Did Evolutionary Psychology Get Dating All Wrong? - Dr Paul Eastwick

1. 0:00 – 15:00

   What’s Really Broken in the Mating Market

   1. CWChris Williamson0:00

      we were talking before we got started, uh, many of the past guests that have been on my show and much of my education, I think, into the world of mating dynamics, understanding relationship science, uh, has been informed by an evolutionary perspective.

   2. PEDr. Paul Eastwick0:13

      Yeah.

   3. CWChris Williamson0:14

      I think it's fair to say that your new book takes somewhat of an opposing perspective-

   4. PEDr. Paul Eastwick0:21

      Yeah

   5. CWChris Williamson0:21

      ... to much of the evolutionary psychology position. Is that a, a fair assessment?

   6. PEDr. Paul Eastwick0:26

      I think that's fair. I am not using the standard like, this is not a standard nature-nurture thing. [chuckles] Uh, that's not where I'm coming from. I'm coming from a place of, actually, there's a different way of talking about human nature, a different way of talking about the way that humans evolve to form relationships, that I think is kind of missing out there, and that's more or less why I wrote the book.

   7. CWChris Williamson0:50

      What's your background? Because most people, when we talk about relationship science in the modern world, are going to be coming out of some kind of EP-

   8. PEDr. Paul Eastwick0:58

      Yeah

   9. CWChris Williamson0:58

      ... mating research lab. What are you?

   10. PEDr. Paul Eastwick1:02

       Yeah. So I would say I'm a scholar of close relationships. There's a whole field, and we call ourselves relationship science. We're largely in the social and personality psychological tradition, but there are threads that connect to things like clinical psychology, family, uh, family studies, things like that. So we are informed by an evolutionary perspective, too. It's just a different one. So, for example, we talk about attachment perspectives a lot, and attachment has very deep evolutionary roots, going back to Bowlby and so forth, but it's just a little different from the standard evolutionary psychological perspective.

   11. CWChris Williamson1:43

       That's interesting. Okay, so [clears throat] what is your problem with the sort of classic Evo script-

   12. PEDr. Paul Eastwick1:53

       Yeah

   13. CWChris Williamson1:53

       ... as you see it?

   14. PEDr. Paul Eastwick1:54

       Yeah. I think it overestimates a few things. It exaggerates some features of human mating, and it's only in a few cases where I'm like, "Oh, it's totally off the mark," but I think there's a big emphasis on things like mate value, the idea that some people are more desirable than others. There's an emphasis on gender differences, right? Like, men and women are really, really different in the mating realm. I also think there's this emphasis on, like, the short-term versus long-term mating distinction, and, like, some people are good at one or the other. Um, I think these ideas, uh, we've got a lot of misconceptions, to put it mildly, about [chuckles] those three things. Um, and I think once we kind of pick those things apart, we can, uh, put the pieces back together in a way that fits what I'd call the relationship science view, which is more about attachment, compatibility, and forming relationships through small networks.

   15. CWChris Williamson2:56

       Okay. Yeah, I, I think a lot of conversations that I would have would be about short term versus long term.

   16. PEDr. Paul Eastwick3:02

       Yeah.

   17. CWChris Williamson3:02

       A lot would be related to sex differences, preferences. I think the world of EP a lot of the time is talking about this, uh, sex differences, e-especially in terms of preferences for life, not just preferences in another parta- partner. Um, yeah, I, I, I think that's fair. I guess, right up top, the words mating market, probably one of the most ubiquitously used in all of the world of evolutionary psychology mating research.

   18. PEDr. Paul Eastwick3:29

       Exactly right. [chuckles]

   19. CWChris Williamson3:31

       What is your problem with the term mating market?

   20. PEDr. Paul Eastwick3:35

       Um, I think the mating market, it's a way of thinking about how humans form relationships, like it's a competition, right? And the competition follows from the idea that some people are really desirable, they've got lots of attributes that will make them very popular, and they'll be great partners if you can get in a relationship with them. Um, I think this idea, it is true to some extent, but I think it's true in a more limited way than we realize, and specifically, I think it describes initial attraction markets among strangers pretty well. So that's a context where we can think about mating markets, like you're meeting people at a bar, you're going to a party and meeting people for the first time.

   21. CWChris Williamson4:22

       Mm.

   22. PEDr. Paul Eastwick4:23

       And in those contexts, people are gonna agree about who the other desirable people are, and it's gonna feel competitive. It's gonna feel like the tens get all the attention, and the twos just kind of, you know, hang out [chuckles] over in the corner. Um, but what we find through a lot of our research is that that period of time, that, uh, segment of what it's like to form a relationship, is actually kind of short-lived, especially if people are getting to know other people in groups over time. It's, like, become a little bit of a lost art, but when we conduct studies like that, we find that even though people tend to agree pretty strongly, who are the tens and who are the twos when they're first meeting-

   23. CWChris Williamson5:09

       Mm

   24. PEDr. Paul Eastwick5:10

       ... that tendency to agree actually fades over time, and that has really big implications for whether mating feels competitive, whether it feels like a market.

   25. CWChris Williamson5:20

       When you say it fades over time, what do you mean?

   26. PEDr. Paul Eastwick5:22

       Yeah. So let's think about it this way. If you're meeting people for the first time, and let's just make this really simple, um, I'm gonna... You and me, and, you know, we're gonna evaluate a woman, and the question is: hot or not? We're just gonna make simple, binary judgments.

   27. CWChris Williamson5:37

       Mm-hmm.

   28. PEDr. Paul Eastwick5:38

       We probably agree, like, seventy, seventy-five percent of the time, okay? As opposed to fifty-fifty chance. That's, that's pretty good, okay? That is where the sense comes from, that when people are meeting each other or I'm being evaluated, I mean, maybe people are just looking at my photo online and swiping left or right.

   29. CWChris Williamson5:57

       Mm-hmm.

   30. PEDr. Paul Eastwick5:58

       That's where that sense comes from, that there are tens and twos. But a funny thing starts to happen as people meet each other multiple times, and we've shown this in a variety of studies. If you have us [chuckles] do that task again, after a little while, the agreement would go down to sixty-five percent and then sixty percent.... and if I do these studies among, like, friends and acquaintances who've known each other for months or years, they're agreeing, like, fifty-three percent of the time about who's hot and who's not, about who you'd want to date and who you wouldn't want to date. It's sort of shocking, but it makes sense when you realize a couple things. Once we get to know people over time, what happens is that some people seem more appealing to us as we get to know them, right? Maybe we learn, like, "Oh, eh, I didn't think much of them at first, then I realized they have a great sense of humor," so everything about them becomes more appealing. But with other people, it's gonna go the other way, and the issue is that different perceivers sort of go along those tracks differently for the same target. So you might find that somebody gets more appealing; I find that they get less appealing.
2. 15:00 – 25:01

   Is Romance Just a Hierarchy of Inequality?

   1. CWChris Williamson15:01

      so is it your perspective then that the evolutionary approach sees mating as a hierarchy of romantic inequality?

   2. PEDr. Paul Eastwick15:10

      Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think so. Uh, and I think, a- and you know, like we're talking about, I do think online dating exacerbates that inequality, but I think that it... Now, if we're talking about like theory, what's the story of human mating? The story, I mean, as I've understood it since the '90s, was really about like, well, you sort of do the best you can, and, you know, maybe things go well for you, and you improve your attributes, and so you might be able to, like, trade up eventually.

   3. CWChris Williamson15:43

      Mm.

   4. PEDr. Paul Eastwick15:43

      And this is why people give advice to things like, "Well, if you're a six, you should really try to get with somebody else who's a six, because otherwise, like, [chuckles] if you don't trade up on them, like, they're gonna trade up on you." And so it sure would be ideal, you know, the most stable relationships come from a match in mate value. We look at that kind of stuff. [chuckles] We can look at close relationships over time and how matched people are in mate value. You get matches, you get mismatches, none of it matters-

   5. CWChris Williamson16:12

      But on a-

   6. PEDr. Paul Eastwick16:13

      ... on average-

   7. CWChris Williamson16:13

      Uh, uh-

   8. PEDr. Paul Eastwick16:15

      Yeah

   9. CWChris Williamson16:15

      ... I certainly agree. Who you click on doesn't necessarily correlate with who you click with.

