like, hey, here's how to identify, ⁓ here's how to identify women who are sexually exploitable, or here's how to sexually exploit. But rather, ⁓ when you're trying to understand these things, right, that you're trying to do so from the pros ⁓ the perspective of trying to better understand the conditions that produce an unwanted behavior. Right. So that way we're better able to create A world, right, where we can head these things off at the past and where we can get less sexual exploitation. Is that fair to say? speaker-1: That is fair to say, and I appreciate you saying it. and it's also ⁓ we can talk a little bit about the research specifically, but the research really focuses on perceptions. So perceptions of sexual exploitability, ⁓ and then how that influences men's attraction towards women. ⁓ and so it actually doesn't even really tap into actually what makes somebody sexually exploitable. You there could be a gap between those perceptions and reality, right? and ⁓ but For our purposes, the perceptions are what might matter because that what might be what is influencing men's emotions, motivations, and behavior in the end. ⁓ their perceptions rather than necessarily an accurate perception, ⁓ accurate view of of something. speaker-0: Yeah. And I think that I think that understanding what the perception is from a man's point of view, for example, of what is quote unquote exploitable is also important and potentially beneficial information to know for women. Because if they are finding themselves in a situation where they're feeling a little bit uncomfortable, ⁓ trying to minimize those types of cues as much as possible until they're able to get themselves into ⁓ a, you know, into a situation that is ⁓ safer and and better for them. And so you in your research identified 22 observable cues of what you called sexual exploitability. And I'm not going to have you go through all 22 cues. ⁓ but I want you instead to talk in in broad terms, like what are some of the p the factors that men perceive as being related to sexual exploitability? Like what are some things that, you know, some vibes that women need to be careful not to give off if they're feeling ⁓ concerned about the possibility that they may be taken advantage of ⁓ sexually. speaker-1: Sure. So when we first initially set out to think about what these cues possibly could be, we kind of lumped them in three categories. ⁓ so the first category was sort of ⁓ kind of you know, personality cues or behavioral cues specifically about the woman that conveyed something about ⁓ her mindset or what she's like. ⁓ another set of cues were about her current context, a lot of them having to do with currently in the moment, how vulnerable is she? Mm-hmm. ⁓ and then the last set of cues were very much physical cues, things like size, stature, stuff like that. And I'll head off the past, the physical cues, things like being shorter, being smaller, seeming less strong, right? Actually, we didn't find any association between those and perceptions of exploitability. So those didn't weren't ones that popped in our research as ones that were indicative. ⁓ one reason this could be was our our methodology. We were showing men, ⁓ and we showed these to women too, but we were showing them pictures of women. And you could see things about their relative size in those pictures, but it might be that for a cue like that to matter, you actually have to be seeing them in person to know something about relative size. But alternatively, it might be that it doesn't matter. we know, you know, if there's data on things like upper body strength, and it's something like the average man's upper body strength is stronger than like 90% of women, right? ⁓ something like that. So it might be that actually the size and strength of woman isn't something that is really computed as indicative of how exploitable somebody might be. So none of those came out. But in the other two categories, there was the ones about sort of the current context she was in and and potential potentially how incapacitated she was or if she was alone, things like that. We looked at things like if she looked sleepy, intoxicated, particularly fatigued, ⁓ with people or not with people. ⁓ again, the ⁓ with people, not with people, it was sort of the same as the physical cues where none of those seemed to matter, but it might have been the pictures. ⁓ but the other ones I mentioned did seem to matter. So if she looked tired, if she looked fatigued, if she ⁓ her body posture was slumped over, if she ⁓ looked intoxicated. ⁓ all of those ⁓ were correlated with being perceived as more sexually exploitable. ⁓ and then the other set of cues, ⁓ it was things like ⁓ if she was looking particularly flirty, promiscuous, ⁓ like she might be reckless, ⁓ lower in intelligence. There was a set of cues like that that people seemed to be able to pick up from the pictures and that then were ⁓ associated with being perceived as more expensive. speaker-0: And so for a person who's listening and like if they're going out on first dates with people, right, and you don't know who you're dealing with when you're going out with people, especially if you meet somebody on a dating app where you don't really have any context. I mean, I think that that's one of the things where modern dating has ⁓ gotten so removed from what dating used to be, is that you're taking this person, they're totally plucked out of context. You don't know their friends, you don't know their family, you don't know their colleagues, you don't know anything about them. And ⁓ I think that it's always a good idea to be fairly vigilant, ⁓ especially early on when you're getting to know somebody that you have no context for, given everything that you know about what men send tend to perceive as being something that is related to sexual exploitability. And again, we're talking about this in the broad sense, meaning that they think that they can, you know, either ⁓ be sexually aggressive towards you or on sort of the lower end, just ⁓ you know, take advantage of your you know, affection and ⁓ and essentially talk you into sex that you ⁓ might not be wanting to have if you knew their actual level of commitment. Right. So feigning ⁓ one of the popular strategies ⁓ for ex sexual exploitation is feigning commitment, right? And saying that you're ⁓ interested in a long-term relationship or that you're so into this person and then ⁓ you have sex with them and then all of a sudden you're not. What are things that women should be cautious about? I mean, in terms of like their own behavior. And again, you know, just ⁓ again, I wanna that this is a delicate conversation, so I'm gonna put a lot of little pins and asides, but as a pin, it is not women's responsibility to lead men ⁓ to the you know, appropriate behavior. Right. So it's not, it's not our we can wear it we should be able to wear whatever dress we want to. Right. We should be able to drink tequila with our friends until we're a little bit intoxicated. ⁓ we should be able to do all of those things and not worry about sexual exploitation. Right. It is not women's responsibility ⁓ to control the behavior of men. However, we do live in the real world and there are men who sometimes are ⁓ sexually exploitative. And ⁓ If you're somebody who's concerned about that or you want to be vigilant about that, like what are some things that you might do to just make sure that you're not going to be taken advantage of? speaker-1: Yeah, I think, you know, from the from the cues we identified, ⁓ I think a lot of it hinged on those ideas of, you know, seeming aware and with it. and ⁓ certainly being flirtatious on dates, I mean, that's part of it. That's part of the fun, right? ⁓ but depending on your goals, right? If your goals are you want to have casual sex, then go for it, right? ⁓ but if you've