Why Nobody Seems To Care About Incels - Dr Andrew Thomas

1. 0:00 – 7:56

   Why Andrew Spoke in Parliament About Incels

   1. CWChris Williamson0:00

      You spoke at the Houses of Parliament. What was that like?

   2. ATDr Andrew Thomas0:03

      I did, yeah. That was daunting and it was really hot, and I decided to wear my three-piece, which was, uh, not a- not a good idea. But no, that was, uh, a really interesting experience because we produced a piece of research that was funded by, uh, an arm's length body of the Home Office, uh, into incels. Uh, you very kindly shared that study when it was out to help us with recruitment, and that was one of the biggest incels studies to date. Um, and the Women & Equality Select Committee were really interested in it, and so they called myself, Joe Whittaker, and Will to come and talk to them about the report a little bit more, which was, uh, a fantastic experience. All recorded and online. I didn't realize how they- how they do these things these days. It's all sort of part of the public record. Um, but hopefully will kind of inform policy a little bit and- and dispel some of the myths around the incel phenomenon, I think, because, um, the primary research is what we need to be doing. That there's a lot of theoretical stuff out there that's a little bit bad. There's a lot of secondary data analysis, scraping forums and stuff that gives a little bit of a misleading picture. Uh, but it was fantastic to be able to talk about that research on that forum, and I'd love to go back and do more of it.

   3. CWChris Williamson1:13

      Should incels be looked at from a mental health perspective?

   4. ATDr Andrew Thomas1:17

      So (laughs) I think so, at least in part. So if people agree that incels are, quote unquote, "a problem" and that we should try to reduce the online misogynistic ideology, then my view is I don't really care how we do it. Let's just do it the best way and the most effective way. Um, and so in order to figure out what that is, we have to entertain lots of different options. Um, now what we did with our recent study was we tried to predict incel harm, and harm we- is defined quite loosely as a combination of misogynistic beliefs, the condoning of violence, and seeing feminism as the- as the enemy. Sorry, that was in ideology. Um, uh, of- of, uh, aggression and aggressive tendencies, so that's what we had for harm. And then we decided to see how we could predict that using a couple of different things. Uh, now my colleague, Joe Whittaker, who's a criminologist, he was really interested in the networking, how incels are talking to each other and whether that sort of ratchets things up and contributes to risk. Uh, I was interested in a mental health perspective primarily because I've taken a little bit of a left turn into that p- uh, particularly in male psychology. Uh, and of course we had Will Costello that your- your listeners will probably be very familiar with, uh, and he's sort of, uh, knee-deep constantly in incel ideology. And so we were able to run these three things kind of in parallel and say, "Well, which actually predicts harm the most?" And we found something really interesting. So the first thing is they all predicted harm in some, uh, degree. So they're- the- it's not just one thing, and that's fantastic because it means that there's multiple avenues for intervention. So if we look at incel networking and reduce that, then the risk of harm might go down. But we also found that, uh, incel ideology and mental health was about twice the predictive strength of networking. So those things are bigger. So it doesn't mean don't attack the networking, um, but it means that if you're- if you want good bang for your buck, looking at the mental health and the ideology, um, might be a good way to do it. But then the most fascinating thing of all was statistically we found a relationship between mental health and ideology in a sort of bidirectional back-and-forth way. So what that basically means is that the worst an inc- the worse of an incel's mental health was, the more into the ideology they were, but also the more they got into the ideology, the worse their mental health became. And so for me, because engaging with people about ideology and trying to change their beliefs about their ide- ideologies is notoriously difficult. It's one of the most difficult things you can do when it comes to mod- modifying behavior. But mental health, we have a- a- a much better track record of doing something about that. And so what that study kind of imple- implied to me is one avenue we could explore is looking at supporting the mental health, and that in and of itself is probably a worthy goal because people who are suffering with their mental health, they're humans. At the end of the day, you wanna help people from that and stop them suffering. But it kind of implies that that might reduce the ideology along with it, in which case you've got an interesting way of getting, uh, at the issue. So absolutely I think it's- it's not something that we should take off the table, but it's controversial, right? So if you look at the, um, the research evidence on just re-offending, I'm not saying that incels are criminals, but if you look at the forensic literature and you look at re-offending among those who are in prison, there was a in- really interesting study out a couple of years ago that compared giving mental health support, generic mental health support, to inmates versus sort of physical health support. And what they found is that the inmates that you give physical health support to, re-offending went up, whereas if you gave generic general mental health support to them, re-offending rates when they left went down.

   5. CWChris Williamson5:08

      What's physical health support?

   6. ATDr Andrew Thomas5:09

      So physical health would be just sort of encouraging exercise and, um, m- mainly exercise intervention, to be honest. Um, but what's interesting about that is that it doesn't gel well with the sort of public perception of why people should be in prison. So people should be in prison to suffer because they've done something wrong. So the idea of going and giving mental health support to make people feel better in prison is not, um, uh, very palatable. And I see a similar thing going on with the incel thing where there's a resistance about mental health 'cause people are worried about, oh, well, that's just excusing the behavior, but also these are, quote unquote, "really nasty guys who have terrible views." Uh, more on that later because there's huge variety within that community as I've come to learn in private practice. Um, it's like they've got terrible views, so they should be punished for that, so why the hell would you want to help them and h- help them feel better? When again, as I said, my view is I wanna stop misogyny, uh, full- full stop, and I wanna stop suffering full stop. And so I don't care so much about how you get there as long as you get there.... so I don't have that sort of same kind of-

   7. CWChris Williamson6:17

      It's interesting... It's interesting to think about, you know, the way that you framed that at the very beginning was if you think that there is sort of an incel problem which contributes to some antisocial behavior, contributes to cre- creating, uh, content on the internet that it would probably be best if there was less of. But maybe sort of beyond all of that, there are humans inside of that that are suffering in some form or another, and stepping in and intervening in that, whether it comes from the mental health perspective or this sort of recursive feedback loop from ideology to that, I have to imagine that the networking also furthers the entrenching into the ideology and the mental health problem. So yeah, I, I understand what you mean the sort of the incel problem, but y- (laughs) it, it feels an awful lot like sort of sour grapes at an existential level for guys to retreat into that and then make it their identity. I imagine if they were given a surefire route out of it, that many of them would take it, if only they could divorce themselves from the ideology.