   10. PEDr. Paul Eastwick16:21

       Yeah.

   11. CWChris Williamson16:21

       We- we're not necessarily great judges of our own-

   12. PEDr. Paul Eastwick16:24

       Yeah

   13. CWChris Williamson16:24

       ... type.

   14. PEDr. Paul Eastwick16:25

       Yeah.

   15. CWChris Williamson16:25

       And everybody that's ever fallen for someone who they wouldn't have picked at first knows that. However, is it not the case that assortative mating for IQ, for education level, for height, for income, for, uh, attractiveness level, at... And, and, th- these include things that aren't just objective, but stuff that's subjectively consensus, that if you were to pick that, like, on average, sevens get with sevens, and those sevens that look like sevens will gravitate towards sevens, and that occurs over time, and if you were to look at them in five years' time, people would say, "Yeah, that..." Th- there has to be a bulge in the compatibility because the likelihood of 10 with two can't simply be the same as eight with eight.

   16. PEDr. Paul Eastwick17:15

       S- sorta, kinda. Let me try to unpack this. I mean, this is, this is great. I mean, I love talking about this stuff. I, I like to put these two- these attributes in two buckets because a lot of the things you mentioned, whether it's, like, income, education, and stuff, a lot of that is just, like, who people are meeting in the first place. So that, there's, like, sorting on demographics, a lot of that is about proximity and who people are meeting in the first place. But, but let's talk about the stuff that's, that [chuckles] is less sorted, like attractiveness, for example. So yes, it is more likely that you'll see a seven paired with a seven. Again, if you had two people in front of you, uh, it, it... H- here's, here's a useful thought experiment. You got a guy and two women, and you're trying to guess which one is his partner. If you pick the woman that is closer to him in attractiveness, you're gonna be right about 70% of the time, okay? So that- that's about how powerful that effect is, notably higher than 50/50. Um, a lot of that effect can be explained by some of this competition in mating market stuff that we're talking about, right? People initially meeting-... getting to know each other. When relationships form out of that milieu, out of parties, e- out of online dating, that's where the matching comes from. What we also see is that if you want to explain the mismatched couples, look at how long they knew each other before they got together. Quite commonly, what, what we see in some of our work is that those were people who knew each other for a long time before they formed a relationship. Again, that gave them time for those idiosyncrasies to form. But here's the key thing: I've got a set of matched couples and a set of mismatched couples. The matched couples formed-

   17. CWChris Williamson19:00

       What does mis- mismatched is-

   18. PEDr. Paul Eastwick19:02

       Uh, l-

   19. CWChris Williamson19:02

       ... their mate value on the attractiveness scale is not close.

   20. PEDr. Paul Eastwick19:06

       Yeah, an, an eight and a five.

   21. CWChris Williamson19:07

       Right.

   22. PEDr. Paul Eastwick19:07

       Okay. Something like that. Okay? So, so I got, I got a seven and a seven, and I got an eight and a five, okay? Um, there is no indication whatsoever that the eight and the five are gonna break up sooner, be more miserable, be more likely to cheat, relative to the seven and the seven. It doesn't predict a thing.

   23. CWChris Williamson19:27

       [whooshing sound] A quick aside, do you remember learning about the mighty mitochondria back in grade school? Here's a quick refresher: It's the tiny engine inside of your cells that powers everything you do. But here's what they didn't teach you. As you age, your mitochondria break down. That's what can cause you to feel tired more often, take longer to recover, and wake up feeling like you're never fully recharged, no matter how long you sleep. I started taking Timeline nearly two years ago because it is the best product on the market for mitochondrial health, and that is why I partnered with them. Timeline is the number one doctor-recommended urolithin A supplement with a compound called Mitopure. Basically, it helps your body clear out damaged mitochondria and replace them with new ones. Mitopure is backed by over fifteen years of research, over fifty patents, and nearly a dozen human clinical trials. It was recommended to me by my doctor, and that is why I've used it for so long, since way before I knew who even made the product. And best of all, there's a thirty-day money-back guarantee, plus free shipping in the US, and they ship internationally. So right now, you can get a free sample or get up to twenty percent off by going to the link in the description below or heading to timeline.com/modernwisdom. That's timeline.com/modernwisdom. That's interesting 'cause I, I, I've definitely seen some data. Uh, one of Buss' best lines is, "Mates once gained, must be retained." And I think that that's true, which is if you are in a relationship with a very high-profile guy, let's say, uh, a guy whose mate value due to his level of status or fame, or a woman who is incredibly beautiful and very obvious and visible, uh, that is going to create a degree of increased mate guarding because you're simply going to be aware that their other options are greater. Like, there is some small data that suggests attractive people have slightly less satisfaction inside of relationships because they see that they could be always trading. This is from Mack and Murphy, that optionality to attractive people is greater, and there is a small effect that suggests attractive people have less satisfaction in their relationships. Also, if you've got this big, uh, delta in mate value between one person and another, you are almost certainly going to see some degree of anxiety, uncertainty in the person who is less obvious in their attractiveness, even if it's because they... their partner sees them as a nine. Their partner sees them as a nine, but the rest of the world doesn't. The rest of the world is going up to their partner at the bar, at the meeting, at work, on the online social media profile. They are going to continue to accumulate that front end of the funnel traffic-

   24. PEDr. Paul Eastwick22:13

       Yep

   25. CWChris Williamson22:13

       ... in a manner that the one whose, uh, values are more subtle and get revealed over time is not going to.

   26. PEDr. Paul Eastwick22:20

       Yeah. So, um, I, I, with respect to the attractiveness, uh, satisfaction data in the long run-

   27. CWChris Williamson22:29

       Mm

   28. PEDr. Paul Eastwick22:29

       ... uh, that is not what I have seen, and, and we've done meta-analyses of, of exactly that, using objective measures of attractiveness to predict long-term relationship satisfaction. In men and women, it just doesn't do much of anything. Hot people can be great partners; hot people can be terrible partners, o- o- on average. If there's, if there's new data out there, I, I'd, I'd love to see that, but that's what we've seen for, for a long time there. But on the mismatch, I think the, the way that I can help this land for people [chuckles] is to remind them that when a relationship has actually formed, these two people are in it, this eight and this five, [chuckles] are gen- genuinely in a relationship together. What ends up happening is that in order to sustain any kind of relationship, a whole bunch of motivated biases have to come online, okay? If they don't come online, the relationship is not gonna last. Th- th- this always needs to happen. Those biases include things like: What the hell do these other people know about our relationship? I... Yeah, like, "Okay, you're not as attractive as my last boyfriend. You know what? He was, you know, terrible in all these ways, but I can tell you, I love you for reasons X, Y, Z," okay?

   29. CWChris Williamson23:47

       Mm.

   30. PEDr. Paul Eastwick23:47

       Now, are these reasons real? Are they not real? It doesn't matter if the person believes it, like [chuckles] that's the nature of motivated reasoning. Um, so a lot of that has to do with how we defend against alternatives as well. So, uh, people seem to be able to defend against those kinds of threats, the things you're describing, regardless of the level of mate value mismatch. I, I get it. Like, if somebody's an eight and they're paired with a five, it seems like they've probably got more people coming up to them, more people thinking that they might be eager to trade up. But I've never seen any data to suggest that that poses a unique problem, right? Everybody's gotta deal with threats. Everybody's gotta deal with temptations.
3. 25:01 – 31:43

   Does Self-Improvement Boost Your Dating Game?

   1. CWChris Williamson25:01

      Okay. Uh, in the first few lines of the book, you sort of push back against this nerd, improve thyself-

   2. PEDr. Paul Eastwick25:07

      Yeah [chuckles]

   3. CWChris Williamson25:07

      - advice that your friend gave you. Uh, basically, uh, maybe you were single at the time and were looking to find a partner, and your friend said, "Well, you need to go to the gym, and you need to sort your clothes out, and God, your hair sucks-

   4. PEDr. Paul Eastwick25:19

      Yeah [laughing]

   5. CWChris Williamson25:19

      - and you need to do these things."