got goals of wanting longer term investment, it's the realization that if somebody else also has that same goal, they'll be okay with giving it a little bit of time to get to know each other. ⁓ and so not feeling pressure immediately, right? To to go home with them or, you know, do more than you're comfortable with early on until you've, you know, had a little time to get comfortable with one another. Right. And to really be able to suss out is this person, you know, here for the same reasons that I'm here for? And are we on the same page? And that takes time to suss out. ⁓ and it's not always evident from a first date ⁓ or a second date. And so, ⁓ I think I think certainly, you know, you know, it's it's not completely having a guard up, but it's realizing, hey, in those first few dates, right, I need to have my wherewithal, right? ⁓ Yeah, I can have a drink, but maybe keep it to the one or you know, whatever is appropriate for you. ⁓ that I'm gonna try to make sure we go to places where I'm gonna feel comfortable and I know where it is, I know where I can get home from there, I can safely do all of that. It's not some place I've never heard of. Those are perfectly appropriate things to ask for and arrange for in early dates. ⁓ and it it puts you in a position of, you know. Showing you've got, you your wits about you, right? Which is sort of the opposite of being perceived as sexually exploitable. speaker-0: You know, one thing that one thing that I've always thought is really interesting is ⁓ courtship and flirtation. And one of the things that you were saying is like being really flirtatious can ⁓ yeah, I mean it's essentially when you're really flirtatious, ⁓ and I'm I'm I'm a big flirt, so I ⁓ I'm a big fan of of flirting. ⁓ but ⁓ flirt being flirtatious, like it's intentionally obscure like it's it it's it it's intentionally vague, right? Like like one of the things that I think so interesting about courtship is just that you are intentionally, you're kind of like taking a step like, hey, like it, you know, like I think you're cute or I might be interested in you. But you're also like there's an element of deniability and ⁓ and like uncertainty, right? Where the person's like not necessarily sure. And courtship is very much, you know, this sort of like, am I interested? ⁓ maybe I'm not interested. ⁓ maybe I am interested. ⁓ maybe I'm not. And ⁓ and that's what makes it so fun and infuriating at the same time ⁓ when you're dating. ⁓ but it's I think that ultimately the reason that it's so codified is to avoid being exploited, right? Where it's essentially like you're trying to show interest, but not so much interest that somebody could take advantage of your affections, ⁓ and then, you know, kind of take you for a ride. speaker-1: Right. We had these images of women and we had them one set of participants look at these images and essentially code or or rate or quantify how much of each of these characteristics we've been talking about were present in the pictures. And then we had another set of participants, these are men, looking at the pictures and saying how ⁓ sexually attractive they thought the women w woman was and how attractive they thought she was as a long-term mate. And what we found was that You know, the more a woman was displaying cues to exploitability, the more attractive a man was perceiving her sexually, but the less attractive he was perceiving her perceiving her for a long term relationship. So there was this opposite relationship. ⁓ speaker-0: So what is what did you make of that? speaker-1: It's an interesting thing here, right? Especially when you're first meeting people, right? This balance of I want to show that I'm interested, right? But if I do have long-term intentions, right? Making sure that I am not sending off signals that are increasing my sexual attractiveness, but maybe decreasing my attractiveness as a potential long-term partner. ⁓ we didn't follow up exactly why there would be this difference. One speculation we had is that. especially when men are talking to women or looking at these pictures of women they don't know, if they're perceiving that she is being ⁓ flirtatious in general, right, it might not just be towards them, it might be towards other people. And that might put them off for, ⁓ whether or not they would want this person as a long term mate. Right. ⁓ and so I think especially early on, there's an amount of that flirtation to do. Certainly you can't you can't develop anything without it. ⁓ and, you know, Sex often, you know, should be part of long-term relationships, right? These things aren't separated. You need to have sexual attraction and long-term mate attraction. But these cues to exploitability might particularly ramp up that sexual attractiveness at a cost to long-term mate attractiveness. ⁓ and I I you know, I wonder for for some women if you know these strategies have been there, there are some women who do report ⁓ actually purposefully displaying cues to exploitability. as part of made attraction and it tends to be women who are more interested in sh casual sex. Right. ⁓ and so that that's great for them. It's a nice little strategy if that's what they're interested in. But I worry about women who that's not necessarily the goal and figuring out how to be ⁓ navigating, you know, early dating or meeting people. speaker-0: Right. And so it sounds to me like if you're interested, if you're a woman who's interested in a longer term relationship, that ⁓ w a s a smart strategy could be to just be aware of the fact that too many cues to sexual interest early can potentially be picked up on as a cue to exploitability by men and ⁓ could end up, you know, putting you in a position where ⁓ you're not getting the text returned the next day. Right. And so just being aware of that I think is I think is useful information. And like what about the types of like who does this? I mean, 'cause thankfully, you know, so we have this conversation because I do think that it's important ⁓ for again, especially someone like me, because I tend to be pretty naive just in that I have this sort of Pollyanna ish view of human nature where I'm like, everybody's good and says the you know, night what the nice things they say are the nice things they mean. And ⁓ And I I think that sometimes ⁓ it's useful for people like me to hear that, you know, not everybody is going to tell you the truth. And ⁓ and not everybody has your best interests in mind. ⁓ and but I also think that it's worth knowing, like, who who does this? Like, what are some of the are there certain like do some types of men do this more than others? Or is there something do they have a tell? Is there some sort of a like behavioral or psychological tell that is related to ⁓ sexual sexual exploitativeness that women can be looking out for. speaker-1: You know, if they had a real obvious tell, that would be great. ⁓ but the reality is the ones who use this kind of strategy habitually, ⁓ many of them are good at hiding it, right? ⁓ that said, you know, from my research and from other research on this topic in general, there's a broad literature on looking at things like sexual assault, sexual coercion, ⁓ in di which men are more likely to do those sorts of things. So from from some of my research we're just in looking at these exploitability cues, we found that men who were single ⁓ and low in the personality trait agreeableness. Agreeableness is this thing that it sounds like what it means. If somebody who's highly agreeable, they're pretty social, they get along with people, they like social harmony, they like cooperating, right? They they they want things to get along. speaker-0: ⁓ interesting. speaker-1: So somebody low in agreeableness is the opposite of this. ⁓ they tend to be more combative, more competitive, more argumentative, more critical. That's