The Hidden Psychology Of Sexual Conflict - David Buss | Modern Wisdom Podcast 319

1. 0:00 – 0:18

   Intro

   1. DBDavid Buss0:00

      In the workplace, a subset of men tend to be serial sexual harassers. So, it's not all men who do this, it's not all bosses who do this, it's not all men in positions of power who do this. It's a subset that engage in multiple harassment. (wind blows)

   2. CWChris Williamson0:16

      David Buss, welcome to the show.

2. 0:18 – 1:03

   Book release day

   1. CWChris Williamson0:18

   2. DBDavid Buss0:18

      Thank you. Hey, delighted to be here talking to you.

   3. CWChris Williamson0:21

      It's happy book release day.

   4. DBDavid Buss0:24

      Yes, it is. Uh, it's, it's, uh, hugely exciting. Uh, I've been getting a ton of email and people are tweeting about it and, you know, uh, Facebooking about it, so there's a... it's kind of an explosion on social media. So, it- it's, it's very exciting and, um, you know, this is one of these things where this book took me three years to write and it represents more than 30 years of research, on and off, not, not continuous research. So, uh, it is a true labor of love and so it's nice to see this thing finally hatched.

   5. CWChris Williamson0:58

      Well deserved. Really, really well deserved. I said to you before we started, I absolutely love this.

3. 1:03 – 3:01

   What is evolutionary psychology

   1. CWChris Williamson1:03

      Um, how would you char- characterize what evolutionary psychology is and why it's interesting and useful?

   2. DBDavid Buss1:10

      Oh boy, (laughs) that's a big question. Um, so but I will try to be succinct on that. But evolutionary psychology is simply psychology, uh, looked at through the lens of evolutionary theory and it basically is a, um, uh, adds important ingredients such as functionality. So, whereas most psychologists, they don't look at what is the... they don't ask the question, "What is the function of whatever psychological mechanisms we have?" Uh, they just say, you know, here's a phenomenon. The cognitive dissonance or obedience to authority or attribution, uh, bias, or, uh, uh, evolutionary psychologists ask, "Well, what is the evolved function, if any, uh, of the psychological mechanisms we have? Be they food preferences, be they mate preferences, habitat preferences, uh, coalition formation, friendship formation, navigating kinships, navigating social hierarchies." And that functional lens, uh, just posing that question adds a layer of depth to our understanding of psychology that has been missing prior to an evolutionary perspective. And so I think it, it, it brings quite a lot, uh, to the table and, um, I remember early on in, in the field of evolutionary psychology, Leda Cosmides, a, a friend and one of the founders of the field told me, um, that, uh, e- e- that there's no such thing as a non-evolutionary psychology and, um, at that time, I was a little skeptical but I've kind of come around to her view in, in the sense that there's no other causal process that we know about that could have fashioned whatever you... whatever, uh, psychological mechanisms we have housed in our brain which, of course, is an evolved organ.

   3. CWChris Williamson2:59

      That's perfect. What an answer. Um,

4. 3:01 – 6:32

   Why men behave badly

   1. CWChris Williamson3:01

      this book, in the US is Why Men Behave Badly, and in the UK it's Bad Men?

   2. DBDavid Buss3:07

      Yes. Yeah, that's right. (laughs)

   3. CWChris Williamson3:09

      Yeah. Um-

   4. DBDavid Buss3:09

      I'll tell you the brief story about that.

   5. CWChris Williamson3:11

      ... story about that.

   6. DBDavid Buss3:11

      Yeah.

   7. CWChris Williamson3:11

      Well, first off, why Men Behave Badly at all? Why not Men and Women Behave Badly?

   8. DBDavid Buss3:16

      Uh, well, so first of all, the book is about sexual conflict and the, the co-evolution of conflict between males and females which goes back about 1.3 billion years. Uh, so sexual... back to sexual reproduction. But I titled the book, um, When Men Behave Badly: The Hidden Roots of Sexual Deception, Harassment and Assault for a very particular reason. And that is that I... when I started, I, uh, thought I was gonna give equal treatment to men and women and there's a sense in which I do, so the first five chapters or so are equally, uh, bad stuff men do and bad stuff women do. So, for example, deception and internet dating, uh, is a, is a prime example. But when you get to the more, um, high cost-inflicting, uh, behaviors, so intimate partner violence, stalking, sexual coercion, sexual harassment, sexual assault, uh, the more extreme you get, men tend to have more of a monopoly on these more dramatic and cost-inflicting behaviors. And so, uh, over the, the last four chapters of the book, I focus more and more heavily on men as perpetrators and women, uh, women's co-evolved defenses to prevent becoming a victim, uh, of these, uh, of these horrendous, uh, generically f- forms of sexual violence. Um, and, uh, so, um, and so that's why I call it When Men Behave Badly. It's not, it's not a book about male bashing, uh, because I specifically talk about it's not all men. Uh, some, some men are more prone to these forms of sexual violence than others and we can get into that in, in detail. And also, when men behave badly, uh, even men who do it don't do it all the time. I mean, it's one of the interesting things is you can have a man who's happily married, has a loving relationship with his wife, loving relationship with his kids, but then engages in some really bad stuff on the side. Um, and so the book tries to identify not only which men do this, but what are the circumstances in which men are most likely to do it. And so, uh, so, so anyway, so that's the, the title for the US. Um, the UK, uh, what happened was (laughs) here, here's the twist on that. My, my UK publisher told me that, that a while back there was a UK sitcom called some... it's called... you can clarify for... it's called, uh, uh, Men Behaving Badly? Is that the title?

   9. CWChris Williamson5:45

      Yeah, with Martin, with Martin Clunes, yes.

   10. DBDavid Buss5:48

       Yeah, a- and so it's a, a sitcom and so my publisher, my UK publisher's worried that people would... that in the UK would have that association and think that this was-

   11. CWChris Williamson5:57

       Some sort of biopic of the Men Behaving Badly sitcom series written-

   12. DBDavid Buss6:03

       (laughs)

   13. CWChris Williamson6:03

       Written by David Buss. (laughs)

   14. DBDavid Buss6:05

       Right, right, right. So, uh, so the... hence, hence the, the, the change in title, uh, to, to Bad Men in the UK edition, but the content is identical and the subtitle, uh, The Hidden Roots of Sexual Deception, Harassment and Assault-... is identical. So, the book is identical except for that, um, main title in the UK.

   15. CWChris Williamson6:25

       Cool. Yeah, well, at least Martin Clunes isn't knocking on your door asking for royalty or usage-

   16. DBDavid Buss6:29

       (laughs)

   17. CWChris Williamson6:29

       ... or usage or something like that. That would be a bad idea.

5. 6:32 – 8:55

   Sex differences in mating strategies

   1. CWChris Williamson6:32

   2. DBDavid Buss6:32

      Right.

   3. CWChris Williamson6:32

      So, before we- before we get into it, what do we need to know about sex differences and male-female mate preferences before we can kind of get into this discussion?