   6. PEDr. Paul Eastwick25:21

      Yeah.

   7. CWChris Williamson25:21

      "Become more funny," or whatever it is. Um, I understand that using your current conception, uh, the mating market plays into that, that there is a, a kind of value number above your head, and as you do things, you're able to accumulate experience points, and that number is going to increase, and the people around you are going to be, uh, they're going to be able to detect the work that you put into yourself as your mate value goes up. Is that a, a, a fair sort of way? Okay.

   8. PEDr. Paul Eastwick25:51

      Exactly. It's, it's very gamified. [chuckles]

   9. CWChris Williamson25:53

      Right. But are you saying then that it is not possible or advisable to work on yourself to become more attractive on the front end?

   10. PEDr. Paul Eastwick26:02

       Um, I, I think there is some limited amount of that, that's a good idea, right? There's, like, some really basic stuff, right? I mean, working out's a really good idea. Eating healthy is a really good idea. Not just because [chuckles] it's gonna make you desirable, but because it's gonna make you happier about yourself, your life in general.

   11. CWChris Williamson26:20

       Mm.

   12. PEDr. Paul Eastwick26:20

       So these things are a good idea. I just think we get locked into those solutions, locked into the self-improvement solutions, as opposed to the social network-related solutions, that maybe what would be good for me is like, okay, yes, I should go to the gym more. Yes, it would help if I s- stopped, you know, eating Domino's at 11:00 PM. But I also need to remember to, like, actually hang out with people in person and maybe try out some new hobbies and meet some new people if my current social networks aren't really doing it for me. So I just wanna turn down [chuckles] the emphasis on the self-improvement stuff, uh, because my suspicion is that though it helps some people a lot, either it only helps, uh, you know, somewhat for other people, and, and, and when those solutions stop changing people's fortunes, they get frustrated. So I really just wanna remind people that there's another avenue out here.

   13. CWChris Williamson27:26

       Let's say that you're, y- I, I guess, are you suggesting that you compete by taking yourself out? Because you are still the only one person, presuming that we're in a monogamous society, only one person can be with one person. And if that's the case, by taking yourself out of one mating strategy, let's say it's online, and instead using friend referral networks or going to church or starting a hobby and meeting people there, uh, there is still a degree of competition even if you're competing from one bucket to another bucket, right? You have taken yourself out of a red ocean and put yourself into a blue one.

   14. PEDr. Paul Eastwick28:02

       Yeah. Yeah, right. [chuckles] I mean, that's a, an apt metaphor there. But, um, I think that's right, but keeping in mind that, look, i- improving your attributes is, is going to have some value, but remember, it's gonna have actually less value in a context where people are getting to know you over time. I mean, this is y- going back to some of the mate value consensus stuff we were talking about earlier.

   15. CWChris Williamson28:28

       Mm.

   16. PEDr. Paul Eastwick28:29

       There's a funny implication of all of this, which is that if you're exceptionally hot, okay? If everybody can see your good qualities right there on the surface, you're actually best served [chuckles] by hopping from bar to bar or party to party.

   17. CWChris Williamson28:42

       Mm-hmm.

   18. PEDr. Paul Eastwick28:42

       Because the only thing that's gonna happen as people get to know you, is that some subset of folks are gonna think you're less appealing, okay? So if we're talking about church, for example, yes, it can help to improve your attributes a little bit, but remember, that's gonna start to matter less after you've been going for a month or three months or six months, or a year.

   19. CWChris Williamson29:03

       I, I don't know whether I... It, it might be worth you restating sort of your, your position against the thing that keeps coming to mind for me, which is: the front end of your funnel is wider, the, the further up the objective, consensus-driven, obvious front window attractiveness you go. If you are 10, there are more people that you're going to have the opportunity to, and that means over time, that you are going to be able to have your hopefully wonderful f- personality flourish and, and blossom and, and, and go through, and you turn into a 12 or something like that.

   20. PEDr. Paul Eastwick29:38

       But not if the other sevens in your midst don't get to opt out of hanging out with the fives. If they don't get to opt out of hanging out with the fives, some of those fives are gonna increase in their appeal-

   21. CWChris Williamson29:55

       Mm

   22. PEDr. Paul Eastwick29:56

       ... to the sevens-

   23. CWChris Williamson29:57

       Mm

   24. PEDr. Paul Eastwick29:57

       ... and, and your appeal might go down. So, so you, you are thinking about it exactly correctly in an environment where it- where, you know, im- imagine, like, dating somebody sequentially, and you drop off after they seem sufficiently unappealing. Yes, exactly. But if we're, you know, forced, for lack of a better word, [chuckles] -

   25. CWChris Williamson30:20

       Mm

   26. PEDr. Paul Eastwick30:20

       - to interact with people, which happens in a lot of contexts, then again, there's gonna be some amount of increase in opportunity, but it's not so dramatic.

   27. CWChris Williamson30:31

       Well, it certainly did ancestrally, right? You were forced because where are you gonna go? You live in this valley, and this is the group of people that are around you.

   28. PEDr. Paul Eastwick30:38

       Yeah.

   29. CWChris Williamson30:40

       ... trying to take an evolutionary perspective to what you're suggesting here, it would make sense that our bonding and attachment systems would be m- market specific in that way, that certain people would have certain preferences and other people would have other preferences, because that allows as much, uh, m- mating to occur as possible in a mixed group. Is that a fair way to look at it?

   30. PEDr. Paul Eastwick31:08

       Exactly. That is perfect. Uh, it, it's, it's like we over-indexed on, like, oh, mating success was getting with the most desirable people. Mm, instead, we could think about mating success was about forming an interdependent relationship [chuckles] that was effective at raising these extremely costly offspring. So it's not really about getting somebody with the best traits, it's about forming the best relationship that allows us to work together over time, doing this, like, impossibly difficult task [chuckles] of raising children.
4. 31:43 – 42:56

   What Do Men and Women Actually Find Attractive?

   1. CWChris Williamson31:43

      l- let's look at something else then, that isn't just attractiveness, that might be a little bit more kind of evolutionarily apt. Something like, something like resources in men, r- resource provisioning, the, the ability for a, a man to be able to provide for you and your potential future offspring. That would be, regardless of how nice or not nice he is, that would be a long-term payoff that would benefit both you and your kids. No?

   2. PEDr. Paul Eastwick32:12

      Yes. It's complicated by the fact that in a lot of hunter-gatherer groups, the spoils that these men would be able to provide are shared widely. So in some ways, like, a- again, all of these things get very mushy, because what you're actually getting, if you get with, like, a great hunter, for example, is you're getting some prestige from the community. You're also getting a, a little bit of assurance that if something happens-

   3. CWChris Williamson32:37

      Protection

   4. PEDr. Paul Eastwick32:37

      ... the rest of the community is going to be looking out for you. Right. Exactly, stuff like that. Um, but there can be other forms of provisioning that matter, too. So this guy, let's say [chuckles] he's not the best hunter in the world, but you know what he does? He knows where the honey's at, okay? I'm talking about, like, literal honey.

   5. CWChris Williamson32:52

      Mm.

   6. PEDr. Paul Eastwick32:53

      And he goes and finds the honey and brings that back for you. Honey is something-

   7. CWChris Williamson32:58

      Well, we're still talking about another-

   8. PEDr. Paul Eastwick32:59

      Yeah

   9. CWChris Williamson32:59

      ... another sort of competence or resource provisioning thing here-

   10. PEDr. Paul Eastwick33:02

       Yeah

   11. CWChris Williamson33:02

       ... right? We're picking a different-

   12. PEDr. Paul Eastwick33:03

       Right

   13. CWChris Williamson33:03

       ... bucket, but it's still the same overall level of competence in a partner. And I think if we were to look at something like competence as a good example of this, you could use whatever proxy you want for this: agency, conscientiousness, industriousness, maybe IQ. Like, if someone, a male, let's just say that, again, resource provisioning, ancestral environment, yeah, yeah, yeah, women can earn for themselves now. Um, if we have that, if you have a guy who is able to be an eight out of ten provider, provisioner, resource acq- a- acquirer, with the status and, and the renown of the group, and people like him, and he's pro-social, and then you have somebody else who does not have those traits but is equal, like, that is just a raw... Even though that might not be to do with compatibility, their humor, their commitment, all the rest of this stuff, one just brings more to the table. Does that not suggest that there is a kind of objective market when it comes to mate value because of usefulness? How you can... The, the utility of trading this in.