kind of what low agreeableness is. So men who were single, low in agreeableness, and interested in casual sex, ⁓ more interested in casual sex on average, right, compared to other men. ⁓ those were the ones who particularly ⁓ when looking at these cues they they they sort of had this heightened sense of women's exploitability. They were they were seeing women as more exploitable than other men. speaker-0: ⁓ interesting. I wonder what I wonder whether there's like a like a test you can do, right? Like, ⁓ so imagine that you're like, okay, I'm gonna pick the restaurant, right? Or and then and then change it, right? So and then like, so does the person go along with it the first time and then and then do they also go along with it the second time? And then and then you would have your like a high and agreeableness person if they're like, ⁓ sure, yeah, whatever you want to do, that's fine. speaker-1: They're in my research, yeah. ⁓ I love this. Yes. ⁓ it's you know, it's it's interesting because ⁓ I think there's a lot too the like you can in many cases, you know, so certainly there's psychopaths out there who like can do a great job of like acting, you know, wonderful and then they're tricking you, right? But that's not the majority of people. Like that is, you know, there is a small slice of people who can do that really well, right? But most can't most people, I mean, they show you what they are, and it's up to you to believe that. Right. And to to trust your gut. Right. And so if in that early date, right, they aren't particularly agreeable, right? They seem grumpy about stuff. They're critical of the server. Right. They, you know, are, ⁓ the food here, meh, right? They don't seem to be trying to help make the date go along well. Right. That's, I mean, I like the idea of a test. You could totally come up with great tests to like give give those opportunities. But I think there's also cases where People get information about this on these dates and dismiss it. Right. and and, you know, when people tell you what they are, you you you believe ⁓ And so then on the flip side, when that person is being nice and wonderful, you gotta give the credit, right? speaker-0: Believe that, yeah. Believe that too. Right. Because I I do think that, you know, sometimes having these kinds of conversations, because I think that's really important for women to learn how to identify potential ⁓ contexts that are gonna be dangerous and identify ways to ⁓ help to keep themselves safe and also just help to, you know, prevent themselves from being ta ⁓ taken advantage of on in the dating market. ⁓ this is not to give the impression that. all or most men are terrible and devious because I I just don't believe that. I think I think most most men are really wonderful in just real trying to get by in the world and and form good relationships and ⁓ and really do ⁓ mean the things that they say. Right. It's that there's that small percentage of of people that really create problems in ⁓ in people's lives. ⁓ And with all of that being said, you know, most women I know, and I'm one of these women, have had some experience in their life where they ended up in a situation where they and it might it doesn't even need to be sex, right? W but where they thought that ⁓ this person was really into them and and they're giving the cues and and like whether they have a really like steamy makeout session or whether or not they actually have sex, ⁓ the person ends up kind of ghosting them and and disappearing and and going away. And ⁓ and women oftentimes, you know, will respond to these experiences of having something not work out romantically, ⁓ it by feeling regretful. Right. And so feeling like, ⁓ I should not have had the steamy make out sesh with that guy because he or I shouldn't have had sex with that guy. ⁓ because, you know, it ⁓ and and it didn't work out. And interestingly enough, ⁓ for listeners, ⁓ the Opposite of this. So researchers who studied sexual regret find that women more often regret people they had had sex with, whereas men more often regret opportunities that may have been available that they didn't capitalize on. So men regret speaker-1: Missed opportunities. I mostly love that research because like I you know, nobody dives further to able to understand like what were those opport opportunities that you missed. speaker-0: Right. It's like was that an opportunity, John? Like was it? speaker-1: Fantasies, but but yes, that is that you're absolutely characterizing the literature accurately. speaker-0: Yeah. And ⁓ and so recently ⁓ I understand that you've been sort of toying around with this idea of sexual regret in women and th wondering whether what we sometimes label as sexual regret ⁓ might actually be disappointment. Can you walk us through that distinction and why it's important? speaker-1: Yeah. So so ⁓ I've been aware of the literature you've been talking about, you know, for a while. It's it's very interesting. There've been some studies from, you know, an evolutionary psychological perspective and other perspectives getting into this idea of of sexual ret and these sex differences in in what what triggers it. ⁓ but there's you know was one thing that was sort of bothering me a little bit about the evolutionary argument was it when when you're thinking through it's this it's this idea of regret, ⁓ I wish I had made another decision, right? But But we know that when we look at women's sexuality, there's absolutely reasons women might be motivated to have casual sex. Right? ⁓ it's it's not something women don't do or don't have the psychology for or don't get benefits from. Like it absolutely is. speaker-0: Right. Yeah. It's not that we're always duped. Right. It's not just like, ⁓ I thought this would be a long-term relationship and now it's not. And I feel sad. It's like a lot of times it's like I am a gentic. I want to have casual sex. And this is the person I'm having casual sex speaker-1: Right. And and so so there was some of the logic in some of these arguments that I I I wasn't sure if it was totally making sense. And so I started getting into the literature just on regret in general, because I have the larger emotion literature on it. And one thing I came across was in this larger literature that hasn't really been tapped into by sort of the evolutionary psych world that I'm in, is ⁓ this distinction between disappointment and regret. And the way that this is characterized in that literature is that regret is what happens when ⁓ there's, you know, made a decision and there's an outcome. And whatever the outcome one is is outcome was, it was worse than what the outcome would have been if you had made a different choice. And then that's you experiencing regret. But disappointment is what happens when you make a decision and there's an outcome. And that outcome is worse than what you were expecting. And so I wonder if some of this literature is conflating. These a little bit. If you only ask people about regret and you don't give them a way to distinguish between these two different feelings, you might get them attributing, well yeah, that was a negative experience. I guess I regretted it highly. As opposed to if you're asking them in a way that can disentangle these, you might find that some of these experiences from when they're they're like, Well, no, I still would have it didn't work out how I wanted, right? But like I wouldn't have known that if I didn't try, right? Right. ⁓ Or I learned something about myself, or I wouldn't have known this about this person if I didn't have sex with them. And so then I realized I didn't want to be with them. But I I wasn't gonna know if I didn't do that. So I don't regret that I did it. I just wish it had it it didn't live up to my expectations. ⁓ and I think also, you know, depending on the narratives women hear, ⁓ I think