Latest / The Psychology of Relationships / The Science of Attraction: The Research Behind About Who We Fall For and Why w/ Paul Eastwick

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The Science of Attraction: The Research Behind About Who We Fall For and Why w/ Paul Eastwick · The Psychology of Relationships

0:00
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm Julie Craftscheck, and I'm UASU.
0:03
[SPEAKER_00]: This is the Psychology of Relationships.
0:19
[SPEAKER_04]: Why are we drawn to certain people and why does some connections deepen while others fade away?
0:25
[SPEAKER_04]: We often think we know our type, a checklist of ideal partner traits where convinced will lead to love.
0:31
[SPEAKER_04]: But what if science tells a different story?
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[SPEAKER_04]: In this episode, we're joined by Dr. Paul Eastwick.
0:37
[SPEAKER_04]: Professor of Psychology at UC Davis and Director of the Attraction and Relationships Research Lab, where he studies how people form, maintain, and sometimes and romantic connections.
0:50
[SPEAKER_04]: Drawing from decades of psychological research, Dr. Eastwick helps unpack the complex interplay between initial attraction and long-term compatibility.
1:00
[SPEAKER_04]: We explore how our stated partner preferences don't always match we actually connect with.
1:06
[SPEAKER_04]: The psychological shifts that happen once we're in a relationship and why attraction can grow even if the spark wasn't instant.
1:14
[SPEAKER_04]: We also touch on key psychological theories like predictive modeling, attachment and motivated reasoning, which shape how we interpret early chemistry and long-term panic and long-term potential.
1:26
[SPEAKER_04]: We unpack key concepts like the Merrick Sposier Effect, why repeated interactions can actually increase attraction over time, and how deeper connections often comes with familiarity, shared experience, and evolving emotional intimacy.
1:42
[SPEAKER_04]: We also get into what our brains are doing behind the scenes, using predictive models and motivated reasoning to evaluate potential partners in ways we don't always realize.
1:54
[SPEAKER_04]: Whether you're someone who falls hard and fast or needs time to warm up, this episode draws light on the psychology behind what draws us in,
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[SPEAKER_04]: what makes us stay and how love evolves over time.
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[SPEAKER_04]: This conversation isn't just about who we're initially attracted to.
2:09
[SPEAKER_04]: It's about how that attraction deepens, shifts, and sometimes surprises us as real relationships unfolds.
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[SPEAKER_04]: Enjoying the pod, remember to go to Apple Podcast, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts, and leave us a rating.
2:24
[SPEAKER_04]: Five stars, please.
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[SPEAKER_04]: And better get a comment about what you learn from this episode.
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[SPEAKER_04]: This is the Psychology of Relationships, your listening to an episode that might just change the way you show up for love.
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[SPEAKER_04]: Enjoy!
2:43
[SPEAKER_00]: What is attraction even mean we're going to get into that on this episode with our very special guest, Dr. Paul Eastwick, the professor at UC, I was going to say the UC.
2:54
[SPEAKER_00]: He's a professor at UC Davis.
2:58
[SPEAKER_00]: He's very UC professor.
3:00
[SPEAKER_00]: He runs the attraction in relationship research lab where he uses scientific approaches to understand how people form and maintain relationships,
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[SPEAKER_00]: that's a lot.
3:15
[SPEAKER_04]: So excited for this.
3:17
[SPEAKER_00]: And how we found Paul was a really great story.
3:20
[SPEAKER_00]: Paul and Julie were both on the California ground breakers podcast together.
3:25
[SPEAKER_00]: And as soon as Julie finished recording that podcast, she texted me and was like, we need Paul on our podcast.
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[SPEAKER_03]: True story.
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[SPEAKER_03]: Well, thank you very much for having me.
3:36
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you for being here.
3:38
[SPEAKER_00]: Before we get into everything you've learned from the Attraction and Relationship Research Lab.
3:44
[SPEAKER_00]: What exactly is an Attraction and Relationship Research Lab?
3:47
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, that's a great question.
3:49
[SPEAKER_03]: So I am a social psychologist by training.
3:53
[SPEAKER_03]: And so what that means is that I use a variety of experimental, correlational,
3:59
[SPEAKER_03]: mostly dated driven approaches to try to get a better handle on the way that people initiate and maintain relationships.
4:09
[SPEAKER_03]: Sometimes that means bringing people into the laboratory and having the meat a real or fictitious other person to get a sense of how they might react in terms of their romantic interest levels.
4:21
[SPEAKER_03]: Sometimes we
4:22
[SPEAKER_03]: track people's romantic interests over time, and sometimes we actually look at people who are currently in a relationship to try to get a sense of how those relationships are going.
4:32
[SPEAKER_03]: So that gives you a sense of the kinds of approaches we use to try to better understand really.
4:38
[SPEAKER_04]: Interesting.
4:39
[SPEAKER_04]: So is it mostly qualitative, like research or do you ever do like quantitative studies that are more, you know, for anyone?
4:45
[SPEAKER_04]: And for value at the research techniques, it's more.
4:48
[SPEAKER_04]: in-depth conversations versus more survey style or mass looks at the population.
4:54
[SPEAKER_03]: So usually we do quantitative research.
4:58
[SPEAKER_03]: Okay.
4:59
[SPEAKER_03]: Meaning that we're collecting data and we're gonna analyze numbers and we're gonna use statistics in some way shape or form to make generalizations about sort of what those numbers mean.
5:11
[SPEAKER_03]: Sometimes we use a little bit in the realm of qualitative approaches.
5:16
[SPEAKER_03]: Sometimes you'll have videos we're doing a coding project right now when my grad student selects us doing a coding project where she's coding couples talking about their narratives about how they got together in the first place.
5:27
[SPEAKER_03]: So that's very rich qualitative data, but as a quantitative psychologist by training, my instinct is usually okay, let's somehow find a way to put numbers on the stuff that people are talking about, so we can analyze it that way.
5:42
[SPEAKER_03]: But qualitative approaches are also very important in my field, I would say.
5:47
[SPEAKER_00]: And if we just go really high level right now through all of your research, first of all, is attraction a thing that people can attribute to what they've experienced in the past, or can people find attraction with people that they haven't exactly met yet?
6:05
[SPEAKER_00]: So what I mean by this is when we say, oh, I'm attracted to this person.
6:08
[SPEAKER_00]: Is it because it's based on our history?
6:10
[SPEAKER_00]: We're actually based on some sort of chemistry.
6:13
[SPEAKER_03]: It's a good question, certainly it's very easy for people to experience, I think, something they'd comfortably label attractions, and those we talk about romantic interests, I mean, they're sort of a variety of different, you know, people might talk about infatuation if it's especially strong, but these are the various labels we've used to describe, you know, that feeling that,
6:35
[SPEAKER_03]: I am into this person and I would like to pursue this and see where this goes, right, that this sort of internal subjective state that you and only you know, right?
6:45
[SPEAKER_03]: People are very comfortable with the idea that that can happen upon first meeting somebody.
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[SPEAKER_03]: But what do we call that thing?