   8. ATDr Andrew Thomas7:18

      Yeah, and it's such an integral problem that the, the point is there isn't just the one route, right? Um, but yeah, you're, you're, you're 100% right. There's, there's suffering there. I think the sour grapes are, is on the part of people looking in at that as a potential intervention. Um, it kind of reminds me of the type of people where, you know, they, uh, th- they're upset because you haven't done something for them. You then do the thing for them, but they're still upset because you had to be asked, do you know what I mean?

   9. CWChris Williamson7:46

      Mm-hmm.

   10. ATDr Andrew Thomas7:46

       So it's, it, it's like it's stuffed around the actual action rather than the action itself. It has that sort of, um, air about it. Um...

   11. CWChris Williamson7:55

       Why is

2. 7:56 – 14:31

   Why Nobody Sympathises With Incels

   1. CWChris Williamson7:56

      sympathy so hard to come by for incels?

   2. ATDr Andrew Thomas8:02

      So I think it's, uh, a mixture of things. So first and foremost, a lot of people's insight into incel is based on stereotypes. So it's based on what they get from the media. Very few people who even talk about incels have actually put in a lot of the legwork in terms of understanding the community and thinking deeply about it. So if you think about the stereotype, the stereotype is right-wing young male who is, uh, NEET, not in education, employment or training, who, uh, absolutely hates, hates women and is indeed a threat to women. Um, some people actually take a step outside of that stereotype and start thinking about other things, like I've attended talks about incels, and in that talk that, uh, they, people were using domestic violence rates as evidence of incel harm, totally glossing over the fact that, well, you have to have a partner in order-

   3. CWChris Williamson9:03

      (laughs)

   4. ATDr Andrew Thomas9:03

      Do you see what I mean? So, so it's, it's almost like they, they fall into this very sort of s- uh, system one fast-thinking group of just bad men. Yeah, and I think people, uh, respond to that with that sort of habitual g- gut feeling just towards bad men who might do them harm.

   5. CWChris Williamson9:21

      Mm.

   6. ATDr Andrew Thomas9:22

      Uh, it's also a lot easier to frame thinking around that. It's very easy to put people just all in the same box rather than thinking, uh, about things in a more nuanced way.

   7. CWChris Williamson9:34

      It's interesting sort of trying to think about, uh, you know, when you get outside of people that are researching this, this lack of sympathy that really seems to come from both men and women. I think, uh, you can understand it in some ways from, uh, the women's perspective because a lot of the content that's created... I- incels don't exactly have a fantastic brand when it comes to women, even if some of the incels within that would be perfectly nice and supportive of women. I know that they're more left-leaning-

   8. ATDr Andrew Thomas10:02

      Yeah.

   9. CWChris Williamson10:03

      ... uh, on average. I know that they have autism rates at, like, 10 times that of the base le- base rate of-

   10. ATDr Andrew Thomas10:08

       Yeah.

   11. CWChris Williamson10:08

       ... the population. So, you know, they're, they're very, in many ways, uh, deserving of the sympathy that women typically would give to a down-and-out man, but bad brand plus also bad behavior doesn't exactly encourage that. I was particularly interested in where the lack of sympathy comes from from other men, and I kind of get the sense that maybe a zero-sum game of competition, maybe some low-key intrasexual competition for men kind of the same way as the body positivity movement for women might be women encouraging their fatter female friends to continue to-

   12. ATDr Andrew Thomas10:39

       Mm.

   13. CWChris Williamson10:39

       ... eat themselves out of the mating pool, that guys who have sexual access to women encouraging NEETs and incels to ascend actually does create more competition within the mating domain. And I think another one is just in a meritocratic world where you're supposed to be the architect of your successes and your failures, being associated with anybody who hasn't done that is just, you know, you're just helping losers. Like, why should you do that? You know, the male desire for conquer and mastery-

   14. ATDr Andrew Thomas11:10

       Yeah.

   15. CWChris Williamson11:10

       ... and success and competence, uh, is so strong. I wonder if there's a kind of ick or th- that's them over there. They're broken. They're deficient. It's sort of this social-

   16. ATDr Andrew Thomas11:20

       Mm.

   17. CWChris Williamson11:20

       ... social sexual leper type thing.

   18. ATDr Andrew Thomas11:22

       Yeah. I see what you're saying. I actually think... I think I disagree. I think it's, it's more complicated than that.

   19. CWChris Williamson11:29

       Right, it's complete bro science-

   20. ATDr Andrew Thomas11:30

       It's sci- sci- science... (laughs)

   21. CWChris Williamson11:30

       ... pulled out of my arse. Yeah. So it's just, it's just a notion.

   22. ATDr Andrew Thomas11:34

       (laughs) It's a c- uh, and who knows? It might be right, but my... What I suspect is that we need to look more about the, uh, at the center, yeah, who incels are, how they interact with one another. Because, you know, when I was growing up you'd have a, a, a, a group of friends who meet each other in real life, and maybe you'd have the one friend who's struggling and as, uh, you know, maybe they're a bit of a loser and stuff li-... And that's the optimal place to then take someone under your wing and help them. Yeah? Now, incels, by and large, uh, go into these sort of pseudo-anonymous or anonymous forums where no one really knows each other, hiding behind su- uh, uh, usernames, and that's where they're spending their time. Like, I'm pretty sure when we looked at the average profile in our report, um, you know, some incels were spending like five, six hours a day in these, uh, forums.... that's an-- that means they're not leaving the house, they're not actually going out and touching grass, some-some might say, and they're not socializing in those more traditional ways that actually la- lends itself to social support. Uh, and that's not necessarily entirely their fault, because there's some setup around the incel culture that drags people into that. And you mentioned before with autism, you know, it's easier to talk online if maybe you struggle with your social skills. So I think there's some basic stuff around that. On the idea of sympathy, though, you also get these little cultural things that only when you get more familiar with the community do you understand. Like, the, it's what Will normally calls, like, performative antagonism. So incels say, "Well, society rejects me, so I'm gonna kind of lash out and say wild things that I don't necessarily believe to get a rise out of people." Um, and in psychotherapy actually, we would, we would, uh, see this as a little bit of a cycle. So, uh, it's kind of similar to perfectionism. So, uh, with perfectionists, if they feel like they can't accomplish something, they will just self-sabotage, and it's almost like a version of that. Like, "I'll never be accepted by mainstream society, so I may as well self-sabotage. I may as well put something in the way that guarantees the result that I'll get rejected by people and they won't like me, because I kind of think that that's gonna happen anyway, but I can take a bit more control over it if I, if I go first." So I'll say something like, "Oh, you know, the, uh..." This is one example I always use that I saw. "I'll, you know, one way to solve the mating crisis is we'll just have a village, and in every village we'll have one girl who's chained up in the middle naked and guys can free use her, and that will solve the problem." Now, when you talk to incels about these sorts of things and you scratch beneath the surface, they don't believe that sort of stuff for a second. They know it's abhorrent, and it's specifically to get a rise out of people. The problem is, media then picks up on that, thinks it's straight, thinks they 100% believe that in their heart of hearts, and that then informs the stereotype that everyone else believes. And why would you have sympathy for someone who had a view like that if you thought that they were serious about it?