   4. DBDavid Buss6:41

      Uh, okay, well that's, uh, yeah, th- uh, well, that- that's an important topic because sex differences in mating strategies and in sexual psychology, these are the root causes of conflict between the sexes. And so if you don't understand those, you can't understand why men and women get into conflict. And this is in the context of, um, you know, this is kind of surprising to me in broad- in the broader field of psychology. Uh, and that is that in psychology we have a replication crisis, which you and your re- your listeners probably are familiar with. But these sex differences are among the most robust and replicable findings in the entire field of psychology. While e- everyone else is having a crisis, these are replicable and they're solid and they're not trivial in- in magnitude either. So, um, so to get into just a few of them, one, uh, a key critical one is sex differences in desire for sexual variety. And what I mean is the sex differences in desire for a variety of sex partners. And so this is measured in a, uh, many different ways. So how many sex partners would you ideally like to have over the next year, five years, 10 years? Um, you know, m- men say, uh, well, over the lifespan, men say about 18 sex partners would be about right. Women say four to five. Um, many just say one. Uh, so, uh, sexual fantasy is, uh, studies of sexual fantasy is another indication. So, uh, how often do you have sexual fantasies and about whom do you have sexual fantasies? And men t- have sexual- tend to have sexual fantasies about a- a wider variety of different, uh, women, uh, if they're heterosexual, and, um, and they also d- do more partner switching during the course of a single sexual fantasy episode. So, uh, so just- just to give one example, so w- in studies of sexual fantasy, one man said, uh, "My fantasy is I'm- I'm the mayor of the town," so high status, "and all the women down Main Street, uh, have no clothes on, and every day I- I get up and I stroll down Ma- Main Street and decide which woman I want to have sex with that day." Uh, well, the

6. 8:55 – 12:00

   Desire for sexual variety

   1. DBDavid Buss8:55

      very, very-

   2. CWChris Williamson8:55

      That's like an inverse (laughs) ... That's like an inverse of the emperor has no clothes. It's like the town's-

   3. DBDavid Buss8:59

      (laughs) Right.

   4. CWChris Williamson8:59

      ... the townspeople have no clothes. And they're all female.

   5. DBDavid Buss9:03

      Yes. (laughs) Right, and they're all female. Uh, so, but, uh, so that's just kind of an illustration and, uh, and then there's, like, s- how often you think about sex, um, how often do you fantasize about sex with someone who just- a woman who just passes you on the street. Um, uh, if you've known a person for a particular length of time and find them attractive, how much, uh, time would, uh, elapse before you were willing to have sex with them. And for men it's close to zero (laughs) , you know, one second. Um, you know, and women typically need a lot more information. So there are many different sources of evidence that all converge on this key sex difference in desire for sexual variety, and this is one of the things that, um, c- n- now of course, one of the things that you were kind enough to ask about evolutionary psychology, one of the things that evolutionary psychology does is it distinguishes between underlying psychology and its expression in manifest behavior. And so, uh, many men have these desires, but they don't just act on them. They- we- un- fortunately. This would be disastrous if men just walked down the street and had a desire for sex with a woman and just, like, lunged, you know, that would be, um, total disaster and chaos, uh, and in fact men probably don't... Uh, they- they might act on one out of a thousand of these, uh, sexual- these forms of sexual ideation. Uh, uh, and so a lot of men, and so even this includes men who are married or men who are already mated, they might have sexual attractions to women other than their partner, which they often do, and women do as well, men just have them more frequently, um, but they may choose not to act on them for a variety of reasons that have to do with other components of our evolved psychology, our concern with reputation, uh, our concern with preserving our long-term mateship, uh, our- our concern with not damaging, um, our- uh, the social opinion in the eyes of our family, our peers, our- our work colleagues and so forth. Um, and so, um, and so that's why some people I think mistakenly divide up the world into, like, two causal forces, like there are sociocultural forces and then there are evolutionary forces. And what evolutionary psychology does is it breaks down the- this, uh, false dichotomy as we call it, uh, because our evolved psychology is designed to be responsive to these social and cultural conditions, including social norms and social reputation.

   6. CWChris Williamson11:36

      How so?

   7. DBDavid Buss11:38

      Uh, well, we- we evolved in small groups, uh, and w- the small groups had status hierarchies. All groups have status hierarchies, informal or formal. And your position within the status hierarchy influences a whole raft of things, like who wants to be your friend or ally and who's willing to mate with you. Uh, so, um-

   8. CWChris Williamson11:59

      Specifically

7. 12:00 – 15:32

   Status and reputation

   1. CWChris Williamson12:00

      for men more than women?

   2. DBDavid Buss12:02

      Uh, well, for both. So- so I've studied, um, status and reputation, things that lead to increases and decreases in status and reputation. Both sexes are very, very concerned about reputation, including importantly in this context sexual reputation. So, um, you know, you have a reputation as a, uh-... cheater, uh, or as a guy who uses women, or as a guy who cheats on his wife, I mean, that's gonna damage your reputation, which is why men who do act on their... married men or men in relationships who do act on their sexual attractions to other women, uh, go to great effort to try to conceal it. You know? So, um, they try to have their cake and eat it too, so to speak. So they wanna, uh, engage in the sexual activity but not incur the social costs of that being known. Uh, so, um, (laughs) yeah. So, uh, so anyways, so that's a big sex difference. Other sex differences include sex differences in mate preferences. So for example, um, uh, you know, and, and I demonstrated this early on, quite a while ago in my study of 37 cultures, that men, uh, and women, they share many mate preferences. So both sexes want partners who are intelligent, kind, healthy, dependable, and so forth. No one wants a, a mean, stupid, uh, disease-ridden partner.

   3. CWChris Williamson13:29

      (laughs)

   4. DBDavid Buss13:30

      Uh, but, um, but there are some sex differences that are universal and, and, and men tend to prioritize relative youth and physical appearance, physical attractiveness in potential mates. Women also value physical appearance, and this is one of the mistakes people make. They think that women don't care about it. They, they care about it a lot, they just don't care about it as much as men do. Men, it's kind of like it, it overwhelms a lot of other things in the male brain, the physical appearance. Uh, and women tend to prioritize financial resources, uh, and, and even more important, the personality characteristics and social characteristics that lead to resources over time. So, things like, is the man ambitious? Does he have drive? Does he have goals? Or is he, you know, sitting around playing video games all day and, you know, eating Cheetos and drinking beer? Uh, which is perfectly okay. (laughs) It's just that women like, like men who have some, uh, some drive, and, and also social status. So social status, as I mentioned, that's a, a key correlative access to reproductively relevant resources. And so, um, you know, uh, in all groups, resources are heavily concentrated toward the top and then, and then get less and less as you move toward the bottom of the, bottom of the barrel, social status wise. And so those are some sex differences in mate preferences, and they also can create conflict between the sexes. Uh, so, um, for example, violation of those things is a key cause of divorce in relationships. So if the guy loses his job, and this is a topic maybe we can get into a little bit later, uh, 'cause during the pandemic there's been a spike in intimate partner violence, and one of the predictors of intimate partner violence is guys who don't have the benefits to provide women. And so they inflict costs on the woman in an effort to try to keep her.

8. 15:32 – 19:29

   Intimate partner violence

   1. CWChris Williamson15:32

      Uh, to adjust the mate value discrepancy?

   2. DBDavid Buss15:34

      Yeah, to adjust the perceived mate value discrepancy. So-

   3. CWChris Williamson15:38

      Yeah.

