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Modern WisdomThe New Science Of Female Attraction - Psychology Roundtable
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EVERY SPOKEN WORD
140 min read · 28,295 words- 0:00 – 2:39
Is This the Most Attractive Dance Move?
- SPSpeaker
Have you seen the type of dancing which is scientifically most attractive to women?
- RHRob Henderson
I've not seen this.
- SPSpeaker
According to a study at Northumbria University, the dances found... This one. This is the dance that women found most attractive.
- RHRob Henderson
This is a man dance, Adam. [upbeat music]
- SPSpeaker
According to a study by Northumbria University, the dances women found most attractive were ones who moved their head, neck, and torso the most, while also mixing up their moves creatively and showing more variation in rhythm. To test this, researchers used motion capture technology on 30 male dancers, turned their movements into computer avatars, and the best dancers were the ones who used their whole body naturally instead of awkwardly repeating the same arm and leg movements.
- RHRob Henderson
Hmm.
- MMMacken Murphy
Looks like dad dancing to me. [laughs]
- RHRob Henderson
[laughs]
- SPSpeaker
Yeah. Well, Asian people have got natural rhythm-
- RHRob Henderson
Yeah. What I was-
- SPSpeaker
... Rob, so I imagine that's how you dance
- RHRob Henderson
... what I was noticing is, uh, he's keeping his elbows close to the body, so it looks like he might be-
- SPSpeaker
Protecting the femoral artery. [laughs]
- RHRob Henderson
Yeah. He's, he's, he's a, he might be a trained boxer. You know?
- SPSpeaker
Which could be you as well.
- RHRob Henderson
Protecting the ribcage.
- SPSpeaker
Yeah.
- RHRob Henderson
I didn't know that.
- MMMacken Murphy
Actually, I know the guy who, uh... I know the guy who did this study, uh, funnily enough. I was just at HBES with him. Uh, he's my friend Ismail. And, uh, one thing that he was actually talking about was that the dance is quite feminine, and this mirrors something-
- SPSpeaker
Yeah
- MMMacken Murphy
... that you sometimes see in, uh, facial attractiveness research.
- SPSpeaker
Hmm.
- MMMacken Murphy
Where the initial assumption is like, oh, masculinity is just gonna be amazing, as much masculinity as possible. But then in some areas with some traits, femininity is favored.
- SPSpeaker
Hmm.
- MMMacken Murphy
And I think it's, seems like dance is in that-
- SPSpeaker
In dancing, femininity would be favored.
- MMMacken Murphy
Well, what would a masculine dance look like?
- SPSpeaker
That's the question.
- MMMacken Murphy
Kind of like throwing yourself around at a, in a mosh pit. Is that particularly sexy? I'm not sure.
- RHRob Henderson
That looks like dad's body back.
- 2:39 – 13:08
Does Looksmaxxing Give Women the Ick?
- SPSpeaker
[laughs] Uh, does looksmaxxing give women the ick, Rob?
- RHRob Henderson
I, I think it does. Uh, I'd be curious to hear Macken's thoughts, Steve as well, on this, which is, um, Clavicular, the looksmaxxing influencer, he became very popular, uh, you know, uh, through propagating this idea of looksmaxxing, bone smashing, optimizing. And, you know, he, he told The New York Times that he is now sterile because he's injected himself with so many chemicals. Uh, presumably he thinks it's worth it though. I recently wrote a piece suggesting that this gives women the ick, and that people mistakenly think that Clavicular is attracting women because he revamped his physical appearance. I actually think that he, that most of that attention he's receiving from women is due to the fame. He got famous through promoting looksmaxxing, and people mistakenly think it's the looks and not the fame that draw the women to him. For an ordinary man, like a Clavicular fan, who's doing all of the same looksmaxxing protocol, the bone smashing, the injections-
- SPSpeaker
But without any of the fame
- RHRob Henderson
... the, the [laughs] the-
- MMMacken Murphy
Just quietly bone smashing
- RHRob Henderson
... the, um, well, he recently, I think, got a nose job. I saw something going around on X.
- SPSpeaker
Yep, I saw that yesterday.
- RHRob Henderson
And an ordinary guy doing all of that stuff, optimizing for appearance, I think most women would find that kind of guy very vain, very self-centered. Uh, you know, someone who is maybe uninterested in a relationship and is more just interested in themselves. And so maybe it works for Clavicular because it made him famous. But for the average guy, I think that amount of looksmaxxing, um, would be counterproductive.
- SPSpeaker
What do you think it signals?
- MMMacken Murphy
[clears throat]
- RHRob Henderson
I, I mean, I would say that it signals narcissism, vanity, um, maybe sort of short-term oriented mating orientation. Kind of, you know, more interested in being, um, immediately attractive to someone rather than someone who you would be interested in forming a long-term-
- MMMacken Murphy
Yeah
- RHRob Henderson
... bond with.
- MMMacken Murphy
Yeah. And some of it's just a bit weird as well, right? The bone smashing, that kind of thing-
- RHRob Henderson
[laughs]
- MMMacken Murphy
... is just odd.
- RHRob Henderson
Yeah. Yeah. Well, I s- I saw this clip recently. He was, Clavicular was in this interaction with this girl, uh, at this, this bar in New York, and he was telling her how reading is a total waste of time. "I, I don't read. That's ridiculous. That's absurd." And I, 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. [laughs]
- SPSpeaker
[laughs]
- MMMacken Murphy
Looks like that, yeah.
- RHRob Henderson
Sometimes people surprise you.
- MMMacken Murphy
Yeah. [laughs]
- SPSpeaker
Indeed.
- MMMacken Murphy
That's funny. It actually, uh... It's funny that you say that because on the main forum, uh, looksmaxx.org, it actually, if I'm not mistaken, it used to say, "First rule of looksmaxxing, don't talk about looksmaxxing."
- RHRob Henderson
Right.
- SPSpeaker
Hmm.
- MMMacken Murphy
Which reflects a open understanding, like, never say that you're doing any of this stuff. Like, looking good helps, uh, but being transparent about the things that you're doing to look good, uh, probably won't improve your life.
- RHRob Henderson
So is the reason for that, though, so I'm, I'm, you know, I'm looksmaxxing, but I don't tell you about it. Is that because what? Like, to, to bypass all of the, um, what, the prejudices involved there? Like, I don't want you to think I'm vain. I just want you to think that I'm naturally good-looking. Is that the idea, that natural beauty is-
- MMMacken Murphy
Yeah
- RHRob Henderson
... better than artificial beauty?
- MMMacken Murphy
Yeah. So I believe that that was part of it. Uh, then a second facet was actually that they didn't want... I mean, a lot of the methods that they use are, are, such as bone smashing, already been mentioned, is pro- are probably very dubious. Um- But I think that part of it is that they wanted to protect it, uh, with the, honestly a g- a, a view that a lot of us might agree with, which is that the mating market is competitive, and so if everyone gets better looking, uh, it may be the equivalent of everyone st- like kind of running faster but staying in the same place. Yeah
- 13:08 – 16:17
Why Do We Get the Ick?
- SPSpeaker
Well, what's the-
- SPSpeaker
Yeah
- SPSpeaker
... what's the, what is the evolutionary psychology of the ick?
- SPSpeaker
Uh, she's trying to explain it in terms of, of a mate choice. She's predicting that 'cause women on average are choosier, women are more prone to the ick, which is, I don't think anyone would disagree with that intuition, and we've g- now got good evidence that that's the case. Um, yeah. Uh, and she's looking at in terms of evolved disgust reactions. Uh, and-
- SPSpeaker
That's interesting
- SPSpeaker
... yeah, it is interesting, right? And so looking at it in terms of, um-
- SPSpeaker
Behavioral immune system
- SPSpeaker
... uh, yeah, yeah, behavioral immune system and, uh, evolved disgust reactions in response or in response to sexual stimuli, uh, to sort of stuff that's gross, associated with disease and the like, uh, and moral disgust as well.
- SPSpeaker
So I was gonna say-
- SPSpeaker
And personality disgust
- SPSpeaker
... maybe, maybe something in that women are more, uh, adept at reading social cues, which means that if a guy does something which is socially ungainly, he might be able to breeze through it, or his friends might be able to breeze through it. Or if a woman was to do it that's the partner of a guy, he might not notice it, whereas if she's able to pay more attention more closely to how people are responding-
- SPSpeaker
Yeah.
- RHRob Henderson
Hmm
- SPSpeaker
... understanding that, uh, sort of social, uh, hierarchy a bit more. So it's fascinating and, yeah, there's lots of things that you could do. B- being unhygienic, being unhealthy, being rude.
- RHRob Henderson
Yeah.
- SPSpeaker
But the funny thing's a, a guy trying to pick up a moving ping pong ball.
- SPSpeaker
[laughs]
- SPSpeaker
Like, why is that an ick? Or why is a guy who misses a turn a, a, an, an, like, on in a car-
- RHRob Henderson
Oh, okay
- SPSpeaker
... like, doesn't, doesn't drive dexterously.
- RHRob Henderson
Yeah.
