Latest / Come Together with Ephraim Herschmann / Psychology Series 9: Todd Shackelford (18+) / Relations/ Jealousy / Sexual Competition

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Psychology Series 9: Todd Shackelford (18+) / Relations/ Jealousy / Sexual Competition · Come Together with Ephraim Herschmann

• 0:01
  Welcome to another episode of Come Together,
• 0:15
  Todd Jackelford. Welcome, Professor Doctor Good
• 0:18
  to all of the above. It's thank you so much for
• 0:20
  joining. I'm really excited to have you
• 0:22
  here. How are you?
• 0:23
  My pleasure. I'm just fine, thank you.
• 0:24
  My pleasure. I'm so excited.
• 0:27
  I'm so excited to talk to you because I love psychology and
• 0:31
  I've recently been super fascinated with the, with
• 0:36
  learning about evolutionary psychology and understanding,
• 0:39
  you know how we get where we are.
• 0:41
  I teach, I teach high school and I teach 9th, 10th and 12th
• 0:46
  graders and part of and I teach them English.
• 0:49
  But part of what I find so important is I try to explain to
• 0:51
  them not only why they experience what they experience,
• 0:55
  how you know what, what, what they're experiencing, but why
• 0:58
  they're experiencing it. You know, so we talk about
• 1:00
  anxiety, we talk about fear, we talk about sexual repression, we
• 1:03
  talk about all these kind of things.
• 1:05
  And, you know, on one hand you're like, yeah, we know
• 1:08
  they're all human. We know you experiencing a very,
• 1:10
  you know, you know, emotionally and very strongly and very
• 1:14
  potently. But why, you know, and where'd
• 1:16
  that come from? You know, and, and, and, you
• 1:20
  know, and it's fun to observe and it's fun to, you know, like,
• 1:22
  you know, ask them. But it's even more fun to talk
• 1:24
  to a professional about it or someone that's been researching
• 1:27
  it. So I'm really excited about
• 1:29
  this. Absolutely.
• 1:31
  Well, it's a it's a great feel, no doubt about it.
• 1:33
  How did you get, How did you get involved in it?
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  Well, I actually, I don't know how much you want my background,
• 1:41
  but I actually grew up in Oklahoma and I wanted to get out
• 1:45
  of Oklahoma. And so I went to where I got the
• 1:48
  best scholarship. And as it turns out, that
• 1:50
  happens to have been at the University of New Mexico in
• 1:53
  Albuquerque. And I thought, well, that sounds
• 1:56
  interesting. And so I went there and I didn't
• 1:59
  know it at the time, but I basically landed in what was
• 2:02
  then and to some extent still is, one of the hot spots of
• 2:05
  evolutionary science, evolutionary psychology in
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  particular. And that was back in 19.
• 2:10
  When was that? That was back in 1989, nineteen
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  90. And so I mean, they had
• 2:16
  outstanding faculty in evolutionary psychology, in
• 2:19
  biology, in psychology and anthropology.
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  And so I basically took a whole bunch of courses in all of those
• 2:26
  different disciplines. You know, you asked me how I
• 2:30
  learned. I came to it.
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  I mean, basically, I learned about Darwin in, as it turns
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  out, in a, in a psychology honors class, the professor was
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  actually strangely, he was a creationist, which is weird for
• 2:44
  a professor. But nevertheless, to his credit,
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  he had us read, you know, sort of classic readings in, in
• 2:51
  psychology, one of which he decided to assign was part of
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  Darwin's Origin of Species. And I had, I honestly had never
• 2:58
  known about, I mean, I probably heard about Darwin, but it was,
• 3:01
  you know, sort of religiously blinkered.
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  I grew up in a very religious sort of environment, very
• 3:05
  conservative. So I learned about it.
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  And the truth is, once I read Darwin, honestly, I mean, I
• 3:10
  could not turn back. And that's where I talked to
• 3:13
  this guy and I was like, well, I'd like to learn more about
• 3:14
  this field. And he said we should talk to
• 3:16
  Stephen Gangastad, who was one of the faculty in psychology at
• 3:19
  the time. So I talked to him and then he
• 3:22
  introduced me to Randy Thornhill in biology.
• 3:24
  And he and Randy introduced me to a couple of faculty in
• 3:27
  anthropology. And I mean, I just, once I
• 3:30
  learned about evolutionary psychology, I just truly, I
• 3:34
  could not turn back. I mean, I knew that this is what
• 3:36
  I want to do for the rest of my life.
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  Wow, amazing. What's What's evolutionary
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  anthropology? Well, I mean, basically, I mean,
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  the way it was practiced at New Mexico, it was very much in line
• 3:50
  with evolutionary psychology. I mean, basically it was the
• 3:52
  application of evolutionary principles to human, in this
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  case with anthropology, to human behavior as opposed to human
• 3:58
  psychology. And I mean, for me, it always
• 4:02
  felt a little bit off. I mean, I appreciated the
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  application of evolutionary principles to human behavior,
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  but it always seemed to me that they were skipping a step,
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  namely what happens inside the mind.
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  I mean, behavior doesn't just drop out of the sky, it's
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  motivated and facilitated by the brain.
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  And so I sort of I enjoyed and appreciated learning about
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  evolutionary anthropology, which mostly included, you know,
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  reading and, you know, learning about non Western peoples,
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  hunter gatherers. And, you know, I loved it.
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  I mean, they're, you know, just as human as every other, you
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  know, Westerner, for example. But it always occurred to me
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  that, you know, it always struck me that, you know, they were
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  sort of like I said, skipping, skipping the psychology step.
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  But that didn't stop me from, you know, loving that field as
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  well and enjoying the field. And, and similarly with biology,
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  much of the work that we, that you know, much of the course
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  work that I took, actually, I took a lot of courses with, with
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  Randy Thornhill, who was a biologist, but applying
• 5:00
  evolutionary principles to specifically to humans.
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  And so I took a course with him in sexual psychology and
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  behavior. And that's where I learned about
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  this theory of sperm competition, which is, you know,
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  widely used and established in biology.
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  But there were some researchers at the time in the late 80s,
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  early 90s, doing work on humans. And I thought that was so cool.
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  I thought it was so interesting. And just, it kind of blew my
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  mind. And so, you know, I was very,
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  very fortunate to have kind of stumbled into a place where
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  multiple departments were thinking about evolutionary
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  application to humans in particular.
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  Yeah, yeah, I noticed that a lot of the research that he did, it
• 5:39
  seems super, super cool about, you know, evolutionary processes
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  that are, you know, very strict or I guess very strictly focused
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  on on particular human, you know, behaviors or, or habits
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  or, or, you know, actions, I guess, or, you know,
• 5:53
  relationships, which is really cool.
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  I, I want to, I want to ask you about the, about the sperm, the
• 6:03
  sperm, I guess race, I guess you call it.
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  But before I do real quick, I want to just ask about because
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  I, I am religious. You know, I'm, I'm Orthodox
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  Jewish and, and you know, I grew up with, you know, I for the
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  first probably 20 years of my life, I'm almost 30 for the 1st
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  20 years of my life, everyone always told me that religion and
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  science, you know, were, would basically butt heads.
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  And then I found out that they didn't necessarily need to and
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  that it was kind of I, I don't, I don't know how much truth
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  necessarily there is to this, But my understanding was that
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  for a long time, religion filled in a lot of scientific, you
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  know, blanks, you know, so we had like a big board with, you
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  know, a lot of questions and, you know, we'd go to the
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  creationist answers for whenever we didn't have a scientific, you
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  know, breakthrough to, to really explain or describe it.
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  And then as science started developing, scientists started
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  to say, hey, we don't need, you know, to use this creationist
• 7:02
  religious perspective as much. And I think that religion kind
• 7:05
  of took that as, like, indication of what, you know, a
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  proclamation of war against it. And so they started responding
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  by saying, oh, well, we don't accept science either, you know,
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  and that kind of feels like it's falling away recently.
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  Do you find that? I guess it depends on who you
• 7:19
  ask. I mean, I, you know, I am very
• 7:22
  persuaded by Jerry, do you know Jerry Coyne, biologist Jerry
• 7:25
  Coyne, he wrote, he wrote a book, wonderful book called Fact
• 7:29
  versus Faith, I think. And he basically makes the very
• 7:32
  strong argument that religion and science are utterly and
• 7:37
  entirely incompatible. And, and I agree with that.
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  I think they're entirely incompatible.
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  Yes. I think there's no place where
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  the two can find any kind of any kind of joining together.
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  I'm not suggesting that there aren't religious people who are
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  also scientists. There certainly are.
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  And similarly there are plenty of scientists who themselves are
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  are religious. But I think they're deluding
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  themselves. You think so?
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  Yes. Can you elaborate?
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  I would love to hear what you think about that.
• 8:07
  Well, there's, well, I guess it depends on what what part of
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  that I just think we're. How do you think they're
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  incompatible? The way that I, I guess the way
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  that I like to think of it is science helps me appreciate
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  God's world as the way that I think about it.
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  It may make it helps me understand.
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  It, but you're presuming there is a God.
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  I am right? OK, well, we're already.
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  On well, we can't, right? Right.
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  Exactly. And I can't and and and God.
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  And God is not scientifically provable because you can't.
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  He's not subject to test or subject to.
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  Our. Yeah, well, I mean, anything
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  that's in a system that, you know, when there's a bigger
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  system can't really make observation.
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  Like soccer players, people in US metaphor, I guess I hear, is
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  like people in like playing a sport can never understand what
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  it's don't understand while they're playing what it's like
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  to be a spectator of the sport. Because there's something else
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  about the grand culminating experience of following the, you
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  know, the team for X amount of time and investing X amount of
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  money in a ticket and fighting traps to go there.
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  And you go there with family or friends and you buy a beer and
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  you buy some snacks and you're sitting, you're watching the
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  people that that you love do the thing that you know that that do
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  do the best at what you love. And it's A and like what they're
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  experiencing is something totally different than the
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  people that are actually playing the game.
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  Right. The people that are playing the
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  game are not, Oh, you don't know?
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  I would imagine. I mean, I think this sounds like
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  a bunch of gobbledygook to me. It does.
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  Forgive me. No, please.
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  Of course, I mean, everyone's all entitled to, to our
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  understanding that, that, that I, I, I think that bigger,
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  there's smaller systems and bigger systems.