   4. DBDavid Buss15:38

      ... yeah. So, so, and this is a horrendous thing, and people might be very upset by this, but I, uh, think there's good evidence that one of the... that intimate partner violence, as abhorrent as it is, it actually has a function. And the function is, is a, is a desperate measure to hold onto a woman who, who wants to leave. She wants to defect from the relationship, uh, or, you know, dip her toe in the water with an infidelity to see if there might be a better mate out there for her. Uh, and so, you know, one of the things that, uh, these, uh, violent guys do, guys who are violent toward their romantic partners, is they try to cut off their, their friendships. They try to cut off their kin ties, their relationships with their family, their genetic relatives, in an effort to, uh, strip them of bodyguards. And this is, this is one of the things that I talk about in the book also that, is women's defenses against some of these forms of male bad behavior is bodyguards. And bodyguards are absolutely critical, and so if the woman doesn't have, you know, the father around, the brother, the sisters, the mother, the, the friends, male and female friends, uh, very difficult for an abuser to abuse someone if they, if the woman has these social allies, the bodyguards. And so it's a critical defense, which is why (laughs) these, uh, abusive men try to cut off those, uh, bodyguards from, from the woman. So, um, anyway, I don't know quite how we (laughs) got onto that track. I do have a whole chapter to intimate partner violence, um, and I think it's a r- it's a really important topic because, uh, even in the most, um... Like, we, we might think about it as, uh, you know, horrendously worse in some cultures than others, and, and it is. Uh, but even in the most, uh, sexually egalitarian cultures such as, say, the Scandinavian cultures, uh, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, uh, uh, uh, the Netherlands, int- rates of intimate partner violence are around 27 to 30% in terms of lifetime incidents. That is, the percentage of women who will, um, experience intimate partner violence at some point, uh, in their lives. So that, that's what you're talking about, close to a third of women who are subject to this. So, I think it's a very important topic and has been relatively neglected. Um, it's certainly relatively neglected by, by evolutionary psychologists, and that's why they've got a whole chapter to it. It's, it, it's a form of sexual violence in that, uh, even if the, um, the male doesn't rape his partner, which is another topic that I, that I talk about, uh, the physical violence is basically an effort to control her sexuality. And that's why I put it under the umbrella of sexual violence.

   5. CWChris Williamson18:32

      Mitigating that sexual access is something that you talk about in detail to do with mate guarding and jealousy. And it seems to me like the, the effects that you're saying there where you have an incredibly controlling, mostly, usually male partner in a relationship, it feels like that mate guarding turned up to 11. We feel that the partner that we're with is slipping away from us. We are concerned that, y- you talk about, um, uh, creating a small bridge back into the dating pool rather than jumping in feet first and, and getting cold, I think you say.

   6. DBDavid Buss19:05

      Yeah.

   7. CWChris Williamson19:05

      Or you can create backup mates, or you can trade up in value. There's all of these different tactics that both men and women use.

   8. DBDavid Buss19:11

      Yeah.

   9. CWChris Williamson19:12

      Um, and it feels like the situation you've just described there with the men is when it gets, it gets turned right up to 11. Uh, some of the things that I went through this book, the number of photos I've taken and sent to my buddy Rob Henderson, who we are mutual friends with, and he's a past-

   10. DBDavid Buss19:25

       Ah. Ah.

   11. CWChris Williamson19:26

       ... past guest on this. The,

9. 19:29 – 25:23

   Over and under perception bias

   1. CWChris Williamson19:29

      I think one of the most interesting insights that I took from your book was the understanding of the over-perception and the under-perception bias. I think it's a cure for so many problems between-

   2. DBDavid Buss19:39

      Yes.

   3. CWChris Williamson19:39

      ... men and women and how they don't understand each other. Can you explain that?

   4. DBDavid Buss19:43

      Yes. Uh, yeah, it's a, a great question, and, and that's another, that's another important sex difference. So, the, uh, the kind of classic case is man and woman are interacting, woman smiles at the man or casually touches his arm, or incidentally brushes up against him, and he infers sexual interest on her part, or romantic interest, when it may not be there at all. Uh, so, uh, and, and this is, uh, very robust finding that, um, uh, you know, women often say, "Well, I was just being friendly." Uh, and in fact, a smile is one of those inherently ambiguous cues. You know, it could signal friendliness. It could signal sexual interest. It could signal, uh, nervousness if they, she think the guy's a creep. Um, and, but men tend to over infer sexual interest when it, when it's not there. And, and, and we think that they do, um, this is work that I initially developed with Marty Hazelton, who's a former graduate student, now a professor at UCLA. And, um, and what we argue is that it's, it's an adaptive bias. So there's a reason that men have this, and that is that missing out on sexual opportunities, uh, was extremely costly over, over evolutionary time. Uh, and so men have this, uh, kind of a over-perception bias to err on the side of not missing out on anything, even if there are, it results in many false alarms. You know, turns out no, the woman's not interested in ... Although we also argue, and this is an interesting thing, that, um, the fact that they think she's interested could actually be functional in converting her from initially uninterested to being interested. Uh, so, um-

   5. CWChris Williamson21:26

      Because it encourages behavior in the male which is more likely to signal that he is interested, which can cause reciprocal interest from the female?

   6. DBDavid Buss21:34

      Yes, that and, uh, confidence. So, if, if the man thinks she's interested, he's gonna be more confident.

   7. CWChris Williamson21:40

      Got you.

   8. DBDavid Buss21:41

      And women value confidence and interpret it as a sign of, uh, status and, um-

   9. CWChris Williamson21:46

      Even, even if it's unwarranted in reality-

   10. DBDavid Buss21:49

       (laughs) .

   11. CWChris Williamson21:49

       ... but then, but then manifests from the male?

   12. DBDavid Buss21:52

       Yeah. But that's why, like, if, if he thinks, uh, "Oh, she's not interested at all, and, but I wanna try to approach her," he's not gonna be very self- self-confident in that approach. But if he thinks, "Oh, she's genuinely interested," even if it's a false belief, he's gonna ran- he's gonna feel more confident in his approach toward her. Uh, a- and then on the flip side, we also found, and this is work that I did with, uh, Karen Parillou, a- another former student, now a professor. And w- what we, we did a kind of like a speed dating paradigm in our lab where we brought men and women into the lab and had 'em interact with each other. And then afterwards say, "Do you think this person was sexually interested in you? How interested are you in them?" Et cetera. Then kind of rotate. Uh, and what we found is that women, uh, under-perceived men's sexual interest. That is, women thought, "No, this guy's, he's not interested in me," when in fact the guys are saying, "Yes, I'm very interested in her." Uh, and so they tended to under-perceive. Now, this is an interesting thing. This was the first time that's ever been documented. Um, and, uh, and- and we have a couple hypotheses about why that's the case. So, one is that men who are genuinely sexually interested try to eliminate, um, expressing the sexual components of their interest, uh, because in fact it backfires. So, and we, we know this, and there are, there are studies that have, uh, documented this. I did one in, in my lab as well, where the more s- overtly sexual the approach, uh, the less th- effective it is. So, men, in essence, feign genuine interest, long-term interest, um, caring about what she thinks, how she feels and so forth, and dis- and disguise any sexual interest at all. And so it may be that women are sort of, "Well, he displayed no cues of sexual interest, so, um, you know, I don't think he's interested." And the guys are saying, "Yes, I've been thinking about her f- constantly." So, um, so, so but what, what this does though is this, uh, especially the male sexual over-perception bias results in sexual conflict, because what it means is that guys are hitting on women and approaching women, uh, who are genuinely not interested. And, and, and so that creates just a prob- a problem, especially in the workplace. But, uh, let's talk about the workplace, for example. Uh, in that he thinks he's int- she's interested in him, so he approaches her, uh, and she is in a work context, so she might be a coworker, she might, the guy, uh, who's, uh, approaching might be his- her boss. And so she has to deflect this sexual intention in a way that doesn't cause, um, resentment on the part of the guy.... 'cause if it's a, if it's a coworker or boss, they can do reputational damage to her. They can not give her promotions. Uh, they can undermine her in various ways. And so women do things like, uh, uh, "Oh, I, I, I can't, I can't go out with you. Um, I have a boyfriend." Uh, or, "I can't go out with you. I'm, I'm, I'm vis- I'm seeing my girlfriends for a glass of wine tonight." Uh, and so they try to deflect it rather than saying, "Look, um, I don't find you attractive at all. I'm not interested at all. Please don't ever ask me again for anything." Um, they, they can't do that, so they, they try to basically, uh, wh- what, uh, sometimes is called a soft rejection. So, uh, uh, you know, so... But it puts women in

