Modern WisdomThe New Science Of Female Attraction - Psychology Roundtable
CHAPTERS
- 0:00 – 2:40
What dance moves women actually find attractive (and why “shadow boxing” kills the vibe)
The conversation opens with a study on which male dance movements women rate as most attractive, using motion-capture avatars. The group riffs on how “attractive” movement can look surprisingly feminine and why certain masculine-coded behaviors (shadow boxing, football chants) feel instantly repulsive.
- •Northumbria study: head/neck/torso movement, rhythm variation, and natural whole-body motion predict attractiveness
- •Attractiveness in dance may reward creativity and fluidity more than stereotypical “masculine” moves
- •Shadow boxing is framed as performative toughness with no real opponent—signals posturing
- •“Ick” reactions can be triggered by socially ungainly male displays in public
- 2:40 – 8:13
Looksmaxxing and the “ick”: when optimization signals vanity, not desirability
They debate whether extreme looksmaxxing (bone smashing, injections, surgery) backfires by signaling narcissism and short-term mating intent. Clavicular is used as a case study, with the claim that his attention from women may be driven more by fame than by facial changes.
- •Looksmaxxing can signal vanity, insecurity, and self-obsession—traits associated with lower long-term “datability”
- •Fame may be mistaken for attractiveness: attention goes to status, not just looks
- •“First rule of looksmaxxing: don’t talk about looksmaxxing” as implicit awareness of social penalties
- •Mating markets as arms races: if everyone adopts a tactic, the advantage disappears
- 8:13 – 12:17
Artificial beauty vs natural signals: plastic surgery, makeup, and cheater-detection intuitions
The group explores evidence that cosmetic enhancements raise attractiveness but can reduce perceived relationship suitability once observers learn the effort involved. They unpack why “knowing it’s engineered” changes personality inferences and how we respond more to cues than underlying traits.
- •Study discussed: makeup/surgery boosts attractiveness; disclosure attenuates datability judgments
- •Attenuation may come from negative personality inferences (narcissism, insecurity) rather than pure “deception”
- •Humans often respond to signals (appearance cues) more than the trait the signal is supposed to indicate
- •The “ick” is framed as a nebulous, semi-subconscious evaluation system
- 12:17 – 16:18
The evolutionary psychology of the “ick”: disgust, competence cues, and female choosiness
They sketch a research program on ‘ick’ as a mate-choice mechanism, linking it to disgust psychology and the behavioral immune system. Examples range from hygiene and rudeness to seemingly modern competence cues (driving errors, jokes that don’t land).
- •Prediction: women experience the ick more due to higher baseline choosiness and higher mating costs
- •Potential mechanisms: pathogen disgust, moral disgust, personality/behavioral disgust
- •Competence and social status cues (missing turns, social miscues) can temporarily lower attraction
- •Sex differences framed as risk asymmetry: men risk missing opportunities; women risk mating with the wrong partner
- 16:18 – 24:49
The myth of the Chad: what the data says about who’s actually having all the sex
Rob challenges the viral narrative that a small group of men monopolizes all women. He argues the distribution of sexual activity is similar for men and women: most people have one or zero partners yearly, while a small sociosexual minority on both sides has many partners.
- •Tinder/OkCupid swipe concentration is often over-interpreted as real-world sexual behavior
- •Survey trend claim: ~18–20% of men report 3+ partners/year—and a similar minority of women does too
- •Most sex occurs in relationships; the modal response is one partner, followed by zero
- •Online discourse amplifies atypical extremes (pickup brags vs incel complaints), creating availability bias
- 24:49 – 30:26
Monogamous marriage as “sexual redistribution”: affirmative action/DEI for men?
They debate whether monogamy historically functioned as a social technology that limited elite male access to multiple partners. The group explores why both men and women might support or resist monogamous norms, and how deregulated ‘sexual capitalism’ changes incentives.
- •Framing: monogamy as a mechanism that pairs people 1-to-1, reducing polygyny
- •Right-wing calls to “re-regulate” mating vs left-wing reinventions (demisexual, sapiosexual, etc.)
- •Polygyny can benefit some women by allowing access to high-status men even as a second partner
- •Humans may have a menu of mating systems; the argument turns on what the default is
- 30:26 – 34:18
Are humans serial monogamists? Falling in love twice, contraception, and relationship turnover
They discuss ethnographic evidence that pair-bonding is common, but partner switching is also widespread. Using “number of times passionately in love” as a proxy, they connect attachment dynamics, fertility constraints, and the modern ability to avoid pregnancy.
- •Serial monogamy: common to form bonds, have children, then re-pair with someone else
- •A minority of first marriages last for life even in small-scale societies
- •Passionate love experiences average around ~2 across the lifespan (as quoted in discussion)
- •Modern contraception decouples pair-bonding from inevitable childbirth
- 34:18 – 43:41
When women have money: experiments on income, inequality, and shifting resource preferences
Macken explains a large experimental design manipulating personal income and local gender economic inequality to test causal effects on mate preferences. The key result: resource preferences increase when individuals feel poorer or disadvantaged—across both sexes—while beauty preferences remain stable.
- •Longstanding debate: evolutionary explanations vs social role theory (gender inequality as driver)
- •45-condition experiment: changes income/inequality inputs, observes mate preference outputs
- •Finding: poverty/disenfranchisement increases preference for resources and hypergamy for both men and women
- •Beauty preferences and age preferences largely didn’t move experimentally (contrary to some preregistered expectations)
- 43:41 – 54:58
Scarcity vs abundance and attraction: why hunger can change body-size preferences
They pivot to ecological explanations for shifting beauty standards, including evidence that hunger primes men to prefer slightly larger women. The group debates competing rationales—fertility insurance, status signaling, and conscientiousness cues—and why cross-cultural differences can be large.