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  I don't know the smaller systems can necessarily understand the
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  bigger systems. But that doesn't imply that
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  there's a God. It doesn't.
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  It just implies it is a bigger system.
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  I don't know what the word I I does.
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  I mean, how do you how do you know that the real God isn't
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  Allah or Zeus? I don't.
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  And by the way, I mean we could fill in any word you want for
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  the word God. Like we could fill in, you know,
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  what do you call it? The simulation, you know, the
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  person that codes the simulation that you could fill in Zeus, you
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  could fill in I I don't think it's Zeus.
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  Maybe it is, but it's it could be most.
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  It could be thought it was Zeus. Much of the world's.
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  Just many humans. At one point in time, all smart
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  people knew that Zeus existed. Yeah, it's true.
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  You know what I mean? It's true.
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  So, but I think, I mean, what I do appreciate is that religion
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  provides comfort. I understand that.
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  And it provides what many people think is an explanation.
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  And that's OK. I mean, I think it's, I, I
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  wouldn't want to abolish religion.
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  I think it's, you know, it can be very helpful for people who,
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  you know, who are satisfied with those sorts of answers.
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  Right. OK, But that sounds good to me.
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  I like that, it's a very cool. Very cool area of evolutionary
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  science as well. There's the cognitive science of
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  religion and trying to understand, you know, the
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  production of religious beliefs. I've been actually talk to
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  people about that. If you could, if you want, if
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  you can introduce me to anyone. I'm really, I'm really
• 11:20
  fascinated to learn about that kind of stuff, actually.
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  Yeah, and I mean, one person in particular who's who's written a
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  couple of books on it. He's also an evolutionary
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  psychologist. His name is Jesse Bering.
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  He's, he wrote a book called The Belief Instinct and he isn't
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  religious, although there are I, I actually do know there's a guy
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  called Justin Barrett, who is a, an evangelical Christian who
• 11:45
  also is a wonderful cognitive scientist, you know, So again,
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  there's no, So what I mean is that I know that there are
• 11:53
  people who are religious and also scientists, but again, that
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  doesn't mean they're compatible. It just means that some people
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  are really good at compartmentalizing.
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  That might be what it is, by the way, it could very welcomely.
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  Yeah, totally. Yeah.
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  And I am interested in hearing exactly, you know, I'm more
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  interested in hearing what you think because that's the point
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  of this conversation. Great.
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  So now that we got that or at least talked about that a little
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  bit, I want to talk about a lot of your research that you did
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  because I was looking through it and I am fascinated by it.
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  So do you want to, do we want to start from I guess the positive
• 12:25
  things and kind of work our way to a little bit of darker topics
• 12:28
  that you that you research, You want to start with the darker
• 12:30
  topics and work our way towards the lighter stuff?
• 12:33
  Well, I mean, I sort of, when people ask me, I, I sort of note
• 12:37
  that much of what I do is on the darker side.
• 12:39
  I, I actually, I mean, what maybe you've found things that
• 12:43
  are more positive. I, I guess I have done work like
• 12:47
  on personality traits, but generally I'm just, I'm much
• 12:51
  more interested in, you know, when things go terribly wrong
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  and, you know, I'm, I'm very interested in, you know, when,
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  you know, for example, with homicide and spousal killing,
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  child killing, sexual jealousy, sexual coercion, rape.
• 13:09
  These are the topics that I find most engaging.
• 13:12
  And so, yeah, I mean, I'm happy to to to talk about.
• 13:16
  Anyone of them? OK, so.
• 13:17
  So. Yeah.
• 13:17
  OK, great. So, so let's so so I mean, yeah.
• 13:20
  So we, I guess most of our work revolves around sexuality and
• 13:24
  relationships, I've noticed. For better, for worse in a, you
• 13:28
  know, And so I guess we could start with, do you want to
• 13:31
  explain? Maybe I know that sexuality
• 13:33
  drives everyone. And actually maybe I'll ask you
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  this question. I've heard a quote, I don't
• 13:38
  remember who said it, but that everything in life is about sex
• 13:40
  except for sex, which is about power.
• 13:44
  Do you find that to be the case in your research?
• 13:50
  No, I mean, I think that sex isn't about power.
• 13:53
  It has nothing to do with power or very little to do with power.
• 13:55
  That's a classic sort of, you know, yeah.
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  I mean, I mean, you know, you hear these sorts of phrases
• 14:04
  like, you know, sexual portion of rape is not about sex.
• 14:07
  It's really about power. I think there's there's
• 14:09
  certainly no evidence for that. You know, that's, I mean it.
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  Sex is about sex. I mean, men, when men rape
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  women, they don't, you know, they take very great pains to
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  almost always, you know, to insert their penis into the,
• 14:25
  into the vagina and then ejaculate.
• 14:28
  I mean, if it was about power, why not just bash her over the
• 14:30
  head and be done with it, right? So sex is very important in life
• 14:36
  and it's certainly very, it's a very important, you know, point
• 14:40
  of conflict between men and women in particular.
• 14:43
  Now, much of the work that that we've done has been on
• 14:44
  heterosexual sex. We've done a little work on
• 14:47
  homosexual sex, much more on heterosexual sex.
• 14:51
  I mean, one could argue that reflects, you know, the
• 14:53
  proportional representation in the population.
• 14:57
  But we also find that, of course, sex generates a lot of
• 15:00
  conflict. Certainly there's, you know,
• 15:03
  requires a certain degree of cooperation.
• 15:06
  But much of what we've looked at with regard to sex is, you know,
• 15:10
  admittedly focused on male psychological machinery of mind
• 15:14
  that motivates sexual interest and the pursuit of sex.
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  Much of that work has focused on long term relationships.
• 15:20
  So men and women who are in existing relationships.
• 15:23
  And you know, some of the more recent work we've done has
• 15:27
  looked at, for example, has a has investigated various
• 15:32
  features of what I mentioned earlier is called sperm
• 15:34
  competition theory. And there's a huge amount of
• 15:37
  work, for example, in birds and other species, documenting that
• 15:41
  where there's a greater risk of so-called sperm competition,
• 15:44
  that is where a male in a relationship, where it may occur
• 15:49
  that his partner has sex with another man or another male,
• 15:54
  there appears to be evolved machinery of mind and evolved
• 15:57
  machinery of Physiology that for lack of the better way of
• 16:00
  putting it, corrects for that risk.
• 16:02
  In other words, response to that risk.
• 16:05
  So what we find is that where there's where men and women
• 16:07
  spend a greater percentage of their time apart from their
• 16:09
  partners since they last had sex.
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  This is in humans. Men report that their partners
• 16:13
  are more sexually attractive, more physically attractive.
• 16:16
  They report a greater urgency to have sex.
• 16:18
  And then when they do have sex, they report more frequent
• 16:21
  thrusting, copulatory thrusting, and also deeper thrusting.
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  And it's not just men that report this, it's their partners
• 16:27
  that report this as well, right? So it's not self reporting.
• 16:31
  It's also almost objective. It's it's it's both ends of the
• 16:33
  spectrum. Sure, and so it helps when you
• 16:36
  have both partners reports and they match.
• 16:38
  Yeah. Now, perhaps one could argue
• 16:40
  that, well, they're both, you know, they're both self
• 16:43
  reportedly confused. Well, that may be the case, but
• 16:45
  they happen to be really In Sync with whatever they're confused
• 16:48
  about. But we've also gone, we've also
• 16:52
  extended this research in we have a fully functioning semen
• 16:55
  analysis lab. So we actually collect
• 16:57
  ejaculates from couples. So they have sex.
• 17:00
  They, I mean, it's a pretty regimented process that's all
• 17:04
  fully approved. Actually, we follow a lot of the
• 17:06
  medical procedures and they have sex, they bring in the condom.
• 17:11
  Then we can do in a, as long as we get it within about an hour
• 17:14
  of ejaculation, we can get 17 clinical parameters in about 75
• 17:18
  seconds. And so we can assess things like
• 17:20
  sperm number, sperm swimming speed, the track of the swim, we
• 17:25
  can see if it's relatively straight or more curvy.
• 17:28
  And so there we've, we've provided, we've found some
• 17:31
  evidence, we have a small sample size right now only about 35
• 17:34
  couples have done this. But nevertheless, there's some
• 17:37
  indication that males, men, human males adjust their
• 17:41
  ejaculates as a function of the risk of sperm competition.
• 17:43
  So they, they produce faster. Yeah, they produce faster
• 17:47
  swimming sperm when there's a greater risk of sperm
• 17:49
  competition. And sperm and so and and, and
• 17:52
  just to clarify, risk of sperm competition just means time
• 17:55
  spent away from your partner essentially, right?
• 17:58
  Well, we've actually assessed it in multiple different ways.
• 18:00
  One is percentage of time spent apart from partners since they
• 18:04
  last had sex. That's In other words, that's
• 18:06
  time that he can't account for what she's doing.
• 18:09
  We've also looked at number of male friends the the woman has
• 18:14
  and time spent with male friends, male colleagues or.
• 18:18
  All this has an impact on on the sperms, on the sperms, you know,
• 18:22
  speed travelling, everything. And number, yeah, the number of.
• 18:28
  It goes up or down. It's.
• 18:29
  Amazing. Increases, Yeah, Increases
• 18:32
  speed. Speed is faster.
• 18:34
  The number of sperm is greater, which is what you would expect
• 18:37
  if males are registering greater competition.
• 18:40
  In other words, greater risk that another male has
• 18:43
  inseminated their partner announced to them and therefore
• 18:47
  in order to compete more effectively, they increase the
• 18:50
  number quality swimming speed of the sperm that they inseminate.
• 18:56
  It's really amazing. Now.
• 18:58
  This is, yeah, See, this is what I've just told you has been
• 19:01
  known in birds and bats and fish and all sorts of species for
• 19:06
  decades. But then it was the application
• 19:09
  to humans that I found, you know, particularly intriguing.
• 19:14
  Yeah, because it almost links our intentionality and
• 19:17
  consciousness to our, to something that that we would,
• 19:20
  that we would argue is totally separate from us.
• 19:22
  You know, like, what would that have to do?
• 19:24
  Especially once it even leaves, you know, like once, once the
• 19:27
  sperm leaves our body, Like what?