10. 25:23 – 31:33

    Sexual harassment

    1. DBDavid Buss25:23

       this, in this really, uh, difficult dilemma because then sometimes the guys come back and say, uh, "Well, get rid of your boyfriend," or, "Is your boyfriend in town now? Um, you know, if not, let's, uh, let's go out." Or, or, um, "You're busy tonight. How about, uh, next Wednesday?" Uh, and so, and so the... And what it turns out is with sexual harassment that in the workplace, a subset of men tend to be serial sexual harassers. So it's not all men who do this. It's not all bosses who do this. It's not all men in positions of power who do this. It's a subset that engage in multiple harasses, harass- harassment. And so women often know who these guys are. They'll sometimes tell a new female worker, like, "Watch, don't be, you know, alone with this guy in the supply room or whatever, 'cause he's got wandering hands," or, uh, whatever. So, uh, but, um, but, but again, part of that is the sexual over-perception bias can lead to, or contribute to, sexual harassment. And, and that's why I think one of the key things is we have to understand at a deep level the underlying sexual psychology of men and women and how they differ in order to get at the root causes of sexual conflict in order to eliminate or, or at best, uh, uh, eliminate at best or minimize the sexual conflicts that occur, uh, 'cause these are, these are pervasive forms of conflict. They, uh, they occur in many different species, and they occur in all human cultures. And, uh, one of the things that I, if I could (laughs) jump in, I'll stop and as- let you ask the question here since I'm just kinda rambling, is, uh, uh, and I borrowed this, uh, quote. I kind of... I was reading Steve Pinker's book, one of his excellent books, and, and he noted that, uh, sexual violence against women is perhaps the most widespread human rights violation in the world. And the more I thought about it, the more I think that he's right. And it's one of the things that I argue in this book, in that, uh, you ha- what you have is these forms of sexual conflict, they transcend culture. They transcend, uh, they transcend ethnicity. They transcend religious groups. Uh, it, it doesn't matter. It's like a, you could say, an equal opportunity, um, destroyer, uh, if you will. And so, uh, and it affects half of the population, uh, who are women, and it affects even more than that. So it affects all those who are primary victims, primary victims of sexual harassment, assault, uh, intimate partner violence, partner rape, um, or stalking. Uh, and, uh, and in addition, it affects all those women who have to engage in defensive maneuvers to avoid becoming a victim. So women, sometimes they can't go out at night, or they can't go out at night alone, uh, or they have to take, uh, various precautions, uh, and, and do things to prevent becoming a victim. So there's the primary victims who are victims, and there's, then there's these secondary victims, and then there are all the people who care deeply about the women who are victims. So the, the partners, the fathers, the brothers, the mothers, the sisters, the female friends, the male friends, um, who all care about this. And then they are also traumatized by the, their loved one being sexually a- abused in one of these ways. Uh, and so, and so that's why I say the most widespread human rights violation is sec- is sexual violence toward women. Uh, and getting back to the evolutionary angle on it, so we, we have, um, it, it, it is, it basically violates freedom of sexual choice. So we have, uh, at least in most Western cultures, we have f- uh, freedom of speech. We have freedom of the press. We have freedom of, uh, peaceable assembly. We have these, um, freedoms that are granted to us. But one of the freedoms that I think should be an international human right is freedom of sexual choice. Um, it, it's basically Darwin 1871, uh, who, with his theory of sexual selection, where he observed that throughout the animal kingdom, uh, females tended to be more discriminating or choosy or discerning about who they had sex with, who they mated with. Um, and, and that's why, uh, w- women have adaptations to, uh, to avoid that bypassing female choice and adaptations to be extremely upset about attempts or, or enactments of that violation, um, more upsetting than, than anything else. Uh, so more upsetting than, than just purely physical violence or other, other forms of, of violence. So, uh, and, and so, and so, so this is something that everybody should care about. And one of the goals of my book, and, and this is perhaps... uh, revealing of my arrogance or former arrogance, I've- throughout my career, I've always kind of fancied myself as a basic researcher. Like I only... I'm, um, pure science. I just study human nature.

    2. CWChris Williamson30:50

       Not applying stuff. Yeah.

    3. DBDavid Buss30:51

       Yeah, not applying stuff. And then... But then, uh, uh, I realized, as I was writing this book, that this is tremendously important information to reducing sexual violence and reducing the- these abhorrent, um, costs that are inflicted on women. And so, uh, so I've become more, more applied. And I think that this information is extremely useful in reducing, uh, the harms that are inflicted on women as a result of male sexual psychology. So, so anyway, this is a long- a long-winded, uh, diatribe there. But... So, let me pause and let you ask a question (laughs) or make a comment.

    4. CWChris Williamson31:32

       Well, I think

11. 31:33 – 34:56

    Understanding the mating world

    1. CWChris Williamson31:33

       so much of what you've gone through... And, and reading the book, I have to confess, and this will be the same for a lot of men that read it, it's uncomfortable as a man to read-

    2. DBDavid Buss31:40

       Yeah.

    3. CWChris Williamson31:40

       ... the book.

    4. DBDavid Buss31:42

       Okay.

    5. CWChris Williamson31:42

       I think that you do, uh, a good job of easing us in and explaining the lay of the land with what is, to begin with, a, a relatively sort of balanced viewpoint. But as you say, as we get towards the more extreme ends of sexual violence, there simply isn't the research, and presumably aren't the, the, um, data to underpin the research of women doing it to men. There are certain occurrences that happen, but when you get to the extreme ends, when you get to the rape, when you get to the, the violence, the intimate partner violence, and the stalking, and stuff like that, it is disproportionately caused by men. And it's very difficult, as someone who hasn't done that, to read it and think, "Well, this isn't me." And then when we see, um, overbearing and overstepping acts coming from the women's empowerment movement that, again, blame men for toxic masculinity and for the patriarchy being... It is difficult to read. And yet, at the same time, learning something like, uh, the, uh, under-perception and the over-perception bias helps me to understand not only the dynamic generally of the mating world, but it also helps me to understand other men that aren't me and myself.

    6. DBDavid Buss32:59

       Yes.

    7. CWChris Williamson32:59

       So, I think that's something that is super important. Yes, the, the insights that you have around evolutionary psychology and how they inform our understanding of sexual conflict can help women to understand the risks, to get past them if it has occurred, and to also deal with them sort of during the process as well, if they are occurring. But I think it also helps men. If people understand, if men understand the fact that the woman is probably less interested in you than she seems, and that you to her seem less interested than you seem-

    8. DBDavid Buss33:32

       (laughs) Yes.

    9. CWChris Williamson33:34

       ... if you simply understand that, there is so much more transparency around... And this is... It's the same as learning, uh, a cognitive bias, right? It's like a mating bias. It's when you learn fundamental attribution error, you actually realize, "Oh, god. Like that, that's not necessarily the way the world works. He's not an arsehole 'cause he cut me off in traffic. He might just be late."

    10. DBDavid Buss33:54

        (laughs)

    11. CWChris Williamson33:54

        "Like, 'cause I've, 'cause I've done it before." Um, but it is uncomfortable to read. And I think that's a good practice for both men and women to do. I enjoy delivering uncomfortable and harsh truths on this show as much as possible. And the reason is, it gives us the opportunity to observe what rises inside of us. It's a mindfulness exercise, right? You observe the emotion that occurs as you hear something, as you hear X number of percent of women have gone through sexual harassment, and you just want to scream out as a man, "Well, yeah, but yeah, but not me. That's not me."

    12. DBDavid Buss34:29

        Right, right.

    13. CWChris Williamson34:29

        And you go, "We weren't saying it was."