6:51
[SPEAKER_03]: If you haven't actually met the person, what do we call that thing?
6:54
[SPEAKER_03]: If you're like reading an online dating profile, something
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[SPEAKER_03]: Is that the same experience or is it like anticipated romantic interest anticipated attraction when I see that person?
7:05
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm sort of making a guess at how I'm gonna feel about them.
7:09
[SPEAKER_03]: I guess my answer is maybe a little bit unsatisfying Which is that it's probably a little bit of both.
7:14
[SPEAKER_03]: I do think people can experience genuine attraction for somebody if you've
7:19
[SPEAKER_03]: just looked at their online dating profile or just corresponded by a text or something like that.
7:25
[SPEAKER_03]: But I do think that there is some component of that that is anticipatory.
7:29
[SPEAKER_03]: And then if I told you, you were never going to get to meet this person face to face.
7:34
[SPEAKER_03]: That would change your approach substantially in terms of what you were hoping to pursue with this person.
7:41
[SPEAKER_04]: So how do people even know in the first place what they're looking for?
7:45
[SPEAKER_04]: Like we hear people all the time be like, I have a tight and is that stemmed from society from their background?
7:52
[SPEAKER_04]: Like where does that come from?
7:54
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, so people often have very strong opinions and strong ideas about what it is that's going to appeal to them.
8:05
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes.
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[SPEAKER_03]: and these opinions and ideas go by a lot of names so having a type or not is part of that sometimes people also talk about at jargony terms we use in the literature or make preferences or ideal partner preferences right and that's usually about traits right it's usually about uh I really want somebody who's hot and intelligent and go scuba diving right I mean you can get
8:31
[SPEAKER_03]: So people form these ideas from a number of different places.
8:36
[SPEAKER_03]: I'll just review the possibilities and I'll try not to let my biases come through about where I think they are.
8:43
[SPEAKER_04]: Sure, academic speaking.
8:46
[SPEAKER_03]: Right.
8:46
[SPEAKER_03]: I'll do my best.
8:47
[SPEAKER_03]: Okay.
8:47
[SPEAKER_03]: So somebody would say they're evolved.
8:49
[SPEAKER_03]: Okay, so there are species typical preferences that humans have, others might stress that some are male typical and some are female typical right so if you're a man you're going to sort of be more likely to have on average a preference for somebody who is physically attractive than a woman.
9:06
[SPEAKER_03]: Okay, so these things could be species typical the word innate is complicated and loaded But some people would use that word to describe where preferences come other people would say it is basically a stereotype It's basically a distillation of the average people of your preferred sex that you meet and you're sort of forming this template of what people of the other sex If you're heterosexual
9:31
[SPEAKER_03]: tend to have, and so that's what's coming out.
9:35
[SPEAKER_03]: Another possibility is that it is something to do with your history of meeting different kinds of people, distilling water the things that separate the people you like from the people you don't like, and sort of properly calibrating like, you know, I really have seemed to like the intelligent women I've met more than the unintelligent women.
9:53
[SPEAKER_03]: And I seem to have that tendency more than my other male friends, air-go, I must like intelligence more than other people do.
10:01
[SPEAKER_03]: OK, so the mental calculus there is a little complex, but people might be doing that.
10:07
[SPEAKER_03]: So those are at least three broad possibilities for where people's ideas come from, right?
10:12
[SPEAKER_03]: It's innate.
10:13
[SPEAKER_03]: People are just telling you what they see around them without any real personal insight.
10:17
[SPEAKER_03]: or people are sort of going over their own history and trying to tell you what is especially appealing to them as individuals.
10:26
[SPEAKER_00]: And when we use the word attraction and attractiveness, I just want to clarify that now because I've said this before and I've heard friends say this too.
10:35
[SPEAKER_00]: I find this person attractive but I'm not attracted to them.
10:38
[SPEAKER_00]: Is that a true statement?
10:40
[SPEAKER_00]: Can you actually find someone attractive but not be attracted to them?
10:43
[SPEAKER_03]: Yes, certainly, and that makes me wish we had two words.
10:46
[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, honestly, it's kind of, when you say attraction in our nerdy papers, we often say things like romantic interest or romantic desire, because the tendency to get confused between attraction and attractiveness is very, very easy.
11:02
[SPEAKER_03]: But the word attractiveness is almost always about physical attractiveness, like how hot is this person?
11:08
[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, you mean, you mean, you mean, facing it about five, right?
11:10
[SPEAKER_03]: Different.
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[SPEAKER_03]: components of a person could be physically attractive, but that's, that's usually what we're talking about.
11:16
[SPEAKER_03]: Let me say that.
11:17
[SPEAKER_03]: So, you know, the correlation between how physically attractive you think somebody is and whether or not you romantically desire that person, that correlation's like 0.6 or 0.7, that's enormous and social science terms, but it's not determinative.
11:32
[SPEAKER_03]: So there are gonna be some people that you're like, yeah, that guy's hot, but I'm not in to him.
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[SPEAKER_03]: I do not desire him, so that can certainly happen.
11:40
[SPEAKER_04]: So you talked about ideal partner preferences.
11:42
[SPEAKER_04]: That's kind of like the nerdy term that you use in papers.
11:46
[SPEAKER_04]: Do you see like trends of certain qualities popping up?
11:50
[SPEAKER_04]: Is it all like physical or is it across the board?
11:53
[SPEAKER_03]: Um, well, so, so people, if you ask people to start listening, I mean, they can go on for hundreds and hundreds of traits.
12:02
[SPEAKER_03]: About things that that have occurred to them at some point, like, oh, yeah.
12:06
[SPEAKER_03]: I really like that attribute.
12:07
[SPEAKER_03]: I really like that attribute.
12:08
[SPEAKER_03]: The most, you know, if you ask people off the top of your head, go start nominating things, actually the most common thing that people come up with is sense of humor, but you get, you get attractive, you know, physical attractiveness comes in pretty high, all sorts of attributes related to warmth and trustworthiness.
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[SPEAKER_03]: are also very popular, too.
12:29
[SPEAKER_03]: And then you'll get things related to status and money and other kinds of indicators of the ability to navigate social hierarchies, again, that's our jargony way of describing where those attributes come from.
12:42
[SPEAKER_03]: But people can go on for a very, very long time about the attributes that appeal to them and get in arguments about, oh, you think that attributes important.
12:51
[SPEAKER_03]: I don't really think so.
12:52
[SPEAKER_03]: I think it's, it's,
12:53
[SPEAKER_03]: these other attributes.
12:55
[SPEAKER_03]: And I guess I would say I don't know how useful those arguments are because it's not totally clear to me how predictive these ideas are.
13:07
[SPEAKER_03]: Then people have about what are the important things.
13:09
[SPEAKER_00]: Can you explain that a little bit more?
13:11
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, so so here's a thing I I do believe about People's uh personal insights they would say I'm more likely to be attracted to somebody who is warm than somebody who is moody like good for you.
13:24
[SPEAKER_03]: You nailed it
13:26
[SPEAKER_01]: That's good.