- SPSpeaker
Why is that a particular i-
- RHRob Henderson
[laughs]
- SPSpeaker
... like, stuff that's a bit more lifestyle-y and certainly more-
- RHRob Henderson
Lack of competence
- SPSpeaker
... yeah, more modern and novel.
- RHRob Henderson
Yeah.
- SPSpeaker
I mean, Diana Fleischman said this before. She's very, very, uh, attuned to her husband Jeffrey's sort of social status and his level of competence, and if he misses a turn when driving, she literally feels her attraction to him go down for a little while.
- RHRob Henderson
Okay.
- SPSpeaker
And then it comes back up. If he says, if he says a joke that doesn't land at a dinner table, she's, like, actively unattracted to him for a little while, and then comes... She's like, "I, I have some psychopathic tendencies. I'm aware of that."
- 16:17 – 24:49
Are Chads Stealing All the Women?
- RHRob Henderson
Yeah, exactly.
- SPSpeaker
Uh-
- RHRob Henderson
Yeah
- SPSpeaker
... what's the... Speaking of the sort of current world of looksmaxxing guys trying to rise to the top of the level as much as they can, what's the myth of the Chad?
- RHRob Henderson
Hmm. Well, so, so I wrote this piece, The Myth of the Chad, and, uh, I think I dropped it in the, the, the group chat, which is, um, you know, for a long time we've heard this story. I think you and, you and I talked about this on a previous podcast, Chris. Um, because it made some level of intuitive sense that, uh, as the dating marketplace has become more deregulated, people can meet each other more easily.
- SPSpeaker
[laughs] I love the idea of a deregulated mating marketplace.
- RHRob Henderson
We, we live in sexual capital, late sexual capitalism.
- SPSpeaker
Yeah.
- RHRob Henderson
Um, and so now you have, uh, you know, with dating apps, online dating, people can meet each other more easily. We are, um, you know, supposedly placing more value on looks as a result of social media and dating apps and so on. So the story was... And we saw some statistical trends that supported this notion, at least initially, that, uh, a small percentage of men were getting the majority of female attention.
- SPSpeaker
Hmm.
- RHRob Henderson
And that men, uh, sort of on the lower end of, uh, mate value were getting, uh, increasingly less, uh, female interest. And so the story was, what was it? Like 20% of men are getting 80% of the attention. There was some truth to that, at least with regard to sort of, um, uh, match rates and swipe rates on Tinder and so on. But, uh, if you look at the actual data, you dig into it and, and, you know, more statistics and findings have come out since, uh, you and I have had those discussions a few years ago, suggest that actually that story isn't completely true. Um, that in fact this, this has been going on for a long time, that very attractive men have always had the opportunity to mate with more women. Um, so when you look at the data, it looks like something like about maybe 18 to 20% of men, um, report having three or more sexual partners within the past year, and that really hasn't changed since about the year 2000, uh, which is as far back as I could find, uh, data on this. Uh, and so you might think, okay, well, that's, there you go. You got the Chads. The 20% of men are getting three or more partners a year. Those are the guys, you know, hogging all the women. But then when you look at the sexual behavior of women, you find essentially the same pattern, which is that something like 12 to 18% of women also report three or more sexual partners a year. And what this means is that 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.
- SPSpeaker
Hmm.
- RHRob Henderson
So most sex is going on in relationships, followed by people not having sex at all, and then a small ... fraction of men and a small fraction of women who are high in sociosexual orientation, very promiscuous and open to short-term mating. They're having a lot of sex with each other
- SPSpeaker
At least partly attractive as well, presumably
- RHRob Henderson
Oh, yeah. I'm, yeah, I'm sure. You know, physically attractive. And what I suggest is that because, um, dating apps have made this, uh, uh, uh, you know, sort of frictionless and because social media has created this kind of panopticon where, you know, men in particular, um, you know, they are... You got sort of the pickup artist and red pill guys who claim to be very successful with women bragging about how many women they've hooked up with, and then you have the incels on the other side of this whi- who are, you know, not bragging, but, you know, I guess whining and complaining about how little sex they're having. This gives you the, the impression that, oh, wow, you've got one segment of guys who are having all of the sex, and then you have this other section of guys who are having none of the sex, and then women are just passive bystanders who are maybe getting, you know, duped by the, the pickup artist or the Chads or something. Uh, but what this suggests actually is that, you know, there is a kind of a Chad, but the, the myth of the Chad is that, um, yeah, that, oh, one segment of guys are having all of the sex with all of the women
- SPSpeaker
With all of the women. Yeah, mm-hmm
- RHRob Henderson
... and it's, it's not the case. That, uh, there are, you know, there are femcels, there are women in relationships, there are women who are just uninterested in dating. And, uh, and you kind of see the, you know, mirror image of this for men as well, that... And, and weirdly this suggests that men and women are more alike, uh, than, than many think-
- SPSpeaker
Yeah
- RHRob Henderson
... which is maybe a point to, to your book.
- SPSpeaker
It's one of, one of the key-
- RHRob Henderson
Yeah
- SPSpeaker
... ideas in my book, yeah.
- RHRob Henderson
Mm-hmm.
- SPSpeaker
And I think that, you know, the average, uh, number of sexual partners that men have, if you exclude sex workers and the like, is somewhat higher. Uh, but, uh, I do think it's a very important point that, yeah, among, among the guys who are having sex with lots of women-
- RHRob Henderson
Mm-hmm
- SPSpeaker
... generally having sex with the women who are having sex with lots of guys. And, uh-
- RHRob Henderson
And that's-
- SPSpeaker
Yeah
- RHRob Henderson
... the sociosexual few, right?
- SPSpeaker
Yeah, sociosexual few
- 24:49 – 30:26
Is Marriage Affirmative Action for Men?
- RHRob Henderson
If there's, so if there's this Porsche polygamy, like Scott Galloway calls it, going on at the moment, at least even if it's in online dating, uh, even if it's not represented in who's getting laid and all the rest of it, but if there's some degree of big bucket of attention going towards small number of guys-
- MMMacken Murphy
Mm
- SPSpeaker
Historically, does that mean that monogamous marriage was basically affirmative action for men?
- MMMacken Murphy
[laughs] Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, the, so this, there was a recent paper about this, uh-
- SPSpeaker
Mm
- MMMacken Murphy
... where they, they suggested that marriage was a, a h- affirmative action for, uh, you know-
- SPSpeaker
Sexual redistribution
- MMMacken Murphy
... yeah, yeah, sexual redistribution of women. They also used the phrase DEI for men, um, that, uh, you know, uh, by definition most guys are not in the top 10% or top 20%. And so 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-
- SPSpeaker
[laughs]
- MMMacken Murphy
... for the deregulation of the, the, the dating marketplace.
- SPSpeaker
Dating marketplace. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- MMMacken Murphy
And, uh, and now that we've, you know, we, we've kind of reached that norm-
- SPSpeaker
Like s- late stage sexual capitalism
- MMMacken Murphy
... now we're in... [laughs] Yeah. Yeah, we went through a pha- I think, you know, maybe, maybe arguably starting in the 1960s we deregulated things and now we're in the sort of the late stage. And I think now people on, well, for a while on the right, the kind of, um, I don't know, the, the manosphere right have been, um, calling for some kind of a return, return with that, that V thing. And then, um, on the left increasingly, I think women are becoming fed up and they're, they're, they're sort of, you know, finding ways to, you know, reinvent, um, you know... W- what's that phrase? Demisexual.
- SPSpeaker
Oh, yeah.
- MMMacken Murphy
Heard of this phrase demisexual?
- SPSpeaker
I'm only gonna sleep with people that I'm, uh-
- MMMacken Murphy
Emotionally
- SPSpeaker
... emotionally connected to.
- MMMacken Murphy
Yeah, conne- yeah, I'm not gonna have sex with a stranger.
- SPSpeaker
Yeah.
- MMMacken Murphy
You know? It requires its own-
- SPSpeaker
It's a special kind of sexual-
- MMMacken Murphy
... category.
- SPSpeaker
And then there's-
- SPSpeaker
Yeah. Very rare
- SPSpeaker
... sapio- sapiosexual, that's being attracted to people that you're intellectually stimulated by.
- MMMacken Murphy
Mm-hmm.
- SPSpeaker
And then there's solo poly.
- MMMacken Murphy
I don't know.
- 30:26 – 34:18
Are Humans Meant to Be Serial Monogamists?
- MMMacken Murphy
what.
- SPSpeaker
Are we serial monogamists, though? I mean, I've seen some-
- SPSpeaker
Yeah. Yeah, yeah
- SPSpeaker
... ethnographies, hunter gatherers where, you know, it's, it's common to pair bond with one person, maybe have a child, maybe two children, and then the kind of, uh, uh, you know, the, the romantic feelings can dissipate and then form a new relationship-
- SPSpeaker
Yeah
- SPSpeaker
... with someone else-
- SPSpeaker
That is very common
- SPSpeaker
... kind of swinging to...
- SPSpeaker
Yeah, yeah. Very common. I've seen data as well, um, in those kind of societies though, um, often like a, a small number, a small but like non-trivial number, 5% or so-
- SPSpeaker
Mm
- SPSpeaker
... of first marriages do last for life.