- •Replicated finding: hunger/scarcity primes shift preferences toward heavier bodies (small but measurable)
- •Cross-cultural variation: in some societies higher BMI is strongly preferred and socially reinforced
- •Competing explanations: fat as a caloric ‘bank account’ and fertility buffer during famine
- •Alternative angles: body type as status cue; thinness as impulse-control signal in abundance
- 54:58 – 1:02:51
High-earning women, mate standards, and the rise of male beautification
The panel explores how women’s rising earnings (especially in big cities) reshapes dating dynamics without eliminating resource preferences. They argue that higher-status people often have higher standards across many domains, and that men increasingly compete via parenting effort and appearance.
- •In many metro areas, under-30 women now out-earn men, reversing earlier gaps
- •Richer women often want “more of everything” (resources, attractiveness, compatibility), not less
- •Male beautification trends: weightlifting, grooming, and appearance routines becoming mainstream
- •Parenting effort has increased substantially among men (with strong SES differences)
- 1:02:51 – 1:13:41
Stated vs revealed preferences: speed-dating critiques, matchmaking data, and what “counts”
They interrogate whether surveys exaggerate sex differences while real-world choice data erases them. Eastwick’s speed-dating and partner-evaluation work is challenged on sampling and context, while high-stakes matchmaking (Keeper AI) is proposed as a bridge between stated and revealed preference.
- •Critique: speed-dating is evolutionarily novel and heavily look-dominant; college samples limit variance
- •Selection effects: couples measured ‘in relationship’ exclude pairings that already failed on key traits
- •Keeper AI: ‘stated preferences with consequences’—high incentives may approximate revealed preferences
- •Women reportedly reject “marrying down” on income/education/intelligence more than men (as discussed)
- 1:13:41 – 1:30:58
Dating apps: dark triad users, height filters, and why face beats height
They discuss evidence that dating app users (at least in college samples) score higher on dark triad traits, raising doubts about whether app success predicts spouse quality. The group also unpacks research suggesting facial attractiveness dominates swiping behavior and how height filters blur stated vs revealed preference.
- •Study cited: Tinder users higher in dark triad traits than non-users (college sample)
- •Hypothesis: traits that win on apps may be orthogonal—or opposed—to traits that make a good spouse
- •Gamified app study: face overwhelmingly predicted choices; height mattered less without explicit filtering
- •Height thresholds are partly arbitrary and shaped by platform affordances (filters, units, lying)
- 1:30:58 – 1:34:48
Formidability vs attractiveness: why “being able to win a fight” predicts mating outcomes
They revisit research (associated with Buss) suggesting perceived male formidability predicts sexual partner counts more strongly than women’s ratings of men’s sexual attractiveness in thin-slice videos. This reframes looksmaxxing and bodybuilding as potentially targeting male–male competition as much as female choice.
- •Study summary: men rate other men’s fighting ability; women rate attractiveness; formidability predicts partner count
- •Interpretation: dominance/formidability may translate into mating access via intrasexual competition
- •Looksmaxxing may accidentally optimize ‘formidability’ signaling more than genuine appeal
- •Fame can act like ‘psychological formidability’ by intimidating rivals
- 1:34:48 – 1:46:58
Female teacher sex scandals and the power of being desired
Rob offers a speculative mechanism for why some female teachers sleep with underage male students: not just sex, but an unusually intense form of sexual attention from an inexperienced partner. They connect this to broader sex differences in whether people prioritize the partner’s attractiveness versus feeling desired.
- •Claim: female teacher scandals go viral partly because they’re anomalous (and often involve attractive teachers)
- •Hypothesis: the ‘supernormal’ reward is the student’s uniquely intense attention/adoration
- •Twitter forced-choice poll: men prefer the hotter partner even if undesired; women prefer being desired even by someone less attractive
- •Connection to desire dynamics: ‘being desired’ may be a central driver of women’s arousal and satisfaction
- 1:46:58 – 1:50:12
Why minimizing sex differences can backfire: safety, medicine, and social policy tradeoffs
They outline harms of denying or minimizing sex differences, from misreading risk in sexual contexts to missing sex-specific medical symptoms. The group also stresses that overstating sex differences has its own costs, historically used to enforce restrictive roles.
- •Minimization risks: policy and norms that treat sex differences as purely discrimination artifacts
- •Safety example: naive assumptions about male/female sexual motivations can increase vulnerability
- •Medical example: heart attack symptoms differ by sex; ignoring differences can delay diagnosis
- •Balanced view: both minimization and exaggeration can produce real harm
- 1:50:12 – 2:06:14
Mate switching, sex-drive decline in relationships, and what counts as “human nature”
The closing stretch ranges from updates on mate-switching research to the puzzle of women’s faster decline in sexual desire within long-term relationships. They end on a methodological debate: should ‘human nature’ be inferred from scarcity-era hunter-gatherers or modern abundance societies—and what lesbian/gay attraction patterns imply.
- •Conference-teased mate-switching research is mentioned but not fully disclosed on-air
- •Women’s relationship libido decline: possible retention/bargaining interpretations vs boredom/novelty mechanisms
- •Human nature problem: EEA vs WEIRD societies—scarcity constraints vs abundance “true expression”
- •Same-sex attraction patterns: gay men’s emphasis on appearance/youth; lesbian patterns discussed as more status/resource-linked