13:31
[SPEAKER_03]: But if Julie, you say that you really want somebody who is intelligent and you say that you really want somebody who is adventurous, Julie, are you likely to attract the intelligent people more than you are and you are likely to like the adventurous people more than Julie is.
13:50
[SPEAKER_03]: odds are no, that that differentiation between people tends not to be very predictive.
13:58
[SPEAKER_03]: In other words, you don't really have unique insights into the attributes that appeal to you, especially.
14:06
[SPEAKER_03]: So,
14:06
[SPEAKER_03]: Yes, you're able to describe something that's sort of typical of the whole population, right, sort of like, you know, holding someone's hand is better than a kick in the head, but individual differences in how these traits appeal to people is very hard for people to have good insight into.
14:22
[SPEAKER_00]: And so how does that play into our dating lives because I feel like everyone feels like they are so confident yes in the attributes are looking for their deal breakers and these are must have and now you're basically a mind blown that you're telling us no we actually do not know these nuance attributes that we're looking for.
14:43
[SPEAKER_03]: right and what it means is that most of the time that people are spending on online and I'm thinking about like maybe a little bit more the old time me like oh this is a profile and now like about me and it's not always after me it's some things.
15:00
[SPEAKER_03]: Hmm, you can spend a lot of time looking at that, but it's a coin flip, essentially, whether or not you're going to like the person that appeals to you on paper more than some random other person who didn't appeal to you on paper that you decide or fascinating.
15:16
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, so that's the challenge, right?
15:18
[SPEAKER_03]: As you can spend a lot of time like fishing through the pile and trying to set up your, you know, perfect weekend of four coffee dates.
15:26
[SPEAKER_03]: But what if you took 10 minutes and just picked the first four that seemed remotely reasonable, you might save yourself a lot of time and it's not clear to me that you're outcome that we can would be any.
15:36
[SPEAKER_04]: So equal odds really equal odds we hear that all the time though is like people like something on paper and then it doesn't match up in real life And we've heard from experts before too, and we've talked about it on the show is that innately we don't know what we really want
15:51
[SPEAKER_04]: like we think we want something in characteristics like for example some of the best sense of humor may not actually be the partner that's going to be you know really the partner that makes you happy that's going to be there for you through thick and thin like how to people kind of like get out of their own way with that type of stuff.
16:09
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, it's very tricky and I do think when people get in the mindset of, all right, well, I'm just going to I'm going to keep meeting people until that first coffee day is just a huge mind blowing hit you might be at it for a while and the reality is that isn't
16:25
[SPEAKER_03]: really the way that we were meant to date.
16:29
[SPEAKER_03]: Like, classically speaking, the people that we dated were people that knew for longer period of time, right?
16:36
[SPEAKER_03]: People had these social milleus.
16:37
[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, even going back to ancestral contexts, right?
16:40
[SPEAKER_03]: You were part of a social milleus, there was actually pretty small.
16:44
[SPEAKER_03]: And these were people that would sort of come in and out of your life, but you would have a chance to get to know them in a context that wasn't so officially romantically
16:55
[SPEAKER_03]: It, classically, if you think back to, you know, being in school, you sort of get a chance to know people by chance, or you're assigned to the same group over here in this task, or maybe you go to grandma's for the summer, and you meet whoever's down the street or whoever's next door, right?
17:11
[SPEAKER_03]: So there's all these sort of chance ways that we have to get to know people gradually over time that allow for a more subtle,
17:22
[SPEAKER_03]: So the online dating realm is amazing in the sense that it gives you all these options and hey, you got four coffee dates, you can, but it's a, it's a very special and unusual kind of filtering process.
17:36
[SPEAKER_03]: And I think I think it's easy to forget that if you just like lose that whole social milieu mixing component where people are gradually getting to know each other, it can feel like
17:46
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, like a job, right?
17:49
[SPEAKER_03]: It's like this whole extra job that you have that can be pretty disputing at times.
17:54
[SPEAKER_04]: We've taught to another expert, too, that mentioned like she's a behavioral scientist at hinge, and she mentioned how dating apps folk, like they force you to focus on certain attributes because you can't see if someone's kind or if they're funny or anything like you end up focusing on physical traits and, you know, job and status and all that.
18:15
[SPEAKER_04]: I guess in your opinion, I'd love to hear from you.
18:17
[SPEAKER_04]: Like, how do you let dating apps work for you to mimic more what you were just saying
18:22
[SPEAKER_04]: kind of that natural getting to know someone.
18:25
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, yeah, so, and here I'm speculating because honestly it's been a long time since I found myself on a dating app.
18:33
[SPEAKER_03]: So I can't really speak to the contemporary transom.
18:37
[SPEAKER_03]: What is it really like to use them?
18:39
[SPEAKER_03]: So some of this advice might sound absolutely wild too.
18:43
[SPEAKER_03]: Thanks for the caveat.
18:46
[SPEAKER_03]: It's very right.
18:46
[SPEAKER_03]: So, um, I would imagine
18:49
[SPEAKER_03]: that if you were using online dating as a way of broadening social networks, right, as a way of saying, not, um, what coffee dates, can I have this week and that I can leverage into something else?
19:02
[SPEAKER_03]: But who seems like the kind of person I might want to meet and they might know of a party or get together among a larger group of like-minded people, right, that maybe that would be something that you
19:17
[SPEAKER_03]: So instead of like, you know, trying this dark throw of like maybe you're the one for me or maybe you're the one for me is sort of like use online dating as a way of sort of making social networks move and meld together so you're getting to meet more people again.
19:32
[SPEAKER_03]: Again, this is all in the pre-dating website age.
19:36
[SPEAKER_03]: But that was really sort of where the magic happened in terms of like feeling your social universe expanding.
19:44
[SPEAKER_03]: When you were like sort of connecting this social group with that social group and like people are all kind of meeting each other in new ways, I do think that that really leaves open the most possibilities.
19:56
[SPEAKER_03]: And I think it can be very frustrating and isolating for people.
20:00
[SPEAKER_03]: all they have are the online dating opportunities strictly speaking with.
20:04
[SPEAKER_03]: This coffee date is to see where this date goes and nowhere else.
20:07
[SPEAKER_00]: That's a really insightful, I think piece of advice for how to filter on online dating apps because it is a way of expanding your mind to be on romantic interest.
20:20
[SPEAKER_00]: It's more of who do I see myself hanging out with that I
20:22
[SPEAKER_00]: would probably normally wouldn't get to.
20:25
[SPEAKER_00]: But once you get to that first date, and we hear this quite a bit as two is I wasn't attracted to this person, where I wasn't attracted to this person when I met them in real life.
20:35
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm hearing from you is, in some ways, attraction builds over time.
20:39
[SPEAKER_00]: So a lot of our listeners will ask, well, should I absolutely go on a second date regardless?
20:45
[SPEAKER_00]: What would you say to that?
20:46
[SPEAKER_00]: Do you think that attraction can build over time even if you just don't even have an ounce of attraction from that first date?
20:52
[SPEAKER_03]: So, this is complicated in many ways because on the one hand, if you look at relationships that became something, okay, so we're now, we know this relationship became long-term or short-term.