• 19:29
  You know, it almost feels like it's got like it's an intention
• 19:31
  of its own to like, do its own thing.
• 19:33
  It's crazy. Wow.
• 19:37
  And that's, that's really why I ended up getting into this
• 19:39
  research because I just could not believe it that this kind of
• 19:42
  thing could be happening. It just feels so strange.
• 19:46
  And but on the other hand, you know, looking back at 2020
• 19:49
  hindsight, we really shouldn't expect that humans are somehow,
• 19:52
  you know, unique in that sense. You know, there's no reason to
• 19:57
  suppose that we wouldn't also have been subject to the very
• 20:00
  same processes of natural and sexual selection.
• 20:04
  Yeah, definitely. Yeah, yeah, it's really, yeah.
• 20:07
  And I guess, and I guess you can by by observing that in other
• 20:11
  animals like birds or whatever you can are you of the mind that
• 20:16
  other animals are quote UN quote conscious the same that the same
• 20:19
  way that we are. No, no, I don't think so.
• 20:23
  I don't think that. We don't have like that same
• 20:25
  level of like competition or jealousy or whatever you want to
• 20:27
  call it that would like encourage, you know, the, the,
• 20:31
  the sperms travel or, you know, to travel differently.
• 20:34
  It almost feels like it would be amplified with people relative
• 20:38
  to like a bird or another animal, right?
• 20:41
  Yeah, I mean, it could be. I mean when you when you said
• 20:43
  conscious, we should probably, you know, define what you mean.
• 20:46
  I mean I'm thinking of like self aware.
• 20:48
  I mean, I do think that animals, non humans, they're most non
• 20:51
  humans. Anything with a brain
• 20:52
  experiences pain, for example, you know, and there's, I have no
• 20:58
  doubt that birds experience something like what we call
• 21:02
  sexual jealousy. And the reason I think that is
• 21:04
  because they behave precisely as human males behave or very
• 21:08
  similarly so when a male bird. And there's actually work in
• 21:11
  birds looking at what they offhandedly referred to as
• 21:15
  domestic violence. I mean, when males observe their
• 21:18
  partners having sex with another male, males look like they're
• 21:22
  sexually jealous. They look like they're mad.
• 21:24
  They chase their partner down. They Peck at her.
• 21:26
  They immediately, wow, force the copulation.
• 21:29
  Yeah. And I mean, do we know that
• 21:31
  they're sexually jealous? No.
• 21:33
  I mean, because we don't have any way of accessing what
• 21:35
  they're actually feeling. But all the behaviors, Sure.
• 21:38
  Looks like it, yeah. Yeah, the so-called make
• 21:41
  guarding behaviors and you know, sort of sexually jealous
• 21:44
  behaviors. So they're conscious in the
• 21:47
  sense that they're perceiving their partner, you know,
• 21:50
  involved with another male and appear not to be pleased with
• 21:54
  that and then behave accordingly.
• 21:56
  I don't know what they're actually feeling.
• 21:58
  I mean, we know that animals feel pain because we can see how
• 22:00
  they respond with with stimuli that we find painful.
• 22:04
  But to the extent that they're self aware, I mean, I don't, you
• 22:07
  know, I'm not sure about that. Yeah, yeah, me neither.
• 22:10
  I'm curious about I'm I'm really curious about that stuff.
• 22:14
  I really am. I'm do from your eyes.
• 22:17
  Do you do you see the psychology of sex to be for the sake of
• 22:25
  procreation or or something more than that?
• 22:28
  Because I know that obviously biologically pretty deep, you
• 22:30
  know, it's pretty deeply ingrained to want to procreate.
• 22:34
  But I'm thinking about situations like this where
• 22:38
  people become start acting territorial and it becomes more
• 22:41
  about quote, UN quote territory and relationships rather than
• 22:45
  just procreation and how that have an impact on our psychology
• 22:48
  and therefore our behavior. Yeah, I think most sex and most
• 22:54
  things we look at with regard to sexual psychology and behavior.
• 22:57
  Are you still there, Edra? Yeah, I'm here.
• 22:58
  I'm here. Yeah, OK.
• 23:01
  I would say most most of our psychology is not motivating
• 23:06
  behavior in order to procreate. I think procreation most of the
• 23:11
  time is a by product of our sexual psychology, which
• 23:14
  motivates us to pursue sex because it feels good, because
• 23:18
  we want it. I don't think that there's any
• 23:20
  reason to expect that that humans any more than birds are
• 23:26
  frequently are you know more are most of the time are thinking
• 23:30
  about making babies. I think making babies is a is a
• 23:33
  consequence of that psychology and of course making babies is
• 23:37
  the natural, excuse me, is the is the consequence over our
• 23:42
  evolutionary history that built the psychology.
• 23:44
  But if you ask people, you know why they have sex.
• 23:48
  In fact, people have done this. Very rarely will, they say, in
• 23:51
  order to make a baby. Right.
• 23:53
  Very rarely they will, but that's over the course of, of
• 23:59
  millions of years of evolution and that you know, that, that
• 24:01
  the entire society has changed. But I mean, if, if you know, one
• 24:05
  of every two or three of your kids were dying, you know, in
• 24:08
  the, in the, in the, in the, in the desert of the forest
• 24:11
  somewhere, then you really needed to be able to, you know,
• 24:13
  pass your jeans on and, and, and in as many ways as possible.
• 24:18
  Well, no, absolutely. I mean, the, the, you know, the
• 24:21
  production of offspring is of course what's selected for the
• 24:25
  machinery of mind that motivates our interest and pursuit of sex.
• 24:28
  But sex itself is pursued because it feels good, because
• 24:35
  we want it, because we want to be closer to our partner.
• 24:38
  I mean, very occasionally in humans, of course, people will
• 24:41
  explicitly say, and sometimes more frequently people will say,
• 24:43
  I want to make a baby. But it's not necessary that
• 24:46
  there's a that people are conscious of the evolutionary
• 24:49
  logic that built their psychology any more than we
• 24:52
  expect birds ever think about making a baby.
• 24:54
  I don't think birds do think about making a baby.
• 24:57
  Birds have sex because you know, they can or because it feels
• 25:01
  good. I mean, we don't you know, know
• 25:02
  exactly why, but. Right, Yeah, right.
• 25:05
  I would imagine just just from speculation, just, you know, if
• 25:11
  I, if I were to speculate and you were to lay out this
• 25:13
  information to me, I, I feel like one, one of the things that
• 25:17
  I would conclude would be that procreation is important.
• 25:20
  Passing on your genes is important.
• 25:22
  Therefore, we, you know, we would evolve or develop in a way
• 25:28
  that it, that, that act would be as pleased, as pleasant and
• 25:33
  enjoyable as possible as to encourage that behavior.
• 25:38
  And then we've kind of got caught up in the weeds of how it
• 25:41
  feels rather than understanding the root of why we're of the
• 25:44
  root of why it is that we're doing it.
• 25:49
  Yeah, I see what you're saying. It's just a speculation just
• 25:53
  from what we're talking about. Yeah.
• 25:58
  I mean, I guess I would say that procreation doesn't have to be
• 26:04
  important in order for those mechanisms to have been built by
• 26:08
  natural selection. Important in the sense that
• 26:10
  people care about it, People care about it.
• 26:13
  The desire to have children isn't necessary in order to have
• 26:16
  children. You, you have to have sex to
• 26:18
  have children. And So what you expect natural
• 26:22
  selection to do is to build machinery of mind that motivates
• 26:26
  a, you know, a consistent and persistent pursuit of sex, not a
• 26:31
  consistent and persistent pursuit of having babies.
• 26:33
  That's not necessary. It's having sex.
• 26:37
  I mean, I'm not denying that. I mean, there are plenty of, you
• 26:40
  know, people want to have babies, they report they want to
• 26:43
  have babies, but even people that report they don't want to
• 26:45
  have children still sometimes have children.
• 26:49
  So at any rate, I, I guess there's a distinction between,
• 26:53
  you know, the process of, of natural selection and the
• 26:56
  product of natural selection. The process is differential
• 27:00
  reproduction over evolutionary history.
• 27:03
  You know, some of our ancestors or those of our those early
• 27:06
  humans that were ancestors more were more successful at having
• 27:09
  sex and producing children, but that that that's what built, you
• 27:15
  know, whatever. Right now the the final product
• 27:17
  is that we enjoy it. Yes, yes.
• 27:24
  Which isn't to deny that over evolutionary time.
• 27:27
  Yeah, which isn't to deny that over over evolutionary time,
• 27:30
  that enjoyment led to babies more often than not.
• 27:33
  Right, right, right, right. But it but we still enjoy sex
• 27:36
  without having babies. Certainly.
• 27:38
  I mean, I mean, we know, we know that all over the world people
• 27:41
  are right because the amount of people, you know, population
• 27:43
  keeps dropping. What do you think about that?
• 27:46
  Right? The.
• 27:52
  Population. Are dropping, Yeah, yeah, I
• 27:56
  mean, I guess it I mean it's still increasing in in many
• 27:59
  parts of the world, sub-Saharan Africa, for example, you know,
• 28:02
  population is exploding. Other parts of the world like
• 28:06
  Northern Europe, for example, I mean, you have a population
• 28:09
  decrease Japan. Korea, China overall.
• 28:14
  Yeah, yeah, of course. Yeah, it's decreasing.
• 28:17
  And many people do wring their hands about it because in
• 28:19
  particular, you know, if you look at, you know, national
• 28:22
  level, you know, intelligence, for example, people fret about,
• 28:25
  you know, the, you know, the people who are the least
• 28:27
  intelligent or the least well off or the least capable are the
• 28:31
  ones having most babies. And people do fret about this.
• 28:34
  But I guess I really don't because, I mean, humans will go
• 28:37
  extinct like every other species went extinct.
• 28:39
  But we're not going to be around forever.
• 28:42
  You know, if you play out the, you know, the, you know, the
• 28:45
  astronomy, I mean, the Earth will go careening into the sun
• 28:48
  in about 5 billion years. And none of this will make a
• 28:50
  difference anyways. Right, right, right, right,
• 28:54
  right. Unless we find a way, I really
• 28:55
  don't. Travel.
• 28:58
  I guess. Yeah, perhaps.