   14. PEDr. Paul Eastwick34:04

       Um, I, I think there's some, but I think, again, what that sidelines is the fact that a lot of what these guys would, would have been needed for is, are, are things surrounding, like, protection of, like, my offspring. Like, why was it in the first place that a couple of million years ago, women seemed to start wanting men to be around? I mean, they started selecting for the men that were less aggressive around kids, right? That they could trust around their own kids.

   15. CWChris Williamson34:36

       Hmm.

   16. PEDr. Paul Eastwick34:37

       And this is why we start to see-- Like, we don't have the sharp canines anymore. [chuckles] We're, we- men, human men are pretty docile compared to, you know, what you see in our closest ape relatives, and that's because we were being selected to be good caregivers as well. I mean, it's weird to think about today. We don't think about that as being a particularly manly activity, but it is, in fact, one of the primary things that we were selected to do by the women, to be able to be around young children, to teach them things, to show them the skills of, of hunting, provisioning, and everything else. And a lot of that was gonna depend on the, uh, compatibility of that relationship. So, so we just have to imagine these things existing in tandem. Yes, there are gonna be some men in ancestral contexts who were better providers and were more well-respected by the group, at least at a given moment in time. A lot of those things were fluid and shifted and changed as well.

   17. CWChris Williamson35:39

       Hmm.

   18. PEDr. Paul Eastwick35:39

       But yes, there's gonna be some amount of hierarchy there, but that is complemented by both sort of having a sense of belonging to a group, contributing to a group, and having a compatible relationship, where two people can function well in an interdependent way. You know, not only that dyad relative to the rest of the group, but that dyad and how they raise offspring, et cetera.

   19. CWChris Williamson36:02

       Okay, so your perspective, that's an alternative to seeing mating as a marketplace is compatibility-driven bonding?

   20. PEDr. Paul Eastwick36:08

       Yes, exactly.

   21. CWChris Williamson36:09

       Right.

   22. PEDr. Paul Eastwick36:09

       Exactly.

   23. CWChris Williamson36:10

       Okay.

   24. PEDr. Paul Eastwick36:10

       That, the, right, that the, that the, the attachment bonds that human mating partners form, this is not some weird new phenomenon, [chuckles] that this is also absolutely key to understanding human evolution. And in fact, if we want to focus on the particulars of the way humans evolved, that's where I would point. Again, as I mentioned earlier, this idea that human males got smaller, gentler, we lost the sharp canines-

   25. CWChris Williamson36:36

       Hmm

   26. PEDr. Paul Eastwick36:36

       ... dimorphism decreased because we were being selected to be gentle and kind, especially around offspring.

   27. CWChris Williamson36:44

       ... Right, because male parental investment went up.

   28. PEDr. Paul Eastwick36:47

       Yes.

   29. CWChris Williamson36:47

       MPI, MPI went up because kids were more Neutonic and blobby.

   30. PEDr. Paul Eastwick36:50

       Exactly.
5. 42:56 – 47:07

   Why Online Dating is Destroying Modern Mating

   1. CWChris Williamson42:56

      Explain to me then-

   2. PEDr. Paul Eastwick42:58

      Yeah

   3. CWChris Williamson42:58

      -what you think women mean, modern women, when they say, "Men need to up their game."

   4. PEDr. Paul Eastwick43:06

      Yeah.

   5. CWChris Williamson43:07

      Uh, there's a million ways that I can put it.

   6. PEDr. Paul Eastwick43:08

      Yeah.

   7. CWChris Williamson43:09

      Improve their standards, pick themselves up by their bootstraps, sort themselves out.

   8. PEDr. Paul Eastwick43:13

      Yeah.

   9. CWChris Williamson43:13

      Men need to up their game, which I think is what a lot of the young female-- like, if I look at mid-20s, classic dating advice from wo- whatever the female equivalent of the manosphere is, like dating commentators that are female in their 20s, much of the advice, much of, much of the justification given is, "We're not putting up with men who don't meet our standards anymore."

   10. PEDr. Paul Eastwick43:38

       Yeah.

   11. CWChris Williamson43:39

       What do you think they mean by that?

   12. PEDr. Paul Eastwick43:43

       I think what they mean is that what they're seeing online is disappointing, and-

   13. CWChris Williamson43:49

       On online dating?

   14. PEDr. Paul Eastwick43:50

       Yeah. Um, I think that they're probably not actually meeting many of these guys, and that could be on the guys. That could be because some men have retreated from traditional modes of social in- interaction.

   15. CWChris Williamson44:08

       Do you know if they've done that more than women?

   16. PEDr. Paul Eastwick44:11

       That, I don't know. It's plausible. I mean, it, you know, it's happening at all ages, [chuckles] that I can tell you. I mean, we're, we're often very eager to blame this on, like, Gen Z, or we want to, like, blame the kids these days for being-

   17. CWChris Williamson44:24

       Well, I know that the, the American Time Use Survey recently found out that the average female pet owner spends more time with her pet than all humans combined.

   18. PEDr. Paul Eastwick44:32

       Oh, wow! [laughing] That's... Good Lord. But, but look, I, I do think, um, spending time that, you know, phones, screens, I mean, w- whatever it is that's not out there interacting with real people in the world, um, if... Uh, so I haven't seen the data, but I would certainly buy the idea that that's happened to men more than women. That I, I would suggest very well could be the problem. So if we engaged [chuckles] as a society in a large, like, loneliness intervention that got men off the couch and out into the world again, meeting these women, I think things are gonna go a lot better. I'm not saying that women aren't gonna be disappointed in these guys from time to time.

   19. CWChris Williamson45:18

       Mm.

   20. PEDr. Paul Eastwick45:18

       I h- I hope that if they're not as educated, that they've developed some other attributes instead. [chuckles] I hope they're dynamite in the kitchen. But, um, uh, but I think the real problem is people not meeting. I mean, I almost always go back to that, these-

   21. CWChris Williamson45:32

       You think that, you think that a guy who has a high school diploma trying to date a woman who has a master's, if he can make a good rigatoni, that would offset his, the delta?

   22. PEDr. Paul Eastwick45:43

       Uh, yeah. I mean, um, m- maybe, like, fix the sink. [chuckles] Like, you know, there's, there's lots of useful things that people can do to make themselves appealing. Education is just one among many, but the problem is that w- if you're dating online and you're swiping, it's all being used as a screening criterion, so you're not even getting to the first date, much less interacting with somebody for-

   23. CWChris Williamson46:04

       Does this not play, does this not play into the mating market justification, though?

   24. PEDr. Paul Eastwick46:09

       No, no, I know it does. No, but this is the problem. Th- this is, uh, it... This is why, like, online dating makes it all worse, right? O- o- online dating means like, oh, not only are the tens gonna do way better than the sevens, who are gonna do way better than the fours-

   25. CWChris Williamson46:24

       Mm

   26. PEDr. Paul Eastwick46:24

       ... but I don't even need to bother interacting with you in the first place if you don't check all the boxes.

   27. CWChris Williamson46:31

       Mm.

   28. PEDr. Paul Eastwick46:31

       And to me, that's a bummer, because what, what I know and what w- I've seen time and time again is that the boxes that you think are so important, and again, it does- gender doesn't matter, uh, who on this. Men do this, too. The boxes that you think are so important, I can tell you, they go right out the window once you meet face to face, for good or for ill.

   29. CWChris Williamson46:54

       Yeah, okay. Uh, I mean, this was our first conversation from a couple of years ago. People should go back and watch that. I think the, the, the research that you did, looking at stated and revealed preferences and, and how that sort of percolates, was really fascinating.

6. 47:07 – 58:20

   What Traits are Over and Underestimated in Men and Women?