21:06
[SPEAKER_03]: It was sexual in some way, and you look back at the beginning.
21:09
[SPEAKER_03]: You can bank on seeing a trajectory that sort of started middleing and went up, okay.
21:14
[SPEAKER_03]: So, if everybody had a filter of, you have to sort of blow my mind from a moment one,
21:22
[SPEAKER_01]: Uh-huh.
21:23
[SPEAKER_03]: However.
21:25
[SPEAKER_03]: If you take instead of relationships that made it, you look at the full pool of people that you've met that you were like a little into and you watch what happens for a moment when it goes down.
21:36
[SPEAKER_03]: So what this tells me is that, yep, you need to go out and meet a lot of people and most of them, your opinion of them will not, your romantic opinion of them will not say high over time, but you're kind of waiting out for the few where your opinion will increase.
21:54
[SPEAKER_03]: So it's a lot of work.
21:56
[SPEAKER_03]: It's a lot of work.
21:58
[SPEAKER_03]: Right.
21:59
[SPEAKER_04]: I mean, I've definitely heard of people that have said like my partner initially wasn't who I thought I'd end up with.
22:05
[SPEAKER_04]: Or when I was on a dating app, I would have actually passed over my current partner that I'm with because of the way we just jived in real life.
22:13
[SPEAKER_04]: I personally think like it doesn't need to be fireworks from day one, but there needs to be like something there.
22:24
[SPEAKER_03]: Right.
22:24
[SPEAKER_03]: I think that's right.
22:25
[SPEAKER_03]: And, you know, people have limited time, right?
22:29
[SPEAKER_03]: So, you know, it certainly, how into somebody you are at moment one is going to be highly correlated with how you feel about them at moment two and then moment three, right?
22:39
[SPEAKER_03]: So, you know, it's going to track, but it can still be going up or down if you give it time to do one of the other.
22:46
[SPEAKER_03]: So, people, you know, you want to start by pursuing the relationships where you're
22:50
[SPEAKER_03]: feeling really good about the person right from the beginning, but that doesn't preclude the possibility that had you given somebody a chance who didn't initially, you know, really blow your way, it would have been, well, and this was the thing about sort of the way we used to meet people, and by used to, I mean, decades past, but also for those of us who are sort of in.
23:09
[SPEAKER_03]: professional workforce, now back when you went to school and were forced to interact with people over and over again, whether you like them or not, is that that allowed those trajectories to just sort of happen natural, right?
23:23
[SPEAKER_03]: So you didn't really have a ton of choice about who you got to see on a regular basis.
23:29
[SPEAKER_03]: So it's a very different universe when we're given so much choice
23:36
[SPEAKER_00]: But we kind of need to stay in the current universe because that we were working with.
23:40
[SPEAKER_00]: So from the stories we've heard of couples meeting IRL, a lot of them started out with friends or they were part of the same group or club or a friend circle.
23:49
[SPEAKER_00]: And maybe that attraction was in there and eventually that attraction built.
23:53
[SPEAKER_00]: My current partner I had known each other for five years before we started dating.
23:57
[SPEAKER_00]: He played the long game.
23:58
[SPEAKER_01]: I did too.
23:59
[SPEAKER_00]: But in today's environment, if we're thinking about online dating, and we really want to feel that attraction.
24:06
[SPEAKER_00]: Do you have any observations or hacks on how to speed up the attraction process?
24:13
[SPEAKER_00]: Can I make myself attracted to someone a little bit faster?
24:17
[SPEAKER_03]: you know, there are here is what I'll sort of channel the collective wisdom of my field.
24:27
[SPEAKER_03]: I think what people would say is that there are a couple tools you have at your disposal.
24:32
[SPEAKER_03]: The first is make those initial interactions different and memorable.
24:39
[SPEAKER_03]: This is actually coming out of the season.
24:41
[SPEAKER_03]: It's all right, but from a few years ago, talks about a group of people, a group of friends, they always take their first dates to monster truck rallies, right?
24:49
[SPEAKER_03]: These were not exactly monster truck rally people, neither the doing this nor the dates, but that's like pretty memorable and gives people a chance to show more aspects of themselves than the typical coffee drinks kind of date.
25:06
[SPEAKER_03]: because you have something else to do and sort of marvel at.
25:11
[SPEAKER_03]: So doing things that are that are unusual or contain some sort of other activity.
25:18
[SPEAKER_03]: Now some folks would even go further and say, yes, and make those activities exciting and novel and arousing.
25:25
[SPEAKER_03]: So, you know, bunchy jumping first date.
25:28
[SPEAKER_03]: Oh my gosh, can't get it.
25:30
[SPEAKER_03]: Get the, you know, by 10, get one free card and just make that your first date go to, you know, maybe, you know, I do think that that mixing it up keeping it interesting, if you're going to use this sort of like one date and let's see how well we hit it off kind of strategy.
25:47
[SPEAKER_03]: You know what I wish existed was online dating, but like I'm going to meet you, but actually it's because you've got three friends and so like I'm sure somebody's done this.
25:58
[SPEAKER_03]: That sounds the kind of thing that would be compelling.
26:02
[SPEAKER_03]: Now, people who run these sites can now tell me that's a terrible idea for a million reasons, but from a pure empirical psychologist perspective, that's what I'd want to say.
26:11
[SPEAKER_03]: People meet each other, but not because I want to date you because you've got a number of single friends.
26:16
[SPEAKER_04]: And they could end up falling for that person.
26:18
[SPEAKER_04]: Sure, like plus pressure.
26:20
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, so, okay, so we're in the current world where data gaps are prevalent.
26:26
[SPEAKER_04]: I mean, there are ways to meet outside, but I think especially during this year and it's been even more focused.
26:32
[SPEAKER_04]: We are not in a lab.
26:34
[SPEAKER_04]: We cannot create the no quote unquote perfect partner.
26:37
[SPEAKER_04]: How do people like come to terms that someone realistically is not going to meet every ideal partner preference they have?
26:44
[SPEAKER_04]: Like how do they feel like they've still made a good choice?
26:47
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, my guess is that what happens 80 to 90% of the time?
26:52
[SPEAKER_03]: Is that people say, I guess I didn't really like that in the first place?
26:56
[SPEAKER_03]: Because I'm really into this person and yep, they don't match what I would have told you ahead of time, but oh well, and they they move forward and I would argue that is in most cases Probably the psychologically healthy thing to do
27:12
[SPEAKER_03]: and that when people get very strict or rigid about what it is they're looking for.
27:20
[SPEAKER_03]: So much so that they foreclose promising real-life options because that person is missing some attribute or
27:28
[SPEAKER_03]: you know, maybe component of their family history of something like that.
27:30
[SPEAKER_03]: So they foreclose those options from moving forward.
27:34
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, that's the kind of thing that's probably worth doing some self-exploration to try to understand exactly why that is.
27:42
[SPEAKER_03]: Are you convinced that this is a way of sort of preventing future strife and pain and how well can you really predict the future?
27:50
[SPEAKER_03]: And, you know, sort of maybe there'd be some, uh,
27:53
[SPEAKER_03]: some self-questioning in that respect.