• 29:00
  And I'll be long dead before that.
• 29:02
  Yeah, exactly. It's a, it's a lot, it's a lot
• 29:04
  of speculation, I imagine. Can you talk about the, the
• 29:07
  marriage research that you did, some of the marriage research
• 29:09
  that you did, especially over the course of time and you want
• 29:12
  to you want to explain just some of the studies that you, the
• 29:15
  research that you've done and what you've, what you've
• 29:16
  noticed. Sure.
• 29:19
  So some of the earlier work I did, and really I've continued
• 29:22
  doing it, is with married couples in part.
• 29:26
  I mean, there's nothing magical about being married.
• 29:28
  I mean, it just it, it, it, it's a level of commitment that sort
• 29:32
  of standardizes, you know, who's involved in the research.
• 29:37
  And so we had a, a sample of married couples we followed over
• 29:41
  the years. And in one study, my colleague
• 29:44
  and I, this is my former graduate advisor, David Buss, we
• 29:48
  collected data on married couples.
• 29:49
  And one of the things we looked at was make guarding behavior.
• 29:53
  And this was actually inspired by research on nonhumans on this
• 29:57
  mate guarding behavior that men and women do to thwart their
• 30:00
  partners interest in another, another partner, for example.
• 30:06
  And we found that for example, men's mate guard.
• 30:10
  We we measure both men's mate guarding and women's mate
• 30:12
  guarding, the things they do to stop their partner from getting
• 30:14
  involved with someone else. And we asked them to self to
• 30:17
  self report. We also asked them to report
• 30:20
  their own mate guarding, their partners mate guarding and then
• 30:22
  we had them interviewed by an independent interviewer, each
• 30:25
  member of the couple. And what we found is that men's
• 30:29
  mate guarding in these married couples varied with their
• 30:35
  partner's age and physical attractiveness.
• 30:37
  So men who are married to younger, more physically
• 30:40
  attractive women engaged in a lot more mate retention
• 30:43
  according to themselves, according to their partners and
• 30:45
  according to independent interviewers.
• 30:48
  But here's what was interesting about that is that it wasn't
• 30:51
  women's independently assessed attractiveness, the interviewer
• 30:55
  assessments of attractiveness. It was what men thought their
• 30:57
  partners attractiveness was. So men who thought their
• 30:59
  partners were very attractive or engaged in much more mate
• 31:01
  retention behavior. Now, on the other hand, women
• 31:05
  also engage in mate retention behavior.
• 31:07
  There's no doubt about that. And we found that men's, excuse
• 31:10
  me, women's mate retention, that is attempts to stop their
• 31:13
  husband from getting involved with another woman.
• 31:15
  Women's mate retention varied with their, with their husband's
• 31:18
  age also and with their husband's social status and
• 31:23
  career trajectory. So women who are married to
• 31:25
  older men and men who were higher in social status and had
• 31:32
  a more positive career trajectory, their their wives
• 31:35
  were investing much more time and effort in guarding them and
• 31:39
  in thwarting other women. What kind of behavior?
• 31:42
  How does that manifest for men and women?
• 31:44
  How does that? How does that?
• 31:45
  How? What does the guardian behavior
• 31:46
  manifest as? Yeah, that's a great question.
• 31:49
  So we've had, we assessed it with it's literally called the
• 31:53
  Mate retention inventory. And it's a, it's an inventory
• 31:56
  that we we've used with, in dozens of studies now across
• 31:59
  multiple cultures. And it assesses this, The longer
• 32:03
  version assesses 100, about 100 specific acts that men or women
• 32:07
  can do that is with the purpose of stopping a partner from
• 32:12
  getting involved with someone else.
• 32:14
  And so this includes things like direct guarding.
• 32:16
  We call it direct guarding. It's, you know, calling a
• 32:18
  partner to see if she's where she said she was, stopping by a
• 32:21
  partner's place of employment to see if she's.
• 32:27
  Yeah, OK Rifling through a partner's mail or e-mail.
• 32:32
  It also includes things like concealment.
• 32:35
  Concealment. This is refusing to let a
• 32:38
  partner go out somewhere to a party or to spend time with
• 32:41
  friends. These are other things that both
• 32:43
  party, both men and women do. So it can be as obvious as, you
• 32:48
  know, tracking a partner and following them to things like.
• 32:52
  There's another type of mate retention that involves putting
• 32:55
  a partner down, you know, telling them they'll never find
• 32:57
  anything, anyone better than you.
• 32:59
  Or now a more positive, a more positive mate retention tactic
• 33:04
  is what's called displaying love and care.
• 33:06
  You know, telling a partner that you love them and, you know,
• 33:08
  giving them gifts, taking them out to a nice event, basically
• 33:14
  demonstrating emotional commitment.
• 33:17
  Yeah. Do do you have you have you been
• 33:19
  able to observe or have you ever wondered whether the positive or
• 33:21
  negative retention behaviors was more was more beneficial?
• 33:27
  Like which one was a better method to keep a partner, you
• 33:31
  know faithful? Yeah, that's a that's an
• 33:35
  excellent question. We that yeah, I mean there's a
• 33:37
  lot more work recently on breaking these up into benefit
• 33:41
  provisioning tactics and cost inflicting tactics, you know,
• 33:44
  making things better to keep them here or inflicting costs,
• 33:49
  you know, if they are stray. I mean, I think generally
• 33:51
  speaking, the, I mean, well, what I can say is it, it appears
• 33:59
  that most men and women only resort to the negative stuff if
• 34:03
  the positive stuff is either isn't working or if they don't
• 34:06
  have the ability to display the positive stuff.
• 34:09
  So for example, we know that men without access to resources
• 34:13
  cannot invest resources in a partner.
• 34:16
  So it's men who are economically poorer who are the ones who are
• 34:20
  much more likely to use, for example, physical violence as a
• 34:23
  means of retaining their partner.
• 34:24
  I mean, it's all they have. I'm not, I'm not excusing it,
• 34:27
  but I'm saying men who can't invest resources don't.
• 34:32
  And so they'll use physical force and they'll use
• 34:35
  psychological terrorism. Yeah, yeah.
• 34:39
  The short answer is the positive stuff works better if they the.
• 34:42
  Positive, right, That's good. That's good.
• 34:45
  By the way, I wonder if, and is there a correlation?
• 34:49
  And I guess unless this is just, you know, based on individual
• 34:52
  preferences, whether someone prefers that more emotional or
• 34:55
  physical type of, you know, for example, right.
• 34:58
  Like if I can't afford to take my wife on a vacation every six
• 35:01
  months, you know, which a lot of people can then cannot rather
• 35:05
  then then I might find it more, I might find it more beneficial
• 35:10
  to say, hey, you know, we don't we can't go on vacations all the
• 35:12
  time, but we're going to have, we're going to go on walks
• 35:14
  together to have my phone aside. We're going to go on walks
• 35:17
  together and just it's going to be me and you time, you know,
• 35:20
  aside from the kids, aside from everything, just me and you.
• 35:22
  And we're going to do this once a week.
• 35:26
  Do we? Do we, do we do?
• 35:27
  Have you observed that there would be a difference between,
• 35:29
  you know, monetary or physical as opposed to emotional type of
• 35:32
  reinforcement reinforcing behavior?
• 35:37
  That's a great question. I mean, the short answer is no,
• 35:41
  Those can be just as effective. Those can be incredibly
• 35:43
  effective. I mean, displays of love and
• 35:45
  care are not mutually exclusive to or don't necessarily go with
• 35:51
  displays of economic resources. For some men or women, display
• 35:57
  of economic resources is very effective because of course they
• 35:59
  have those economic resources. But if they don't, there are
• 36:02
  other ways to invest that don't involve, you know, the negative
• 36:05
  or cost inflicting sorts of behaviors like investing time,
• 36:09
  effort, investing intimate feelings in the sense of sharing
• 36:14
  with a partner and spending time with a partner.
• 36:16
  I mean, these can be and are and are, generally speaking,
• 36:20
  incredibly valuable and are perceived as a signal of
• 36:23
  commitment, a partner's interest in spending time and, you know,
• 36:28
  writing poems and, you know, giving small gifts that are
• 36:32
  really, you know, the kinds of gifts that we say, well, it
• 36:35
  comes from the heart. Yeah, and that all works out.
• 36:38
  Have you and and as and as time goes on.
• 36:42
  So this you, you, you, you, you have emphasized that this is
• 36:45
  particularly when we're younger, people are younger and people
• 36:47
  are, you know, younger, I guess how they perceived
• 36:51
  attractiveness. And I guess it's almost like
• 36:54
  social currency, how much competition they would be in
• 36:56
  your people would be interested in your partner.
• 36:59
  As time goes on, what changes? What we have followed up are
• 37:06
  married couples. We actually assessed them first
• 37:09
  in their newlywed year and then we we followed up with them
• 37:12
  three years later to see how things were going.
• 37:14
  And unfortunately, non trivial portion of them had already
• 37:18
  divorced or had separated. But we ended up, you know,
• 37:23
  basically reconnecting with about half of the couple of the
• 37:25
  couples. And for those that were still
• 37:27
  involved, First of all, the main one of the main findings is that
• 37:31
  for both men and women, mate retention generally decreases
• 37:35
  over time, much less so for women than for men, which in
• 37:40
  some sense isn't particularly surprising because we know that,
• 37:43
  you know, make value, the so-called, you know,
• 37:49
  attractiveness as a mate on the quote mating market decreases
• 37:54
  generally speaking, decreases more for women than for men,
• 37:59
  given that women's mate value is more tied up in their physical
• 38:01
  attractiveness and in their youth.
• 38:03
  On the other hand, men can be a much riskier investment.
• 38:06
  I mean, men's mate retention can increase dramatically.
• 38:09
  Excuse me. Men's mate value, so-called mate
• 38:11
  value can increase dramatically over time as they achieve, you
• 38:15
  know, status and reputation resources, but can also plummet.
• 38:19
  We know that number one reason that women report divorcing
• 38:21
  their husbands is he lost a job. And that's true in over across
• 38:26
  160 cultures. The number one reason that women
• 38:28
  seek divorce from a partner is lack of financial resources.
• 38:32
  And so those men who whose status doesn't increase as
• 38:36
  expected are at risk of their partner leaving.