- SPSpeaker
Mm.
- SPSpeaker
So, um, I think serial monogamy is probably more common. Uh, and I think we know that 'cause most people fall in love more than once in their lifetimes.
- SPSpeaker
Mm-hmm. Mm.
- SPSpeaker
Um, but it does sometimes happen, and we have a polygynous streak as well, I think.
- SPSpeaker
Yeah.
- SPSpeaker
Um, but yeah, so when, when the guardrails are off and there are no strict rules-
- MMMacken Murphy
You tend to find that most relationships are pair bonds and largely exclusive pair bonds. Um, but you do also find that, uh, you have a small level of polygyny and a small level of, uh, and yeah, a small level of for life mating. But switching is not uncommon.
- SPSpeaker
Jerry, can you, can you chat GPT, uh, how, how many people, how many romantic partners does the average person fall in love with across their lifespan?
- MMMacken Murphy
Hmm.
- SPSpeaker
Because until you had reliable contraception-
- MMMacken Murphy
Yeah
- SPSpeaker
... anybody that you fell in love with, presumably you were having sex with, and outside of either infertility issues or fertility compatibility issues, pretty much all of those people eventually would get pregnant if it was more than, I don't know, a couple of years, something like that. The honeymoon period typically lasts for around about that long.
- MMMacken Murphy
Yeah.
- RHRob Henderson
Yeah. It's like 85% fertility for a couple for one year, then it jumps up to in the 90s after two years of marriage.
- SPSpeaker
Here we go. Uh, 2026 Kinsey Institute study of over 10,000 US adults found the average number of passionate love experiences is 2.05.
- MMMacken Murphy
Hmm.
- SPSpeaker
Uh, 14% reported never having been passionately in love. 28% reported being passionately in love once, 30% twice, 17% three times, 11% four or more times.
- MMMacken Murphy
Hmm.
- SPSpeaker
Uh, measured passionate love, the intense falling in love experience, not long-term attachment or commitment. Some people can fall deeply in love only once. Others do multiple times. People al- also experience renewed feelings of love within the same long-term relationship, which is harder to count. So about two times on average throughout your life. So that would suggest, like if you don't have reliable contraception, if having sex leads to having babies, and if you're having sex when you're in love with somebody, you know, 11% of people just going through the machinate... Forget culture, forget anything over the top. Like, those people would have cycled through multiple partners across their lifespan.
- 34:18 – 43:44
How Rich Women Change Men’s Resourcefulness
- RHRob Henderson
and...
- MMMacken Murphy
Yep.
- RHRob Henderson
Yeah.
- SPSpeaker
What's this new study that shows preference for resourceful partners softens when women are richer?
- MMMacken Murphy
Uh, are, are you talking about, uh, the PNAS paper that we, that we did? Yeah. Well, I mean, this is-
- RHRob Henderson
This is a real sexy new thing
- MMMacken Murphy
... this is something that I could talk about for hours, so please, you know, tell me to shut up after 30 to 50 seconds if you can manage it. Uh, but basically-
- SPSpeaker
I thought you were gonna say 30 to 50 minutes. [laughs]
- RHRob Henderson
I was gonna say there too. I was like, all right, I'm gonna kick back, crack open a chardonnay. [laughs]
- MMMacken Murphy
That's funny. Uh, yeah. So what, so there's been a longstanding debate over the last, I would say, 37 years. Um, I mean, it's been intense for 37 years, but it's, you know, it, it, it actually predates that even about the causes of sex differences in mate preferences. And a huge variable that people consider, uh, in this topic, probably the variable, if you were going to pick just one, is gender inequality. And if you're gonna pick a second one, it's probably income. And basis-
- SPSpeaker
What does gender inequality mean?
- MMMacken Murphy
Well, it, [laughs] I'm glad you asked because it means different things depending on which social scientist you're talking to. Uh, so there have been, so we know, and, and anyone who's listened to this podcast has heard a million times that men have a stronger mate preference for looks on average, at least, uh, certainly in their stated mate preferences and in some revealed measures as well. And then women, um, have a stronger stated mate preference for resources. And then obviously there's the sex difference in age preferences, where men have a preference for youth, and then, and then women have a preference for slightly older than them throughout their lives. So you've got all those differences, and there's been this very longstanding debate over the extent to which this is explicable with reference to social and economic factors, and the extent to which it's explicable by evolutionary factors. So what we did, uh, if you go through this debate, there's been tons of cross-cultural studies. Um, there's been, there's been seven, um, really, really big ones, and those have generally found that, I, I mean, in, in, in, f- uh, five out of the seven have found something there with regards to mate preferences for resources and gender inequality. Um, all of the ones that checked age, um, found that when gender inequality is lower, age mate preferences and age gaps get smaller.
- RHRob Henderson
Hmm.
- MMMacken Murphy
Uh, and then the beauty basically doesn't move. In fact, there's even some evidence that it goes in the opposite direction in one of those analyses. So you've got this kind of mixed result there. And then you can look at the, uh, individual level studies as well, where you look at when people have more money, what happens to their mate preferences. And, uh, I, I could talk about that more. It's actually a bit controversial, so I, there's, there's different ways of measuring this. Um, but basically what it finds is, is that, uh, it, it does not move in the way that you would expect from the social role theory perspective, where it's like, oh, when women have more money, they're gonna start wanting young, gorgeous men. Uh, individual women who are rich, um- That, that, that doesn't seem to happen. However, there, there are some caveats there. So what we did, we've got all this cross-sectional data. Basically, you're hearing about correlational study, correlational study, correlational study-
- CWChris Williamson
Hmm
- MMMacken Murphy
... until the cows come home. And we said, "Well, th- we're testing causal relationships, and we know what's happening correlationally." And there's been critiques both from the evolutionary psychologists and from the social role theorists about the correlational nature of these studies, depending on which ones they don't like, essentially.
- CWChris Williamson
Hmm.
- MMMacken Murphy
And so we said, "Okay, well, we'll, we'll do an experiment." And so we did a really complicated, uh... unfortunately complicated. Complexity is not a virtue, but it's just necessary for this sort of study design. We did a 45-condition experiment that varied people's individual income and local gender economic inequality, and then we tried to see how those variables would predict changes in mate preferences. So basically, participants were put inside of a virtual environment where their economics were different. Now, I'm, I'm, I'm sure the timer has probably gone for five minutes. I feel like I'm giving a massive speech here. Uh, but it is just a complicated background to review. And what we found was actually something that was slightly inconsistent with the evo psych perspective, slightly inconsistent with the social role perspective, and actually most consistent with a perspective that's been common in behavioral ecology for a very long time, which is that people will adjust their mate preferences strategically based on what the environment incentivizes them to want. And what we found is that when people are poor, um, as in, as individuals they're poor, or as in the opposite sex is rich and their sex is disenfranchised, they upregulate their mate preferences for resources. So they want to, they want to... This is true in ranked preferences, in rated preferences, and also in hypergamous preferences, so desire to mate with someone who's richer than yourself.
- CWChris Williamson
And this goes for both men and women?
- MMMacken Murphy
For both men and women, yes.
- CWChris Williamson
Is the effect less for men than it is for women?
- MMMacken Murphy
The effect, it, it's really complicated, and it depends on which specific measure you're talking about.
- CWChris Williamson
Hmm.
- MMMacken Murphy
Um, and, uh, a- and so, so it depends. We could, we could kind of go into detail in there. Um, our main analyses were, were testing the effects of the variables on b- on both sexes.
- CWChris Williamson
It's interesting, yeah.
- MMMacken Murphy
And, uh, we didn't find beauty preferences moved, which actually it didn't... wouldn't make sense to a social role theorist. Uh, it would make... But-
- CWChris Williamson
Can you explain?
- MMMacken Murphy
As in social role theorists, they generally say, oh, the reason that, uh, mate preferences for beauty are different is because there are social and economic gender differences. Um, but those experimentally, they... It doesn't really show up in the cross-cultural data to begin with but also doesn't show up in the experiments. And then weirdly, the age differences didn't move. The age preferences, those didn't move, and I really expected them to because the cross-cult- We pre-registered that we thought that that was gonna happen because that's what the cross-cultural literature showed. But it didn't. However, mate preferences for resources, which is really what you'd expect to move in this sort of experiment because that's the, that's the strategic variable-
- CWChris Williamson
Hmm
- MMMacken Murphy
... that's being adjusted, um, it makes a lot of sense. I think verbally, like, I could talk about the modeling work, and I could talk about it in, like, a really obscure way. But at a very basic level, I find it very intuitive that it's like if I was poor and if women were rich, yeah, I would want to-
- 43:44 – 55:00
Abundance vs Scarcity: What’s More Attractive?
- SPSpeaker
You know, this is, this is generally sort of controversial, but the, the idea of the evolutionary adapted environment or the environment of evolutionary adaptation, um, it was... wasn't, wasn't scarcity more or less the norm?
- SPSpeaker
The norm, yeah. Mm.