27:56
[SPEAKER_03]: That would be the thing that I would worry about when people get very rigid about.
28:00
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, I like you.
28:01
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, this is going well, but this is not what I said I wanted.
28:05
[SPEAKER_03]: That's not to say there aren't like real dealbreakers in the world that people have, right?
28:10
[SPEAKER_03]: Obvious ones are things like how do we coordinate our two jobs and you know, how do we
28:15
[SPEAKER_03]: you want to think about kids, right?
28:18
[SPEAKER_03]: So these are big deals, but I think it's also very common for people to take surmountable things and transform them in their minds into something insurmountable.
28:30
[SPEAKER_03]: And that I would argue may not always be the best idea.
28:35
[SPEAKER_04]: Like, if you're like, I like blondes in this person's approved at, it might be, okay, it might be so rigid that I'm afraid to get something real, essentially.
28:44
[SPEAKER_03]: Right.
28:44
[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, to make it like a little more, you know, think about like, sort of, maybe educational background.
28:51
[SPEAKER_03]: maybe, you know, the things that you're into doing, right?
28:55
[SPEAKER_03]: Like, you might desperately love travel, but this is somebody who's kind of a home body.
29:01
[SPEAKER_03]: Like, you never imagined being with a partner that you weren't going to travel the world with.
29:07
[SPEAKER_03]: But this is going well, what do you do under that circumstance?
29:12
[SPEAKER_03]: I do think that it's worth doing some exploration to try to, you know, are there other ways you can sort of satisfy your travel bug, right?
29:22
[SPEAKER_03]: Are there other futures you could imagine that are a little less rigid than the one that you've got in your mind?
29:30
[SPEAKER_04]: Interesting.
29:31
[SPEAKER_04]: I wasn't even thinking of that example.
29:32
[SPEAKER_04]: So I want to go into that a little more maybe like which traits like in this ideal partner preference in your opinion are things that people can fold on and that may not really be a predictor, a future happiness versus which ones are maybe like gray areas because I could see travel being your gray area potentially.
29:51
[SPEAKER_03]: So honestly, you know, I use the example of sort of job coordination, child coordination, family relevant stuff, but but to be honest, there's no good research suggesting that anything is, you know, anything other than a gray right now I'm I'm sort of.
30:06
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, sort of imposing my own values on it really when I say like well, obviously, you know if you know you don't want kids You know you do want kids like that's rigid and you stick to that But I actually don't have any sort of broader evidence for that and part of that is a function of the limited way that we study things We usually study sort of basic traits, right?
30:29
[SPEAKER_03]: So physical attractiveness intelligence sense of humor.
30:32
[SPEAKER_03]: It's almost always like European
30:34
[SPEAKER_03]: Right.
30:35
[SPEAKER_03]: All of that stuff is negotiable.
30:37
[SPEAKER_03]: Whether they're sort of more lifestyle relevant stuff politics would be another obvious one, right?
30:43
[SPEAKER_03]: They're like really like this stuff is is also fungible like you could change your mind about that But I have the intuition that some of these things are very important to stick to but I actually have no evidence
30:55
[SPEAKER_00]: and into similar vein in your research for the couples who've established some sort of baseline attraction towards each other.
31:04
[SPEAKER_00]: Have you discovered at what point do they decide that this is it?
31:10
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not going to look any farther.
31:11
[SPEAKER_00]: There's no one else better or they accept the fact that there may be other people were better, but I'm sticking with this partner.
31:18
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, it's a really good question and it's in some ways like that's the most interesting moment that comes two thirds of the way through the romantic comedy, right?
31:27
[SPEAKER_03]: That's like this is this is what it happens and like we are terrible at studying it.
31:31
[SPEAKER_03]: We're terrible at studying it because most of the time when we're studying couples, we're bringing in people who are way past that point and they sort of committed to each other, right?
31:40
[SPEAKER_03]: So those are the people that come to labs for us studies, but you know, we missed all that interesting stuff, right?
31:48
[SPEAKER_03]: with their moments along the way where, you know, you almost bailed, or the other person, almost bailed, or we've got, you know, you broke up and you got back together, these things we tend to miss.
31:59
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, what we have seen when you ask people to, again, these are like relationships that made it to a certain point.
32:06
[SPEAKER_03]: Now you ask them to go back in time and sort of reconstruct what happened.
32:10
[SPEAKER_03]: And there's a long period of time between when people first meet on average and when they actually say like yep we are together and we are exclusive and we are sort of moving forward we are off the market there is a lot of stuff that happens right there's usually at least you know in the modern Western context there's a lot of sexual stuff that happens prior to that point part of that is people sort of figuring out and assessing like is this somebody that I'm into.
32:37
[SPEAKER_03]: part of it is about meeting friends, you know, sort of you're dipping your toe in what this other person's life is like to see how it feels and to see like can you sort of bring the two streams of your lives together in a harmonious way.
32:52
[SPEAKER_03]: But we see these success stories when we study couples and retrospect.
32:56
[SPEAKER_03]: But that's very different than as this is starting to happen.
33:00
[SPEAKER_03]: Can we predict sort of where this is going to go?
33:03
[SPEAKER_03]: And that's, you know, I would argue this is actually one of the great mysteries in the empirical science right now is like, what can we predict before it actually happens?
33:13
[SPEAKER_03]: It's actually quite different.
33:14
[SPEAKER_04]: So the people that you guys study, the people that are in committed relationships, and you're saying that, you know, some of them might have been attracted enough at the beginning, but maybe they didn't think their partner was the hottest person they ever saw or the most beautiful.
33:29
[SPEAKER_04]: Do you find that as the relationship progresses, they start to think of their partner and higher terms or are they like, is it that they're just looking at the overall picture or do they actually start believing that because they've bought into it?
33:43
[SPEAKER_03]: I do think that what happens on average is that people's again, the couples that have made it and now have we get to this point, they've started feeling more and more positively about this person over time.
33:56
[SPEAKER_03]: And whether it was, I got to see what this person is really like or I got to see how well we fit together or I got to see things about this person that maybe nobody else has ever really gotten to see maybe you saw them in a context that nobody else had seen or maybe things that now they're sharing with you that they'd never really shared with anybody before.
34:20
[SPEAKER_03]: All of these elements start to create, you know, we use the term, you know, we use the term unique to refer to the way that sort of two people end up fitting well together, right, so they build a unique relationship or sort of a unique set of expectations and like a little micro culture.
34:43
[SPEAKER_03]: That is specific to their relationship.
34:45
[SPEAKER_03]: And so when they grow that successfully, that's where it seems good relationships come from.
34:52
[SPEAKER_03]: So it's not about sort of picking the right person from the very beginning, but about building something over the first set of interactions that you have with this person.
35:06
[SPEAKER_03]: This will think good relationships come from.
35:09
[SPEAKER_04]: That's fascinating.
35:11
[SPEAKER_01]: That's really fascinating.
35:11
[SPEAKER_04]: Because that's like the opposite of how I want dating works.
35:14
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, that's right.