    14. DBDavid Buss34:31

        Right, exac-

    15. CWChris Williamson34:31

        That's the, that's the compulsion, that knee-jerk reaction.

    16. DBDavid Buss34:34

        Right.

    17. CWChris Williamson34:34

        Because for a lot of most recent popular culture, there has been a lot of finger-pointing. And given the stats, that makes sense.

    18. DBDavid Buss34:43

        Yes.

    19. CWChris Williamson34:43

        But also the, um, indignation of a, a, a huge swath of men is also understandable.

    20. DBDavid Buss34:52

        Yeah.

    21. CWChris Williamson34:52

        But only with the data and the understanding can we actually work out why that's the case.

12. 34:56 – 38:47

    The dark triad

    1. CWChris Williamson34:56

    2. DBDavid Buss34:56

       Yes. Oh, I think that's very eloquently, eloquently put. Uh, and, uh, I mean, I feel very much the same way that, um... I mean, I don't... To my knowledge, I don't- I haven't engaged in sexual harass- harassment or sexual coercion. Um, uh, but that's, I think, why I titled the book When Men Behave Badly, because as I said at the beginning, it's not all men. And so I think it's, it's... That's an erroneous thing. I think most men, um, you know, uh, hold their desires in check, uh, uh, for a variety of reasons that we, that we talked about. But, um, but, but some men don't. And, and, uh... And, and it's the some men that are really a, a danger, not just to women, but also to men in the form that you just alluded to, which is that, um, men get a bad rap, uh, and get blamed for things sort of as a generic half of the species, uh, when that's not appropriate. Uh, because, uh, you know, there, there are men who would never dream of engaging, for example, in sexual harassment or intimate partner violence and, um, and wouldn't do it even if you put them in the most conducive conditions for doing it. Uh, that's why some of these stable personality characteristics, uh, are critical. So in, in the book, for example, I talk about, uh, the dark triad as being critical. So the dark triad is a constellation of personality traits, that is, uh, narcissism, so, uh, psychopathy and Machiavellianism. Narcissism being characterized as... A hallmark is a sense of entitlement. So high narcissist guys, uh, they think that they're great, they think they're entitled to more than their fair share, a bigger slice of the pie, and, and, and so they overestimate their brilliance, uh, and attractiveness. They, they think they're hot, but they're not. Um, or at least they're not, um, on average more attractive than people lower on narcissism.Psychopathy is basically, uh, the empathy circuit that most normal humans have is severed. So these guys, uh, a dog gets run over by a car and they laugh. You know, they have the no empathy, uh, for, um, animals or, or other humans. That's why I actually have some litmus tests for, uh, diagnosing some of these things. So ask a guy how he feels about pets, you know, dogs or cats or, or whatever. Watch, watch him interact with them or watch him interact with a, a child. Uh, or wat- watch how he treats waiters and waitresses, that's another indication, you know. So, um, uh, and, um, and then Machiavellianism is basically people who pursue a, a, an exploitative social strategy. So these are people who sometimes come off as cooperators and then defect and cheat. Uh, they view other people as instruments or pawns to be manipulated and, uh, toyed with and moved around to, uh, a lot of like chess pieces so that they can, um, obtain maximal benefit with least effort. Uh, and so it's this constellation, uh, this, uh, dark triad, especially when you combine it with a short-term mating strategy, these guys are most likely to engage in these bad forms of behavior, like sexual harassment, sexual coercion. Uh, so, um, so it is, it is a subset of guys. And as I mentioned, a subset of guys who are doing the harassing that are ... And this is why also I think your point is a good one, that, that men and women need to be aware of these things. Uh, so there are these biases in cross-sex mind reading that if we understand them, we can make appropriate corrections, uh, a- as you, um, most eloquently

13. 38:47 – 40:47

    Why are women attracted to bad boys

    1. DBDavid Buss38:47

       put it.

    2. CWChris Williamson38:47

       Why are women attracted to bad boys then if you have this particular dark triad of traits, why do women-

    3. DBDavid Buss38:54

       Yeah.

    4. CWChris Williamson38:55

       ... get attracted towards those sort of guys?

    5. DBDavid Buss38:57

       Y- yeah. Well, well, often, uh, well, there are two things. So, so one is that they do often have characteristics that women do find attractive in mates. So these guys are often very self-confident, okay? Uh, if you're high on narcissism, you, you think you're great and you think everyone else should think you're great. And, and w- as animals, we interpret each other at our own word, so to speak. If you have high self-confidence, people think, "Oh, he must have something going for him." Um, and, uh, they're often risk-taking. Uh, and so women find guys who are willing to, who are brave in the face of danger, willing to take risks, physical risks or social risks, like, uh, telling, uh, a joke to an entire room at a party, uh, is a social risk, but also physical risk. Uh, driving motorcycles and, um, you know, parachute jumping, ski jumping, other things. So th- these guys often have traits that are attractive to women, but they're especially attractive to younger women. Uh-

    6. CWChris Williamson39:56

       Why is that?

    7. DBDavid Buss39:57

       ... so it ... Uh, I, I think part of it is, um, inexperience. Uh, so these, these guys, the high dark triad guys are disastrous as long-term mates, but they can be sometimes very exciting as short-term mates. And sometimes, uh, you know, younger women engage in ... They're the new in the mating market, they engage in experimentation, some sexual experimentation, you know, uh, mate switching and so forth. As they mature and get some more experience, they want to settle down, typically, not always, but typically into a long-term committed mateship. And these guys, uh, the high dark triad guys can be very exciting as short-term mates, but disastrous as long-term mates. And so-

    8. CWChris Williamson40:36

       And presumably the young women will have found that out, and you only probably learn that lesson a few times before you think-

    9. DBDavid Buss40:43

       Yes.

    10. CWChris Williamson40:43

        ... there's a, there's a pattern occurring here.

    11. DBDavid Buss40:45

        Yes, exactly.

14. 40:47 – 42:27

    Why arent all women born with good genes

    1. DBDavid Buss40:47

    2. CWChris Williamson40:47

       Why wouldn't that have managed to become adaptive? Why hasn't that evolved? Why, why aren't all women sort of born with that? Is it just that if it is a short-term mating strategy, then it probably would be adaptive because he's got excess fitness and excess reputation, therefore good genes, sexy son hypothesis, et cetera?

    3. DBDavid Buss41:04

       Yeah, possibly. It, uh, that, I mean, that's one, that's one hypothesis, uh, about it. Uh, another is that, uh, we live in a, um, this is, um, under the rubric of evolutionary mismatches. We live in a pretty bizarre modern world that is very different from the world in which we evolved. So we, we evolved in small groups where you would have had, um, perhaps exposure to a few dozen potential mates in your entire lifespan. Um, and in the modern world, we have access to thousands or millions of potential mates in large cities or through internet dating. Uh, and so, uh, a- a- and so these men also can engage in behavior and escape the reputational consequences that would have occurred ancestrally. So in small group living, everybody knows everyone else. And you start doing bad stuff like abusing women, uh, you're going to get a reputation they're going to either kill you or ostracize you from, from the group. In the modern environment, we don't have that. So internet dating, you're, you're meeting s- total strangers. You don't know who their social group is, you don't know what their reputation is. So with, uh, large urban settings and also geographic mobility, uh, these guys can escape what formerly would have been reputational damage, which would have been extremely costly.

15. 42:27 – 48:09

    The meninism world

    1. DBDavid Buss42:27

    2. CWChris Williamson42:27

       It's like a sexual snake oil salesman moving, proverbially moving from the, from town to town, but it's just from, from girl to girl.

    3. DBDavid Buss42:35

       Yeah.