sometimes expectations about casual sex don't Live up to women's expectations. I think sometimes there's ideas about what that's gonna be like that don't maybe fit with how women's sexuality works. ⁓ and that then might set women up, right? To be like, no, I'm a agentic freestanding woman who I can do what I want. I'm gonna go have this casual sex, it's gonna be great. And then it's like, well, that wasn't great for me. Why? Right? Ugh and and I think some of the literature is packaging that as regret. And maybe that's not accurate. ⁓ and maybe disappointment is a little bit more of what's happening. speaker-0: So I want to probe on that just a little bit. So do you think that women like that their sexual psychology is less adept or less inclined to see short-term casual sexual behavior as purely and like just, you know, enjoyable, not not necessarily the sex, right? Because the sex might be incredibly enjoyable, but just the experience of engaging in short-term casual relationships. Like, do you think that ⁓ women's mating psychology is not as well equipped for those types of relationships as male psychology. And can you explain if you ⁓ do believe that? ⁓ can you explain the rationale behind that? speaker-1: I think there's some evidence that supports that in in some ways, right? So I think, ⁓ I don't want to paint men as simple, but I think in some ways it's more straightforward, right? That ⁓ for men ⁓ ancestrally and currently too in our modern environment, right? ⁓ there's, you know, ⁓ benefits they can get from engaging in casual sex, right? That are simple without with potentially fewer costs, right? They're not the ones who end up being pregnant. They are less susceptible to the ⁓ sexually transmitted infections and the negative effects from it, right? ⁓ they don't suffer the same sort of reputational costs, right? So there's just reasons that the potentially doing this, you know, could be less costly for them, right? So engaging in casual sex, right, can get these, you know, can have a nice sexual experience without these the specter of these costs, right? Right. But for women it's just gonna be much more variable. Right. For some women, those costs might not be there, but for others, they might be there or they potentially might be there. And so it sets up a much, a much more complicated, I think, landscape for women when it comes to casual sex about not just the act of sex being enjoyable, but then how you might feel about it afterwards, depending on this landscape of potential costs or benefits that could come out. speaker-0: Yeah, that's one of the yeah, that's one of the things I've I've heard from women a lot is I think that especially, you know, I'm Gen X. ⁓ and you know, and and like I was ⁓ college when sex in the city was a big thing and there was this, you know, big moment that we were having where, you know, women can be just as sexual as men, which is absolutely true. We can be. ⁓ but that it can be more complicated for women just having short term casual sexual relationships. That oftentimes ⁓ women end up ⁓ either catching feelings or feeling badly about themselves in ways that men don't. And I don't think that it's just the result of women sort of passively absorbing the patriarchy ⁓ that, you know, instead that we have this brain that's very sensitive to the costs that historically women have been confronted with when it comes to sexual activity, which through most of our evolutionary history meant the possibility of pregnancy. And so and that our brain is very sensitive to those costs. And as a result of that, that ⁓ it may be inclined also to be more likely to catch feelings for the with the people that we're having sexual activity with because that could end up being the father of the child that we may now be carrying. And ⁓ and that there is all of this extra nuance in women's ⁓ sexual psychology that men's sexual psychology does not have. And ⁓ and and I think that ⁓ I I think that a lot of women in my generation certainly, and and even women now, ⁓ have been led to believe that there's something wrong with them when they feel that way. And ⁓ and so anyway, I think that it's very validating for a lot of women to understand that like there's you're not broken and and there's not anything wrong with you if ⁓ if casual sex isn't as easy for you as it is for your male friend or the person that you just had sex with. ⁓ because ⁓ our brains, male and female brains, especially when it comes to ⁓ sexual activity, given the different costs that are related to sexual activity for men and women, if you have a male or female body, means that you're going to have somewhat more nuance within the psychology of sexual behavior for women compared to men. speaker-1: Absolutely. And I mean, I think your point there too about those potential costs, it's ⁓ it's so much more after the actual sex act, right? I mean, there's in there's data about there too about, you know, women's sexual satisfaction from having, you know, has sex with a partner they don't know very well and things like that that also contribute here. But after it, you're looking at, you know, days or weeks of this sort of rumination on Is this cost happening? Is it not happening, right? Because you don't know immediately for for all of them, right? It's any of them, reputational, STIs, pregnancy, any of these things are things that you might not know immediately. Right. In our modern environment, we can know faster, right? But for most of human evolutionary history, you you probably had a few weeks before you might know some of this. And that just puts you in this place of, ⁓ thinking about this, right? And you we might have psychology that focuses on doing that, right? That men speaker-0: Okay. speaker-1: Their psychology just doesn't work in the same way because those same considerations didn't need to be made, right? ⁓ and so I think it absolutely makes sense then for women that these decisions are more complicated and sometimes it might make it so that it's that's not something that would be enjoyable to pursue, right? To have to deal with. And that's not because anything's wrong with them, that it's that's their mind is working the way absolutely it was designed to work. speaker-0: Way I want to talk about, you know, speaking of casual sex, I want to talk to you about a paper that you were on that absolutely the first time I I saw it, I still remember where I was. I was I was at ⁓ one of our conferences. We go to these human behavior and evolutionary society conferences. And and I still remember where I was when I saw it because as soon as I saw it, I was like, I am absolutely in love with this research line. ⁓ it was on ⁓ reproduction expediting. And I loved it so much because I think I was like 30 at the time. And so like I was like your core demographic in some ways. ⁓ looking at and I was, you know, I was I was married and I had kids and everything, but I still like I could I understood I understood what was happening with the research. And essentially what this research finds, and correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm gonna have you walk us through it more slowly, is that as women get closer to the age at which their fertility Is going to begin to decline that during this time, particularly for women who want to have children or haven't had children, that they may be more oriented and sort of less restrictive when it comes to sexual behavior. And essentially that women become a little bit less picky about the people with whom they're having sex and that they become less stringent in their requirements for investment before consenting to sex. Is that correct? That's correct. speaker-1: Correct. Yeah. They have more ⁓ intense sexual fantasies, more sexual fantasies. in addition to what you were saying, right? So it was this whole constellation of sort