   23. CWChris Williamson14:29

       Yeah. Really great point.

   24. ATDr Andrew Thomas14:30

       (clears throat)

3. 14:31 – 17:28

   The Criticisms of Andrew’s Research

   1. ATDr Andrew Thomas14:31

   2. CWChris Williamson14:31

      I saw that you got into a bit of a brouhaha recently with, uh, a few authors that took issue with some of the stuff that you guys had written. "Recent violent attacks by misogynist incels have catalyzed a flurry of research. In this essay, we critique scholarly approaches that attribute incel violence perpetuated, perpetrated by cisgender heterosexual men to poor mental health and loneliness. We argue that such approaches lack explanatory power and methodological rigor, validate misogynist incels' claims to victimhood, reflect undue sympathy for violent perpetrators, and obscure and legitimize incel violence. To address the limitations of the research that focuses on poor mental health and loneliness as the primary causes of incel violence, we recommend researchers incorporate feminist, structural, and intersectional approaches in their work, and conceptualize misogynist incel ideology and violence as products of male supremacist culture and structure." What does that mean?

   3. ATDr Andrew Thomas15:28

      Um, it means that someone went to ChatGPT and says, "I don't like the idea that incels might, uh, can explain away what they do with mental health, um, and I'm really into feminism. Craft for me an academic-sounding journal article, and then we'll publish it." Now, I'm saying that with tongue in cheek. It, it, obviously the authors care a lot about the incel problem. They c- care a lot about harm and violence against women. I do too. Most people do. But the way they go about it is just, uh... Like, they're, they're, they're pooh-poohing all of these alternative approaches and mental health approaches but they don't even talk about psychology at all in the paper. Um, I feel a bit bad because it feels almost a bit like punching down because it's essentially published by some sociologists who are a mixture of PhD and postdoc, but at the same time science is science, and there shouldn't be an excuse for putting something out there that's just, just bad and not helping, um, and...

   4. CWChris Williamson16:24

      There is also a, if you start playing with fire, dot, dot, dot, kind of expectation.

   5. ATDr Andrew Thomas16:29

      Yeah. And when I say bad, I, I just mean on like a logical fallacy front. Because I think on the, the tweet, the tweet that I put out about this, I give an e- example of at least like 17 fallacies in there, including, uh, very, very close to the knuckle ad hominem attacks, uh, in there. You know, questioning, um, the sexuality of, um, of incel researchers and saying that that gets in the way, um, you know, uh, criticizing the rigor of, of the theories that are being used while suggesting a pet theory that generally isn't very rigorous at all. Uh, leveraging a lot of claims that are unfalsifiable. Um, it's just not very helpful. Um, and what it ultimately is doing is it's pooh-poohing, like I said at the start, one avenue that I think that we should explore. And if we're serious about helpi- uh, about sorting out this problem or helping people, we should explore all avenues.

   6. CWChris Williamson17:27

      Is there a lot

4. 17:28 – 31:57

   Does Incel Violence Occur?

   1. CWChris Williamson17:28

      of incel violence?

   2. ATDr Andrew Thomas17:30

      Uh, so, uh, it depends, right? So some people define violence as, um, e-e-even if someone was to say something awful that makes someone feel bad, some people now take that as a definition of violence. Or if you take the perpetuate, per-, uh, perpetuation of misogynistic views as violence, then of course there's incel violence everywhere you look. I, my w- working definition of violence tends to go more to that sort of acting out physical. So we're talking attacks. So you're talking the likes of Elliot Rodger or you're talking about the recent shooter in Plymouth in the UK. That to me is that sort of acting out violence. Um, if you look at that side of things, actually compared to organized terrorist groups, if you look at, uh, um, a group like Boko Haram, for example, the number of actual incel attacks is very, very small. And not only is it very small, but a lot of them, after the fact, there's a big question mark raised, uh, over whether, um...... uh, that they're incel motivated attacks at all. So Aleck Minassian is the, uh, the, the example that comes to mind, where he actually put a social media post implying that it was an incel attack, and everyone treated it that way, obviously. But then after the fact, when you go and look when it went through the court system and looked at the judge's verd- verdict, uh, they basically could conclude that that was a lie, and that he, he wasn't inspired by that at all. So when you take some of those out, you're talking about very low double digit figures from a community where, I think last time I went on the forum, there were, uh, 26,000 members. But that's just the people who use one forum predominantly from one country. Um, and of course, what other people don't realize is that incel is kind of an identity. Uh, it also just, just kind of describes reproductive status at a basic level. "I'm, I'm not having sex when..." and that, "I feel like that's outside of my control." But you have some guys out there that I call incel adjacent, so they don't... They say, "I'm not an incel," but they've got all of the same beliefs, and there's a lot of those guys out there as well. So you've potentially got hundreds of thousands of guys who either subscribe to this ideology or are very close to it, who are doing a lot of harm online with the, um, what they're, they're promoting. And sometimes what they're doing, you know, like, uh, doxing people and, um, which can ruin people's lives, or modifying, uh, people's pictures to put clothes back on them. That can be very-

   3. CWChris Williamson20:10

      (laughs)

   4. ATDr Andrew Thomas20:10

      ... uh, upsetting. Um, I mean, it's, it's, it's... (sighs) You could argue it's not as bad as the other way around, but it still sort of feels, can feel like a personal attack.

   5. CWChris Williamson20:20

      Yeah.

   6. ATDr Andrew Thomas20:21

      But I never put those things in the same ballpark as someone who, uh, has shot you or stabbed you or crossed that line into-

   7. CWChris Williamson20:30

      Mm-hmm.

   8. ATDr Andrew Thomas20:30

      ... physical violence.