35:17
[SPEAKER_03]: And it's what it could mean is that you could build a successful relationship with many, many people.
35:25
[SPEAKER_03]: Right.
35:26
[SPEAKER_03]: So the one is a myth.
35:27
[SPEAKER_03]: Right.
35:28
[SPEAKER_03]: If you had three options, you'd make it work with one of them.
35:31
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
35:31
[SPEAKER_03]: Now you have 10,000.
35:32
[SPEAKER_03]: So you spend a lot of time shopping around.
35:34
[SPEAKER_00]: And with that shopping around, I think one thing that dating apps do is that it makes you feel more attractive than you really are because it's, everybody's profile photos are looking at you.
35:46
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like stepping into a bar and 10,000 people all eyes on you.
35:50
[SPEAKER_00]: And you have the choice of saying, yes and no to all these different people.
35:56
[SPEAKER_00]: Have you found that to be true in your studies that people may define, they may think they're more attractive than they really are.
36:02
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's what's attributing to their un-success.
36:06
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, that's interesting.
36:07
[SPEAKER_00]: With all-in-dating.
36:08
[SPEAKER_04]: That's definitely my theory of obliterating.
36:10
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, everybody feels, yeah, good, no good.
36:13
[SPEAKER_04]: Everyone thinks they're hotter than they are.
36:15
[SPEAKER_04]: And then they're looking for somewhat hotter.
36:17
[SPEAKER_04]: And it's a cycle of never-fighting somewhat.
36:19
[SPEAKER_04]: And I think when you find someone I hear quote unquote level, that's when things fall into place.
36:24
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, I do think that there is an easy tendency to get overwhelmed by the wide variety of options and to think like this feels good, but I wonder if something else could feel even better, where we could click, you know, even more strongly.
36:41
[SPEAKER_03]: Now that's a little different from the matching idea.
36:44
[SPEAKER_03]: right, the idea that people get a lofty sense of who they are and they start pursuing people who are in fact, you know, at an even higher level than them and like that causes this mismanement.
36:59
[SPEAKER_03]: That as an idea, I am a bit skeptical of at least once you start talking about face-to-face interactions and moving forward.
37:10
[SPEAKER_03]: And the reason why is that I think we
37:12
[SPEAKER_03]: I think we overstate the amount of agreement there is about things like who is desirable and who is hot.
37:20
[SPEAKER_03]: People do agree, but it is not all agreement.
37:24
[SPEAKER_03]: And in fact, it is very far from perfect agreement.
37:27
[SPEAKER_03]: There's a great study, I mean it's like a 15-year-old study before my time.
37:32
[SPEAKER_03]: It's truly fascinating, kinds of stats they do, it was very creative.
37:36
[SPEAKER_03]: But it's
37:40
[SPEAKER_03]: and a bunch of raiders looking at these photos and rating how hot they were, okay.
37:45
[SPEAKER_03]: And they looked across, okay, 100 of these photos for how many of these photos did somebody put you in the top half and somebody else put you in the bottom half.
37:57
[SPEAKER_03]: And the answer was 95% of people, guess what, somebody's going to think you're awesome and somebody's going to think you're terrible.
38:09
[SPEAKER_03]: Wow, it's only 5% of people who like everybody agrees like you do not have it or you definitely have a chance.
38:17
[SPEAKER_03]: So there is a lot of disagreement about who is hot and who is not.
38:22
[SPEAKER_03]: and even more dramatic is that as people get to know each other, that goes down even more.
38:27
[SPEAKER_03]: Now I don't have to make the same numbers, but you can imagine that going to 1996, 1997, 1998, 99% that, you know, among the people that you know well, it's actually not great consensus about how good of a catch you are, right?
38:42
[SPEAKER_03]: Some people just just
38:44
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, like hanging out with you, but, you know, they may not exactly be into you where some people are in the U.S. secretly into you, right?
38:50
[SPEAKER_03]: So that agreement goes down.
38:53
[SPEAKER_03]: If agreement goes down, it means all of this, like you can do better, you're a six, she's a nine, just, it all sort of becomes high school silliness.
39:02
[SPEAKER_04]: That's so fascinating because I feel like in society there's certain cultural standards and those actually are different and other in different places.
39:10
[SPEAKER_04]: So I think sometimes I definitely have felt this like if I'm not this that's like pinpointed as the cultural definition of beauty, then people must not feel that way.
39:21
[SPEAKER_04]: And you're basically saying like that's just all bullshit in a way.
39:25
[SPEAKER_03]: It is, I would say it is a little true.
39:30
[SPEAKER_03]: Here's another way that I'm fond of putting it.
39:33
[SPEAKER_03]: Okay, so I would argue beauty is in the eye of the holder, that I would argue it's approximately 70% in the eye of the holder, right?
39:41
[SPEAKER_03]: But 30% of the variants as people agree.
39:44
[SPEAKER_03]: Okay.
39:45
[SPEAKER_03]: And so if you're talking about context where people are looking at photos or they're meeting you for the first time, they don't really get to know you.
39:53
[SPEAKER_03]: 30% is going to be agreement and that can feel like a lot, right?
39:57
[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, yeah, it leaves a line share left over but like you would be able to figure out pretty quickly where you ranked in the hierarchy of things if agreement is at that 30% level.
40:08
[SPEAKER_03]: But it's
40:08
[SPEAKER_03]: As people get to know you over a course of weeks and months, it goes down.
40:11
[SPEAKER_03]: It's 20% is 10%.
40:13
[SPEAKER_03]: And among people who know each other really well, it's quite small.
40:17
[SPEAKER_03]: That I think is maybe the distinction is that, and why people who might not essentially be the most desirable people on paper or when photographed, they can often feel like movie stars among their small cadre of friends and acquaintances.
40:36
[SPEAKER_03]: You know what that's exactly how it's designed because that was how we evolved.
40:40
[SPEAKER_03]: We evolved to sort of get to know people in these small groups, right?
40:44
[SPEAKER_03]: We didn't evolve to like, oh, like, one person gets dominate all the mates because they're the right.
40:50
[SPEAKER_03]: It's like, that's that.
40:51
[SPEAKER_03]: Like, again, like, you hear that from evolutionary psychologists, but I don't know what species they're describing.
40:56
[SPEAKER_03]: It's not what people do, right?
40:58
[SPEAKER_03]: Right.
40:58
[SPEAKER_04]: If you look around people, like, every person is like, it's found someone, right?
41:06
[SPEAKER_03]: people that I think are unattractive when I first meet them, guess what?
41:10
[SPEAKER_03]: There's a very good chance that person is going to find a very happy relationship and be great, or maybe they'll have a relationship and then it'll go badly and they'll break up and they'll get another relationship, like it's all okay.
41:20
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a lid for every pot.
41:21
[SPEAKER_00]: That's always the case, but in your studies again, because I'm just so curious, if you've seen any differences, when it comes to attraction, based on different genders, based on different age groups, based on different stages in life, are people looking for different things because they're in a certain stage or they're a certain age.
41:44
[SPEAKER_03]: Um, this is a good question.