- SPSpeaker
And so this idea that we have an evolved module to detect scarcity versus abundance, I mean, everyone was roughly equally poor because in these communities people shared just about everything. Yes, you had talented hunters, but generally my understanding is they, you know, shared their, uh, spoils and, you know, it, it wasn't until after the agricultural revolution that we were able to stockpile large amounts of resources.
- SPSpeaker
Yeah.
- MMMacken Murphy
Well, this... Yeah, this is actually something that's controversial in anthropology because it's true that if you go off of modern hunter-gatherers, then you do get this impression that like, oh, scarcity is the norm.
- SPSpeaker
Mm-hmm.
- MMMacken Murphy
But all the good places became agricultural.
- SPSpeaker
Yeah.
- MMMacken Murphy
So it's like there could've... Like, you look at, uh, there are animals where it's like they're in environments that they're very well adapted to.
- SPSpeaker
Mm-hmm.
- MMMacken Murphy
And they're not really struggling. And I would say that there-
- SPSpeaker
But that had been around for long enough for us to have been able to develop modules that would be baked in to be adapted to.
- MMMacken Murphy
Well, again, I personally don't have an opinion on the module thing, so it's not something that I'm, I'm-
- SPSpeaker
Yeah
- MMMacken Murphy
... it's not, it's, it's actually not something that I think is true. It's just something that I'm kind of putting out there. Like, I'm, I'm genuinely open about mechanisms. I could hear any side of the story. Um, but I do think that it's... Like, there are s- there is some, there is some interesting shit here. Like, for example, um, there's the studies that we've talked about before where when men are primed with scarcity, um, such as when they're hungry or when they're acutely poor or where there, when there's a local famine, they shift to preferring larger women, right?
- SPSpeaker
Mm.
- MMMacken Murphy
And it, that seems to suggest that there may have been some fluctuations in how valuable larger women were that selected for some-
- SPSpeaker
And also it suggests that there was fluctuations in how large women were.
- MMMacken Murphy
Yeah, exactly.
- SPSpeaker
That there were times, we spoke about this earlier on.
- MMMacken Murphy
Yeah.
- SPSpeaker
Mm-hmm.
- SPSpeaker
There were times of surplus to the point where people could at least gain a little bit more body fat.
- MMMacken Murphy
Yeah. And there are very realistic depictions of obese people in prehistory. I know it's, I know it sounds surprising, but it's like-
- SPSpeaker
Dude, if you're, if you managed to be fat in prehistory-
- MMMacken Murphy
[laughs]
- SPSpeaker
Mm
- SPSpeaker
... that is a real accomplishment.
- MMMacken Murphy
Yeah.
- SPSpeaker
Real accomplishment.
- 55:00 – 1:04:29
Do High-Earning Women Have Higher Standards?
- SPSpeaker
optimal. Going, going back to the, the sort of inequality thing, what is the state of the gender pay gap in big cities now? 'Cause I saw some data. It's been for a while, it was 29 that women were out-earning men by about 1,000 pounds. I think now it's up to 31, 32. Does anyone know this?
- MMMacken Murphy
Yeah. Don't know the exact numbers, but I do know that in a lot of cities it's reversed, and that, um, young women are earning more than young men.
- RHRob Henderson
Yeah. Ma- major, uh, metro areas in the US.
- MMMacken Murphy
Yeah.
- RHRob Henderson
So, uh, New York, DC, Boston-
- MMMacken Murphy
LA
- RHRob Henderson
... LA. I think Seattle as well. I don't, I don't know the state of Austin, but it wouldn't surprise me if Austin, uh-
- MMMacken Murphy
Yeah
- RHRob Henderson
... I'm sure the, the, the same pattern as well.
- SPSpeaker
Totally.
- RHRob Henderson
For, for under 30s.
- SPSpeaker
Yeah.
- MMMacken Murphy
Yeah, yeah.
- RHRob Henderson
Maybe.
- SPSpeaker
I think it's squeaking into the 31s, 32s now.
- RHRob Henderson
Yeah.
- MMMacken Murphy
Mm.
- RHRob Henderson
Yeah.
- SPSpeaker
And that's what's gonna be really interesting. Like, yeah, maybe you're right, and we've managed to, uh- Preference for resourceful partners has reduced w- as women have gotten richer. There was some studies a little while ago, Vincent Harinam, um, put this one out in his paper from like, well, his article from, like, six years ago, that suggested that h- very high-powered career women had an increased preference for more high-powered men.
- RHRob Henderson
Mm.
- SPSpeaker
So ambitious people desire more ambitious partners.
- RHRob Henderson
Yeah.
- SPSpeaker
Uh, specifically women to men. The, the, uh, effect in reverse.
- RHRob Henderson
Mm-hmm.
- SPSpeaker
Uh, but it seems that what you're suggesting here, maybe for the middle bit of the bell curve, perhaps when you get to the top-
- RHRob Henderson
Mm
- SPSpeaker
... 10% of hyper ambitious people, they, that somehow flips because they have s- they've warped so much of their sense of self-worth around ambition that inevitably it's gonna bleed into what they find sexually attractive too, or the desirable in a partner, or maybe they're, they're such an outlier that they breach some threshold of being able to talk to the normies about what they're going through. You know what I mean? Like, all of these things. Like, an elite athlete would, would probably be good if their partner at least understands how the game of American football is played.
- RHRob Henderson
Mm.
- MMMacken Murphy
Yeah.
- SPSpeaker
Right?
- 1:04:29 – 1:10:02
Can Surveys Accurately Measure Sex Differences?
- SPSpeaker
necessarily.
- MMMacken Murphy
Well, what about the, uh, what would you, could you, I don't know if you've been following, uh, Paul Eastwick's work-
- SPSpeaker
I have, I have
- MMMacken Murphy
... on stated versus revealed preferences.
- SPSpeaker
Yeah.
- MMMacken Murphy
I've, I've been, you know, I've been reading a lot of his, uh, scientific work. I haven't read his, his book yet. Uh, but I would love a rejoinder to his, uh, so he makes the claim that essentially I'll, I'll summarize it and then maybe you can tell me what you think about it. Um, but he makes the claim that yes, in survey data, you see these consistent sex differences in what men and women want.
- SPSpeaker
Mm-hmm.
- MMMacken Murphy
But when you measure it through speed dating or through how these stated preferences predict romantic evaluations of partners, well then women care a lot more about looks than they say, and men care a little more about resources than they say such that there's essentially no sex difference. And I think I even saw an excerpt from his book where he says, well, how could, how could these sex differences in preferences have evolved if, uh, they don't result in behavior, if they're just resulting in survey items? I know I don't necessarily buy that, that kind of, I buy his data. I don't necessarily buy the follow-up part of the argument, but I'd love to hear what's your, with your billion years of sex differences background, what's the, what's the rejoinder?
- SPSpeaker
Well, first of all, let me say, I think he's a, he's a great scholar.
- MMMacken Murphy
Mm-hmm.
- SPSpeaker
I don't, I don't agree with him on this, but I do think he's a very good scholar and he's worth taking seriously and reading his work. Um, so I think he, he seems to be, he seems to focus a lot on the two lines of evidence that don't show sex differences in mate preferences, um, and exclude pretty much everything else. So one thing he focuses on the speed dating data that he's personally done, um, and often doesn't find the differences that you might expect. Um, I'm not sure if it's, uh, representative samples for a start. Like a lot of the studies that he'd done, he's done have been university students, all of whom are quite possibly, I mean, presumably do have pretty good career prospects. So there's not going to be a huge amount of variance there necessarily. Um, and a speed dating context, you don't get to know somebody, uh, particularly well. So their looks are going to be a large part of what shapes your assessment of them. Um, he points out that, uh, a lot of the data that evolutionary psychologists look at dating, uh, app data for instance, is evolutionarily novel. So speed dating, it's, it's an evolutionary novelty. It's nothing like what happens in reality. Um, but he's happy there because you don't find the differences that you expect to find. Um, so he focuses on that. And actually there is some, um, speed dating research that does show some of the standard differences.
- MMMacken Murphy
Hmm.
- SPSpeaker
Um, Rob Kurzban, I think did one study that did find it. So it's, it's mixed rather than showing no effect at all of the standard, uh, evolutionarily, uh, psychology predicted stuff. Um, with the revealed preferences, I think that, um, well, I don't know. It's also, I'm a bit dubious about it, uh, partly just because it goes against the 90% of other or 95% of other research, including real world data, uh, that does find directions, uh, uh, effects in the direction you'd expect. Like women are more likely than men to leave a guy who is unemployed, who becomes unemployed or, uh, fails to earn a decent living. Um, and actually that's one, one reason that the revealed preferences data might not be accurate is that when you're looking at how, how important it is in a relationship that the guy is earning quite a bit among current couples-
- SPSpeaker
Those are current couples and, and it's gonna be a bunch of, uh, couples who... partnerships that have dissolved already. And-
- MMMacken Murphy
Oh, you gotta catch them as they lose their job
- SPSpeaker
... Yeah, or before they do. Exactly.
- MMMacken Murphy
Yeah.