of sexual motivation and sexual behavior and and stuff related to yeah, attitudes towards casual sex that ⁓ you know, we saw this this increase in these in those women that were in this ⁓ ⁓ declining fertility ⁓ age group ⁓ compared to younger women. speaker-0: Yeah, so let's walk for people who don't have a lot of familiarity about the female fertility curve and all of these cruel, uncaring forces that shape women's biology. ⁓ walk us through us a little bit, walk us through it a little bit. ⁓ explain female fertility and its relationship with age. So first just like tell us what is and this, by the way, for two people who have PhDs, because we both have PhDs, ⁓ which is a s a degree that requires you to stay in school until you're in your thirties. ⁓ and and like starting your career then it's it's a really terrible the relationship between age and fertility when you are getting an advanced degree that requires you to be a student until you're, you know, kind of past peak reproduction. Tell us about the relationship between age and fertility and women. speaker-1: Yeah, so ⁓ you know, women become able to conceive, right? ⁓ that number's actually changed, right? ⁓ quite a bit over time. But ⁓ you know, usually ⁓ sometime in their teens, right? ⁓ and what we see is that takes a little bit of time to stabilize sort of their ovulatory cycles. ⁓ so there's sort of like actually an increase, right, in their likelihood of conceiving from when that when they first start ovulating, right, to ⁓ up until ⁓ their mid-20s-ish. The exact number varies for women. There's individual differences in this. So what we're talking about are trends. So ⁓ when I talk about this in my classes, I tend to say mid twenties just as a a time point. ⁓ if you look in the literature, it's it's sometimes pinpointed around 22 or 23 or 24, right? But that's that's where we're starting to hit that hit that peak. ⁓ I think for the the stuff the literature we were looking at, ⁓ we did 18, age 18 to 26 was that sort of like. increasing getting to peak of fertility was what we had for for that paper. And that was based on ⁓ data in medical journals and and some other sources that were were pinpointing that. ⁓ After that, you know, we hit that that peak and and that's that's what we were talking about, the the likelihood of conception occurring for any given act of sex. ⁓ that it it sort of peaks in around those those the mid-20s and then it starts declining. ⁓ now, ⁓ you know, it's declining from a peak. So, you know, women are still often quite fertile, right? Through ⁓ their thirties, right? ⁓ but it is declining ⁓ until women hit menopause and then that's that precipitous drop-off where ⁓ they're no longer able to conceive. ⁓ the ⁓ the median age of menopause at the time, and I think this has been pretty stable, although I haven't rechecked the literature recently, ⁓ is f around forty-five, and that was pretty consistent, like across ⁓ different countries, across different so that was our our cutoff. We used we had three age groups. We had the sort of like increasing fertility age group that was 18 year olds to 26 year olds because we were only studying adults. And then we had the declining fertility group that was 27 year olds to ⁓ 44 or 45, right? And then we had the 45 plus group that was our we were ⁓ as considering that to be menopausal or postmenopausal. We just had ages, so we don't actually know the women's fertility status. There are women who can conceive at age forty seven, there are women who can't conceive at age thirty eight, but you know, we were lumping them in these groups based on that literature. speaker-0: Right. And so you looked at these different groups of women, and then you looked at their, as you noted, like ⁓ attitudes towards casual sex, their ⁓ s sex number of sexual fantasies, the tendency ⁓ for them to ⁓ sort of say no to casual sex or or sort of insist on investment ⁓ before ⁓ consenting to sex. And you found that particularly like this specific group of women, this ⁓ 27 to 45, so those for whom the reproductive curve, they're beginning to crest downward on the hill, that these women exhibited this ⁓ increase in sort of I guess we can just call it like like their their their sexuality is turned on. Right. So they they're just kind of more sexual ⁓ compared to the women in the other categories. And you predicted this because why? speaker-1: Well, our idea was that if if this is the time frame when women's fertility is declining, right? That from an evolutionary perspective, it would be the the time frame where, you know, if if you're to take advantage of what remaining fertility that you have, right? ⁓ and that it would be adaptive, right, to be able to produce ⁓ you know, at least one more offspring, maybe two, ⁓ in that time before you're no longer able to reproduce at all. And this is likely an unconscious motivation, right? It's not that women are Although some are very consciously having to think about this now, about, ⁓ God, I want to have a kid, I gotta do it now. ⁓ but ⁓ you know, we were thinking about this in a pre-birth control world, right? In a world where you have much less control other than whether or not you have sex with somebody, ⁓ about whether or not offspring could be produced, right? And so in that time frame, ⁓ it might be particularly functional to to have that kind of motivation to produce ⁓ an additional offspring. Right. And so we called it, you know, reproduction expediting, trying to get that last last one in there if you can. speaker-0: Yeah. So what's really interesting about that, well, there's there's two things. So one is it this is actually very consistent with hormonal changes that happen across the lifespan. So you actually see that testosterone starts to increase when women are usually like mid 30s when they're starting to like enter into this like early paramenopause state. And I wonder whether that is sort of the ⁓ biological lever that's helping to sort of push women into this state of. Increased sexual motivation, increased sexual openness, ⁓ that would then ultimately lead them into, you know, essentially putting themselves in a position where they're increasingly likely to get pregnant and have a baby. Because as you noted, throughout most of our our history as a human species, ⁓ you know, being a mother wasn't about wanting children, right? It was about having sex. And it was like wanting to have children is is a very novel ⁓ trait to even be considered when it comes to motherhood. ⁓ because it used to not be, you know, parenthood now is opt in and it used to not be that way. ⁓ it used to be that parenthood was just a byproduct of sex ⁓ throughout before we had contraception. And so what this means is that we've inherited this brain that ⁓ is wired to get ourselves into these into these situations where we accidentally, you know, and and I I say the word accidentally and and it's making it way too cavali sound way too cavalier, is not quite that cavalier. But essentially like getting ourselves into these situations where we end up passing down genes, right? And then those traits that got passed down then get expressed again in the next generation. Right. So you get generation after generation of women inheriting this tendency at ⁓ you know, midlife to have an increase in sexual motivation to like get out that last, you know, potential offspring. And ⁓ and and there's very, like I said, the what happens hormonally with women as they're starting to. pressed into early paramenopause is very consistent with that, which I think is really ⁓ interesting and ⁓ and really fascinating. And I also, you know, it makes me think about ⁓ two sort of like I don't know if they're like I don't know if we would call these a myth or sort of like a lore. ⁓ but you know, just this idea of like the sexual peak, you know, like that women