• 38:40
  But there are men who in fact their status increases and
• 38:45
  unfortunately, that's also a predictor of divorce.
• 38:48
  When men register, perhaps accurately, that they have, you
• 38:52
  know more validity to attract a younger and.
• 38:55
  Attractive. Partner.
• 38:57
  Wow. So on one hand, the same thing
• 38:59
  that makes you more desirable to the woman also makes from the
• 39:06
  man's perspective, makes the woman less desirable to to him.
• 39:11
  Wow. So what's the how do you, how do
• 39:14
  you resolve that conflict? Yeah, it's ridiculous.
• 39:17
  That sounds crazy. Well, I mean, couples do stay
• 39:23
  married couples navigate, you know, you know, these sorts of
• 39:27
  issues. Often times women will become
• 39:32
  more interested, for example, in, you know, role-playing in
• 39:36
  sex, you know, in, you know, wearing particular outfits that
• 39:41
  their husband, you know, wants them to wear.
• 39:43
  I mean, they'll, they'll be a little more open to sexual
• 39:46
  adventuresome, you know, you know, activities and, and, you
• 39:51
  know, on the other hand, I mean, I don't mean to suggest that
• 39:56
  relationships never last. Of course they do.
• 39:57
  I mean, most don't, at least in the Western world, most end in
• 40:01
  divorce, about 60% of them. But that means that 40% remain
• 40:05
  married. I mean, also couples become more
• 40:09
  tolerant of their spouses infidelities.
• 40:12
  I mean, women become, by their own reports, much more tolerant
• 40:15
  of their spouses infidelities as they age.
• 40:17
  Really. Men don't seem to.
• 40:20
  Oh, yeah, Yeah, for sure. Yeah, for sure.
• 40:23
  I think in part they're registering that they don't have
• 40:24
  to put up with this when they're younger, but as they age, they
• 40:28
  have less leverage. That's not to suggest that all
• 40:32
  women are more tolerant as they age, but that's a general
• 40:35
  finding, you know? Yeah.
• 40:38
  So that's another way that the conflict has been resolved or
• 40:42
  can be resolved. Yeah.
• 40:46
  But OK. But it is, I mean, there's no
• 40:48
  doubt about it. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 40:52
  I it's so interesting. All this is all this is so
• 40:55
  interesting. When you, when you're doing this
• 40:57
  research, how do you go about it?
• 40:59
  What's the? What's the process from your
• 41:00
  end? Well, with the couples we
• 41:06
  actually, we begin by, I mean, we've done it in a variety of
• 41:10
  ways. In fact, in that study, we
• 41:11
  actually advertised in a local newspaper for interest in this
• 41:17
  was many years ago when that was much more common, you know, to
• 41:19
  advertise in a paper, but you can also advertise online for,
• 41:23
  you know, you're looking for newlywed couples to participate
• 41:26
  in research and you know, you stay typically if you can pay
• 41:29
  them or not. So some of the work that we've
• 41:31
  done in our lab recently where we had the couples, we've
• 41:33
  tracked them, they came into the lab 7 * / a period of several
• 41:37
  months and we actually paid them at the end of their, their
• 41:40
  participation, we were able to pay them about $200.
• 41:43
  Now that's not a whole lot of money.
• 41:45
  Mostly you get couples who are very interested in research and
• 41:48
  you know, there are lots of biases that you accidentally
• 41:51
  build into it. I mean, generally you're, you're
• 41:53
  bringing in couples who are, you know, are generally a little
• 41:56
  more intelligent, they're more interested in relationships.
• 41:59
  They're probably have a better relationship than the couples
• 42:02
  that don't participate. So you always have to be, you
• 42:05
  know, you know, you always have to respect, you know, the, the
• 42:09
  possibility that you, that you've introduced by us, but you
• 42:11
  simply, you know, you can put out a, a broad net and then you
• 42:16
  have them call the lab and indicate their interests.
• 42:19
  And then typically we'll talk to them and, you know, and make
• 42:22
  sure they meet all the various criteria.
• 42:24
  And then we'll bring them into the lab.
• 42:25
  And then typically we'll separate them, put one, put the
• 42:28
  husband in one room and the wife in another room, have them
• 42:30
  complete some intake inventories like personality and conflict
• 42:34
  and relationship. And then we'll bring them back
• 42:36
  together and we'll schedule a follow up appointment.
• 42:39
  So it's, I mean, I'm fortunate to have, you know, many really
• 42:43
  excellent graduate students and undergraduate students who do a
• 42:46
  lot of the interviews and the intakes and in fact do a lot of
• 42:50
  the calling and scheduling. But it's, you know, it's,
• 42:54
  there's really no glamour. It's just a lot of, you know,
• 42:57
  just sort of persistence and hard work and bringing couples
• 43:01
  back in and scheduling them. And so that's what we do.
• 43:03
  I mean, would that work that just involves, you know, having
• 43:06
  them complete various surveys about themselves and about their
• 43:10
  partner and then we interview them.
• 43:12
  You know, we have trained research assistants that
• 43:14
  interview the couples. Can I?
• 43:17
  How often do the self surveys and the interviews end up being
• 43:21
  contradictory to one another? I feel like that would happen
• 43:23
  pretty often because the way that you'd want to express
• 43:25
  yourself on a piece of paper might turn out differently in
• 43:28
  the way you're talking to someone when you're talking face
• 43:30
  to face. Well, I mean, especially if
• 43:35
  you're not careful, it can be terribly conflicting.
• 43:39
  But we know, for example, that there are, there are certain
• 43:42
  areas that we have to be exceptionally careful at how we
• 43:46
  ask the questions and we have to give them, the participants
• 43:49
  every reassurance that there's no way their partner is going to
• 43:52
  find out what they said. For example, we never have
• 43:55
  participants put their name on anything.
• 43:57
  They only have a code. They know their code and we know
• 44:01
  their code, but but basically nobody else could possibly know
• 44:06
  that their responses were their responses.
• 44:10
  So we have to do that. We also have them complete their
• 44:12
  their surveys and then put them in an envelope, a nondescript
• 44:15
  envelope. That envelope is in place in a
• 44:18
  box with other nondescript sealed envelopes.
• 44:21
  Amazing. You know, typically they'll mix
• 44:23
  them in and that's fine. We assure them that we will not
• 44:28
  be able to determine who gave which response.
• 44:31
  I mean, ultimately we have a separate coding sheet that that
• 44:34
  assigns each individual person to a particular code.
• 44:38
  And that's only in one location. So as a matter of fact, people
• 44:41
  looking at the data don't know who is who.
• 44:43
  You have to have access to the specific code.
• 44:47
  And that's actually kept in a locked office on a password
• 44:50
  protected computer. So we have to do all these
• 44:52
  things so that people will be more likely to be honest.
• 44:56
  And we, you know, look, there's no doubt that some people lie.
• 44:59
  Some people won't say they were unfaithful when they were
• 45:01
  unfaithful, and we understand that.
• 45:03
  And, you know, we can only do everything we can possibly do to
• 45:07
  encourage them to be honest. But our results generally line
• 45:11
  up with the results of of lots of other research on infidelity
• 45:14
  and conflict. We're not finding anything
• 45:15
  peculiar. You know, You know, much of the
• 45:20
  work indicates that about 30% of men and about 25% of women are
• 45:25
  unfaithful to their spouse at some point in the relationship.
• 45:28
  And that's basically what we find about one in three men and
• 45:31
  about one in four women. How do you, sorry, what's the,
• 45:34
  how do you determine or how do you determine unfaithfulness?
• 45:39
  Is that physical contact? Is that emotional, you know, is
• 45:44
  that a date with another woman? And well, how do you, how do you
• 45:46
  determine that? Great question.
• 45:52
  Well, we actually ask it in several different ways, in a
• 45:56
  variety of different ways from a continuum from, you know, in
• 46:01
  terms of physical contact. It's, you know, we ask about
• 46:03
  kissing, we ask about holding hands all the way up to, you
• 46:08
  know, actually having sex, but including everything in between.
• 46:12
  So we actually break it down into specific behaviors.
• 46:15
  Similarly, we separate out questions dealing with emotional
• 46:19
  infidelity. And so we ask about, you know,
• 46:24
  you know, time spent with another person.
• 46:27
  We ask about feeling in love with another person.
• 46:29
  We ask about did you share secrets of that person?
• 46:32
  Did you spend money on that person?
• 46:34
  And so we separate out as a broad, as a broad brush stroke,
• 46:38
  we actually separate sexual infidelity from emotional
• 46:41
  infidelity. In fact, there's a lot of work
• 46:44
  on sexual and emotional infidelity and on sex
• 46:47
  differences in responses to sexual and emotional infidelity
• 46:52
  with with women in every culture for which we've collected these
• 46:55
  data. Women are far more upset by a
• 46:57
  partner's emotional infidelity than by a partner's sexual
• 47:00
  infidelity. The reverse is true for men.
• 47:02
  Men are far more upset by a partner's sexual infidelity than
• 47:05
  by a partner's emotional infidelity.
• 47:07
  Fascinating. So fascinating.
• 47:10
  So, you know, it's so funny 'cause I earlier, maybe about a
• 47:14
  year ago, I was actually almost exactly a year ago, I was in
• 47:17
  between houses and I got an air, my wife and I got an Airbnb in
• 47:20
  Orlando for, you know, a month and it was a lot of fun.
• 47:23
  And you know, you took our, you took our kids to Disney a couple
• 47:25
  of times in the water parks. It is cute.
• 47:27
  And one time I was out by myself in Downtown Disney listening to
• 47:31
  some live Irish music, which I love, and watching some
• 47:34
  basketball. And I was sitting at the bar and
• 47:39
  there's a woman that was 2 that was two seats over for me.
• 47:41
  There's a scene in between US and she was getting up to use
• 47:44
  the restroom. And I pulled out the chair for
• 47:46
  her just to let her just to just help her out, just to get out.
• 47:50
  And she started talking, you know, and we started talking.
• 47:53
  And I had not, you know, engaged, you know, with another
• 47:59
  woman, you know, one-on-one at a bar scene like that since I've
• 48:04
  gotten married. And the only thing that came
• 48:07
  across my mind was just sheer panic.
• 48:09
  Just, you know, I'm playing at my wedding ring the whole time.