   1. CWChris Williamson47:07

      Do me a 30,000-foot view. What is it that men and women think that they're going to find appealing in the opposite sex, and what is it that actually matters?

   2. PEDr. Paul Eastwick47:17

      Um, I think, I think, look, in broad strokes, they do get some of these things right. I mean, they think they want somebody that, that they find i- intelligent, and somebody that they think has got a good sense of humor, and, and somebody who's gonna be loyal to them, and indeed, like, these are qualities that matter. It's really important that we feel that our partners have these things. If anything, both men and women underestimate how much attractiveness is important. And, and here, what I'm really talking about is the feeling you have that somebody else i- is attractive. I think sometimes both, uh, women and even men, to some extent, think it's a little shallow [chuckles] if I put attractiveness at the top of my must-have attributes.

   3. CWChris Williamson47:59

      Mm.

   4. PEDr. Paul Eastwick48:00

      Um, but it is important to think that your partner is sexy. It's especially important to think your partner is a good lover. I mean, we found that that was number one in terms of what actually mattered, in terms of pr- predicting how happy people were in their relationships. If you ask people to rate that on a scale, it's not quite so high. So those are a few of the examples, but I think in large part, what makes people happy in relationships is, is, yeah, you wanna think your partner has all those things, but let's also don't forget about the dyadic stuff. It's like, if I had a crappy day, do I feel like I can talk to you about it, and you're gonna listen to what went wrong with, you know, with my day? You're gonna try to, try to, you know, bolster me back up. If something good happened to me, are you more excited about it than I am, right? Those are-

   5. CWChris Williamson48:50

      So what are we talking about there? Patience, attentiveness to detail?

   6. PEDr. Paul Eastwick48:54

      Um, it's, it's supportiveness-... but it gets, um, to a, it- it's like supportiveness, but supportive in a way that isn't like, oh, like you're a supportive friend. Like, oh, you're the kind of person everybody goes to-

   7. CWChris Williamson49:08

      Mm

   8. PEDr. Paul Eastwick49:08

      -when something's gone wrong. I want you, as a partner, to be exceptionally attuned to, like, my goals, my dreams. I mean, this is kind of what we've done to [chuckles] to marriage recently. We expect our partner to do all these things, but indeed, people tend to be much happier in their relationships if they feel like their partner has their back and is, like, supporting them as they pursue the things that they want to pursue. It can be a tall order, but these generally tend to be the things that matter the most for people.

   9. CWChris Williamson49:40

      What- if you were to give people advice, and you were to say, "Here are a couple of traits that you can usually detect within the first few dates, or maybe even online," um, what are the ones that you wish you could advise people to dispense with and put in the bin? What are people overestimating on, and what are people underestimating on?

   10. PEDr. Paul Eastwick50:04

       [inhales] That's a good question. I think they underestimate the importance of, uh, vulnerability, their own vulnerability, and the other person's. And again, like, you're describing it like a trait, but that isn't totally how I think about it. It's not like I want to find a vulnerable person. I want to find somebody who's willing to be vulnerable with me, who's willing to disclose things to me. I mean, I don't know if you've ever had this experience of, like, getting to know somebody, but the first time they tell you something deeply personal about themselves, you get the sense they haven't told this to many people.

   11. CWChris Williamson50:40

       Hmm.

   12. PEDr. Paul Eastwick50:40

       That's kind of an aphrodisiac in and of itself. It's like, this person is really opening up to me. They must really trust me.

   13. CWChris Williamson50:47

       Feel chosen and special. Yeah.

   14. PEDr. Paul Eastwick50:50

       Exactly. So, so there's something at the intersection of vulnerability that I think people don't quite get. I think when people think about dating, they think about self-promotion, they think about putting the best version of themselves out there.

   15. CWChris Williamson51:01

       Yeah.

   16. PEDr. Paul Eastwick51:01

       But a lot of times, coming across-- A- again, this is gonna shock a lot of [chuckles] people, but there, there really is research on this. Like, coming across as a little bit vulnerable, a little bit like you kind of are, uh... like, needy is too strong, but, like, just a touch of openness to having somebody else do, [chuckles] do things for you, to learning from another person, that's maybe a good way of thinking about it.

   17. CWChris Williamson51:27

       You know what, you know what it makes me think of? It makes me think of kind of like emotional reciprocal altruism in that way. I'm going to give you a little thing, and in the giving of that... What's that psychological study where people prefer you to ask them for a favor than to do a favor for them? Because inherent in that is this reciprocal, "At some point in future, you think that maybe I could do this back to you, and I feel helpful." Um, [exhales] an interesting, like, wrinkle in that, I guess, would be I'd love to have this broken down by age. I get the sense that younger people are going to be- they're going to find a m- a tougher time to work out what the emotional complexity of this person means. Does this vulnerability signal a lack of resilience and revot- resource provisioning a- at 22, when at 32 you actually realize, wow, this person's been very brave in order to get themselves to the stage where they can open up? I'm looking for different sorts of things. I understand this in the gr- in the broader context. And the reason I say this is I know all of my single friends in their 30s, if they post something that is like a dog photo, or them holding a nephew, or them-

   18. PEDr. Paul Eastwick52:51

       Yeah. [chuckles]

   19. CWChris Williamson52:52

       - talking in a kind of mindful way, those sorts of posts get way more engagement from women than they would have done in their 20s. And also, they get way more engagement from women than posting their car, or their Rolex, or their new deadlift. Like, the, the bottom line is, I think a lot of the, like, alpha posturing stuff that guys think is attractive to women st- m- might be in kind of like an ancillary way, but it also says a lot about what you value-

   20. PEDr. Paul Eastwick53:25

       Yeah

   21. CWChris Williamson53:25

       ... and what would be a better place to start. A- and controversial fucking take:

   22. PEDr. Paul Eastwick53:30

       [chuckles]

   23. CWChris Williamson53:30

       If you po- if you post pro-family stuff as a guy who's trying to get a partner, I think that you are swimming immediately into a blue ocean.

   24. PEDr. Paul Eastwick53:39

       Yeah.

   25. CWChris Williamson53:39

       Whereas if you try and post- if you try and post a Lamborghini photo, i- i- it's not even a red ocean. You haven't even jumped in. I don't think that girls care. Um, like I, I, I may be wrong, I may be- there may be floods of women in the comments who are saying, "I, I love seeing it when guys post their new car on their Instagram. Like, it makes me so attracted to them." Something tells me-

   26. PEDr. Paul Eastwick54:01

       I'm sure there are a few [chuckles]

   27. CWChris Williamson54:03

       ... that's not how many it is.

   28. PEDr. Paul Eastwick54:03

       [chuckles] No, but I, I, I love this idea. Um, I think the age idea is interesting, or at least the idea that, um, that as people age and, you know, they have more experience dating, that they kind of learn from their past experiences and grow and change. I think there's something to be said for that sort of maturation, although-

   29. CWChris Williamson54:21

       Ooh, ooh, sorry, I need to interrupt. Think about, you-- so you've got your idea of, um, over time, the compatibility-driven bonding, and that is within an interaction with a s- with a single individual, you work out that you like them more, therefore, you rate them more highly. That's kind of the way that it works. I think that you have this longitudinally across someone's dating career.... that over time-

   30. PEDr. Paul Eastwick54:51

       Oh, that's cool.
7. 58:20 – 1:14:54

   Waiting to Have Sex: Does It Really Improve Relationships?

   1. CWChris Williamson58:20

      I, I guess the, the question that comes to mind is: How much of attraction is just a matter of taste and timing, then? What's the role of taste and timing when it comes to attraction?