have this sexual peak that's a little bit later in life, that's like midlife, and which again is consistent with the idea that testosterone has this big surge, ⁓ right. pri you know, prior to or or during early paramenopause. ⁓ and then also the idea of like this like like like the cougar. Right. You know, which is like this like midlife woman who's just who just wants to party. And whether that might be something that is consistent with this idea of rep reproduction expediting. speaker-1: Absolutely. Yeah. When the study first came out, the the cougar thing was the response from so many people. it was interesting because we didn't certainly in there we had something about women's sort of ⁓ a shift in their requirements for partners, right? ⁓ and you know, in some ways that could a little bit explain the cougar phenomenon because if they're expanding their interest in age range for partners, right? It might not be that they're only interested in younger men, but It's it's i it's just a broader range, right? And so that then includes, right? ⁓ and so absolutely that was you know, those, yeah, the sexual peak idea, the cougar, I mean it it might help explain the extent to that any of those things are true, right? This might be a piece of that. speaker-0: Puzzle. Yeah. So if there's a listener who's in her 30s and she's kind of feeling this pull where she's listening to this conversation and thinking, wait a minute, that's me. Like, like I have noticed that I'm casting a wider net ⁓ and that I'm feeling less stringent in my requirements for ⁓ sex. Like, do you have a a like what would you want this person to ⁓ understand about what's happening? to their psychology. And then also is there, like, is there a way that that we can like cause I I do think so one of the things that with the work that we do that that I've found like very ⁓ powerful is that when I know about some of the unconscious stuff that my brain is doing, like I very much feel more on top of it. Like I feel like, ⁓ I know what that is. And and then I'm able to kind of give myself a workaround. And so I'm just like wondering if if if For a woman who's listening to this who's in her 30s who's saying, ⁓ my gosh, that's me. I'm doing these, I like I found myself ex experiencing these shifts. And that's not consistent with ultimately what strategy I I want. Right. Because if if that's what you ⁓ if that's how you want to do things, and there's nothing wrong with it, right? But ⁓ if ultimately what you're looking for is a a longer term relationship and you notice that you're casting this wider net with people that you may or may not be happy with, ⁓ like d is there some sort of mental workaround? Or some bit of information that you think might be useful for these women to take into consideration ⁓ as they're considering their prospects or their own dating strategies. speaker-1: I mean, you can put my research together, right? That there's a little bit of some, you know, to the extent that you're signaling that sexual availability, right? ⁓ is that going to then be perceived as exploitability and then make you less attractive, right? ⁓ as a long term partner, right? ⁓ but but I but I think that the you know, the first part of what you said about just knowing about these things can be why you're feeling these things can be so helpful. So you're not attributing it to ⁓ man, I'm feeling really sexually attracted to that guy. That must mean it's a good idea. Right. ⁓ that is that is, I feel like as an evolutionary psychologist, that I think that's the biggest power I personally have gotten from understanding the mind, the way we understand the mind, is that thinking through my motivations and emotions when I feel a thing that That doesn't mean it's because it this is going to produce an outcome that is the c the outcome that I want in the world the in my life that I'm living now. It exists because, you know, ⁓ a long history of ancestral women, you know, by behaving this way, it produced more offspring. Right. Cool. Like that's great. And we can then understand that that's why it exists. But that's very different than me making a decision about what's best for me and my life and long-term consequences for me. And so when I feel these things, right, ⁓ being really mindful of that of, okay, is this gonna produce an outcome that is the goals that I want, right? Or is this producing an outcome that would have made babies ancestrally? speaker-0: I l I love this wisdom so much because I I think that I think that that ultimately you articulated what has been so powerful for me with this lens in a way that I I wasn't able to. But yeah, it's essentially recognizing that ⁓ okay, no, just because something feels like really compelling, you know, this doesn't necessarily mean it's a good idea, right? It might mean that historically it would have led my female ancestors to have babies. Right. And I'll tell you that like. Nine and a half, nine point nine nine times out of ten, that's not what I'm trying to do, you know, in my life. Like, like I am not trying to have more babies. ⁓ I I've had those and ⁓ and now like that is no longer on on the my plate. And just understanding and recognizing that that things that feel like really compelling and really like that we're very much drawn to, that ⁓ on the one hand, you know, we can like trust our gut with some things, but sometimes our gut is just trying to get us pregnant. And And recognizing that and ultimately that we inherited a lot of tendencies that were good at getting women pregnant because ultimately that's why we inherited those traits is because they got passed down to somebody. I think that's like such a valuable insight. And I think I honestly, I think that we probably just like totally blew the minds of so many listeners. So I really appreciate that ⁓ that really beautiful piece of wisdom. The last thing I want to ask you about is about evolutionary mismatch. And this is something that you've written about specifically as it it applies to dating and mating. And ⁓ why do we need this concept at all? Like what like what what is why do we need to think about evolutionary mismatch and what can it help us understand about dating in twenty twenty six? speaker-1: Yeah, so so the idea of evolutionary mismatch in general is just this idea that we've got we refer to them as adaptations, but you could think of it as just like your psychology and how it works. it it evolved in an environment that is very different than the one that we're living in now. ⁓ now, in some ways there's things that are the same, right? ⁓ there's there's you know regularities, stuff that isn't changed. ⁓ we're still on the planet Earth, there's still gravity. ⁓ you know, there's still ⁓ You know, we still engage in in, you know, ⁓ committed monogamous relationships. Some people engage in non-monogamous relationships. That's been consistent too. ⁓ we have friendships, we have ⁓ family relationships, you know, there's lots of things that are the same, but but we can really pinpoint things that are different too. And I think it's really important then that we think about this psychology that evolved in a different environment is now operating in this environment that has some of these these real stark differences. And We've talked about it a little bit already with thinking about, you know, social media or thinking about apps and dating. ⁓ but thinking even more broadly about the social media space, I think is one of the ⁓ a key factor that matters a lot for how our our social perception psychology works. ⁓ we do a lot of of comparing ourselves, evaluating ourselves, thinking with respect to other people. So, you know, almost ⁓ many most of our judgments are are relative judgments, right? When we think about how intelligent I am I, we don't think about it in some standardized test way. We think