• 48:12
  And I'm like, how do I give every indication that like, you
• 48:15
  know, I'm not, I'm not sure. I'm not, I'm not trying to do
• 48:18
  anything like this. But you know, I, I'm sure
• 48:21
  there's a good amount of emotional self, you know,
• 48:24
  emotional self regulating or self censoring that comes from
• 48:29
  that comes from both ends, I imagine, right.
• 48:34
  Absolutely, absolutely. I mean, one of the things that
• 48:36
  both members of both men and women do is they they simply
• 48:39
  avoid any possible, you know, situation where they might find,
• 48:44
  you know, themselves talking to someone else.
• 48:46
  I mean, in fact, one of the one of the more interesting and
• 48:50
  memorable findings in in a lot of this work is that the best
• 48:55
  predictor of women's infidelity, either sexual or emotional, is
• 48:58
  their, their relationship satisfaction, how satisfied they
• 49:01
  are with their current relationship.
• 49:03
  So women who are less satisfied are far more likely to be
• 49:06
  ungrateful. On the other hand, for men, the
• 49:08
  the best predictor of men's infidelity is opportunity.
• 49:12
  No way. And so really, yeah, just if
• 49:16
  they have the opportunity. And that's why what you find is
• 49:18
  many men, many married men, explicitly avoiding situations
• 49:23
  where they might have the opportunity.
• 49:26
  They sort of, you know, stop it before it starts.
• 49:30
  Yeah, yeah. I don't even, I, I don't even
• 49:32
  know what, I don't even know how it responds, if it even got more
• 49:38
  than like that emotion that, you know, that first initial
• 49:40
  conversation. But I, I'm assuming I would just
• 49:43
  probably just shut down out of guilt.
• 49:45
  I, I don't know. But I, I guess that could lead
• 49:48
  us to another conversation which I was actually really interested
• 49:51
  about the rape and murder study that you did.
• 49:56
  And I guess you kind of already kind of provided an answer to me
• 50:00
  because I was going to, I was when I was reading, when I was
• 50:03
  doing the research and I was just thinking while I was
• 50:05
  reading, I would have imagined that people would be less
• 50:10
  inclined to murder after a rape if your behavior is driven by
• 50:17
  the need to procreate, you know, and I guess we already covered
• 50:20
  that. That's not what necessarily
• 50:22
  drives your behavior, you know, so it's not necessary.
• 50:24
  So, so, So what was? So can you tell me a little bit
• 50:26
  about that research that you're doing?
• 50:27
  Because I mean, it seems like we already got some, you know, you
• 50:30
  answered that, that aspect of my curiosity about that, about the
• 50:33
  topic, but you want to just maybe dive into a little bit.
• 50:39
  Sure. Yeah.
• 50:40
  So, well, we know that. I mean, there there's of course,
• 50:42
  a lot of work, a lot of unfortunately, it's
• 50:44
  controversial because people, I think, I think it's loaded up
• 50:47
  with lots of misunderstandings. But if you look at who is most
• 50:50
  likely to be the victim of rape, it's young women.
• 50:54
  It's young single women in particular.
• 50:57
  Now, one could argue, well, that's because men are trying to
• 51:01
  inflict, you know, power on younger women.
• 51:05
  But I mean, the exercise of power will be so much easier,
• 51:08
  you know, if you would try to overpower an older woman.
• 51:11
  I mean, why is it, you know, I don't think it's, it's
• 51:13
  incidental that men target younger women, younger, more
• 51:17
  physically attractive women who are, who also happen to be
• 51:21
  single. They're single.
• 51:24
  They're less likely to have male partners around them.
• 51:26
  They're easier to prey, basically.
• 51:29
  So what drives, you know, men's men who are raping, you know, is
• 51:34
  not is there attraction to younger women who don't have a
• 51:39
  lot of men around them or have any men around them?
• 51:42
  And by their reports and by victims reports, women, younger
• 51:48
  women are more at risk. That's not to suggest that older
• 51:50
  women are not raped. Of course they are.
• 51:53
  But it's just statistically speaking, the risk of rape is
• 51:55
  much, much, much higher for younger women.
• 51:57
  I mean, if you look at the risk, you know, risk of rape, it just
• 52:00
  plummets after about, you know, the mid 20s.
• 52:04
  And I think that's an indication of male sexual interest, not
• 52:08
  male interest in, you know, inflicting their power.
• 52:14
  Because after all, it would be much easier to overpower a child
• 52:17
  or an elderly woman than it is to overpower a young adult woman
• 52:21
  who typically puts up much greater fight than, you know, a
• 52:26
  young child or, you know, a much older woman now.
• 52:30
  But you asked specifically about.
• 52:32
  They're connected with murder, yeah.
• 52:33
  It is a very interesting question.
• 52:35
  Occasionally men who rape women do murder them.
• 52:39
  I mean, it's first of all, rape is relatively rare, stranger
• 52:42
  rape. But let's just so it does occur.
• 52:46
  No, of course, no doubt about it.
• 52:48
  But rarely, sometimes men then kill the women that they've just
• 52:53
  raped. And that seems dramatically
• 52:55
  opposed to the idea that rape is about procreation.
• 52:58
  Well, that's because rape's not about procreation.
• 53:00
  I mean, historically, our ancestors were those men who did
• 53:03
  rape when the occasion presented itself and the the perceived
• 53:09
  costs weren't as great as the perceived benefits.
• 53:12
  Or I mean, bottom line is our ancestors were those men who did
• 53:17
  occasionally rape. That's the argument.
• 53:20
  Our ancestors are not those men who avoided sexual coercion at
• 53:25
  all costs, because then they would have been less successful.
• 53:29
  We might say they were morally better, but that's irrelevant.
• 53:34
  I think that men sometimes kill women that they rape because of
• 53:37
  course dead people can't report them, you know.
• 53:41
  Do you think? They need to clean up your mess.
• 53:43
  Cover it up. Yes, yes.
• 53:46
  I don't think they're yes, I mean, by their own reports, men
• 53:49
  who are caught having raped and then murdered women.
• 53:53
  They report that they killed them because they didn't want to
• 53:56
  get caught. Right.
• 53:58
  And I guess that goes back to the cost, the cost benefit that
• 54:00
  you they were discussing, you know that.
• 54:03
  Oh, I can't hear you. We lost the audio Ephraim.
• 54:24
  I'm sorry about that. You see, that happens again.
• 54:25
  I'm sorry. Here it is can.
• 54:28
  You hear me? You're back.
• 54:29
  On, you're back on. Great.
• 54:32
  I'm just turning off the camera now.
• 54:33
  Can you hear me? Yeah, I hear you.
• 54:34
  I'm turning off the camera to prevent that again.
• 54:38
  OK. Good.
• 54:40
  So we're talking so I guess so I guess it goes back to the cost
• 54:43
  benefit that you were mentioning that, you know, for the rape.
• 54:46
  The benefit obviously is what you is, is you know, the, the
• 54:49
  rape, yes, you know, the, the sexual act.
• 54:52
  And then the cost would be that you'd have to pay presumably for
• 54:56
  the rest of your life. If you you know, if if this
• 54:59
  person you know, outs you. And so you have a better chance
• 55:03
  at getting away with it with a leaving a body behind than you
• 55:06
  do with a living person running around talking about how they
• 55:09
  got raped. Yes.
• 55:14
  I mean, that's the bottom line, Yes.
• 55:16
  And then, well, I should also say that I mean, of course, for
• 55:21
  most of our evolutionary history, rapists weren't
• 55:23
  imprisoned. There weren't prisons, but they
• 55:26
  were tracked down by the woman's husband or the woman's brothers
• 55:31
  or the woman's father. And it was not uncommon for
• 55:34
  rapists or suspected rapists to be murdered by the close family
• 55:42
  members of the woman. And so yet yet again, another
• 55:44
  reason to I'm not separate issue from the moral concerns.
• 55:50
  Of course, another reason to kill her, you know, if but So
• 55:55
  what I think is selected for is male sexual interest in
• 55:57
  attractive young women. Another you know, combine that
• 56:02
  with male evolved psychology to use aggression and force to take
• 56:06
  what one wants, whether that's sex or a shiny object or money,
• 56:12
  and the end product is or can be rape.
• 56:18
  Right, right. Right.
• 56:19
  Right, man. Yeah.
• 56:22
  And I mean, and that was the way that people use, I mean, when
• 56:25
  you hear the term pillage and plunder, I mean, that's what
• 56:27
  you'd do in times of war. And when you would, when you'd
• 56:29
  conquer, you'd conquest or come to a new town, you'd kill the
• 56:33
  men and take all the women, you know.
• 56:34
  And that was, I'm assuming that not all these relationships were
• 56:37
  consensual, you know, not even close.
• 56:41
  Oh, right. So I guess it's a.
• 56:43
  So would you call that a learned evolutionary behavior?
• 56:49
  Well, I mean, I don't think so in the sense that I mean we know
• 56:55
  that humans aren't the only species that you know, that
• 56:59
  engages in rape following overpowering of another group.
• 57:03
  I mean we know chimpanzees do this.
• 57:05
  Chimpanzees will kill males, but will will keep females for their
• 57:10
  own. But they won't kill them after
• 57:12
  they rape them. And I don't know that they've
• 57:13
  ever sorry. But the chimpanzees won't kill
• 57:17
  the the females after they rape them I imagine, right?
• 57:22
  No, they most often will keep them and they'll become members
• 57:25
  of their group, which often happens in humans too, of
• 57:28
  course. I mean hunter gatherers, you
• 57:30
  know, who compete with one another, who get into conflict.
• 57:33
  They, in fact, they are less likely to kill the young, the
• 57:38
  young women, they, they, they will rape them, but they will
• 57:40
  also bring them back into their tribe and, and include them as
• 57:44
  members of their tribe. And they'll, you know, be
• 57:47
  sometimes second or third wives, for example.
• 57:50
  And they won't, it's less common to kill the women, of course,
• 57:53
  they'll kill the, the boy children and they'll kill the
• 57:56
  men, but they'll, they'll leave for their own use, you know, the
• 58:01
  adult women and, and even the, the young females.
• 58:05
  And that's true also in other species, at least other primates
• 58:09
  like chimpanzees, for example. So anyways, what I mean is, I
• 58:13
  mean part partly it could be certainly learning is evolved.