- SPSpeaker
And so you're just looking at the subset that remains-
- MMMacken Murphy
Mm
- SPSpeaker
... after, after those kind of processes have happened. So you're gonna have reduced variance in terms of ability to make a living and, and earn a good wage. And reduced variance therefore means that the, uh, the correlation's going to be weaker and other things are gonna, um, become more important, seem- seemingly more important. But maybe that's a problem with the data rather than the fact that women actually don't care more about that after all-
- MMMacken Murphy
Mm
- SPSpeaker
... than men.
- MMMacken Murphy
Did you see the, uh, worldwide preference matching paper?
- SPSpeaker
I think I did, yeah.
- MMMacken Murphy
Yeah.
- SPSpeaker
Yeah. Uh, last year, right?
- MMMacken Murphy
Yeah, so that was one-
- SPSpeaker
Yeah
- MMMacken Murphy
... to kind of r- remind people. I know that, I know that you spoke to Eastwick about it on the show, so people, people may already know.
- SPSpeaker
It was the first episode that I did with, with-
- 1:10:02 – 1:16:19
Are Dating App Users Worse Partners?
- MMMacken Murphy
Yeah.
- SPSpeaker
Uh, did you see, uh, Jake Kozlowski from Keeper AI put up the, m- uh, ask men if they'd marry down on three axes?
- MMMacken Murphy
I think I DM him every time he tweets out new data.
- SPSpeaker
[laughs]
- MMMacken Murphy
[laughs] I'm like, "Can I get another look at that?"
- SPSpeaker
I see a lot of his.
- MMMacken Murphy
"Can I get a little bit closer on the..."
- SPSpeaker
Dude, I mean, Jake, Jake's got the possibility to be a, a really fascinating source of stated preferences-
- MMMacken Murphy
Mm
- SPSpeaker
... with real world results.
- MMMacken Murphy
That's it, yeah.
- SPSpeaker
Real, real world incentives. So for the people that don't know, Keeper AI is an AI matchmaking service. It's 50 grand. The guy pays, the women don't. It's five grand per date for the first, for each date for the guy, but that's-
- MMMacken Murphy
On top of the 50.
- SPSpeaker
It's credited against it.
- MMMacken Murphy
Okay.
- SPSpeaker
But it's only credited against it up to the first five. So if you have like 10 dates in order to get there, then you're gonna pay 75. Anyway, uh, they have a pretty comprehensive psychometric evaluation, personality testing, all of these sorts of things.
- MMMacken Murphy
Wow.
- SPSpeaker
Uh, pull up the, uh, Keeper AI website, Jared. It's kinda, it's kinda fun. And, um, anyway, because he's got this raw data and he's happy to aggregate it, and presumably the terms of, terms and conditions just say like, "Hey, fucking open this, uh, open this sucker up." Uh, asked if they'd marry down on three axes, women say no far more than men every time.
- MMMacken Murphy
All right.
- SPSpeaker
Earns less, women are 12 more likely, 12 times more likely to refuse. Less intelligent, six times more. Less educated, four times more. Marrying down is a near deal breaker for women and a non-issue for men, consistent across all three.
- MMMacken Murphy
Mm.
- SPSpeaker
Right? So especially when you bundle those together, like that is a real fucking covariate bastard, but... A multivariate bastard. Uh, what I realized thinking about Eastwick's stuff, if you're in a world where the new ecology involves this ability to s- sterile autistically design what it is that you want, like stated preferences become revealed preferences.
- MMMacken Murphy
Yep.
- SPSpeaker
Does this make... Am I saying-
- MMMacken Murphy
Yeah, no, it makes sense, and what's funny is that I actually DM'd Jake that exact, um, that exact point where it's like- [laughs]
- SPSpeaker
Don't fuck with me, dude. I'm on the fucking level of the academics.
- MMMacken Murphy
[laughs]
- SPSpeaker
All day. I'm on fire today.
- MMMacken Murphy
You actually-
- SPSpeaker
One and a half Neutonics. Don't fuck with me.
- 1:16:19 – 1:20:12
What Matters More: Height or Looks?
- SPSpeaker
That, uh, points in the direction-
- SPSpeaker
Did you see the, that, uh, Whitmer study looking at, uh, facial attractiveness was 12 times more influential in swiping behavior than height is?
- SPSpeaker
Facial attractiveness?
- SPSpeaker
Yeah. Yeah.
- MMMacken Murphy
Yeah, so they did. So I, I, I tweeted that and someone replied, um, photo competition app shows photos are the most important factor.
- SPSpeaker
Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I was thinking of that.
- MMMacken Murphy
And I was like, oh, you did kind of get him there.
- SPSpeaker
Yeah. [laughs]
- MMMacken Murphy
But it is, but it is an interesting, it is an interesting study, right? So what they-
- SPSpeaker
Trying to find some white pills.
- MMMacken Murphy
Yeah. So what they did was they tried to [laughs] so what they, what they did was they tried to essentially set up a gamified, um, dating app. Importantly, there was no height filters on this app.
- SPSpeaker
Hmm.
- MMMacken Murphy
So the f- so that's usually how people see height in a dating app. That's usually how it has, in a real dating app, that's usually how, how it has an influence, and I'd actually be interested in Rob's opinion on whether, uh, uh, uh, kind of testing the intuition of whether a height filter is a stated or revealed preference.
- SPSpeaker
Hmm.
- MMMacken Murphy
Um, because that's also kind of in between.
- SPSpeaker
Hmm.
- MMMacken Murphy
Uh, but yeah, they set up this game and then they... And it was, it was very sophisticated. I had a lot of people come back to me asking, including really prominent scholars coming back, like, kind of challenging the study, and I had to open the study back up again and check, and I was like, "No, they actually thought of that too." And yeah, they found that essentially face was everything, and anything else was... You could put anything in your bio, you could have any height, and it wouldn't really make that much of a difference-
- SPSpeaker
4'8"
- MMMacken Murphy
... with the caveat. [laughs]
- SPSpeaker
Right.
- MMMacken Murphy
With the caveat that fi- filtering for height, um-
- SPSpeaker
Yeah
- MMMacken Murphy
... wasn't an option.
- SPSpeaker
Yeah.
- MMMacken Murphy
And then it had a typical dating app interface. So it's like if you're looking at 50 different faces as a, as a participant in this study-
- SPSpeaker
Hmm
- MMMacken Murphy
... and it's literally like face, face, face, tiny details, tiny details. There is kind of a click-through temptation of like... I mean, this is what happens on real apps, though. I mean, it's, it's, it's accurate.
- SPSpeaker
It is what it is on real apps. Yeah.
- MMMacken Murphy
On real apps, people are doing the same thing. So I think it's methodologically, it's very ecologically sound if you want to find out what's happening.
- SPSpeaker
Pokemon trading card game.
- 1:20:12 – 1:30:53
Why Male Beautification is Exploding
- SPSpeaker
What about that, um, mate budget study that Norm Li did? Because that was about trade-offs, right? And typically, uh, some people generally have good things that come along with good things, but for the most part, there are, there are some sorts of trade-offs with, with someone's spent an awful lot of time dedicated on one thing that maybe neglected another part of another area.
- SPSpeaker
It's an interesting study there, right? So basically-
- SPSpeaker
Can you explain for the-
- SPSpeaker
Sure
- SPSpeaker
... normies?
- SPSpeaker
Sure. Um, so-
- SPSpeaker
The Normlies.
- SPSpeaker
[laughs]
- SPSpeaker
[laughs]
- SPSpeaker
So yeah, Norm Li. Norm Li, he, uh, did a, did a study where he gave people a budget of $8 and then asked them, "Create, create the, um, ideal mate that you can with this budget." Some people got a big budget, and where that was the case, men and women, they both, um, wanted everything. They, um, they wanted good looks, they wanted, uh, they wanted, uh, like a good job, high status, blah, blah, blah, the, the works. Um, but if they had a smaller m- mate budget, which I think is probably more like most people's situation in life, no offense, um, if they had that, they, um... Sex differences be- became more pronounced, and so people, uh, men would spend more to get an attractive partner, uh, whereas women would, would spend more to get a, um, a partner with resources and status.
- SPSpeaker
Hmm.
- SPSpeaker
Yeah.
- SPSpeaker
Hmm.
- MMMacken Murphy
Yeah, he also did a study where he had people a- allocate for themselves, if I'm not mistaken, and it-
- SPSpeaker
Presumably, yeah
- MMMacken Murphy
... it mirrored the, uh... It mirrored that ig- that same pattern, where it's-
- SPSpeaker
Yeah
- MMMacken Murphy
... like when men were kind of RPG style building their own character. I think it was him. I don't, I don't mean to give him credit if it wasn't, but, um, basically men tried to make themselves richer relative to women-
- SPSpeaker
Yeah
- MMMacken Murphy
... and women tried to make themselves prettier relative to men. So yeah.
- SPSpeaker
Well, I mean, that's the reason why we don't see women turning up in supercars with expensive Rolexes at a nightclub-
- MMMacken Murphy
Hmm
- SPSpeaker
... or guys spending tons of time doing the beautification thing.
- MMMacken Murphy
Hmm.
- SPSpeaker
Like we know, we have a, an intuition about what is effective.
- SPSpeaker
Yeah.
- SPSpeaker
It's the, the failures just continue to stack up in really interesting ways.