about it compared to other people. Am I smarter or less smart than this person, right? ⁓ and where do I stand on this? And we we do this for so many things, our, you know, kindness, intelligence, generosity, status, ⁓ physical attractiveness. And with social media. You know, we're not just doing this in sort of a small group living situation where there's, you know, a few dozen other people or a few hundred people. We're doing it, you know, by looking at these people ⁓ who we're never really gonna interact with, but we're still comparing ourselves to their lives. And not only that, but they've curated social media in a way that it's probably not an accurate reflection of what their homes are like, what their partners are like, what their relationships are like, what they even look like. What their daily living is like, right? But we've got a mind that's built to be making these comparisons, right? And can really then set us up to feel like we're not enough, right? Or what we have isn't good. Or ⁓ we should be trying for more and we shouldn't be happy with the way our lives are. ⁓ and so I really worry about that's one sort of element of evolutionary mismatch I think about a lot, because this mind, our mind evolved in a circumstance where that that wasn't what Those that the psychology that does those comparisons didn't evolve to be doing it against this vast array of people who can fake it, right? Right. speaker-0: I think that I think that ⁓ evolutionary mismatch is really useful in terms of just helping to understand the different traps that are set for us. And I think social media is a huge one where it's like you see everybody's highlight real and then you feel dissatisfied. And then no matter what you do, there's always gonna be people who are better off than you are. And so you're ultimately never gonna feel good. And ⁓ and that's just like one of the traps. And and the other another way that social media I think is a trap is that. you it gives your brain like enough social sort of, you know, hits where you kind of feel like you're doing social things. But it's kind of like eating empty calories. Like it's like, you know, in in somebody, I I don't know if it was John Hyde or somebody else, but they talked about social media, because you know, we talk about ultra processed food, but as ultra processed information. And I think that that's like so well articulated because it is essentially it gives us the feeling like we're eating something and then but it's like empty calories and then we're still hungry and then we feel lonely and sad and we spent all this time doing something that our brain thought was, you know, social and yet it was not. speaker-1: Mm-hmm. And it and it interferes with our ability to get to get the real calories, right? Right, exactly. Because you know, you're you're doing that instead of, you know, ⁓ actually going out and having coffee with a friend, right? You've spent the hour doing this when it could have been the hour with the friend to get the actual real social relationship. ⁓ it interferes with relationships. There's there's interesting literature and just like the long-term relationship psychology on this kind of technoference in relationships where it disrupts relationship processes because people are now you know, doing this and interacting here instead of with their actual partner, right? And then that can cause, you know, relationship dissatisfaction and problems in relationships. ⁓ and then, you know, people have also talked about the more indirect pathways that because there's evidence of this having impacts on just our attention and some more general cognitive capabilities, that then impacts your social relationships because If you can't pay attention to people as well or remember these things, right? You're you're not as good of a friend or a partner. And so through those indirect routes too, it ends up, you know, impeding the building and maintaining of those relationships. speaker-0: Right, absolutely. And so what do you think ⁓ is the most important thing that ⁓ listeners should take away and use in their dating life when considering everything that we talked about today, whether it's evolutionary mismatch or whether it is talking about ⁓ sexual exploitability or talking about reproduction expediting, or what do you think people should know in their dating lives? speaker-1: I think. Two things. ⁓ the first is ⁓ take things offline as much as you can. Right? So there's an amount of meeting people and interacting online to do, but that's where I see the biggest pitfalls with people. ⁓ I've been talking to this person online for three weeks. Why? Why have you not met? That's a really long time, right? Like you you've built this entire idea of what this person is like based on the curated version that they have they have said to you, right? Right. When you could have met after a week and learned a lot more. speaker-0: Right. Or like that immediate, like, because I I think that we learn more from like a five second like in person interaction than we could from months of this. Because like attraction is like so complex and ⁓ and we still don't really understand it, folks. So ⁓ that's like one of these areas where it's like people still don't understand it. Like there's some scent stuff, there's some visual stuff, there's some You know, the way people move. So I mean, there's so many things that go into attraction and and and our brain is able to solve all of that complex calculus in like a second. Yeah. speaker-1: Like Yep. Yep. And there's feelings there immediately. You learn different information, right? So yeah, you can talk to somebody for three weeks and ⁓ learn about, you know, the names of all their cousins or something, right? But like, ⁓ like you don't need to know that. Like you need to get more about that compatibility and and stuff just from meeting and and it we're it's you don't need to meet right away, but you could, you know, exchange a few messages and then try to meet. And if somebody doesn't want to, there you go, then you know. Right. That that's not what they're interested in and you haven't wasted time and time and time. And so setting up some boundaries for yourself like that, I think are hugely important if you're in the online dating space. It's great for showing you a lot of options, but you then have to figure out the boundaries on okay, we've talked. If we're not gonna meet, then I'm done here. Right. If what you're looking for is in in person long term real right, like where you're actually, you know, being with somebody. And so that so that's that's the first one. ⁓ and the other one, ⁓ I think ⁓ we talked about some of this a little bit, but when we were talking about ⁓ things like relationship load and costs, ⁓ and it hits on a little bit the alternatives too. ⁓ and this is one of those silly things that people said to me, and with time and age and with thinking about what I know in the literature on relationships, ⁓ that ⁓ the grass is greener where you water it, right? and it's one of those silly things that people say. And it's one of those things that I think is really important with the alternatives issue, right? That you can endlessly be thinking these alternatives are gonna be better. But while doing that, right, you also might be investing then less in the relationship you have, right? Which might then be causing this feedback loop of it being worse, right? Which then makes these alternatives seem even better. And so there's an importance there in in doing those things to ⁓ you know, invest in your partner and your partnership to see if it is the good partner to be with, right? And it might be from that you figure out it's not. It might be you then realize I am doing all this investment and this person is not and this cost benefit is not worth it. And then you can feel comfortable