   2. PEDr. Paul Eastwick58:31

      I think it's a lot of it. Um, if we look at, at people who are meeting for the first time, I alluded to this earlier, but if you look at that consensus component, it's totally there, but compatibility, what we might call taste and timing, I mean, [chuckles] that's sort of wrapped up in the, in the term compatibility, but, um, that's gonna be a little bigger, and it ends up growing more over time. Now, the tricky thing about taste and timing is that it is remarkably hard to predict, 'cause you might think, like, "Well, I can sort of make use of this whole compatibility component by, I don't know, like, if I really wanna be with somebody who's tall," for example, "if I just, like... You know, okay, let's line up the tall guys, and I can- you know, I'm more likely to find somebody who's gonna especially appeal to me." And this is just another one of those challenges. It doesn't quite work that way. Like, we know compatibility is important, but it's remarkably hard to predict, and a lot of it comes through conversation, but it's often, like, the random, like, sidetracks that we get onto in conversations, where two people find that, oh, like, whoa, we w- you know, uh, had the same, like, uh, you know, elementary school teacher three years apart, or something like that, right? You find those little nuggets, those little moments of serendipity while you're talking with somebody else. That's where a lot of the magic comes from, but it's just remarkably hard to predict that stuff.

   3. CWChris Williamson1:00:03

      Okay, what about short-term versus long-term distinctions? Is it alpha chads versus beta dads or sort of hookup material versus relationship material? Are these things true?

   4. PEDr. Paul Eastwick1:00:13

      Not exactly. Uh, what is true is, as we've talked about, some people are better in the initial attraction realm, and so what that means is that if you're somebody that's a 10, you're gonna have more hookup opportunities. You're gonna have more sex partners over the course of your life. Um, you know, these sorts of short-term successes, you'll have more of those. The issue is that, and this is, again, this is like, wait, what? These guys, um, they actually-

   5. CWChris Williamson1:00:46

      And girls.

   6. PEDr. Paul Eastwick1:00:46

      aren't... And girls. [chuckles] Um, there's no real long-term-... cost to that. In other words, the attributes that make somebody desirable in the short term, they're just irrelevant to a person's long-term desirability. Attractiveness makes people-

   7. CWChris Williamson1:01:05

      Not irrelevant.

   8. PEDr. Paul Eastwick1:01:06

      No, truly, it, the correlation of zero with, uh, they, uh, you know, how good their partners will ultimately rate them. In fact, if anything, some of this stuff goes in the opposite direction.

   9. CWChris Williamson1:01:20

      Okay, question-

   10. PEDr. Paul Eastwick1:01:21

       So if you-

   11. CWChris Williamson1:01:21

       Question.

   12. PEDr. Paul Eastwick1:01:21

       Yeah.

   13. CWChris Williamson1:01:21

       Just a, a question on that. If over time, a husband or a wife was to gain a lot of weight, which is probably a reliable way to decrease your attractiveness, most people would rather be of a healthy weight than, than, than not. Very few people look good, better fat than look g- better at a, a fit body weight.

   14. PEDr. Paul Eastwick1:01:41

       Yep.

   15. CWChris Williamson1:01:43

       Are you saying that that would have no predictive power over whether or not their partner would still be attracted to them?

   16. PEDr. Paul Eastwick1:01:48

       I, I'm, I'm, I- you know, all the data I've seen, all the attractiveness data I've seen, I mean, you're d- you're describing a trend over time, and I'm pretty sure that study hasn't been done. But just straight up, what is the attractiveness level of these people? And I'm going to correlate that with the romantic satisfaction of their partners, how happy they are, or do I want to continue this relationship into the future? Correlation is near zero. It just doesn't-

   17. CWChris Williamson1:02:13

       Okay

   18. PEDr. Paul Eastwick1:02:13

       ... predict much of anything.

   19. CWChris Williamson1:02:14

       I, I, I understand what the data may suggest, even though we don't have data around this specifically, but I think we can all use intuition, and that can be sufficiently powerful here, that if your husband gains 50 pounds over the space of three years, the likelihood that you see him in the exact same way-- or, uh, take it to an, do reductio ad absurdum, 150 pounds. Like, y- y- you're, you're talking about attractiveness can't be zero. It simply can't be zero.

   20. PEDr. Paul Eastwick1:02:41

       Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Uh, look, I, I t- I totally get it, and people will have... people will have experiences like what you're talking about, and, [chuckles] and, and be like: "Well, then I don't buy the data." A- and, and I absolutely get it. I'm just... like, I gotta work with, [chuckles] with what's in front of me. I will note this, um, it is true that, like, as people go through changes and as they age, like, we can look at things like age, what does that do over time? As people age, especially, like, into middle age and all of the things that come with that, there is an overall decrease in people's satisfaction, right? So and, and, and look, some of that is related to the fact that challenges emerge as you have kids. Like, jobs are often really hard when you [chuckles] get into your 40s and 50s. So you do s- and, and, and probably people get more out of shape, too. So I totally buy that that can be part of that broader age-related trend. Um, so, uh, so, so I do think there is something to that. But if we're thinking about, like, you know, differences between people, and a lot of the way these studies are done, it's like I get some attributes on you at baseline, and then I use that to predict how your partner feels about you, you know, three months later, six months later. You know, w- we're not talking about the kinds of time frames that, that i- in your example. But with those kinds of studies, the attributes that make somebody more desirable, the confident guys, uh, and, and, and women, [chuckles] um, the attractive men and women, just, uh, when you use that to predict long-term relationship success, um, it just doesn't do all that much.

   21. CWChris Williamson1:04:22

       Okay.

   22. PEDr. Paul Eastwick1:04:22

       And, and actually, this is... Yeah.

   23. CWChris Williamson1:04:23

       And so going back to the short-term versus long-term distinction-

   24. PEDr. Paul Eastwick1:04:28

       Yeah

   25. CWChris Williamson1:04:29

       ... you're talking about, uh, some people signal in the way that they look, a, um, alpha or maybe easy or kind of tarty, flirty energy from the female side, um, that suggests: "I am up for short-term mating," and that people then bucket them into categories. What you're suggesting is that this doesn't necessarily seem to be true. Is it not the case, though, that people's behavior, like if you give up sex on the first date, does that not suggest something different about your motivations? Does- is there not an implication in the same way as if I turn up to the first date wearing joggers-

   26. PEDr. Paul Eastwick1:05:10

       [chuckles]

   27. CWChris Williamson1:05:10

       ... as opposed to wearing a two-piece suit-

   28. PEDr. Paul Eastwick1:05:12

       Right

   29. CWChris Williamson1:05:12

       ... that suggests something about my character? If I give up sex or if I push for sex on the first date as a man, does that not also suggest something about my personality?

   30. PEDr. Paul Eastwick1:05:24

       Um, I, I think it does suggest things about your, about your personality, and I'm certainly not going to s- suggest that it's necessarily a good idea, or at least certainly not a good idea in all contexts. But I think the, the easiest step for people to make is to think of sh- short term, long term. It's not a single dimension. Let's talk about it as two dimensions, okay? So some people are, you know, willing to have sex on the first date, and some people are not, and maybe those people will be good long-term partners, or maybe they won't be. Do you see what I mean? Like, think about it as, uh, independent ways of measuring differences between people rather than as a single dimension that we're putting people on. It actually gets more complicated than that, but we can sort of start there with the idea that, like, somebody... like, the, the n- the notches that somebody has on their bed post, it just ultimately doesn't predict that much about how happy they'll be in their relationships. Like, you know, you'll see people- you get this in, like, the family studies community. Sometimes we'll talk about, like, oh, like, having premarital sex is, like, bad for your marriage. Like, barely. Those correlations are absolutely tiny. I would not worry about that at all. So it's stuff like that. It is not the case that people who are more likely to have sex or eager to have sex early ultimately have worse relationships.
8. 1:14:54 – 1:19:17

   Why Attachment Matters in Love

   1. CWChris Williamson1:14:54

      Well, look, uh, to, to counterbalance my evolutionary psychology bona fides, um, I, I, I started off an episode maybe with Tai Tashiro, maybe with somebody else, and I was explaining... Oh, no, it was, uh, Gay Hendricks, actually. So, um, I do this episode, and I basically started off explaining my journey, and I think that this is what a lot of guys, mindful guys that try to understand human mating will go through. I started off, and I said: I want to understand human nature, so I went to evolutionary psychology, and I under- uh, began to understand adaptive explanations for behavior, proximate and ultimate, sc- male parental uncertainty, et cetera, et cetera. And then I thought, "Okay, but that doesn't necessarily explain what's happening now, so then I'm going to look at the mismatch in the modern world," and that was the next stage. So it's, okay, how do these predispositions come into contact with the real world at the moment? And that's when you start to learn about sort of tall girl problem, and manosphere, and red pill dating, and-

   2. PEDr. Paul Eastwick1:15:57

      Yeah

   3. CWChris Williamson1:15:57

      ... uh, uh, uh, sex ratio hypothesis on campuses, and so on and so forth. But that still isn't how we experience relationships. The way that we experience relationships is through our nervous system, one-on-one with another person.