- MMMacken Murphy
Well, this is something that we proposed actually in our PNAS paper. Uh, in the discussion section, we talked about this, where it's like it is interesting and quite conspicuous, but also quite circumstantial that over the 1900s there's pretty good data from David Buss. It's hard to do. It's hard to gather the survey data, but it does seem that over time, throughout the 1900s, um, especially in the period after women's kind of financial emancipation, let's call it, uh, mate preferences converged quite a bit-
- SPSpeaker
Hmm
- MMMacken Murphy
... between men and women.
- 1:30:53 – 1:34:48
Do Women Prefer Formidable Men?
- SPSpeaker
Going back to the clavicular thing, it, it's kind of fascinating the weightlifting being the biggest change because-
- MMMacken Murphy
Mm
- SPSpeaker
... I don't know whether guys increasing their upper body strength makes a bigger impact on attractiveness or formidability. Like if you were to just to rank it starting at a baseline of this, and you do, uh, you gain 10 pounds of, of lean muscle mass, are you more attractive or more, more formidable to other guys? That would be fascinating to work out because I don't know what the net gain is. Now obviously you get both, and that's what's great. But certainly when we look at sort of the myth of Chad and, and, uh, Louis Theroux's documentary and sort of the caricature of hypermasculinity at the moment, a lot of what guys are doing, it's the male to male transsexual as Mary Harrington calls it.
- MMMacken Murphy
[laughs]
- SPSpeaker
It's like the most caricatured parts of, of, uh, the masculine look to the point where that hypermasculinized face we know from tons and tons of data is not as attractive as a average or slightly feminized face on a man is to women. And- All of these other things to me seem to be just signaling formidability.
- RHRob Henderson
Mm-hmm.
- SPSpeaker
Signaling status and formidability to other men. It's the handbag of the face. [laughs]
- RHRob Henderson
Mm-hmm. So the, the David Buss work would suggest it's more about formidability, or, or rather the, the, the increase in formidability would outpace the, the increase in attractiveness.
- SPSpeaker
Do you wanna just read it? I mean, we've dropped it on the show like 10 times, but it's the fucking [laughs] It is just-
- RHRob Henderson
The frat boy study? [laughs]
- SPSpeaker
... the best. Can you do, do you know it? Do you know this one?
- RHRob Henderson
Yeah, I, I know it. Yeah, yeah, I can do it. Uh, so David Buss, uh, and his colleagues famously did this study, uh, where they brought in, uh, a group of men and recorded them in these videos, uh, and very, very short clips, and then they brought in a, a different group of men to watch the men, uh, in these videos, and then they asked these men who were watching these other men in the clip, um, you know, they asked them a question which is, uh, "How likely is it that this man that you're watching in this clip could beat a man in a physical fight?" Uh, and it was a range from very likely to very unlikely. Uh, and then they showed, um, a group of women these videos as well of these men in these short clips, and they asked these women, "Okay, this man in this video, uh, how sexually attractive is this man?" And then, uh, these researchers followed up with those men in the videos 18 months later and, um, you know, collected data on them including how many sexual partners they'd had over the previous 18 months, and they found that how formidable they were, uh, predicted how many sexual partners they had.
- SPSpeaker
Bet.
- RHRob Henderson
Whereas how sexually attractive they were to these women, uh, had no relationship at all.
- SPSpeaker
Right.
- RHRob Henderson
So formidability predicted-
- SPSpeaker
The most fucking insane study.
- RHRob Henderson
Now as, you know, a- as we've mentioned, this is, uh, this, this was on, um, college students, you know, fraternity, uh, members. But, uh-
- SPSpeaker
It was like a specific frat, wasn't it? [laughs]
- RHRob Henderson
Oh, was it?
- SPSpeaker
I think so. I'm not sure.
- RHRob Henderson
I think it was a specific... Okay. But, um, you know, this is consistent with David Buss' other work showing that formidability seems to have this huge effect on sexual success.
- SPSpeaker
This is my take.
- RHRob Henderson
Yeah.
- SPSpeaker
This is my take on clavicular-
- RHRob Henderson
Yeah
- SPSpeaker
... and deluxe maxing world.
- RHRob Henderson
Yeah.
- SPSpeaker
That they have closed their eyes, thrown the dart, and hit the bullseye if they've fluked optimizing formidability for male attention over attractiveness to only land in the middle of David Buss' study finding out-
- RHRob Henderson
[laughs]
- 1:34:48 – 1:42:22
The Rise of Female Teacher Sex Scandals
- RHRob Henderson
Yeah.
- SPSpeaker
Well, haven't you been studying female teacher sex scandals?
- RHRob Henderson
[laughs]
- SPSpeaker
Studying.
- RHRob Henderson
That was, that was behind the paywall, but I love Chris Williamson and I love Modern Wisdom, so, you know, let's-
- SPSpeaker
Bring it out. [laughs]
- RHRob Henderson
Yeah. Yeah. This is, uh, this was my, you know, kind of, this is my conjecture. I, I don't have hard evidence for this, but I was building on something that Louise Perry had written. I believe this was in The Spectator. You know, she was kind of riffing on this idea of, of OnlyFans and how sexual attention for women can be as satisfying as, um, as, you know, actual sex can be for men. So you know, men really like to have sex, women really like sexual attention.
- SPSpeaker
Mm.
- RHRob Henderson
And these can be sort of equally powerful incentives. And you know, in, in the context of OnlyFans, it's this supernormal stimulus in the way that porn is for men. So porn, you know, you get novelty, all these different naked women and so on. It's very exciting for men, whereas OnlyFans as a creator can be very exciting for women 'cause you're getting large, huge amount of sexual attention from thousands of men, and all of them are praising you and telling you how beautiful you are. You could imagine this would be, uh, extremely, uh, enjoyable for some women. Now, this, the female sexual scandal thing, the female teacher sexual scandal I should say, um, you know, every few months we see these stories come out of some surprisingly attractive female teacher who sleeps with a male student, some 15, 16-year-old kid, and you know, all these, you know, all the, the online discourse around this always goes crazy. Um, it's also important here to remember that male teachers are still far more likely to, um, uh, commit this transgression of sleeping with an underage student than female teachers are. The reason why those stories go viral is because again, they're anomalous. Um, my suggestion for at least in some cases why these female teachers sleep with their male students is because the response that they get from the male student is, is a one of a kind unique sort of supernormal stimulus, where, you know, if you're an attractive 25-year-old woman and you get naked in front of, you know, your typical 28-year-old guy who's seen naked women before, whatever look on his face, whatever attention he gives you is not going to be nearly as potent as when you undress for the first time [laughs] and you see, um, and you see a, uh... [laughs]
- SPSpeaker
[laughs]
- RHRob Henderson
Now, now that look-
- SPSpeaker
Wait, you look like a chef.
- RHRob Henderson
That look, that look with your-
- SPSpeaker
Race
- RHRob Henderson
... yeah, half, half Latino, half Asian
- SPSpeaker
... does not scream captain of the ship when it's facing backward.
- RHRob Henderson
What do I look like?
- SPSpeaker
I don't know what it is.
- RHRob Henderson
[laughs]
- SPSpeaker
You look like, you look like the guy out of Tintin.
- RHRob Henderson
[laughs] Wait, I don't know this. What?
- SPSpeaker
Pull up the fucking-
- RHRob Henderson
Yeah
- SPSpeaker
... pull up the dude from Tintin in the Hat. But you can keep going for now.
- RHRob Henderson
Um, oh, I lost, uh... Okay. So, um, you know, y- so, so the response, right? So you're, you're an attractive 25-year-old woman. You get naked in front of a 25-year-old guy. You know, the response is, you know, he's gonna be like, "Wow, cool," 'cause you know, women, men like seeing naked women. But a 16-year-old male who has seen very few naked women in his life, he sees a fully grown, you know, woman at the peak of her fertility and so on for the first time.
- SPSpeaker
Mm-hmm.
- RHRob Henderson
The attention he gives you is going to be extremely potent.
- SPSpeaker
Yeah.
- RHRob Henderson
And it's the kind of look and level of attention that most people wouldn't have access to.
- SPSpeaker
The reason this is interesting-
- 1:42:22 – 1:46:58
Is Being Desired What Women Want Most?
- SPSpeaker
Hmm.
- MMMacken Murphy
Did- didn't you have a Twitter poll o- o- on this regarding, um, it was, it was a really interesting would you rather where you found a big sex difference on, like, would you rather sleep with someone very attractive or someone who's very attracted to you?
- RHRob Henderson
Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, um, I put it, uh, two different, uh, polls on Twitter. Um, first, uh, uh, for men, and I asked, you know, this is a forced choice, this contrived scenario, uh, would you rather sleep with someone who you find, uh, intensely attractive but they are not at all attracted to you, or would you rather sleep with someone who finds you very attractive but you are not attracted at all to them? So I administered that poll first to men and to women, and literally got the exact opposite, where something-
- SPSpeaker
Hmm
- RHRob Henderson
... like 75% of men were like, "Give me the hot person who finds me ugly."