    4. CWChris Williamson42:36

       Yeah. Um, I don't know if you're aware of this, but there is a subsection of the meninism world, or the, uh, the red pill movement world for men's rights, actively working to create dark tri- triad traits. So they to- they coach men on how to develop the dark triad traits.

    5. DBDavid Buss42:57

       Really?

    6. CWChris Williamson42:57

       It's something which is actually aspirational. I'll send you some articles, um, once we're done.

    7. DBDavid Buss43:01

       Yeah.

    8. CWChris Williamson43:01

       ... it is a fascinating corner of the internet. And some of the stuff that these guys write about, these bloggers, they're incredibly proficient writers, very, very erudite, incredibly articulate. And some of the things that they talk about are fantastic bits of advice for men. And then some of the other parts talk about how to cultivate... There's entire series of how to cultivate your, your dark triad, um, personality.

    9. DBDavid Buss43:28

       Huh.

    10. CWChris Williamson43:28

        Um, because presumably from their side, m- my theory is that these are often men who've either had no success with women or have had success with women and then been scorned. And their strategy to now deal with the inevitable or perceived inevitable pain of the dating market is to never care, is to develop that lack of empathy, is to see people as tools to be used, so on and so forth. So it almost becomes a defensive strategy that they can wrap around themselves, and then also-

    11. DBDavid Buss43:58

        Interesting.

    12. CWChris Williamson43:59

        ... to create this, um, bravado, this excess fitness which doesn't actually signal excess fitness, this excess reputation which doesn't actually signal excess reputation, and to use that, because they know they will get the success with the women from that. Plus they will inoculate themselves by never caring, by not having the empathy.

    13. DBDavid Buss44:16

        Yeah.

    14. CWChris Williamson44:16

        They can never be hurt. Um, and, yeah, it's, it's a-

    15. DBDavid Buss44:21

        Wow, that's, that's frightening.

    16. CWChris Williamson44:23

        Terrifying, terrifying. And yet, for short-term mating strategies, successful. So, eh, eh, you can imagine that in a world where that was the, that was the outcome metric that a man was optimizing for, that he might actually see what he was doing as successful, and then see it as so successful that he would coach other men on how to do it-

    17. DBDavid Buss44:45

        Yeah.

    18. CWChris Williamson44:45

        ... and write a blog about it that was very articulate. So-

    19. DBDavid Buss44:48

        Right, yeah.

    20. CWChris Williamson44:48

        Yeah, God, I mean, the, th- that whole world is, especially from an evolutionary psychology perspective, it is, it is fascinating. I wanted to talk about how men and women differ in their motivations for stalking, because that is something... I think culturally, especially among young people, we talk about young girls sort of stalking their partner's profiles, seeing the, the other girls that he's liking and stuff like that. But you mean something-

    21. DBDavid Buss45:17

        Mm-hmm.

    22. CWChris Williamson45:17

        ... a little bit different here. You don't just mean kind of, uh, distance mate guarding and kind of checking up on jealousy stuff. You mean something-

    23. DBDavid Buss45:25

        Right.

    24. CWChris Williamson45:25

        ... a little bit more intense.

    25. DBDavid Buss45:27

        Yeah, yeah. So the, what you just described I would call information gathering. Um, stalking, when I talk about stalking, I'm really referring to criminal stalking. So, eh, it's a, um, it's a, it's a really a fascinating phenomenon, eh, and w- so when it comes to criminal stalking, at least in the... I'm not sure what the UK law is, but I think they're, are, they're, I think they're similar to the US laws where, uh, eh, they're written in a way so there has to be a pattern of conduct, uh, such as following, repeated phone calls, repeated, uh, you know, tracking of the, of someone, in a, in a way that instills fear in the victim. And that instilling fear is a critical part of the definition of, of criminal stalking. And so, and so a woman who's look- Googling a guy she's interested in or, uh, checking up on his Facebook to see if he's partying with other women, that's not criminal stalking, uh, because the guy, p- presumably she's doing it, uh, he's not even aware.

    26. CWChris Williamson46:30

        She's doing it covertly, yeah.

    27. DBDavid Buss46:32

        Yeah. Uh, so, so I would separate that activity from the criminal stalking that instills fear in the victim. Uh, and when you get to criminal stalking, you have about 80% of the perpetrators are, are men and about 20%, uh, are women. So men do tend to have a monopoly, but not exclusive. So, uh, there are women who do, uh, who do stalk. I don't know if you ever saw the movie, uh, Fatal Attraction?

    28. CWChris Williamson46:57

        Yes.

    29. DBDavid Buss46:58

        Uh, with, uh, Michael Douglas ha- has a, has an, a, a brief fling with, uh, Glenn Close. He's married, has a bring, bring, uh, uh, uh, a f- brief affair with his coworker, and, uh, she just proceeds to make his life absolutely miserable, like boils his pet rabbit and (laughs) does, like it, it's like a disaster. There was a, after that movie came out, I think it was like... This is old. It was 1989, I think. After this came out, there was like a, a, uh, a rampant epidemic of sexual infidelity. So guys were terrified of having affairs.

    30. CWChris Williamson47:33

        No way. They'd been scared straight.
16. 48:09 – 51:30

    Attentional adhesion

    1. CWChris Williamson48:09

       What about unwanted sexual attention? Why do men do that? Is it just-

    2. DBDavid Buss48:16

       Yeah.

    3. CWChris Williamson48:16

       ... is it explained heavily by the, the, um, differences in perceived interest?

    4. DBDavid Buss48:22

       Well, there are a couple things there, and, uh, I, I talk about that in the, uh, in the chapter on sexual coercion. So one is, um, that, uh, a phenomenon that John Mader talks about and d- did some cool lab work on called attentional adhesion. So basically he has like a computer screen, and what he says is, uh, "An image is gonna come up, and when that im- when that, uh, and then somewhere else on the screen there will be a- an X, uh, appearing either in one of the four quadrants of the screen. When that X appears, I want you to disengage from the image you're watching and then focus on that, that X." And so basically the, in a nutshell what he found is that when men are... when the image is of an attractive woman, men have trouble disengaging their attention. So, so they, they do like, you know, "Ugh, where does that... Uh, finally I'll disengage." So he... attentional adhesion. So men have a- a- and...... uh, it's linked to... When that occurs, it's linked to a brain circuit known as the nucleus accumbens. And the nucleus accumbens is, is one of the pleasure centers of the brain. So, men literally feel pleasure from looking at attractive women. And there, there have been songs written about this. You know, "I'm, I'm a girl-watcher," uh, et cetera, et cetera. So, so men are basically, uh, th- they have evolved mechanisms to attend to physically attractive women and find it very rewarding to be... uh, to, to look at attractive women. It's just... And now that leads... That's also, that's become one of the background causal conditions for things like leering or ogling or, you know, catcalling, or, you know, s- uh, starting... I've talked to... Like, for example, one woman told me, uh, that when in her workplace, she had to tell guys... They kept staring at her breasts. And she had to, like, say, say, "Look, look, my eyes are here." Like (laughs) , she had to, like, bring their attention away from her, her breasts. And, and, so, you know, men have these, um, brain circuits that are attuned to these features of women, and, and these are part of the causal, uh, the causal, uh, background for leading to things. You know, you combine that with a sexual overperception bias, desire for sexual variety, um, the importance of physical appearance in men's sexual arousal. Uh, you know, where men see the woman, they're attracted to her, they feel pleasure looking at her, and they feel sexually aroused, and they can't imagine that she doesn't feel the same way about them.