   9. CWChris Williamson20:30

      I think this is, this is one of the problems with talking about incel violence. When most people think about the word violence, especially if you have it going after the word incel, what you think is Elliot Rodger. You think mass school shooter, you think kinetic, uh, some form of big incident that, that is, is really, really not good.

   10. ATDr Andrew Thomas20:50

       Mm-hmm.

   11. CWChris Williamson20:50

       That's not to say that manipulating people's photos and doxing them online is nothing. But I do think that the term violence conjures up, uh, on average, a more aggressive, more impactful issue than what it is mostly. I mean, just for clarity, at the moment, David and William have got a pre-print, uh, journal, uh, bit of analysis that they're doing-

   12. ATDr Andrew Thomas21:12

       Mm-hmm.

   13. CWChris Williamson21:12

       ... which is literally titled, "Why Isn't There More Incel Violence?"

   14. ATDr Andrew Thomas21:16

       Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And I think that's published now, um, so people should be, be able to access that. Um, and yes, there's, there's this idea that actually maybe we should be expecting more given the numbers, and that there are things getting in the way, like the fact that, um, incels sort of do a lot of, uh, talking online in those sort of pseudo-anonymous communities. So we talked a lot about this with- in the paper with regards to networking, the paper that we did for the, the Home Office. If you look at the types of organizations that do a lot of physical violence, they have, um, an ideology, and they have an ideology with an end goal. So they w- they have a specific goal that they want to realize. Incels don't have that. But there's also a lot of small group talking, in-person planning, uh, and hallmarks of big large scale attacks that's kind of missing from the incel community, which is one of the reasons that they, they're not particularly organized.

   15. CWChris Williamson22:15

       Well, is it even right to refer to it as the incel community? Are they a cohesive movement with a central goal?

   16. ATDr Andrew Thomas22:23

       Um, so I'm not sure whether that's the definition of community. So I would say that they are a community. I would say that they're a community even though it fragments, so you have some on Discord, some on the forums. They're a community in the sense that they know each other, they come together to talk, people feel like they have s- an element of social support from it. So I would say, yes, that you could count that as a community. What I would actually put the question mark over is that ideology. Uh, is it an ideology? Is it a movement? That's where the, the lines get a bit hazy, because compared to other, uh, uh, threatening movements, they don't have the same hallmarks.

   17. CWChris Williamson23:04

       What's himpathy? I saw you cite that. I'd never heard of that word before.

   18. ATDr Andrew Thomas23:09

       Oh, so, um, that... (laughs) So that's one of those terms that's thrown around like, um, toxic masculinity in the paper. I'll be honest that with, uh, the... So this is referring to the paper which we've now written in rebuttal to the one that we talked about earlier, and what's really cool about that is we've, we've gone together some of the top scholars, uh, including, uh, a woman of color, by the way, um, to craft a response to that article. It's actually longer than the original article, pointing out all the flaw- flaws and justifying why, um, a mental health lens might be, might be good to at least entertain with this. Uh, and part of the article, we kind of attacked the fact that the, the authors use these kind of nebulous terms like toxic masculinity, like himpathy, to sort of downplay the suffering of men, uh, and demonize some stereotypically male behavior. Um, I don't have too much more to say about himpathy, if I'm honest, because that's a part of the paper which wasn't my MO. Um, but one thing's for certain, it, it doesn't help. There's a l- there's a lot of terminology in this debate that isn't helpful, okay? Some of it is true imprecision. So like we were talking about violence earlier, right? So if you've got, if you're gonna lump everything in as violence, from shooting someone to name-calling online, then the opportunities to reduce violence...... kind of reduce or become less effective because you're not being specific enough in the behaviors that you're targeting. Um, similarly, I think we're, in a lot of this discourse, things like empathy, things like toxic, toxic masculinity, they're very nebulous terms that kind of get in the way and turn the discourse really into word salad. But they're all fancy ways of saying, uh, men can't possibly suffer because men historically have been the repressors and not the repressed. Um, there's a lot of that in the article. One of my favorite, um, one of my, well, I say favorite, one of the bits that really got my back up was the argument that we, uh, even if men suffer with their mental health, it doesn't really matter because there are other groups that suffer with their mental health more.

   19. CWChris Williamson25:26

       Zero-sum view of empathy.

   20. ATDr Andrew Thomas25:27

       Zero-sum view of empathy, exactly.

   21. CWChris Williamson25:29

       Uh-huh.

   22. ATDr Andrew Thomas25:29

       And zero-sum, sum view of mental health support. So, you know, your mental health can be through the floor. You could be having suicidal thoughts every other day, but as long as there's another group that might be having suicidal thoughts every day, uh, you don't matter. You're fine. You may as well be absolutely fine and okay.

   23. CWChris Williamson25:48

       I th- (clears throat) I think, as well, when you layer on top the "bad people shouldn't get support" label ...

   24. ATDr Andrew Thomas25:54

       Yeah.

   25. CWChris Williamson25:54

       Uh, this is a, a real sort of one-two slam dunk.

   26. ATDr Andrew Thomas25:57

       Yeah. Bad people shouldn't get support, and that just gets in the way because sometimes giving the support turns pe- (laughs) bad people into not-so-bad people.

   27. CWChris Williamson26:07

       Hmm. What happens if you view and label incels as violent monsters?

   28. ATDr Andrew Thomas26:14

       Um, what happen... That's such a good question. It depends on the person, I think. So, incels, what we do know incels by and large is that they're high on rejection sensitivity. That's one of the things that we found, and they're also high on victimhood, uh, rightly or wrongly. They perceive society as not liking them. They perceive society as not empathizing with them, and they're worried about putting themselves out there, um, in society out of fear of getting rejected. And that's not just in romantic relationships. Um, and so, when you refer to them that way, you're just gonna be feeding into the problem and validating that. It's strong evidence. I used this analogy with, um, uh, with Will the other day actually. Um, sometimes talking to these guys, it reminds me of some of those cult, um, shows you see on Netflix where you've got a massive family in a house in Utah somewhere who are all holding up, talking about the fact that the outside world is so awful and all the enemies are out there and we have to stay inside and protect ourselves, very isolating. Um, and I feel like the incel forum sometimes can, uh, c- can have this similar thing where you get together, they swap the worst examples of the outside world, everyone convinces each other that if you go outside and talk to a woman, you're gonna be thrown in jail. And so they, they stay inside. So whenever you get that sort of labeling effect, "You're bad, you're awful, you're a monster," it's just gonna be fuel for that fire and keep-

   29. CWChris Williamson27:49

       Mm-hmm.