- MMMacken Murphy
[laughs]
- RHRob Henderson
Uh, that's way more preferable than, uh, sleeping with an ugly person who finds me hot.
- MMMacken Murphy
Yeah.
- RHRob Henderson
Whereas women, it was the opposite. Women were, about 75% of women said they would rather sleep with someone who they find ugly who finds them attractive than to sleep with a hot person who was unattracted t- to them.
- MMMacken Murphy
Mm.
- RHRob Henderson
Um, so it's almost like men and women were made for each other.
- SPSpeaker
This was something that... This was a mess-up that I [laughs] ... This is a mess-up that I did in my conversation with Esther Perel, uh, where she said something to the effect of, "When have you ever..." She was talking about desire and what wa- makes a woman feel desired. She said something to the effect of, "When have you ever heard of a woman being turned on because her partner was, like, aroused in front of her?" Like, women need to be wooed. And I, I was just g- like, in, I wasn't in my EP hat, I was in my relating and she's the expert hat, and, uh, I should have just said, "Dude, like, being desired is probably the number one thing that women want as a turn-on." Uh, or the other thing that women want as a turn-on, just put this hat back on backwards for me. I've worked out who it is that you look like. I got it wrong.
- MMMacken Murphy
I thought that was the other person as well.
- SPSpeaker
Put it on backwards. Put it on backwards.
- RHRob Henderson
Hold on. I got a, you know, I got a big dome, man.
- SPSpeaker
You do. Both of you do, actually. I couldn't believe it. No, no, no. So there it is. So I thought that it was, uh, Tintin It's not Tintin, it's Indiana Jones, and it's this
- SPSpeaker
[laughs]
- SPSpeaker
I'm just glad you picked up the skinny-
- SPSpeaker
Is that not you?
- SPSpeaker
I mean, no. Oh, wait, but don't I have to wear it like this?
- SPSpeaker
Yeah.
- SPSpeaker
No. He's got it on backwards. Does he not?
- SPSpeaker
No, he's got it the right way. There.
- SPSpeaker
Okay. Well, it's not a captain's hat. Anyway, I knew that I was right. Um, yeah, I, uh... Wait, that's Tintin?
- SPSpeaker
No, no.
- SPSpeaker
Oh.
- SPSpeaker
That's fucking the kid from Indiana Jones.
- SPSpeaker
Oh, really?
- SPSpeaker
Indy.
- SPSpeaker
Um, yeah, I'm, I'm like, I'm kind of fascinated by what's gonna unfold over the next few years with what's happening with increased socioeconomic successful women, male beautification. I actually think that what guys think they're doing, even if it doesn't work with the formidability double loop closed eye, bullseye thing, is, uh... I think that it's a kind of rejection of the female gaze in some ways. Like, it's just male to male intrasexual competition. Do you ever remember Zyzz? You know Zyzz?
- 1:46:58 – 1:50:12
The Dangers of Minimising Sex Differences
- SPSpeaker
Yeah.
- SPSpeaker
How much do you think a denial of sex differences at the moment has led to the current mating crisis?
- SPSpeaker
Mm.
- SPSpeaker
Is that something that you've drawn a lineage through?
- SPSpeaker
Hmm. You're looking at me because I'm talking quite a bit in my book about the denial of sex differences, but I can't see a direct line from that to the-
- SPSpeaker
I mean, you've, you've talked about in your book, um-
- SPSpeaker
Yeah, yeah
- SPSpeaker
... Superb, you, you discuss-
- SPSpeaker
Thank you
- SPSpeaker
... the dangers of, um, ignoring, minimizing-
- SPSpeaker
Yeah, yeah
- SPSpeaker
... sex differences. Um, but you, you know, you, you also sort of acknowledge that, that, uh, historically people have sort of overstated the sex differences.
- SPSpeaker
Indeed.
- SPSpeaker
The dangers of overstating-
- SPSpeaker
Yeah
- SPSpeaker
... um, can be, uh, you know, particularly harmful to women, but to, to, to men as well.
- SPSpeaker
Indeed.
- SPSpeaker
And so, so what... Yeah, I'm, yeah, I'm curious, what, what are the dangers of minimizing and, and then overstating?
- SPSpeaker
Uh, the dangers of minimizing, so we talked about this, right? Um, so one danger is that just as people used to, uh, try to force boys and girls and men and women into, um, traditional gender roles-
- SPSpeaker
Mm
- SPSpeaker
... even if they didn't quite fit them, uh, you can get, you can get the reverse.
- SPSpeaker
Mm.
- SPSpeaker
If you minimize or deny sex differences and just think that they're due to discrimination, you're gonna think that actually, uh, we should be trying to minimize them, we should be trying to push, uh, boys and girls and men and women out of traditional, uh, uh, gender roles, and that it's a problem if they don't fit into them.
- SPSpeaker
Mm.
- SPSpeaker
That's, that's one problem. Uh, another one if you minimize sex differences is that you might, uh, fail to, to notice physical problems and psychological problems-
- SPSpeaker
Mm
- SPSpeaker
... that present differently in one sex than the other. So a classic example is cardiovascular problems like, like heart attacks. The symptoms are different for men and women, um, and the male symptoms are better known, so the pain in the sort of chest and down the arms-
- SPSpeaker
Mm
- SPSpeaker
... is quite well known. Um, that's much less common in women. Uh, shortness of breath is a much more common, uh, symptom in women. People don't tend to know that. Uh, they of- often in the past especially just didn't know that, and so women would have heart attacks and not be aware of it until they'd progressed quite a long way down the road. And so, you know, it cost lives and by, by not noticing sex differences rather than, than noticing them.
- SPSpeaker
On, on that point, like-
- 1:50:12 – 1:51:46
The Latest Evidence on Mate Switching
- SPSpeaker
Yeah.
- SPSpeaker
What's happening with the dual mating and mate switching ... hypothesis race at the moment. Has there been any update? Do we know if there's anything new?
- MMMacken Murphy
Um, I, I, I, I ca- I can't spoil their party unfortunately, but there is, there's new s-... I, I heard s-
- SPSpeaker
Oh, fuck you, dude
- MMMacken Murphy
I genuinely can.
- SPSpeaker
You behind the scene, under the bus us because you've got special behind the scenes access.
- MMMacken Murphy
No, it's, it's not, it's not that. It's just that I recognize that when people present work that's, you know, like at a, at a conference, uh, it's like, oh, it's preliminary. Oh, we're gonna have to roll it out in its own kind of time.
- SPSpeaker
This is the Modern Wisdom conference.
- MMMacken Murphy
So, I know, I know.
- SPSpeaker
[laughs] Fuck academia, dude.
- MMMacken Murphy
I mean, I'll happily, I'll happily tell you the full kind of update, uh-
- SPSpeaker
All right, off-
- MMMacken Murphy
... off camera, but-
- SPSpeaker
You're like when a... You, you know what it's like? It's like when I bring Navy SEALs on and they go, "Dude, I know exactly what happened with this summit."
- MMMacken Murphy
[laughs]
- SPSpeaker
"But I can't tell you on air."
- MMMacken Murphy
Well, it's, it's not me trying to aura farm or anything like that. It's literally just like I know that-
- SPSpeaker
Is it gonna be interesting?
- MMMacken Murphy
I know that. I know that.
- SPSpeaker
Is it interesting?
- MMMacken Murphy
I know, I know that, uh, uh, Ryan Dobson and, and his party are, are gonna be rolling out some cool research pretty soon. Uh, so.
- SPSpeaker
Is it not public once it's been, uh, put out at a conference?
- MMMacken Murphy
Uh, well, I, I was told by Candace no.
- SPSpeaker
Okay.
- MMMacken Murphy
But maybe that, that's kind of a social intuition and it's wrong.
- SPSpeaker
Come on, Candace.
- MMMacken Murphy
But, uh, but I, I, I'm a, I'm a new academic, so to say.
- SPSpeaker
You better... Yeah.
- MMMacken Murphy
So I don't necessarily have the-
- SPSpeaker
How's it, how's it, how's it? Yeah
- 1:51:46 – 1:56:06
Why Marriage Kills Women’s Sex Drive
- SPSpeaker
it is.
- MMMacken Murphy
Yeah. Okay, cool. Yeah.
- SPSpeaker
Okay. Well, I've got, I've got a question that I've never been able to work out. Why do you think women's sexual desire declines faster than men's in relationships?
- MMMacken Murphy
Hmm. I, I genuinely don't know. I tweeted it as a question. I'm hoping that maybe Steve or, um, Rob here c- have better answers to that.
- SPSpeaker
I genuinely don't know either. I was-
- MMMacken Murphy
Bro
- SPSpeaker
... I was vaguely pressed, looked to you-
- MMMacken Murphy
If I'm three for three here, this is fucking money.
- SPSpeaker
I mean, would it not make sense that-
- MMMacken Murphy
Busted
- SPSpeaker
... women at the peak of fertility would have the strongest desire for sex? I mean-
- MMMacken Murphy
Yeah
- SPSpeaker
... for, for reproductive aims.
- MMMacken Murphy
But this, but this isn't, this isn't... So that effect exists as well.
- SPSpeaker
Yeah.