41:45
[SPEAKER_03]: For us, I'll talk about sex difference related stuff, and then I'll see if I have anything to add about age specific.
41:51
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
41:51
[SPEAKER_03]: With with respect to differences between men and women, there are definitely differences.
41:56
[SPEAKER_03]: Sometimes those differences are big differences.
41:58
[SPEAKER_03]: And the most obvious glaring difference that you'll find in pretty much any survey is that men are more
42:06
[SPEAKER_03]: You're more comfortable with the idea of casual sex, hooking up with somebody that you don't really know, doing risky things that might facilitate them hooking up with people they don't really know, right?
42:18
[SPEAKER_03]: So these are the things that men are much more likely to do than when, you know, again, it's not like 99% of men will do that and 1% of women, right?
42:26
[SPEAKER_03]: It's more modest than that.
42:28
[SPEAKER_03]: But that's a sex difference that you can easily see with the naked eye.
42:31
[SPEAKER_03]: And so that's also associated with the fact that usually when men and women are first meeting, men tend to be the more amorous one.
42:39
[SPEAKER_03]: But as people get to know each other, those sex differences start to win.
42:44
[SPEAKER_03]: You don't see much of a sex difference.
42:47
[SPEAKER_03]: For example, if you look at established couples and sort of who is sexually satisfied in that relationship, right?
42:53
[SPEAKER_03]: If anything, what you see is that men, when they're meeting people for the first time, tend to be overly optimistic about, you know, all, she seems super in, right?
43:01
[SPEAKER_03]: So men are constantly overestimating how much they're in the them, but they do the opposite, and they're ongoing relationships, like they, they like overcorrect the other way, which is this weird mystery that we don't fully understand.
43:15
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, they think their women, they think their girlfriends don't want to have sex with them, and they totally do.
43:18
[SPEAKER_03]: So a lot of what we understand about sex differences I would argue are about men and women meeting for the first time.
43:27
[SPEAKER_03]: You do see a conflict there and again, like men are like, hey, whatever, like, what do I have to lose?
43:33
[SPEAKER_03]: And women are a little bit more like slow down body.
43:35
[SPEAKER_03]: But all of that relaxes with time and when we get stuck in a mode of or only ever meeting strangers and we're only ever studying strangers in my field Sex differences can look more dramatic than I think that they really are.
43:49
[SPEAKER_04]: So is there any truth to like that you hear all the time that women play some more emphasis on status for instance, like a man's job or, you know, they're wealth or whatever
44:05
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, that men are more like looks focused.
44:08
[SPEAKER_04]: Is there any truth to that or is that bogus?
44:11
[SPEAKER_03]: Not really so and this is something that we've studied a lot in my lab over the over the years and decades So it's definitely true to men and women tell you that right so men will consistently say they like attractiveness more women do a women We'll say they like status and money more than men do okay
44:28
[SPEAKER_03]: But then, if you look at how strongly those traits actually appeal to people, attractiveness is very appealing.
44:35
[SPEAKER_03]: Again, it's not perfectly determinative, but it is positively correlated with how desirable somebody's going to be.
44:41
[SPEAKER_03]: But that's true for men and women, right?
44:43
[SPEAKER_03]: To the same extent.
44:44
[SPEAKER_03]: So the correlation between how physically attractive people can centrally agree somebody is and how successful they're going to be at say speed dating.
44:53
[SPEAKER_03]: That correlation is
44:55
[SPEAKER_03]: It matters pretty important in the grand scheme of things, but it matters the same for men and women.
45:01
[SPEAKER_03]: If you look at things like money or earning potential, and again, I too find this somewhat shocking, but it has a tiny positive effect, but it has the same effect for men and for women.
45:11
[SPEAKER_03]: Now, is that because it's co-vering with different things for men and for women, maybe women who are in a lot are really funny, right?
45:17
[SPEAKER_03]: And maybe men who are in a lot there are really well, right?
45:20
[SPEAKER_03]: And so, you know, there's like other things in there that are sort of causing those things to be equal.
45:26
[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, I suppose you could be getting things like that.
45:29
[SPEAKER_03]: But the sex differences that people report when they describe their ideal partner going back to some of those mechanisms I mentioned earlier, you know, my hunch is that they're mostly describing stereotypes.
45:40
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, Sarah type to the form of like people know that men on average earn more than women.
45:46
[SPEAKER_03]: So women are describing a man.
45:48
[SPEAKER_03]: They're describing somebody who earns more than women describe a woman.
45:52
[SPEAKER_03]: Right.
45:52
[SPEAKER_03]: So I think that is filtering in to people's ideals.
45:55
[SPEAKER_03]: And that's where some of those sex differences come from.
45:57
[SPEAKER_03]: You can actually make the same case about a track in this because guess what, on average, women are hotter than men.
46:01
[SPEAKER_03]: Everybody is.
46:02
[SPEAKER_03]: So there's some amount of that that's getting in there and that's yes men and women are different, but that doesn't necessarily mean that that you would want to max out different attributes, depending on whether you were a man or a woman if you're trying to be successful.
46:17
[SPEAKER_04]: In everyone's perception of what attractive this means and what wealth be is all different.
46:22
[SPEAKER_04]: That's what I wanted to throw this.
46:24
[SPEAKER_04]: That it's like, I think it's a really good segue to some of the takeaways.
46:27
[SPEAKER_04]: It's been a faceted conversation.
46:29
[SPEAKER_04]: Thank you again, Paul for being here.
46:30
[SPEAKER_04]: I mean, my biggest takeaway is one, everything is in the eye of the beholder.
46:35
[SPEAKER_04]: There is no perfect partner.
46:37
[SPEAKER_04]: There are no perfect traits.
46:39
[SPEAKER_04]: It's what is perfect for you in that person, this unit bond that you two have together.
46:44
[SPEAKER_04]: And I think this whole notion of, you know, time that really stood out to me with this.
46:50
[SPEAKER_04]: And I think that might be one of the faults in modern days that we don't give people enough time.
46:55
[SPEAKER_04]: And I think if you're constantly looking for someone quote unquote better and I hate using that word because it kind of goes back to like what does better even mean if it's all like relative to each other, you may be single for the rest of your life if your goal is to be in a relationship because that's
47:10
[SPEAKER_04]: person doesn't exist.
47:12
[SPEAKER_04]: And I think sometimes we have to look at ourselves too.
47:14
[SPEAKER_04]: Are we perfect in every way?
47:15
[SPEAKER_04]: Absolutely not.
47:16
[SPEAKER_04]: I know I'm certainly not.
47:18
[SPEAKER_04]: So why would I expect someone to have every ideal characteristic?
47:22
[SPEAKER_04]: And again, is that ideal?
47:23
[SPEAKER_04]: My ideal or is it a societal ideal?
47:26
[SPEAKER_03]: And then that's great.
47:26
[SPEAKER_03]: I think thinking about compatibility rather than market value and thinking about time rather than hitting it off immediately these are two important things to keep in mind that are underappreciated I think yes by general public but also you know the science gets in a lot of fights about these issues because because we tend to assume market value and you should know immediately and I would argue both of those things are vastly overstated
47:54
[SPEAKER_00]: I think it's undervalued because it takes brain power to think about these things, to think about compatibility.