   30. ATDr Andrew Thomas27:49

       ... the, the wheels spinning.
5. 31:57 – 36:43

   Ethnic & Political Demographics of Incels

   1. CWChris Williamson31:57

      How ethnically and politically diverse are these groups? What's it like inside of the... Because from the outside, a lot of it is, uh, you know, the usual suspects. It's white supremacy-

   2. ATDr Andrew Thomas32:09

      Yeah.

   3. CWChris Williamson32:09

      ... it's right-wing culture-

   4. ATDr Andrew Thomas32:11

      Yeah.

   5. CWChris Williamson32:11

      ... it's misogyny, it's toxic masculinity-

   6. ATDr Andrew Thomas32:14

      Yeah.

   7. CWChris Williamson32:14

      ... it's school shooters. How true is that?

   8. ATDr Andrew Thomas32:16

      Well, we've been myth-busting quite a few of those now for a number of years, we've replicated some of this work quite- quite a bit, and we tend to find that about a third... But... And this is consistent in the UK and the US by the way, about a third are BIPOC, uh, or just non-white, if you wanted to describe it that way. So that's straight away, you know, if they're a white supremacist movement, they're allowing a lot of non-white members in. Um, so that kind of, uh, again, raises questions about that. In terms of young, you know, we get huge standard deviations. You have guys who are incel in their 50s and 60s, you get some who are 80 and 90. I think in most of our samples we end up getting about 26, something like that, so they're not necessarily young. We recently took, um... The Pew Center has, uh, like a political ideology, um, measure that we pinched, which is, uh, quite interesting because what it does, it gives you the left-wing statement of something and a right-wing statement, it says, "Pick which one you agree with most." So it might be, you know, government could do a lot more to help, uh, help the poor versus, uh, the poor should get minimal funding and- and stand on their own two feet. Something like that. Um, and people could pick, everything from environmental policy to gay marriage to, um, uh, there's articles about helping out ethnic minorities. And when you present that to incels, what we actually find is they're picking the left-wing statement more than 50% of the time overall. So they're actually generally quite centrist and they describe themselves as politic- politically centrist as well, uh, and maybe slightly left-leaning. And that- that makes perfect sense, by the way, because if you think about it, it's people who tend to have very little, low status, low money, who tend to be very pro-left-wing policies, so that kind of makes sense. They do tend to be a bit more right-wing on, um, certain elements. Can't remember exactly what they are, but nothing that jumps out as obvious. What you do find, though, is that if you isolate the small proportion of incels who are like, "Yes, violence in the name of incel is- is often justified," um, which I think in our sample is, like, 6% to 10%, something like that. Those tend to have, um, quite right-wing views, so they'll pick the right-wing statement for everything. So it's almost like you've got this community and then within, you've got little sub-groups.

   9. CWChris Williamson34:32

      Mm.

   10. ATDr Andrew Thomas34:33

       Um, and one of those sub-groups is riskier than the others, and that tends to be categorized by right-leaning ideology.

   11. CWChris Williamson34:42

       What about their views on violence and sexual entitlement? Is that universal across incels?

   12. ATDr Andrew Thomas34:48

       Uh, so again, no. No, it's not. That's- that's the simple, straightforward answer. Uh, people will like to take a mean, uh, and just generalize it across everyone and say, "Well, that's- that's the typical and the typical is universal." Um, but even if you take something like rape myth- myth acceptance, even if you take something like, um, sexism, benevolent or hostile sexism, you will find people at both ends of the pole. And so you can... It's- it's very easy to potentially over-generalize, and that's not saying that there aren't some nasty pasties in, uh, in incels and that there aren't more nasty pasties than you might get if you get a similar sample of the general population. Um, but we have to remember that within that, you've got a lot of different voices with a lot of different views. What binds them together is that extremely dark, hopeless experience over their relationship prospects, and that manifests itself in a lot of different ways. Um, a lot of incels that I know, um, almost use the incel forums like a little bit of escapism porn type thing. So they're feeling bad about themselves, they're feeling bad about the lack of relationship prospects. They just wanna go to a place and- and- and- and- and get that message that reinforces how they're feeling, um, without necessarily that informing their opinion of women, at least in the short term anyway. Uh, and this is something that's quite common. I mean, uh, if you see people who have depression and you get them to take the phone out of their pocket and go on TikTok and start swiping, their content that they see the algorithm will be feeding them the sad stuff. It reflects, it's almost like a mirror. Um, and so I think a lot of the incel forums act like a mirror for some individuals who aren't creating the content, aren't engaging with other users, and just feel sad and want to know there are others who feel like them.

   13. CWChris Williamson36:42

       What do you think

6. 36:43 – 43:21

   Does EvPsych Neglect Incels?

   1. CWChris Williamson36:43

      about the accusation that your industry of evolutionary psychology has a body count associated with their neglect of the incel topic?

   2. ATDr Andrew Thomas36:51

      Yeah, so that's, that's been a point of contention. So this was Daniel Conway Beane's, uh, article in the The Boston Globe that, that cited that. And I know Dan, uh, fairly well and he's- and he is a nice guy, and I know that with that article that a lot was left on the chopping room floor. Um, I think myself and Steve Stewart-Williams have been arguing for years that there is a lot of sloppy communication in evolutionary psychology, particularly around sex differences, where people, because they're writing not for the public, they're writing for other academics and they're writing specifically for evolutionary psychologists, they will sometimes cut corners knowing that people will fill in the corners the other end. So, not everyone spells out the full evolutionary logic of their ideas. Sometimes peop- people, because even researchers are human, will slip into that thing of taking an average difference and saying, "Well, men do this and women do that," when it's not, "Men typically do this, women typically do that." Um, and so there's, through sloppy writing and not recognizing the who we're- who we're actually writing for, which with open- with, uh, open access journals, with pre-prints is becoming more and more public. You only have to look at the black- Black Pill wiki and- and go to the Black Pill science section. There's over 200 peer-reviewed articles there with commentary. It's being digested by these communities. And so I think we have some responsibility to bear that in mind when we're writing, uh, and tighten that up and do it, uh, properly. Um, at the same time, to then say that there's a body count associated with that, I'm not so sure. Because again, there's a lot of cherry picking of evidence that's done by the community. So, uh, they will find a way of finding some evidence that backs up what they're saying and ignore the evidence that runs counter to that. Um, and a- and a point that kind of applies to this, but the stuff that I- I- I've made about other things as well, if you've got an individual who the- the difference between... The- the thing that makes them commit an act of violence is some evolutionary psychology research that they've read. You have someone who is very close to violence already, who already has that disposition and has just found something that can be used as a reason. That's my argument. Um, I don't think there's anyone who's going from 0 to 100 through the reading of evolutionary psychology would. And so then s- giving the ultimate responsibility, saying that there's a body count associated with that, I think is incredibly far-fetched. And unfortunately, what it also does is it kind of diminishes the efforts of people like Geoffrey Miller, it diminishes the efforts of people like, uh, Will or myself who actually try to correct that, um, and try to push back and encourage an accurate way of viewing that research when applied to real world mating.