• 58:17
  On the other hand, like in the modern Western world, we, you
• 58:21
  know, the the US Army, for example, and Western armies
• 58:24
  spend a huge amount of time and effort saying don't rape.
• 58:27
  When we go in there, you better not rape, do not rape.
• 58:30
  There's you will be court martialed.
• 58:31
  You will get in trouble. And still, you know, you know,
• 58:36
  modern, you know, warriors, do they engage in rape?
• 58:43
  It's it, it's so not only is it not taught or at least at some
• 58:46
  level, but it's actually legally, you know, forbidden.
• 58:54
  Have you, have you, have you, have you looked into or
• 58:57
  researched the type of personalities that are more
• 59:00
  inclined to rape or the type of or, or, or the behaviour that,
• 59:04
  or the, you know, the circumstances that would lead to
• 59:06
  someone raping? Other than obviously, you know,
• 59:08
  like I understand, again, we're talking about the context of,
• 59:10
  you know, tribal wars, you know, from, you know, from, you know,
• 59:14
  anywhere from the relatively just relatively distant past.
• 59:18
  But today, you know, you're walking around the city or
• 59:21
  you're walking around Manhattan or you're walking around Miami,
• 59:24
  You know, are there indications personality wise or, you know,
• 59:28
  you know, just that someone would be more inclined to
• 59:31
  behave? Is, is there, is it aggression,
• 59:33
  Is it rejection? Is it, is it isolation?
• 59:36
  What what causes someone to be to to to take take their
• 59:43
  frustrations out on another human being in that, in that
• 59:46
  form? That's an excellent question and
• 59:52
  I think in order to answer it, we have to distinguish different
• 59:54
  types of rape. So for example, there's think
• 59:56
  there's we've done a lot of work on spousal rape or partner rape,
• 1:00:00
  but there's also stranger rape, which I think should be
• 1:00:03
  distinguished from acquaintance rape.
• 1:00:06
  And so, for example, the work on acquaintance rape.
• 1:00:09
  So this is where you know the men and women, that the men who
• 1:00:12
  rape, the women, they know each other and they've actually maybe
• 1:00:14
  even had dates before, maybe they've even seen each other
• 1:00:17
  before. Those men who engage in
• 1:00:19
  acquaintance rape, they are typically rated as the most
• 1:00:23
  attractive men. They typically have more sex
• 1:00:26
  than other men. They're sort of the so-called
• 1:00:28
  players. And I think what's going on
• 1:00:30
  there is that these men don't think they're raping, You know,
• 1:00:33
  they basically think, well, surely she can't say no because
• 1:00:36
  who would say no to me? I'm, I'm handsome and muscly and
• 1:00:40
  I, I have sex with all kinds of women.
• 1:00:42
  This she can't really mean no. Maybe this time no means no must
• 1:00:46
  mean yes. That's one kind of rape, the
• 1:00:48
  acquaintance rape. And that's why that's there's a
• 1:00:51
  lot of work showing that men who are more narcissistic, more
• 1:00:55
  extroverted, you know, these are men who are more likely to be
• 1:00:59
  the acquaintance rapists. They're also typically they
• 1:01:03
  display quote good genes. They're super attractive.
• 1:01:06
  And I think what's going on, like I said, is that they they
• 1:01:08
  just can't imagine that she really doesn't want to have sex
• 1:01:11
  or they think it's some kind of game that she's playing with him
• 1:01:14
  and it's not. And so those are one type of
• 1:01:17
  rapists, the stranger rapists. There's other work suggesting
• 1:01:20
  that men who, you know, sort of jump out of the bushes rapists.
• 1:01:24
  These are guys who are basically losers.
• 1:01:26
  And they basically have so-called disadvantaged men who
• 1:01:31
  basically are ugly or poor or have nothing going for them.
• 1:01:36
  And the only way they're ever going to have sex, as far as
• 1:01:38
  they've determined and, and maybe realistically is to force
• 1:01:42
  it. And so these are the, these are
• 1:01:45
  often referred to as competitively disadvantaged men.
• 1:01:48
  Another way of saying loser, which is a very different kind
• 1:01:52
  of rapist from the, you know, the acquaintance rapist.
• 1:01:55
  And then with partner rapes there that's, you know, we,
• 1:01:59
  we've studied partner rape or spousal rape.
• 1:02:02
  And there it, it's predicted by, by many of the things that
• 1:02:07
  predict, you know, perceptions of, of increased risk of, of
• 1:02:12
  sperm competition. So, for example, men who have
• 1:02:16
  raped their partners typically report very high suspicions that
• 1:02:21
  their partners had sex with other men, sometimes multiple
• 1:02:24
  times. And sometimes this is
• 1:02:26
  pathological and sometimes it's it's accurate.
• 1:02:30
  And again, that's not to justify their rape, it's to understand
• 1:02:33
  why they would do this. Yeah, I don't think any, I don't
• 1:02:37
  think anyone. It's none of this is none of
• 1:02:39
  this is justifications. It's all it's all just getting
• 1:02:42
  to the root cause of behavior, I think.
• 1:02:46
  Yeah, yes. And I think that's a common
• 1:02:50
  misunderstanding, though. People think that if you're
• 1:02:53
  getting an explanation for something that somehow you're
• 1:02:56
  justifying it. But that's like blaming
• 1:02:59
  oncologists for cancer. It's a good question.
• 1:03:02
  It's a good clue by the way, you.
• 1:03:03
  Know Word. Well, yeah, you mean, I mean, I
• 1:03:09
  shouldn't have to say that. I have three daughters, two
• 1:03:11
  sisters, a mother. I'm not interested in advocating
• 1:03:14
  rape. But see, that's what people
• 1:03:16
  sometimes think, especially if they take an evolutionary
• 1:03:19
  perspective. They they then think that, oh,
• 1:03:21
  so you're saying that because it's natural, then it's OK, just
• 1:03:24
  let boys be boys? Hell no, as far as I'm
• 1:03:27
  concerned. But if we want to stop it, we
• 1:03:30
  better figure out what's causing it.
• 1:03:32
  Yeah, that's what I that, that's the way, that's the way that I
• 1:03:34
  look at things too. And I think that it's, I mean,
• 1:03:38
  you know, I mean, we've tried, I feel like you've tried the other
• 1:03:40
  way and the other way just doesn't work, you know, because
• 1:03:43
  you end up just running in circles and cutting out, you
• 1:03:45
  know, and you and, and you just end up do, you know, making the
• 1:03:48
  same mistakes or allowing the same kind of, you know, people
• 1:03:52
  to kind of bubble up the same type of personalities to bubble
• 1:03:54
  up to the surface. If you don't, if you don't
• 1:03:56
  understand what's causing that to happen.
• 1:03:58
  Yeah. So.
• 1:04:01
  Yes, I mean a general principle. I mean please.
• 1:04:05
  Please finish the thought, yeah. OK, well, my, my general thought
• 1:04:11
  was, I mean, as a scientist, it's, you know, as a researcher,
• 1:04:15
  my working assumption is that it's always better to know more
• 1:04:18
  than to know less. Yeah, yeah, definitely is, is,
• 1:04:25
  do you consider, do you consider manipulation to require a good
• 1:04:28
  idea? Sorry, I, I think there's a
• 1:04:31
  little bit of a, what do you call it?
• 1:04:33
  I think there's a little bit of a delay, which is why we're
• 1:04:34
  answering each other at different points.
• 1:04:38
  Do is, is manipulation considered rape?
• 1:04:42
  If you guilt someone into something, if you manipulate
• 1:04:46
  them, if you use your words or your or, or or whatever to, you
• 1:04:50
  know, let's say my, I come home, God, you know, let's just say
• 1:04:52
  someone comes home and their wives are tired and they're
• 1:04:55
  feeling good and they and they talk their wives into it.
• 1:04:58
  Come on, please. Come on.
• 1:05:00
  You know, I'm not, you know, or you know, it's been so long,
• 1:05:02
  blah, blah. And the woman finally goes
• 1:05:05
  whatever, you know, and like they don't feel, especially if
• 1:05:07
  you're an associate or a, or a, or a spouse, right?
• 1:05:13
  How do you what? How do you Where do we draw the
• 1:05:15
  lines for what's considered rape as opposed to not?
• 1:05:21
  I mean, that is an excellent question.
• 1:05:24
  And in fact, the way we've developed a measure of sexual
• 1:05:27
  coercion and it's called the sexual coercion and intimate
• 1:05:29
  relationship scale. And it includes, yes, we do ask
• 1:05:32
  about physical force, but it includes all sorts of things
• 1:05:36
  like commitment, manipulation, you know, saying that, Oh, well,
• 1:05:39
  you know, if you love me, you would hinting at, you know, at
• 1:05:46
  the fact that other wives have sex more often with their
• 1:05:49
  husbands than we do. I mean, we include we, we, we
• 1:05:52
  refer to that as sexual coercion.
• 1:05:54
  That is a type of coercion. Now, you might not, I mean, I
• 1:05:57
  think rape flat out physical force, I think is, you know, is
• 1:06:01
  sort of the, is the at the extreme end.
• 1:06:04
  But there's all sorts of manipulative things that men do
• 1:06:07
  and it's typically men seeking sex from women.
• 1:06:11
  But if there's all, if there's a whole range of, of manipulative
• 1:06:14
  tactics that men use by their own reports.
• 1:06:17
  I mean, we actually developed this inventory by asking men and
• 1:06:19
  women, what are some of the things that men do to manipulate
• 1:06:22
  you to have sex. And we or, or we ask men, what
• 1:06:25
  are some of the things that you do to encourage your, your
• 1:06:28
  partner to have sex with you? And then we developed this
• 1:06:30
  inventory that has this, you know, it's a very broad
• 1:06:33
  assessment of sexually coercive verbal behaviors, you know,
• 1:06:38
  emotional manipulation, you know, all sorts of, you know,
• 1:06:44
  everything, you know, short of physical force.
• 1:06:46
  Now we do, we do ask about physical force as well.
• 1:06:49
  But far more couples engage in, you know, sexually coercive, you
• 1:06:54
  know, verbalizations and behaviors.
• 1:06:56
  Then then actually for sex, I mean, that's fairly rare,
• 1:07:00
  forcing sex. I mean, men do it, of course,
• 1:07:06
  but you know, that's the last resort.