    5. CWChris Williamson51:02

       (laughs)

    6. DBDavid Buss51:02

       Uh, and they don't. And this, this actually gets to another sex difference, which is absolutely fascinating, and, uh, I talk about it, this in the book as well, that on average, men find women more attractive than women find men. Uh, and, and this... One of the, one of the things this leads to is, uh, in the, uh, internet dating world, the top, um, 10% to 20% of men get the overwhelming avalanche of interest from-

    7. CWChris Williamson51:29

       It's a perfect Pareto,

17. 51:30 – 56:15

    Men vs women

    1. CWChris Williamson51:30

       isn't it? It's the top 20% of men for the top 80% of women, the bottom 20% of men for the bottom 20%, uh, bottom 80% of women.

    2. DBDavid Buss51:37

       Right, right. But, but it is... But, yeah, exactly. But... So, it's, it's fascinating. So, it plays out in the internet dating world, but it's fascinating to think that, you know, women just don't find men as attractive on average as men find women, so... Uh, and what that means is that men will find a larger array of women attractive, and that attraction is not reciprocated. And, and then when it's not reciprocated, men do get, uh, resentful. So, um, I don't know if they... There's, uh, this, uh, old band that I, that I love. It's part of my generation, but called The Doors. You know, Jim Morrison of The Doors? I think some, uh, younger people know about it. But anyway, uh, Jim Morrison has a lyric in one of these songs which is, uh, "Women seem wicked when you're unwanted." Um, and it kind of captures that, um, resentment that men feel. And the... And you were alluding to this, um... I don't know if it's a movement or a, uh, a, a c-

    3. CWChris Williamson52:32

       Yeah, with meninism and men's rights. Yeah.

    4. DBDavid Buss52:35

       Yeah. But there, there's an, uh, a related one which is the, the incels. Uh, in-... Acronym for involuntarily celibate.

    5. CWChris Williamson52:42

       Mm-hmm.

    6. DBDavid Buss52:42

       And these are men who are extremely resentful that, um, that they're attracted to women, they're sexually aroused by women, and that, and that attraction is not reciprocated by these women. And so they're involuntarily celibate, and, uh, and we... Sometimes it shows up in extreme cases like the, the, uh, shooter out at Santa Barbara, uh, the Isla Vista shooter, where he wrote in his, uh, I gu-... I don't know if it was a Facebook or in his diary that said, he's... on this day, "I'm tired. I'm, I'm gonna punish all these people, you know, because I'm tired of being, you know, sexually rejected. Ever since I hit adolescence, I've wanted women and they don't want me." And, and so the incels, they even have, uh, terms for guys that women are attracted to. They call them Chads, and then, and then the, the women, they call, uh, Stacys. You know, the, the, the... You know, why Stacy? I don't know. Uh, but, uh, so it's-

    7. CWChris Williamson53:40

       Do you know that the, the origin of incel actually came from a, a female?

    8. DBDavid Buss53:47

       Huh.

    9. CWChris Williamson53:48

       So the person that first posted about it was a female college student in a blog. I tracked that.

    10. DBDavid Buss53:53

        Oh, I didn't know that.

    11. CWChris Williamson53:53

        I tracked this back last year. Again, I'll find you-

    12. DBDavid Buss53:55

        Ah, cool.

    13. CWChris Williamson53:55

        ... I'll find you the article for that.

    14. DBDavid Buss53:57

        Ah.

    15. CWChris Williamson53:57

        So, let's, let's just kind of re-... try and recap that, that men, uh, undertaking unwanted sexual attention thing, right? So, we have a proclivity... Uh, men, men have a proclivity, a particular brain circuit which encourages them to look at women that are attractive, or look at them in a sexual manner, which is, I guess, what would be classed as objectifying now-

    16. DBDavid Buss54:19

        Yep.

    17. CWChris Williamson54:19

        ... in some sort of a way. Sexualizing, objectifying them. So that's hardwired into us. Not only that, but we get a reward for it. We get some sense of pleasure which is there to encourage us to do it. Must have been-

    18. DBDavid Buss54:29

        Mm-hmm.

    19. CWChris Williamson54:29

        ... evolutionary adaptive. Uh, again, it makes sense if there is the potential. If there's a 1% chance of having sex with this woman, you'd better be on your, on, on your haunches, sort of on alert to do it, just in case.

    20. DBDavid Buss54:41

        Mm-hmm.

    21. CWChris Williamson54:41

        On top of that, we have the overperception bias. We think that she is probably as interested as us. And, uh, I mean, th- that explains so much. That explains so much.

    22. DBDavid Buss54:53

        Yeah, yeah. (laughs)

    23. CWChris Williamson54:54

        Especially, it, it explains why men act that way, and it should make women... I mean, th-... I might be biased here, but that makes me feel compassion toward the men as well as the women. Because it makes me-

    24. DBDavid Buss55:07

        Yeah.

    25. CWChris Williamson55:07

        ... think you are at the mercy of your programming here.

    26. DBDavid Buss55:10

        Yeah. Well, yeah.

    27. CWChris Williamson55:10

        You're desperately trying to wrangle your nature under control to be societally acceptable.

    28. DBDavid Buss55:16

        Yes. A- and you combine that w- with the desire for sexual variety-

    29. CWChris Williamson55:21

        That was the one I forgot.

    30. DBDavid Buss55:22

        ... uh, and a high sex drive-... what that means is, and, and with respect to, uh, feeling sorry for men, I think there's a way in which that's correct in that, uh, men are saddled with these desires that can never be met, you know? That, that is-
18. 56:15 – 1:09:39

    Difference in motivations

    1. DBDavid Buss56:15

    2. CWChris Williamson56:15

       What are the differences in the motivations for stranger rape and acquaintance rape?

    3. DBDavid Buss56:20

       Difference in, in motivations? Um, well, uh, s- yeah. Stranger rape. So, so first, uh, I have a, a- as you know, a whole chapter, two chapters devoted to s- to rape or sexual assault. One, uh, dealing with the psychology of the perpetrator, the perpetrators, and one dealing with psychology of the victims of the, the defenses that women have to prevent becoming a victim or fend off the assault or deal with the aftermath. Um, and, uh, and, and this surprises some people, but the, the vast majority of rapes are not stranger rapes. They're actually a minority, 10 to 15%, uh, or so. Uh, most rapes occur, uh, they're, they're date rapes or acquaintance rapes, uh, and even, uh, partner rapes. So, and, and, and this is an interesting historical fact that marital rape used to be an incoherent concept. That, that is, people, if you say marital rape, the husband raped his wife, they'd say, "What are you, what are you talking about? That, that can't occur." Uh, and at least in the United States and most Western cultures, the, there is now a, a, a law that, uh ... So the law used to mean if you raped a stranger, that was criminal activity. If you raped your part, your romantic partner or your, your spouse, that was not criminal activity. Uh, and so, uh, now who created these laws? (laughs) And it's interesting that these laws are a reflection of male sexual psychology. "Well, this is my partner, right? I'm entitled to sexual access to her, uh, whenever I, whenever I want." Uh, and, um, uh, so, uh, so, so you combine those with acquaintance rapes and date rapes, and then things like, uh, I don't know if it's the stereotype, but it has some, some truth, fraternity parties on college campuses where the guys spike, spike the drinks, um, typically with high, uh, amounts of alcohol so that you don't taste the alcohol and, uh, you know, this kind of sweet, um, punch that they, that they serve. And, um, uh, a- and one of the stereotypes is that the guys who rape are these kind of ugly, low mate value, drooling strangers who are jumping out at a woman from a dark alley. And that's not true. And one of the things I talk about in the book is ... So this is one of ... It's kind of a cool example of an evolutionary hypothesis that I think has been largely falsified or at least is not correct in its original form, and that's what's called the mate deprivation hypothesis, that is that it's, uh, uh, the loser males basically who can't-

    4. CWChris Williamson59:05

       These incels that we talked about earlier on.