   3. CWChris Williamson39:51

      What's this drama online about you guys being paid by some shadowy anti-extremist task force?

   4. ATDr Andrew Thomas39:57

      (laughs) I really... It's... This stuff just really annoys me because there are certain things in life, being sexist and being racist are two really good examples where you can just levy stuff at someone. Like if you call someone a sexist, the burden of proof instantly shifts to the person who's being accused, right? And this is one of those things where someone comes up with a complete crazy theory, um, and just everyone is like, "Oh, well, that... You need to disprove that." It's like, "Well, uh, what do you want me to do, man?" I'm an... I'm a university lecturer in the UK who's not paid loads and loads and loads of money. If I was to do something shadowy like that and break the sort of ethical code of the British Psychological Society, I'd just lose my job and my livelihood. Like, why would I do that? Plus, um, I think a lot of people with that particular research, 'cause it was funded by the Centre for Countering Extremism, which is an arm's length body of the, uh, the Home Office in the UK. Arm's length means that they're- they're not s- dictated to by the Home Office. They can do their own thing. So there's the first layer of it not being to do with government. The second layer was then that we had it in black and white that they were to have no impact over the actual study that we did. They didn't even get access to the data or anything like that. We kept all of that private. And so... And I even feel bad now that I'm kind of justifying it, but it's just laughable the amount of safeguards that you go through. And bear in mind, right, the thing that really up- upsets me about this is the... A good example of you're damned if you do and you're damned if you don't, right? For that study, we paid incels, okay? We're the onl- to the best of my knowledge, we're the only study ever to- to pay incels. And that was me, right? That was only on my shoulders because I was like, "At the end of the day, these people are people and you normally pay people for doing psychology studies and we should treat them like people, like anyone else, and pay them accordingly like we would anyone else." Bearing in mind that we know within that community that you've got diverse voices and you're not always paying someone for- for being an extreme misogynist. I took so much flak for that from both camps. I took so much flak from the people who weren't incel who were like, "Oh, we don't want you paying them." And I took flak from the incels themselves who were like, "Oh, you know, you're selling all my personal data and this is a front," and stuff like that. It's like, damned if you do, damned if you don't. But there's... E- anything like that, I just block it and just get on with it because, um, I think the- the, uh, people like myself and Will have got a good enough track record now that people know that we call it how it is, right? So our thing has always been if you say something misogynistic, we will tell people exactly what you've said and we'll say, "This- this is the tendency." We won't oversell it. We won't undersell it. We won't say we support it. We will just...... just describe it as it is with an idea of trying to reduce harm. That's where we sit. Um, and there's a lot of incels who personally disagree with my perspective on that, and that of my colleagues, but at least they know where we stand with things, and they know that we, uh, generally call it as it is.

   5. CWChris Williamson43:15

      What-

   6. ATDr Andrew Thomas43:15

      Sorry, that was a rant there. You've got my back now.

   7. CWChris Williamson43:18

      No, no. No, no. That's, that's exactly why I'm here. Uh,

7. 43:21 – 47:06

   Current State of Incel Research

   1. CWChris Williamson43:21

      what haven't we covered from the sort of current state of incel research, new insights that you've been getting from that?

   2. ATDr Andrew Thomas43:30

      Yeah. Oh, right.

   3. CWChris Williamson43:30

      What, what are we missing?

   4. ATDr Andrew Thomas43:31

      Okay. So, we're missing a couple of things. We're missing a couple of things. So, the first thing that we're missing is everyone's still trying to describe stuff, right? So, incel research has exploded, but it's still a load of people scraping forums. I mean, you went to the Evolution in Human Behavior conference a coup- a, a year ago, a couple of years ago in Palm Springs. There were loads of incel talks there, very little data. Lots of theory, lots of scraping of forums, not actually going and talking to these guys and finding out what they, um, uh, what they believe. Now, people are doing that. That's up and running, but it's still in the descriptive. What we're missing is that move into doing something about it, right? And this is why we're going down the mental health route, is not to excuse anything, but it's about saying, "Right, we've described that now. We know there's some harm here. There's some self-harm within the community. There's some harm directed outwards as well, but we also know that there are sub-groups." So, the first thing is, how do we categorize the sub-groups because they may mean different things, and then secondly, how do we actually try to intervene? And that's what we're trying to work towards now. So, I've already talked a little bit about sub-groupings with the small condoning of violence, highly right wing. Um, s- what you might find that's super interesting, we've got this as a pre-print at the moment, we dug into the data in the, the Home Office, well, the CCE paper in more depth, and we found what we think are two statistical clusters of different types of incels, or different pathways towards harm. So, on the one side, you have high autism traits, low mate value, bullying. That's kind of like one cluster. And then on the other side you have dark triad right-wing beliefs.

   5. CWChris Williamson45:16

      Mm.

   6. ATDr Andrew Thomas45:16

      And they both feed into the ideology, but they don't seem to touch one another. So, you've got almost like these two different types within the same community being labeled the same. Now, of course, how you would help, um, someone with poor social skills who's been bullied, who maybe hates women because they feel like they've been hated on themselves, how you would address that would be completely different to someone who is right-wing ideology and highly narcissistic and has psychopathy. So, at a just a beginning stage... And to be honest, what... the reason I love that is when you talk to the NHS in the UK, they say to you, "Um, this feels more like a prevent issue. This feels more like counter-terrorism 'cause some of these guys are really right wing and high dark triad. This doesn't feel like healthcare." And then you go and talk to prevent and they say, "We see so many of these guys who wouldn't hurt a fly, they've just got really poor social skills. Um, this feels like an NHS issue." And this is why I think it is, is because we've got these clusters. So, we need to identify the clusters, identify the needs, and then try to do something about it in terms of helping. Um, and I don't know anyone apart from our team that's trying to actively do that, and do that in good faith.

