Modern WisdomThe New Science Of Female Attraction - Psychology Roundtable
At a glance
WHAT IT’S REALLY ABOUT
Science debates female attraction, mating markets, and modern dating myths
- The group argues that extreme male “looksmaxxing” can backfire by signaling vanity, deception, and short-term intent, even if appearance enhancement still yields some net attractiveness benefits when detected.
- They frame “the ick” as an evolved, often subconscious screening mechanism—more common in women—linked to disgust responses, competence cues, and higher perceived costs of choosing the wrong mate.
- They challenge the viral “Chad steals all the women” narrative using survey trends showing most men and women report 0–1 partners per year, with a smaller promiscuous minority on both sides pairing largely with each other.
- They debate whether monogamous marriage historically acted as “sexual redistribution” that constrained polygyny, while concluding humans show flexible strategies but a strong tendency toward pair-bonding and serial monogamy.
- Newer evidence discussed suggests mate preferences for resources are strategically calibrated to economic conditions (poverty/inequality), while beauty and age preferences appear more stable and less responsive to such manipulations.
IDEAS WORTH REMEMBERING
5 ideasExtreme self-optimization can signal undesirable traits, not just improved looks.
They argue heavy-handed looksmaxxing (bone smashing, excessive procedures) may cue narcissism, insecurity, and short-term orientation—creating “ick”—unless fame reframes it as status rather than vanity.
Artificial enhancement often works, but disclosure changes how people judge you.
A cited makeup/plastic-surgery study suggests attractiveness increases, yet “datability” is attenuated when observers know the work was done—likely due to negative personality inferences or reduced trust in the signal.
The “ick” is treated as a fast elimination mechanism tied to risk management.
They describe women as more prone to the ick because the evolutionary cost of choosing poorly is higher; triggers include hygiene/disgust cues, moral cues, and modern competence cues (e.g., social awkwardness, driving mistakes).
Dating-app inequality in attention does not directly equal real-world sexual inequality.
Swipe distributions are highly skewed, but broader surveys show stability since ~2000: most people report 0–1 partner/year, while a smaller high-sociosexuality segment of men and women has multiple partners and mostly mates within that group.
Resource preferences appear strategically adjustable to economic ecology.
Murphy describes a 45-condition experiment manipulating income and local gender economic inequality: being poorer (or disadvantaged vs the opposite sex) increased preference for resources and hypergamy in both sexes; beauty and age didn’t shift in the experiment.
WORDS WORTH SAVING
5 quotesLike, doing football chants as you walk down the street, I think is just the most, like, vaginally repulsive thing that you can do. Uh, but second only to shadow boxing.
— Chris Williamson
I couldn't help but comment at how shocking is it that the guy who hits himself in the head with a hammer is in favor of reading.
— Rob Henderson
The vast majority of men and the vast majority of women have relatively unexciting sexual lives. The most common response to the question of how many partners have you had in the past 12 months is one, followed by zero.
— Rob Henderson
Monogamous marriage was a way to, um, you know, sort of pair men up with women one-on-one, and it was a form of, sometimes Tung and Chi call it sexual communism, sexual socialist-
— Macken Murphy
They found that how formidable they were, uh, predicted how many sexual partners they had. Whereas how sexually attractive they were to these women, uh, had no relationship at all.
— Rob Henderson
High quality AI-generated summary created from speaker-labeled transcript.