and confident being like, I gotta go check out these alternatives. But I see this happening with people, right? When you see relationships start people start to pull apart, right? And it it's you can see the literature too. It's it's it's right. And it's and it's, you know, trying that investing back in there, and it's hard to do when there's all these potential alternatives that suddenly seem like they'd be less work. There'd be less relationship load. This would be a better place to be. ⁓ and and it might be, but but trying to do a little bit of that investment back in the relationship first to see, right? If will this this be the good place for me or or Is it time to switch? Is it? speaker-0: I love that. I love that. Cause I do think that, ⁓ especially in our online dating culture, that there is the tendency to see the grass as greener on the other side of the fence and remembering that no, the grass is greener where you water it. And I think that's true for like everything, honestly, because I as you were saying that, I'm like, there's so much, you know, when we it's I think about social media and like again, we talked about looking at everybody's highlight reels and it looks like everybody's, you know, got this or whatever. And we're we're wasting all of our time looking at how good everybody else's lives are. And then thinking that our own life is not amazing. And it's like, no, it's because one of the reasons that your life isn't exactly what you want it to be is because you're spending so much time looking at everybody else's life. And instead of ⁓ taking some of that effort and then, you know, redoubling your efforts to create the life that you want and sort of screening out the alternative. So I really, I really love that. I think that's really great, ⁓ really great advice. You willing to do a rapid fire for me? Like if I ask you some questions, you ready? speaker-1: Try, okay, let's see. speaker-0: Right. Okay. Yeah. Well, like I think that ⁓ I think that people are always interested in the opinions of scientists, like on just like real life, everyday things. And so here you are, you're a research scientist, and you study relationships and and you study some of the darker sides of relationships, but also some of the fun stuff. And so it'll be good for us to be able to get in your head. I'm just gonna ask you some ⁓ just some like fun questions. All right. Situationships, evolutionary ⁓ adaptation or modern trap. speaker-1: Ooh. ⁓ Honestly, I see more modern trap, but ⁓ because there's so many different things about our modern environment, where like honestly, like if you've got a good friend group and you've got other good support and you've got a great job you love, like maybe situationships are the right thing for you, right? Like the partner doesn't need to be the end all be right. So like it it it depends, you know. ⁓ but I do worry about the modern. speaker-0: Yeah. Okay. I love it. Well, and I I do think I think that for some people the the situationship can be really you know, really fit into their lives. I think, yeah, for other people. ⁓ because I I I always do think this is just my like Sarah Hill's opinion one ⁓ one, ⁓ about situationships. I always think that there's somebody who's being a little bit exploited. Right. Like like I I I've never seen one of these where both parties or both could take it or leave it. There's usually there's usually somebody who ⁓ wishes that it was not a situation ship. And so I always worry about them being kind of a hotbed of of exploitation, you know, which is the beginning of our conversation ⁓ about sexual exploitation. So I most speaker-1: It's the idea that like in principle they could work. Right. speaker-0: Yeah. Yeah, no, I like and again, like I I tend to be like this cock eyed optimist where I'm always just like, Well, yeah, and it's you know, and it's wonderful and and it's so evolved of us. And then I'm like, Well, no, mm, like that person seems a little bit like they want something else and I don't know that their needs are being met. Right. ⁓ Okay. So what is ⁓ a relationship red flag that nobody should ignore? Just pick one. speaker-1: The the f the the first one in this comes from the first dates when people are rude to any staff or any person there where you're around, right? And it it is not them being cool on your behalf or trying to stand up for you or what's important for you. No. They have literally walked you into a place where they don't know anybody and they have behaved rudely. Like that is giving you information about everything you need to know about how what is gonna go on this relationship. It's not even getting into the relationship. That's just red flag date one sort of thing. speaker-0: But yeah, and and I do think that that's very consistent with the the research literature, by the way, is that that tends to be related to all kinds of ⁓ personality traits that don't bode well for ⁓ committed long term relationships. ⁓ what about like what's a green flag that you think that people undervalue in relationships? ⁓ speaker-1: ⁓ Stability. ⁓ right? That that that's you know, predictable stability because it's not exciting, but it's the thing that's going to actually underlie and make it so you can build something in a relationship because the person is predictable, you can count on them, you know how they're gonna behave, right? And and then and they they have set their life up in a way to to help provide stability for you and that for them, and then that you know also ends up being for you too. And it's one of these things that you don't even mention when people are in good relationships because it it's taken for granted, right? ⁓ but it is such a green flag thing. And it's yes, it's not exciting. It's it's not that they might always just, you know, drop everything and run off to Paris or whatever, but like I mean, it's it's it's that stability, right? Yeah. speaker-0: Right, right. And I do think that ⁓ that that you know, for anybody who thinks that stability is boring, it's ⁓ the opposite of that. It's kind of like building your life or your house on a fault line. It's like you don't wanna do that. You know, it's like ⁓ you don't wanna set like it might be fun to like, you know, go clubbing on a fault line one night and thinking like, I don't know, it's like, you know, but you don't wanna you don't wanna build your house on a on a fault line. No. Okay. If and I I think I know the answer to this one. If you could delete one feature from every dating app, what would it be? speaker-1: What would be the endless options, right? I mean, yeah, it's and I don't know what the right number is. So a little research on this, like I I can't give you a number, but is it the ten a week? Is it ⁓ you know, there that there's some number, right? That somebody could hone in on as ⁓ this does give peop does give people options but doesn't put them in the endless scroll world. speaker-0: Yeah. All right. Love it. Okay. One last question. If you had to summarize human mating psychology in one sentence for someone who's never studied it, what would you say? speaker-1: ⁓ complex and endlessly fascinating. speaker-0: I love it. I think that's I think that that's perfect. It is complex and endlessly fascinating. I think that there's still so much to learn. I mean, it's like, you know, you you think that everybody's got ⁓ dating figured out because it seems like it should be simple, but it is like the most complex ⁓ area, I think one of the com most complex areas of study in psychology. So appreciate the work that you do and thank you for helping to continue. to uncover the deep recesses of our minds when it comes to mating and dating. speaker-1: This was a great conversation. Thank you for having me. speaker-0: Alright, thanks, Carrie. 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.