   7. CWChris Williamson46:29

      It's a problem with taxonomies of anything, right? As soon as you create a label, people get lumped into that label.

   8. ATDr Andrew Thomas46:36

      Yeah.

   9. CWChris Williamson46:36

      Uh, yeah, it covers al- it covers all manner of sins and behaviors. And, uh, I suppose that because everything is so new, uh, this still needs to be broken apart.

   10. ATDr Andrew Thomas46:47

       Yeah. People are kind of scrambling around. It's almost like imagine trying to, um... Imagine taking football hooligans, organized football hooligans, and generalizing that to football fans-

   11. CWChris Williamson46:58

       Mm.

   12. ATDr Andrew Thomas46:58

       ... and everyone's studying football fans, when actually there's this particular corner that we really need to get into and the others are kind of along for the ride.

8. 47:06 – 54:20

   Is Misogyny Increasing in Wider Society?

   1. CWChris Williamson47:06

      Is there anything interesting happening with the state of sort of misogyny, misogyny research outside of the incel world at the moment? You know, we've got a lot of shifting-

   2. ATDr Andrew Thomas47:18

      Yeah.

   3. CWChris Williamson47:19

      ... dynamics happening in, in the modern world with women outperforming men in education and employment, with, uh, poor mental health, uh, for men, with increasing levels of depression, of self-harm, of male sedation hypothesis, my thing, and I'm, I'm wondering whether we're seeing changing rates of anti-female viewpoints outside of the self-identified incel movement.

   4. ATDr Andrew Thomas47:45

      Yeah. Well, the bi- the bigger movement is the wider red pill manosphere, so which is what you're essentially alluding to. And if you're worried about risk of harm, I actually wonder whether it's... And, and particularly if you want to go down this route of, of the harm that you care about being perpetuation of, of miso- misogyny, I'd be more worried about red pill manosphere communities, because the main difference is that incels have taken the red pill, uh, and the red pill in relation to, uh, to feminism. But where the, the manosphere communities, by and large, use that a- uh, to inform some sort of action, incels are using it to perform some sort of inaction, right? So, the red pill is that me- men are hard done by, there's a, a broken mating market, uh, women want one thing when they say they want another, society says it's personality that matters but it isn't. Like, there's these... The people wake up and they get this knowledge in their head. What incels do is they go, "Well, if that's the real game, I can't play that. I can't keep up with that at all. So, I will opt out and I'll get hopeless about it, and that will go and fester over here." On the other side, you've got people saying, "Well, I'll use that to my advantage then."... maybe I'll opt out of mating altogether, the sort of Men Go Their Own Way, uh, community, or I'll try to game the system, Pick-Up Artists community. But what they all have in common is it's actually doing something with that knowledge.

   5. CWChris Williamson49:09

      Mm.

   6. ATDr Andrew Thomas49:09

      Using that to change how you approach life and how to actually then engage with women or, uh, by and large, anyway. So, I think people have been focusing a lot on incel, 'cause it's a catchy term, um, it's- it's more, uh, well-defined out of those different communities. But I think really, we need to be broadening it to what I call online misogynistic ideology, and looking- looking beyond that. OMI, I call it, actually.

   7. CWChris Williamson49:36

      OMI. Interesting.

   8. ATDr Andrew Thomas49:38

      Um-

   9. CWChris Williamson49:38

      Yeah. I- I wonder about that. I, you know, there's... I'm gonna try, and say this in the most delicate way possible. I think the, uh, sort of cabin fever, social awkwardness, basically the stasis in the real world in terms of actually getting stuff done, getting up on time, being able to go and make things happen in your life, that, uh, much of the incel, uh, movement, um, perpetuates or causes or, uh, increases, uh, is in some ways helping to mitigate some of the- the violence that we could see. That the fact that it is encouraging people to stay in the house, don't go outside... I mean, if you're not gonna speak to a woman because you're terrified of talking to her, you need to be a very unique brand of human to overcome that and go straight to punching somebody in the face or- or worse.

   10. ATDr Andrew Thomas50:31

       Yeah, yeah.

   11. CWChris Williamson50:32

       Um, so when it comes to the they go out and do things thing, uh, I would guess that people who are in this online misogyny ecosystem, in- in- infrastructure, whatever your term is, OMI, um, that, uh, they would be more likely to go and do that. The difference being that those people probably have a wider support group. They probably have friends. They probably have pursuits. If they're able to get out of the house and go and do things, maybe they're gainfully employed, maybe they've got a hobby. You know, uh, I- I think that that acts as a bit of a bulwark against them. I don't know of any red pill killings. I haven't seen that come up. I imagine actually saying that, it would probably be identified as incel, because they'd say, "Look at this stuff, this sort of female-hating content that they're sharing-"

   12. ATDr Andrew Thomas51:18

       Yeah.

   13. CWChris Williamson51:18

       "... despite the fact that they didn't identify as that." Just another point, fascinating to think about the similarities between, uh, MGTOW and incels, Men Going Their Own Way, "I chose to do it," incels, "I didn't choose to do it." But after a while, if the incel, uh, ideology, if part of that canon is you shouldn't speak to a woman in case you go to jail, "Oh, right, I'm not gonna speak to a woman," how involuntary is it now? It's like predictively-

   14. ATDr Andrew Thomas51:45

       Yeah.

   15. CWChris Williamson51:45

       ... involuntary-

   16. ATDr Andrew Thomas51:46

       Yeah.

   17. CWChris Williamson51:46

       ... because you say-

   18. ATDr Andrew Thomas51:46

       Yeah.

   19. CWChris Williamson51:46

       ..."Well, I've tried it before," or, "I know, I know what they actually want. I'm able to predict this trajectory out there." But you go, well, the MGTOW and the incel people end up being perilously close together. Does that make sense?