   4. PEDr. Paul Eastwick1:16:12

      Yeah.

   5. CWChris Williamson1:16:12

      And sure, there are objective metrics. This person is this tall, this person earns this much, this woman's g- this is her age.

   6. PEDr. Paul Eastwick1:16:21

      Yeah.

   7. CWChris Williamson1:16:21

      But ultimately, the experience of our relationships occurs, like, in union with another person, and it's just how do we feel when we're around them? Ultimately, it all comes down to that. So I've said for a good while, I think that the evolutionary psychology world, as fantastic as it is, and as much as it's unearthed lots of cool, interesting insights, what it doesn't do is actually explain what the experience of being in a relationship is like.

   8. PEDr. Paul Eastwick1:16:49

      Yeah.

   9. CWChris Williamson1:16:49

      And I'm not convinced that this is even the realm of relationship science either. This is much closer to the realm of philosophy and psychotherapy.

   10. PEDr. Paul Eastwick1:16:57

       Yeah. No, it's a- it, it, it is, I think, an astute observation that people go through [chuckles] those stages that you're describing, and I would say that one thing that I try to do in the book is make the case that a lot of this, the human connection, right, how we feel about somebody else, it gets away from a lot of the, you know, tens will beat the twos kind of material pretty early on. One of the things [chuckles] that people can do in an initial interaction that will- it will shock you how much this can build closeness, how much this can get somebody to like you-

   11. CWChris Williamson1:17:33

       Hmm

   12. PEDr. Paul Eastwick1:17:33

       ... is ask a deeper question than you think. Something like: What is something you're worried about that you've never told anybody? And if you're willing to disclose that back, like, that is magic right there. I mean, that is the best experimental manipulation we have ever come up with in our science for getting people to like each other. It's disclose more than you naturally would by get- you know, in getting to know somebody over the course of an hour.

   13. CWChris Williamson1:17:59

       Hmm.

   14. PEDr. Paul Eastwick1:17:59

       So all of this stuff is important, and you don't have to wait until day 10 [chuckles] to get into this stuff. You can do it earlier than you think.

   15. CWChris Williamson1:18:08

       What's your, uh, definition of attachment in adulthood, then? Like, what, what is it that they're providing?

   16. PEDr. Paul Eastwick1:18:16

       [inhales] Um, I think a lot of it is around support. A lot of what attachment is, is feeling like I need to be around this person, if not literally, at least in your mind, at least through, [chuckles] you know, various forms of communication. But being in touch, uh, having somebody who's gonna be there for me when things go badly, and having them- somebody that's gonna be there for me when things go right, these are really the, the critical things that people need to feel. A lot of that ends up getting wrapped up... You know, if you're in a relationship, it gets wrapped up in, like, your daily goals, and like, how do I support you with the things you want to do, but are my needs being met? These things get very complicated very, very quickly.

   17. CWChris Williamson1:18:55

       Yeah.

   18. PEDr. Paul Eastwick1:18:55

       But the essence of attachment is essentially this sense, like, I am here for you, I trust that you're here for me, and, like, I'm kind of willing to do everything in my power, you know, within reason, to support you.

   19. CWChris Williamson1:19:08

       Right. So it's support in adversity and support in growth.

   20. PEDr. Paul Eastwick1:19:12

       ... Yeah, exactly. The, it, it, thinking about it in those sort of twin forms of support is very, very helpful.

9. 1:19:17 – 1:29:47

   Why Breakups are So Tough

   1. CWChris Williamson1:19:17

      Okay. Why are breakups so psychologically destabilizing with this perspective, then?

   2. PEDr. Paul Eastwick1:19:22

      Yeah. I mean, breakups are tough because not only have you lost something valuable to you, lost something that you cared about, you have also probably lost the person that you would normally go to in the cases where you had lost something that you cared about. So it's like this double whammy of stress, and this is why, like, when people go through breakups, they can't sleep, they don't eat p- maybe at all, [chuckles] or they, they certainly aren't eating well. Um, their immune systems are kind of a mess. Like, your body goes into fight or flight, but there's nothing to fight or flee, and so, you know, people end up... You know, you kinda get sick. So it's really a mess for people, and that, that is tied to these attachment processes. Because people don't have the sense, to the same extent, that there's somebody who's got their back, they kind of fall apart. And this is why I'm always tempted to tell people, like, "If you've got friends going through a breakup, and they're gonna wanna go through the story with you five, 10 times," like, uh, you don't really wanna hear it again, but it sure is kind [chuckles] -

   3. CWChris Williamson1:20:31

      Mm

   4. PEDr. Paul Eastwick1:20:31

      ... to, to listen to them an extra time. 'Cause remember, it's not just that they've had a bad thing happen, they've also lost their support structure that would have helped them with other bad things.

   5. CWChris Williamson1:20:44

      What... Have you looked at the evidence of how people can recover from breakups more or less effectively?

   6. PEDr. Paul Eastwick1:20:50

      Yeah, there, I mean, there are a few things people can do. Um, one thing is to, [exhales] uh, form another relationship. It's kinda cliche, but, like, this one's kinda true. [chuckles] Like, uh, like, when people form relationships, they kinda get over the prior one. I'm not commenting on the wisdom of [chuckles] repeatedly forming relationships without taking any time off for yourself. In fact, there is evidence that the longer time people have between relationships, the happier the next one will be. These are small effects, but, but they're real. Um, another thing that really matters for people, though, is having support in other people and, and forming a coherent story about what happened. And it really just matters that that story is coherent. [chuckles] Maybe that story is, "Your ex is a jackass," maybe that story is, like, "You're gonna do better next time," but y- you gotta have a, a coherent tale for how things went wrong. Uh, otherwise, it's very hard for people to get over.

   7. CWChris Williamson1:21:48

      Mm. Okay, so you need to construct a narrative that makes sense?

   8. PEDr. Paul Eastwick1:21:53

      Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, that, that, that's really key, and like, in part, that's why people [chuckles] keep wanting to rehash the story, right? That's why they want friends around to, [chuckles] to tell the story to over, and over, and over again. I mean, this can be really hard in cases where there's deception involved, and it's like you feel like you gotta, like, sift through the pieces, right? 'Cause you really need the story of, of what actually happened.

   9. CWChris Williamson1:22:17

      Why do you need-

   10. PEDr. Paul Eastwick1:22:17

       This is, yeah-

   11. CWChris Williamson1:22:18

       Why do you need the story?

   12. PEDr. Paul Eastwick1:22:20

       Well, [chuckles] it's really, you need a story, and I think it's... I think in part, the reason why is that, I mean, in general, narratives are very helpful for people. I mean, whether it's a narrative about, like, the course of my life or what I'm doing with myself this year, and people love narratives. But it's especially true in breakups, too, I think because people need to feel like, "Okay, I've gone through the, the challenge part of this story, and now I'm coming out the other side, and there's reason for hope because I have learned something. I won't make that mistake again."

   13. CWChris Williamson1:22:56

       Mm.

   14. PEDr. Paul Eastwick1:22:57

       "Or I have grown, I, I have, you know, new skills and abilities that are gonna help me next time." So when you feel those things, you have some sense of optimism for the future, and, and things just don't totally feel chaotic.

   15. CWChris Williamson1:23:12

       Mm. How much of this do you think is sort of an open-loop, closed-loop thing as well?

   16. PEDr. Paul Eastwick1:23:17

       Um-

   17. CWChris Williamson1:23:18

       Like a relationship-based zeigarnik effect type?

   18. PEDr. Paul Eastwick1:23:21

       Yeah, that's interesting. Uh, uh, yeah, I, I think that probably is part of it, that like, you need to feel like the prior thing has closed down before you can move on to the next thing.