    5. DBDavid Buss59:06

       Yeah, yeah, who can't attract a woman through normal means resort to rape as a last-ditch strategy. And it turns out that, uh, that it's almost the reverse. That is g, the, the best predictors of who does the raping is guys who are actually successful, they ha- have a short-term mating strategy, high, high sex drive, high desire for sexual variety, uh, and they can get away with it. So in the modern environment, the, the, the guys that have made the news, uh, Bill Cosby, Harvey Weinstein, uh, even the governor of New York, uh, A- Andrew Cuomo, less, more sexual harassment than, than rape on his side, uh, Jeffrey Epstein would be another one, these guys are often very wealthy, very high in social status, uh, but they're able to get away with it because of their power, because of their wealth, and they can pay off victims. So for example, the, you know, uh ... Well, and this occurs, and deviating a little bit from your exact question, um, sexual harassment that, that occurred on, um, uh, Fox News, for example, by Bill O'Reilly and Roger Ailes and everything, it turned out these guys were able to pay off the women with large monetary settlements. They had nondisclosure agreements. Uh, so whereas guys who are the, at the low end of the resource and status totem pole, they, they can't get away with it, uh, as much. And so if you talk about people who have been convicted of rape, uh, th- yes, they do fall at the lower end of th- this totem pole, but that's not a reflection of the guys who actually do it-

    6. CWChris Williamson1:00:48

       Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

    7. DBDavid Buss1:00:48

       ... um, and get away with it.

    8. CWChris Williamson1:00:50

       What that suggests is that most men have a desire to do it and only those who have the faculty to be able to get away with it with limited costs or are sufficiently motivated actually end up committing it, and this is something-

    9. DBDavid Buss1:01:08

       Yeah.

    10. CWChris Williamson1:01:08

        ... that you talk about here, uh, in, in the book about are all men potential rapists.

    11. DBDavid Buss1:01:13

        Right, right. And, and I, I think that the, the answer i- the answer to that is unknown, but it's probably no. I think that, you know, to do the experiment, what you'd have to do is put men in-... the, a low-cost situation, where there would be zero penalties for engaging in rape. And the closest proximity we have to that would be a w- warfare context, where you're in a group that has just killed all the males in this group, and there's this group of helpless females with no defenders. Um, and rape in warfare, of course, is, is very common, but, but not all men do it. And I think that there is, there are men, uh, and we don't know what percentage, who would never, even under the most, quote, "optimal circumstances," would never engage in rape. Um, and, and I think it's, you know, your, uh, earlier reflection that, you know, these, you know, when they say, "All men are doing these things," you say, "Well, know that I'm not doing those things." And I, I think so I think that the answer is no. I think that, uh, the, the all men, we can't say definitively, 'cause obviously we can't do this study where we put men (laughs) in these situations. Say, "Okay, we're gonna slaughter all the bodyguards of these women and put you in this no-caught situation." We obviously can't run experiments like that. Uh, but, um, you know, if I were in the armed services as a psychologist doing studies, I would look at, well, what are the characteristics of the men who do rape in those circumstances and characteristic of men who do not? And I think, again, the dark triad is probably gonna play a big role, uh, in which men do and which men do not.

    12. CWChris Williamson1:02:57

        How do you think men can protect themselves from enacting sexual assault of all types?

    13. DBDavid Buss1:03:05

        Uh, I, I think deep knowledge of our evolved sexual psychology is key. And, and we, we covered some of these bases earlier. I think that it, it really, we really have to understand that we do have this sexual over-perception bias. And I'll tell you a, a very brief story, um, on that, uh, that caused me to correct m- my, my, uh, sexual over-perception bias to the degree that I can. So some of these things are more easily correctable than others. So, so I was... Uh, I teach a course in, uh, human mating strategy, psychology of human mating, and I was... This was a, a, a while back, and I was teaching about the sexual over-perception bias. So this is, we're talking a long time ago. Um, and as I was ta- describing the sexual over-perception bias, there was a woman in the class who just, like, kind of lit up like a light bulb, and I thought something I s- just said really struck a nerve with her. And sure enough, class ended, she comes up to me afterwards. She was a very attractive woman, very kind of a smiley disposition, and she said that this perfectly explained why, uh, it, her relationship with her boyfriend ended. And it ended because they would go to parties, they would go to bars together, she and her boyfriend, and other guys would just be hitting up on her right and left. And so she was attractive, but also she was very smiley, very friendly. Uh, and the boyfriend c- was, like, constantly jealous. And so, he couldn't take it, and she couldn't take it. And here's the thing. So I had just been teaching about the sexual over-perception bias. I thought she was trying to hit on me.

    14. CWChris Williamson1:04:45

        (laughs)

    15. DBDavid Buss1:04:45

        Uh, so it was like, I, I still, with that knowledge, had difficulty turning it off. Now, of course, you know, then I, I go back to my office, and then I have the metacognition that, no, you know, it was-

    16. CWChris Williamson1:04:58

        Idiot. Yes.

    17. DBDavid Buss1:04:58

        ... my sexual over-perception bias.

    18. CWChris Williamson1:05:00

        Yeah, yeah.

    19. DBDavid Buss1:05:01

        Uh, but, um, but I think, I think that knowledge about these things has to help to reduce conflict between the sexes, because if we're unaware, like, for example, uh, there's a s- also this movement now, what I, what I call sex difference denialism. And there's this worry that somehow if we admit that there are any fundamentally evolved sex differences, then this will be disastrous and result in discrimination against women, and I think the opposite is true. I think recognizing these fundamental sex differences in our sexual psychology is critical to not harming women. So I think the sex difference denialism actually harms women, because it makes us ignorant, uh, to the causal processes that are resulting in sexual violence.

    20. CWChris Williamson1:05:47

        What's your opinion of the term toxic masculinity as it's used in 2021?

    21. DBDavid Buss1:05:53

        Well, I think there, I mean, masculinity, there are, you know, uh, toxic elements to it. Uh, so, eh, uh, you know, I think that if it's used precisely to describe those bad elements, like, what I would call dark triad type elements, then it's perfectly appropriate. But I don't think that it captures all elements of masculinity. So, at least, you know, now, versions of masculinity have changed across cultures and over time, but some are quite noble. You know, uh, sacrificing, uh, protecting the woman, showing bravery in the face of danger, um, you know, uh, a- and historically, even a man, you know, providing and protecting his family, providing for and protecting his family, his, his wife, his children. So, I think there are, uh, you know, you don't want to take a broad brushstroke of the word toxic and, you know, slap it on all things that are male-related.

    22. CWChris Williamson1:06:51

        But you also don't want to neuter that, and this is one of the, the interesting things that we see. The f- the front brain stuff, the things that we can rationalize and cerebrally come up with an understanding for, those are the ones that we can tweet about and we can have social movements about. But when it comes to the more base stuff, when it comes to things like attraction, there is not a chance in hell that the, um, person that misuses toxic masculinity and wants to tear down the way that men are constructed would s- would not look to date a male, if it was a female or even a male-

    23. DBDavid Buss1:07:26

        Mm-hmm.

    24. CWChris Williamson1:07:27

        ... who wasn't higher in mate value than them and who was able to get resources. You don't want to date a shorter man, a man that's less educated-

    25. DBDavid Buss1:07:33

        Right.

    26. CWChris Williamson1:07:33

        ... or a man that's got less money than you. So-

    27. DBDavid Buss1:07:35

        Right.

    28. CWChris Williamson1:07:35

        ... what we can do in the front of the brain and what our biology and our psychology still wants to enact are in this sort of constant battle. And I think-

    29. DBDavid Buss1:07:43

        Yes.

    30. CWChris Williamson1:07:43

        ... that you're right. What we need to do is-

Episode duration: 1:09:44