48:00
[SPEAKER_00]: What you've touched upon Paul is that we blindly talk about the traits we're looking for because that's what we've been hearing.
48:06
[SPEAKER_00]: I think the sense of humor one is such a great case in point because everybody will say sense of humor is the number one quality they're looking for.
48:14
[SPEAKER_00]: And if that were the case, every comedian out there would be like married with five wives or five husbands, right?
48:19
[SPEAKER_00]: like there would be no single comedians out there, but that's not the case because we just blindly say, since a humor, of course, that's what I've been told.
48:28
[SPEAKER_00]: And stability and sense of adventure, but what I'm gathering from this conversation is that we have to take inventory of all the traits we're looking for.
48:37
[SPEAKER_00]: And kind of go through each one and question, is this something I really truly value or was something that I heard as a stereotype and that I just thought that I should put it onto my list.
48:48
[SPEAKER_00]: And the list of traits were looking for.
48:50
[SPEAKER_00]: She really shouldn't be that long to begin with.
48:52
[SPEAKER_00]: These should be tied to our core values and a needs a redo for a lot of us to reevaluate what it is we're really looking for.
49:00
[SPEAKER_00]: I also love this idea of dating like we're in a lab.
49:04
[SPEAKER_00]: Why can't we have our own attraction labs?
49:06
[SPEAKER_00]: Going on dates and throwing out different things that you're bringing on to the date just to observe what happens.
49:11
[SPEAKER_00]: It's such a great idea because that it becomes less about putting pressure on that person to be someone that you're impressed by or someone could be a romantic interest.
49:20
[SPEAKER_00]: You're putting the onus on yourself to say, how can I make this date more interesting so I can get the most information from my date and learn the most about myself as well.
49:29
[SPEAKER_00]: So we can all date like we're in a traction lab.
49:32
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, my former advisor, when speed dating, this is now almost 20 years ago.
49:38
[SPEAKER_03]: And we're at a set of cards of different questions to ask.
49:41
[SPEAKER_03]: These were questions that came from the empirical literature, okay?
49:44
[SPEAKER_03]: And there were some that were supposed to build intimacy and some that were.
49:47
[SPEAKER_03]: And so you randomly draw them and start talking about them on the dates, okay?
49:50
[SPEAKER_03]: did the cards actually have that predicted experimental fact?
49:53
[SPEAKER_03]: Definitely not, but they were really interesting conversation started.
49:57
[SPEAKER_03]: So there are ways of adapting like these different ideas like you were suggesting.
50:02
[SPEAKER_03]: Treat it like a lab like not the same exact experimental manipulation but bring in different things to like make it interesting and to make it different.
50:10
[SPEAKER_03]: because relationships are a thing that you will have to create.
50:14
[SPEAKER_03]: And so you can imagine the ideal date being where you have the opportunity to try to create something together as opposed to just one rank where you from.
50:23
[SPEAKER_04]: And I think we need to stop looking at it as a list of.
50:27
[SPEAKER_04]: traits, like I think you said something really fascinating.
50:30
[SPEAKER_04]: Paul of just, is it that someone's well dressed or is it like that they have status, like does that fall into looks?
50:37
[SPEAKER_04]: It all kind of merges together and I almost feel like we need to just start, we've talked about this on the podcast many of times, is it's the feeling that you have with this person opposed to cherry picking if every last trait is what you're looking for and you said it here too, it's maybe that isn't really something you need in the first place or maybe you start to see it in a different light,
50:57
[SPEAKER_04]: because it's now hybrid with some other tricks.
51:00
[SPEAKER_04]: Yep, exactly.
51:01
[SPEAKER_00]: One last question for you.
51:02
[SPEAKER_00]: What is the most surprising thing that has come out of the attraction lab for you?
51:06
[SPEAKER_03]: Okay, the most surprising thing.
51:08
[SPEAKER_03]: Wait, give me a second.
51:13
[SPEAKER_03]: Okay, here's one that continues to be pretty surprising to me and we continue to wrestle with it in a lot of ways.
51:20
[SPEAKER_03]: And it is that.
51:21
[SPEAKER_03]: So we talked about this idea that initially people agree about who's hard and who's not okay
51:25
[SPEAKER_03]: that matters a lot early, but it starts to weigh not.
51:28
[SPEAKER_03]: And so then you might assume, well, but that's because other more intimacy producing traits will start to matter more.
51:37
[SPEAKER_03]: So right, initially I'm into the hot guy, but my kind trustworthy friend, his kindness and his trustworthiness,
51:50
[SPEAKER_03]: So it's like a bad boy's win in the beginning, but the nice guys eventually they're kind of traits-taggle.
51:58
[SPEAKER_01]: Mm-hmm.
51:58
[SPEAKER_03]: That's true.
51:59
[SPEAKER_03]: Now, who you are in terms of your individual differences or how people might consensually rate you?
52:07
[SPEAKER_03]: Basically, all of that stops mattering the more you get to know some.
52:11
[SPEAKER_03]: So it is not actually that nice guys win, it's that all guys and women have a chance to develop a relationship where they have an opportunity to be nice and if they take that opportunity, then the relationship is successful.
52:25
[SPEAKER_03]: Don't take that opportunity, then the relationship fails.
52:27
[SPEAKER_03]: But the niceness that you possess actually doesn't do all that much.
52:32
[SPEAKER_03]: And that is a little, again, if they're sending like,
52:35
[SPEAKER_03]: Psychologists listening to this their heads just exploded because they made them very mad by suggesting They're like niceness doesn't really matter, but it matters in the context of you're really in the context of your partner things But like oh, he's such a nice trustworthy guy.
52:49
[SPEAKER_03]: He's not gonna be a better partner It's all of it none of that really matters
52:54
[SPEAKER_00]: love it.
52:55
[SPEAKER_00]: Wow, that is so fascinating.
52:57
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, you know what does matter is you Paul.
52:59
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you so much for being on our show.
53:02
[SPEAKER_03]: Thank you to you.
53:03
[SPEAKER_03]: Matter to us.
53:05
[SPEAKER_03]: That is the nicest out for that ever.
53:06
[SPEAKER_00]: And if people want to learn more about your attraction lab and your research, where can they find you?
53:13
[SPEAKER_03]: Um, they can follow me on Twitter.
53:15
[SPEAKER_03]: That is the, that is probably my largest social media presence.
53:19
[SPEAKER_03]: It isn't a lot, but it's at Paul Eastwick.
53:21
[SPEAKER_03]: That's, you know, where we sort of post our new findings and stuff like that.
53:25
[SPEAKER_00]: Great.
53:25
[SPEAKER_04]: Well, we'll definitely link that in your website in our show notes.
53:29
[SPEAKER_00]: And if you haven't done so yet, subscribe to the psychology of relationships today.
53:34
[SPEAKER_00]: So you don't miss an episode.
53:35
[SPEAKER_00]: And we'll see you all next week.
53:37
[SPEAKER_00]: Bye.