   19. CWChris Williamson1:23:34

       I think-

   20. PEDr. Paul Eastwick1:23:34

       And, and that can be, too, why, like, getting in a new relationship helps because if you're spending all your time thinking about this new person, then you're not thinking about-

   21. CWChris Williamson1:23:42

       You're not thinking about the old one.

   22. PEDr. Paul Eastwick1:23:43

       No.

   23. CWChris Williamson1:23:43

       I suppose the problem-

   24. PEDr. Paul Eastwick1:23:43

       Exactly

   25. CWChris Williamson1:23:44

       ... the problem that you encounter there is, if you move on and you are, you haven't closed the loops in the previous one, those, the ghosts of those previous relationships are bleeding in as you're trying to form a new bond. And you're like, "Well, I, uh, this, the previous one isn't severed, really. Like, that, that loop is still open to me."

   26. PEDr. Paul Eastwick1:24:03

       Yeah, right, exactly. There is... Okay, so, so, uh, I, I think I've told you this before, but I've got this movie podcast where, with Eli Finkel, where we talk. It's called Love, Factually, and we talk about movies. And we just covered, um, My Best Friend's Wedding, and that's an incredible example of this because I think, like, the main guy that the two women are fighting over in that movie, um, he's not quite over the Jules- the Julia Roberts character. And he keeps trying to, like, bring aspects of that relationship into his new one. That's a disaster. Like, people don't wanna feel like you are retreading your old relationship with them now that you've started a new relationship. They wanna feel like this relationship is new and special, and we're carving something out together.

   27. CWChris Williamson1:24:50

       Mm.

   28. PEDr. Paul Eastwick1:24:50

       You can't just, like, borrow the pieces from the old relationship. That is a, a disastrous [chuckles] idea.

   29. CWChris Williamson1:24:55

       Well, I think the-

   30. PEDr. Paul Eastwick1:24:56

       So, you know... Yeah.
10. 1:29:47 – 1:34:49

    Are Humans Naturally Monogamous or Serial Monogamous?

    1. PEDr. Paul Eastwick1:29:47

       should.

    2. CWChris Williamson1:29:48

       What is the relationship science perspective on humans' set point mating system? Are we monogamous? Are we serially monogamous? Are we monogamish? Are we polygynous? What do you think?

    3. PEDr. Paul Eastwick1:30:02

       Yeah, it's a good question. I think we're definitely, we're creatures that attach, right? I, like, I- I'm very careful in the book not to talk about monogamy, right? Having one sex partner, 'cause I don't... I think that's, it's, like, a little bit of a distraction. So we're creatures who at- uh, attach, and we form attachment bonds. Okay, when it comes to sex specifically, I'd describe us as serial monogamists, in the sense that we often move from partner to partner. I think you can design a system that allows for attachments between people and also allows sex with multiple people, right? I think you can look at contemporary polyamorous communities and make a case that like, "Hey, here's a situation where I'm attached to you, and I have sex with you, and I'm also attached to this person, and I have sex with this person, and these relationships don't threaten each other." Humans are, are-- some humans [chuckles] are-

    4. CWChris Williamson1:31:02

       It's a rare-

    5. PEDr. Paul Eastwick1:31:03

       Okay.

    6. CWChris Williamson1:31:03

       It's a fucking rare breed-

    7. PEDr. Paul Eastwick1:31:05

       Yeah, yeah

    8. CWChris Williamson1:31:05

       ... dude.

    9. PEDr. Paul Eastwick1:31:05

       No, no, no. I, I tot- I totally get it, because a lot of times, when you're attached to somebody, you wanna feel special, and many times, feeling special means they wanna have sex with me, and they only wanna have sex with me.

    10. CWChris Williamson1:31:16

        Yeah.

    11. PEDr. Paul Eastwick1:31:17

        But, um, but, but yes, I do think of, of humans as creatures, we form serial relationships over time. Um, if we wanna sort of p- put ourselves in the serial monogamy bucket, that makes sense.... but, um, but, but I really think attachment is the key thing. Like, we have to have attachments in our lives, whether they're romantic or not, or we just completely fall apart.

    12. CWChris Williamson1:31:40

        So it would suggest that some of these pro-relationship biases have a life cycle to them, and they sort of build and then wane over time?

    13. PEDr. Paul Eastwick1:31:48

        Yeah, I mean, that is the sad truth of most [chuckles] relationships, is that people, on average, feel worse about their partners 10 years in than they did at five years, than they did at one year in. I mean, just-

    14. CWChris Williamson1:32:00

        Wow

    15. PEDr. Paul Eastwick1:32:01

        ... people kind of sour a little bit over time. Um, but it's not true for everybody. In fact, you know, probably a good chunk, maybe even the majority of relationships, people start high and stay high over time. But relationships, um, they're not all built to last forever, and building one that lasts forever is really, really hard. Like, my perspective on relationships, and, you know, I talk about these fuzzy topics, right? You know, relationship biases, attachments, you know, loving and support, blah, blah, blah. I believe in all this stuff, but I don't mean to make it sound easy. [chuckles] Like, it's really hard, and it's really easy for people to screw up, too, and when you do, the heartbreak is really, really tough. So mating markets are tough, [chuckles] maintaining relationships are tough. It's all tough, but there are, I think, helpful ways in thinking about us as creatures who search for compatibility. We care about attachment. When you come at it that way, you realize there are other avenues, and I think that can be helpful for people who are struggling.

    16. CWChris Williamson1:33:04

        Mm. I actually got the studies sent through about attractiveness and relationship longevity, so I'm going to read these to you.

    17. PEDr. Paul Eastwick1:33:10

        Okay. Okay, do you wanna-

    18. CWChris Williamson1:33:11

        So this is, uh, Christine McCallum's, uh, f- February 2017 study.

    19. PEDr. Paul Eastwick1:33:16

        Oh.

    20. CWChris Williamson1:33:16

        "Across four studies, we examined the relational repercussions of physical attractiveness."

    21. PEDr. Paul Eastwick1:33:20

        Yeah, I, I, I do know this study.

    22. CWChris Williamson1:33:21

        Okay.

    23. PEDr. Paul Eastwick1:33:22

        I, I, I, I think I was a reviewer on it. Um-

    24. CWChris Williamson1:33:25

        Okay.

    25. PEDr. Paul Eastwick1:33:25

        I don't know what to say other than this is the only study of its kind that shows, that shows this. I, I, I don't know how to explain it. Their data are, are a little unusual. It's like the attractiveness of yearbook photos predicting whether these folks ultimately get divorced. I just, um, I, um... I'm, I'm glad it's out there. I'm glad it's published. Um, I would love to see a pre-registered replication of this, 'cause all the data I've seen are not this. But, but, yes, I, I am familiar with this. Uh, to me, this one's an outlier.

    26. CWChris Williamson1:33:56

        All right. Okay, interesting.

    27. PEDr. Paul Eastwick1:33:58

        Yeah.

    28. CWChris Williamson1:33:58

        Cool.

    29. PEDr. Paul Eastwick1:33:58

        Yeah.

    30. CWChris Williamson1:33:59

        Uh, look, dude, I think it's, I think it's an interesting alternative perspective to this stuff, and-
11. 1:34:49 – 1:35:29

    Where to Find Paul

    1. CWChris Williamson1:34:49

       other side, uh, I appreciate you, mate. Where should people go to check out everything you've got going on?

    2. PEDr. Paul Eastwick1:34:53

       Um, you can buy the book. The book comes out, uh, in February, uh, right around Valentine's Day. The book's called Bonded by Evolution. You get it wherever you buy books, and find me talking about movies with Eli Finkel on the Love, Factually podcast. Uh, we release an episode every couple weeks. We cover all sorts of movies, uh, and we talk about these topics.

    3. CWChris Williamson1:35:12

       Heck yeah. I appreciate you, man. Until next time.

    4. PEDr. Paul Eastwick1:35:14

       All right. Thanks so much for having me. [upbeat music]

    5. CWChris Williamson1:35:16

       Congratulations, you made it to the end of an episode. Your brain has not been completely destroyed by the internet just yet. Here's another one that you should watch. Come on.

Episode duration: 1:35:29