• 1:07:08
  And and even then men, you know, the vascular men don't force it.
• 1:07:15
  What's the difference between the the self reported methods
• 1:07:19
  for men and women to try to coerce their their spouse into
• 1:07:23
  relationships into into having sex?
• 1:07:32
  Unless they're pretty similar? I mean, unless they're pretty
• 1:07:34
  similar. Well, I mean, we really haven't.
• 1:07:38
  I mean, the truth is that it's 99.9% of the time.
• 1:07:45
  If there's any coercion going on, it's women.
• 1:07:49
  Excuse me, it's men who are attempting the coercion.
• 1:07:51
  And that's in part because women are the gatekeepers to when sex
• 1:07:56
  occurs. I mean, outside of rape, it's
• 1:07:59
  women who decide when sex will happen, under what
• 1:08:01
  circumstances, under what conditions.
• 1:08:04
  And that's true in dating relationships just as certainly
• 1:08:07
  as it's true in long term married relationships.
• 1:08:10
  I mean, we've, we've done work on conflict and relationships
• 1:08:13
  and the number one consistently the most we've studied what we
• 1:08:18
  call sources of anger, irritation and upset.
• 1:08:21
  And the number one most upsetting thing that husbands
• 1:08:25
  report that their wives do is withhold sex of all the things
• 1:08:29
  that their wife could do or say or, or, or how they could
• 1:08:33
  behave. I mean, the number one thing
• 1:08:34
  that men report is she withholds sex.
• 1:08:38
  She won't give sex when I want it.
• 1:08:41
  And that tells you something about, you know, about male
• 1:08:44
  psychology and about, in contrast, about female
• 1:08:47
  psychology. I mean, the short answer is
• 1:08:49
  females rarely have to coerce sex.
• 1:08:53
  I mean, sex happens when they say it happens.
• 1:08:56
  Yeah, yeah. That could attest to that.
• 1:09:01
  Well, well, on the other side of that, the truth of the matter is
• 1:09:06
  that we really haven't studied female use of sexually coercive
• 1:09:10
  behaviors, in part because we just have not seen that as an
• 1:09:15
  issue of conflict where women are attempting to coerce sex
• 1:09:18
  from their husbands. Right.
• 1:09:21
  Do you think that falls under the same kind of category as,
• 1:09:25
  you know, the people that say that like, you know, that like
• 1:09:28
  when a high school kid sleeps with his, his, you know, a guy
• 1:09:32
  sleeps with his, you know, hot math teacher, it's not the same
• 1:09:35
  thing as like a guy, a male math teacher sleeping with his 17
• 1:09:39
  year old female student. You know, you think that that
• 1:09:43
  meaning they're obviously both, you know, not obviously not
• 1:09:47
  acceptable in any kind of way, shape or form, but there's
• 1:09:51
  almost seems to be a different type of like response.
• 1:09:53
  There is a different type of response when society hears that
• 1:09:56
  a, you know, a 16 year old, you know, high schooler got laid.
• 1:10:00
  Then when the 17 year old girl got, you know, you know, stuck
• 1:10:04
  with her math teacher, do you think that it's going to that,
• 1:10:09
  that, you know, we so even though we look at it
• 1:10:12
  differently, we don't say, you know, that obviously it does
• 1:10:15
  have the same kind of consequences.
• 1:10:17
  Do you think that that we're going to that there's going to
• 1:10:19
  be research that shows that there's going to be a little bit
• 1:10:21
  that there's going to be different manipulation tactics
• 1:10:24
  that women that women use to get sex when they don't want, you
• 1:10:26
  know, when their husbands don't necessarily want it is my
• 1:10:31
  question. I, I don't know.
• 1:10:32
  I don't know if I'm phrasing my question well enough.
• 1:10:34
  I don't know if I'm making myself clear.
• 1:10:39
  Yeah, no, I mean, well, I would say that.
• 1:10:43
  I mean, I don't doubt that women, if you just take married
• 1:10:47
  couples, I I have no doubt that women sometimes do coerce sex.
• 1:10:50
  They must. But my guess is their tactics
• 1:10:55
  are likely to be less refined, less exacting, less, you know,
• 1:11:00
  because they don't have to be. I mean, women, generally
• 1:11:05
  speaking, compared to men, just don't have to engage in the kind
• 1:11:08
  of intense coercion to convince their partner to have sex with
• 1:11:12
  them. I mean, men are much less, well,
• 1:11:18
  men are much more interested in sex under any circumstance,
• 1:11:22
  under any condition and with any person.
• 1:11:25
  I mean, they're, they're far less, you know, men are far
• 1:11:30
  less. What's the word choosy selective
• 1:11:35
  about when and where and with whom they have sex?
• 1:11:37
  And that's just not men. That's that's all males, right?
• 1:11:41
  The vast majority of males across the animal species.
• 1:11:43
  Right, right, right, right. But you're, yeah, you mentioned
• 1:11:46
  the the issue of the teacher, you know, especially the
• 1:11:48
  student. Well, I was going to say that.
• 1:11:51
  I mean, of course, legally it's the same thing, but I think
• 1:11:54
  you're absolutely right. It's psychologically and
• 1:11:56
  sociologically it's a very different activity in part.
• 1:12:03
  In fact, you know, there's often, you know, groans about,
• 1:12:08
  you know, the 16 year old that had sex with his hot 25 year old
• 1:12:11
  teacher. It's like, where's the crime?
• 1:12:15
  Which you couldn't say ever. You know with, with, you know in
• 1:12:19
  the reverse scenario. Right.
• 1:12:23
  Yeah. I think it's interesting.
• 1:12:26
  What is some, what's some research that you're interested
• 1:12:29
  in now that you're going to be that you're looking to kind of
• 1:12:32
  build on and what's some stuff that you're looking to study in
• 1:12:34
  the future? OOP you cut out a little bit.
• 1:12:43
  I'm sorry about that. I said.
• 1:12:44
  What are some stuff that you're working on that you're
• 1:12:46
  interested in working on in the future and what are you working
• 1:12:48
  on now? What kind of research?
• 1:12:53
  Sure. So, well, let's see, we have
• 1:12:57
  several different projects ongoing right now.
• 1:12:59
  And most of these, in fact, all of them are, you know, projects
• 1:13:03
  that graduate students are conducting for their either
• 1:13:06
  their master's thesis or their doctoral dissertation and or
• 1:13:12
  just collaborative work we're doing with other labs.
• 1:13:14
  One of the things we're doing right now is we're looking at, I
• 1:13:17
  have a student who's interested in homicide, suicide, spousal
• 1:13:22
  homicide, suicide. So we know, for example, that in
• 1:13:26
  particular, we know that and we're talking here about men who
• 1:13:30
  kill their their female partners, their female wives,
• 1:13:33
  excuse me, men who kill their wives.
• 1:13:36
  We know that about half the time they subsequently then kill
• 1:13:39
  themselves. And this is in Western
• 1:13:41
  countries. We don't really have a lot of
• 1:13:43
  data for non Western countries. This is, you know, police
• 1:13:45
  recorded crimes and so forth. And so one of my students is
• 1:13:48
  investigating whether or not there might be differentiating
• 1:13:53
  factors between men who kill their partners and don't kill
• 1:13:57
  themselves and men who kill their partners and do kill
• 1:13:59
  themselves. And what's weird or not weird.
• 1:14:01
  But what's interesting is that, again, about half the time men
• 1:14:05
  kill themselves after killing their partner.
• 1:14:07
  Half the time they don't. And so she's very interested in
• 1:14:11
  understanding, you know, in an exploratory way, Why is this?
• 1:14:14
  Why do some men kill themselves and why do some men not?
• 1:14:17
  So that's one project that's that's going on.
• 1:14:20
  I also have another student who she's very interested in
• 1:14:25
  understanding why she's looking at a sample of intimate partner
• 1:14:30
  homicides. So these are and in this case,
• 1:14:32
  it's again men who have killed their partners.
• 1:14:35
  And one of the things she's become very interested in is
• 1:14:37
  understanding why non fatal strangulation is such a terribly
• 1:14:42
  good predictor of eventually killing a partner.
• 1:14:44
  So what we find is that one of the best predictors of a man
• 1:14:47
  killing his partner is a previous report that he choked
• 1:14:50
  her out, you know, that he choked her to the point of she
• 1:14:53
  lost consciousness. When men non fatally strangle
• 1:14:58
  their partners, that is they're not dead, they choke them out,
• 1:15:00
  that is a terribly good predictor that eventually he's
• 1:15:03
  going to kill her. And so she's very interested in
• 1:15:06
  understanding why is that? Is it a peculiarly strong
• 1:15:10
  indicator of male sexual jealousy?
• 1:15:12
  Perhaps. And, you know, and we know that
• 1:15:15
  male sexual jealousy is a leading cause of wife battering
• 1:15:19
  and wife homicide around the world.
• 1:15:22
  And so she's looking at it from the perspective of male sexual
• 1:15:24
  jealousy, the psychology of sexual jealousy, and why choking
• 1:15:28
  a partner out in particular, hands on the throat, why that's
• 1:15:31
  such a good predictor of eventually killing the woman.
• 1:15:33
  So that's another project. Yeah.
• 1:15:36
  Why can Why would you assume that it's about jealousy as
• 1:15:42
  opposed to the, I guess, perceived pleasure of violence
• 1:15:48
  with sex? Oh God, I'm sorry for him.
• 1:15:50
  I couldn't hear what you were saying.
• 1:15:53
  I said, why do you, why do we assume that it's part it's
• 1:15:56
  because of jealousy as opposed to pleasure associated with
• 1:15:59
  violence and sex? You're you're there's no the
• 1:16:05
  audio cut out. Todd, thank you so much for
• 1:16:10
  coming on. I really appreciate your time.
• 1:16:12
  Sorry I had a little bit of technical issues towards the end
• 1:16:15
  of that, but this was really, really, really insightful and
• 1:16:19
  fascinating and I really learned a lot and I really appreciate
• 1:16:22
  the time. I hope to be able to connect
• 1:16:24
  soon and record another episode sometime down the line.
• 1:16:27
  Thank you so much and I look forward to being in touch.
• 1:16:31
  Have a good one.