- MMMacken Murphy
But this effect is even more peculiar, where if they remate again later, the sex drive goes up again.
- SPSpeaker
Oh, it does.
- MMMacken Murphy
It's just that it's like, oh, the first year or two-
- SPSpeaker
Well, but would that not just be sort of a, a mate retention strategy, right? You're in a new relationship-
- MMMacken Murphy
Mm
- SPSpeaker
... so you would want to sort of boost your sexual, uh, uh, you know, whatever, libido to, you know, get your male partner.
- MMMacken Murphy
So you're getting, you're getting... It's an adaptation-
- SPSpeaker
Yeah, to lock them in
- MMMacken Murphy
... to get them on the hook.
- SPSpeaker
Yeah.
- MMMacken Murphy
To say, if you mate with me, there'll be sex all the time, and then as soon as-
- SPSpeaker
Yeah, but once you have a guy locked in and you've been married for 20 years-
- SPSpeaker
You're just kidding
- SPSpeaker
... and you're no longer fertile, and you know, the, the, the risks to you are very low if you're-
- MMMacken Murphy
Yeah
- 1:56:06 – 2:03:00
How Do We Determine Human Nature?
- RHRob Henderson
I wanted to ask something, um, you know, and then you can tell me if this is taking us too far afield here. Um, on our earlier discussion, something occurred to me, which is, you know, like what, what's the question we're interested in, uh, like regarding sex differences?
- SPSpeaker
Mm.
- RHRob Henderson
Is it, um, you know, how interesting that men are different now than they were decades ago? Or how interesting is it that sex differences are larger in this context, but smaller in that one? Or are we interested in, um, you know, what, what's like the true sex difference? You know, you strip away everything, and like once you really drill down, here's what it is. And I remember I had this conversation, um, I think I was in college, uh, working a- as an RA years ago.
- SPSpeaker
Mm.
- RHRob Henderson
And, um, you know, we were reading about WEIRD societies, Western educated, industrialized, rich democracies. And, you know, there was this thing going on, both of you, all of you are aware of this, of like, oh, we can't really learn anything about... I mean, I'm simplifying somewhat. We can't really learn much about human psychology studying WEIRD societies because this is a very sort of peculiar time in history. These are very strange, you know, weird societies in both senses of the term. Um, and so we need to collect data from other countries and other, uh, uh, parts of the world and, you know, look, look historically and so on. Um, and I, I wondered like, like when we're trying to study psychology and we're trying to study human nature, um, what is more reflective of human nature, too? Is it, um, you got to look at the hunter-gatherers, you know, whether extant hunter-gatherers or hunter-gatherers, you know, uh, uh, in pre-agricultural times when they were sort of scattered all over the world and had access to different kinds of land and territory and so on. Um, we got to study the hunter-gatherers in environments of relative scarcity, uh, because that's what humans, uh, that's how humans lived for most of our evolutionary history. That's what human nature is. Or is it, um, that can't be human nature because they lived in relative scarcity and they're b- they're only behaving that way because they're stuck in this kind of, you know, archaic, pre-industrial, pre-literate society. And actually, we should be studying rich societies because now that you have all of your needs met, now sort of the true underlying, uh, uh, traits and attributes and characteristics can finally emerge and, um, you know, uh, instantiate themselves. Curious in general.
- MMMacken Murphy
So it's kind of like the gender, gender inequality paradox-
- RHRob Henderson
Kind of like that
- MMMacken Murphy
... applied to a separate, like the abundance paradox, let's say, we're becoming.
- RHRob Henderson
Yeah.
- MMMacken Murphy
You know.
- RHRob Henderson
Like, like what, what, what-
- MMMacken Murphy
Interesting
- RHRob Henderson
... I mean, yeah. Or, or, or does the question not even make sense? That there is no real true human nature and that it'll always kind of interact with environments in weird ways.
- SPSpeaker
Yeah. Uh, both of the ideas came to my mind as you were, as you were saying that.
- RHRob Henderson
Mm.
- SPSpeaker
Uh, in terms of what the evolutionary push is, just directionally, I think it's good to look at all the different, uh, types of societies.
- RHRob Henderson
Mm.
- SPSpeaker
Do you find it in hunter-gatherers? Does it persist even in WEIRD societies? Like sometimes that's quite good evidence of, in WEIRD societies, often you have a push against traditional sex differences, and they often emerge anyway.
- RHRob Henderson
Mm.
- SPSpeaker
Suggesting that, that there is an innate nudge. Um, yeah. If they get bigger in, uh, abundant societies, it may be that they're, um, expressing themselves more than the level for which they were selected to be expressed.
- RHRob Henderson
Mm. Mm-hmm.
- SPSpeaker
So it could be that, uh, human nature is able to express itself to an unnaturally extreme degree.
- RHRob Henderson
Mm-hmm. Mm.
- SPSpeaker
Uh, potentially. Yeah. Does that...
- RHRob Henderson
Yeah. No, yeah, that's interesting.
- SPSpeaker
Yeah. Does, yeah. That makes sense.
- RHRob Henderson
Yeah.
- MMMacken Murphy
Yeah, I mean, I spoke to, um, the anthropologist William Buckner about this, and he actually had a real gripe about, uh, the evo psych studies on, um, on sex differences and mate preferences, and his gripe was that if the logic is that the EEA is what forged these, then they really should be more consistent-
- SPSpeaker
EEA?
- MMMacken Murphy
The environment of evolutionary adaptedness. Which isn't, which is, you know, it's, it's a, it's a, it's-
- 2:03:00 – 2:05:23
What Do Lesbians Find Attractive?
- SPSpeaker
at.
- SPSpeaker
It just occurred to me, uh, Steve, in your book, I think you, you point out, uh, you know, one, one line of evidence for, uh, you know, the, the sex differences being, um, you know, sort of evolutionary in origin, uh, not entirely socially constructed is, uh, the way that, that gay men, what they find attractive-
- SPSpeaker
Yeah
- SPSpeaker
... appearance and youth and so on. But, um, do gay women, um, like what are they attracted to? Do they like resources and status in their female partners? Does anyone know this?
- SPSpeaker
Uh, yes, I think that they do. I don't, and I don't think they put a, like, huge amounts of, uh, weight on, on appearance-
- SPSpeaker
Yeah
- SPSpeaker
... even though they're evaluating women rather than-
- SPSpeaker
Yeah, I, yeah-
- SPSpeaker
Yeah
- SPSpeaker
... that, that makes sense to me.
- SPSpeaker
Yeah.
- SPSpeaker
Because I've seen, you know, gay men tend to be very fit and so on-
- SPSpeaker
Indeed. Yeah, yeah
- SPSpeaker
... and, and gay women less so. But then what, what... Uh, are they attracted to the kinds of things that, that heterosexual women are attracted to in a partner?
- SPSpeaker
Like resources-
- SPSpeaker
You know, career ambition, success and those kinds of things
- SPSpeaker
... and status. Yeah.
- SPSpeaker
You know what I would love to see?
- SPSpeaker
Don't think so. No.
- SPSpeaker
I would love to see a sex toy study between what straight women like and what gay women like.
- SPSpeaker
Hmm.
- SPSpeaker
Because, like, there's no reason that the sex toys should in any way resemble a male.
- SPSpeaker
Yeah. Except for female anatomy.
- SPSpeaker
Yes.
- SPSpeaker
Yeah.
- SPSpeaker
But it d- the, the way that it's put together, the humanness of it-
- SPSpeaker
Yeah
- SPSpeaker
... right, shouldn't actually matter.
- SPSpeaker
It wouldn't hurt. It wouldn't hurt
- SPSpeaker
Unless you manage to say that, well, and this is true, the penis is the optimal vagina penetrating machine, right?
- 2:05:23 – 2:06:14
Where to Find the Guys
- SPSpeaker
Heck yeah. Boys, I appreciate you all. You're all awesome. Uh, what do you want to plug? Where should people go to check up to you?
- SPSpeaker
Uh, Rob Henderson's newsletter on Substack, robkhenderson.com, and the paperback of my first book, Troubled: A Memoir of Foster Care, Family, and Social Class.
- SPSpeaker
Nice. Uh, my new book, A Billion Years of Sex Differences, my previous book, The Ape That Understood the Universe, uh, and my Substack, which is the Nature Nurture Nietzsche newsletter.
- SPSpeaker
Yeah. Macken? Nothing to sell. Follow me on TikTok. [laughs]
- SPSpeaker
Yeah, you do. Uh, ham- @hamsterman on TikTok or @mackenmurphy.
- SPSpeaker
[laughs]
- SPSpeaker
Uh, boys, I appreciate you all. These roundtable things are so fucking fun. It's the best. It's the best. I love you all. Thank you for coming.
- SPSpeaker
Thanks, Luke. See you later.
- SPSpeaker
See you next time, everyone. Boys. Yes.
- SPSpeaker
All right.
- SPSpeaker
We've done it. [outro music] Congratulations. You made it to the end of a full podcast episode. You are not so TikTok brained that you've completely dissolved into nothingness. Why not watch another one? Right here. Go on, press it.
Episode duration: 2:06:14
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Transcript of episode YV7xNa3QO0c