   20. ATDr Andrew Thomas51:57

       Yeah, no, it does make sense. And again, you see a lot of this in the therapy space because people... It's about the evidence that people are using. So, if you're out in the field and you're talking to people and you're getting feedback, that gives you a more accurate idea of what's going on. But if you're not doing that and you're getting an impression of rejection from the worst examples that are constantly being fed to you, you're never experiencing rejection yourself. You've kind of internalized it. Now, if I went to a nightclub, not that I would, I could ask out 100 women- uh, women in an evening, and maybe I'll get rejected 100 times knowing me, right? I've experienced it, 100 rounds of rejection. The moment you internalize rejection, uh, you're only limited in how often you're getting rejected by the speed of your own thoughts. So, you could potentially be rejecting yourself hundreds of times a second. Um, and I think you've, it- it's very easy to fall into that loop. And of course, what do we do with people who reject us? What do we do with people we think are gonna reject us, just in life, right? Do we like them? Do we think they're great? Do we want to help them out? No. By and large, the human reaction to people who reject us is, "I don't like you very much." And so this thing compounds and goes over and over and over. And the way that, um, I think you have to break that cycle is you have to get the- the- the reality check in there, first and foremost of, is the data accurate? Um, let's- let's not beat around the bush. There will be some men out there who, they are, they- they feel like they have no mating prospects, and they're right, 100%. Yeah? Um, let's not pretend that people like that don't exist. But if you do, then the route is around acceptance. The route is about acceptance and thinking, "Well, what are you gonna do with your life that isn't bound up in this frustration and this, uh, grieving process?" But for a lot of people, like, I can't tell you the number of interviews with incels, um, and clients I've had as incel, and I'm sat across someone who is more attractive than I am. Like, ob- objectively, um, who have, uh, are opting out of ma- of the mating market purely because of their physical looks. So, I think that there's a data problem here. There's a data problem in terms of not be- not having access to it, making a lot of assumptions that are never challenged and only ever reinforced by the community.

9. 54:20 – 1:07:18

   Men’s Experiences With Female Therapists

   1. ATDr Andrew Thomas54:20

   2. CWChris Williamson54:20

      What have you learned about men's experience with female therapists?

   3. ATDr Andrew Thomas54:24

      Um, so I've learned, I've learned a lot about therapy in general. Now, in the UK... I don't know about your- your experience. You probably have like all-singing, all-dancing healthcare now. Um, I, in the UK, it's- it's quite common now that you have like, say, a GP practice, and every time you go there, you see a different GP, the- the- the days of the family doctor have gone. Um, and what you learn when you see a different GP every time is you realize that there's a lot of variation in quality of GPs, and there's some crap ones. Um, the quality in, um...... the- in therapists, in the var- var- variability in therapists is a hundred-fold larger than that. Um, Chris, could you just say for me a second, "I'm a counselor"?

   4. CWChris Williamson55:08

      Yes.

   5. ATDr Andrew Thomas55:09

      ... No, no, I- no, you personally, say, "I am a counselor."

   6. CWChris Williamson55:12

      You are a counselor.

   7. ATDr Andrew Thomas55:13

      No, no, no. Say you. Say, "I, Chris, am a counselor."

   8. CWChris Williamson55:15

      I am a counselor.

   9. ATDr Andrew Thomas55:16

      There we are. In the UK, you're now a counselor. It's an-

   10. CWChris Williamson55:19

       Oh.

   11. ATDr Andrew Thomas55:19

       ... unregulated role.

   12. CWChris Williamson55:21

       It's like life coach.

   13. ATDr Andrew Thomas55:22

       ... in the UK. Exactly. Anyone could set up shop as a counselor.

   14. CWChris Williamson55:25

       You've just made me change careers.

   15. ATDr Andrew Thomas55:27

       Th- there we go, instantly.

   16. CWChris Williamson55:28

       This is gaslighting.

   17. ATDr Andrew Thomas55:28

       Don't you feel better? Don't you feel better?

   18. CWChris Williamson55:30

       I- yeah, I do actually.

   19. ATDr Andrew Thomas55:31

       (laughs)

   20. CWChris Williamson55:31

       Yeah. Thank you.

   21. ATDr Andrew Thomas55:31

       Now, there's- there are accreditation bodies, but there are people out there practicing with no education, there's people out there practicing with no accreditation, and even those who have accreditation, there's huge variation in, um, education levels. And so, I just want to kind of frame that, because I will t- talk about the experiences of some of the clients that I've had come to me, and what they've said they've had, but I kind of wanna put that on a backdrop of, there's a lot of crap therapists out there. And really, a message to your viewers as well, it's- i- if someone has only gone and seen a therapist once and had a bad experience, don't write off therapy. Just write off that person, and go to the- go to the next one because chances are, it'll be different next time. Um, now the other problem is that most counselors and therapists in the UK are women, so if you're going to have a bad experience with a counselor, chances are, it's going to be a woman because there's more of- there's more of them. That being said, when I have had clients come to me and say, "I've had a really bad, uh, experience," most of my clients are male, and they do say certain things about their experiences with female counselors, uh, that I can't say is a pattern, but it is something that I see quite regularly. Um, so one that comes up, uh, from time and time again is, if I've seen men who h- have been in relationships that have been seen by a- a female counselor in couples therapy, there's a huge perception that she, uh, the female counselor has sided with the female partner and sort of doubled-up and double-teamed on the guy, so you get a lot of that. Um, but you also get common complaints about lack of empathy, particularly within, um, mating contexts. So, female therapists report supposedly being unable to empathize with the male client over the fact that they're struggling to get a relationship. Um, I have- I've met people, for example, who, um, uh, have lots of female friends. They're very di- stressed because their female friends tell them, "You're an amazing person," you know, "It's only a matter of time for you," even though it- it's never happened. Um, and they've gone to the- the- the female therapist who said the exact same thing, and then they felt like, "Everyone around me is saying that I should be fine. I'm not. What's wrong with me?" So you get em- elements of that. But then, the real kicker, the real kick in the teeth, is that you get a lot of ideology entering the therapy space. So I've- I've had lots of clients talking about how they've been told that their problem is due to their toxic masculinity, that their problem is due to them being narcissistic-

   22. CWChris Williamson58:09

       Mm-hmm.

   23. ATDr Andrew Thomas58:09

       ... or that their problem being that they haven't- um, they don't engage with feminist ideology. Um, and really, in therapy, that's a complete no-no. Um, and so actually, a lot of my guys, um, that I've seen, like, I've seen conservative guys and Christian guys, um, guys from working class backgrounds, all of which were like, "I can't gel with my therapist because I don't think that they- they will empathize with me." Now, what's really interesting about that is that there's no real evidence in the counseling and psychotherapy literature that the qualities of the counselor actually matter. So you see a lot of this in, uh, alcohol, uh, and substance misuse, right? So a lot of clients will say, "I only want a counselor if they've been an alcoholic themselves, 'cause only then will they understand me."

   24. CWChris Williamson59:00

       Mm.

   25. ATDr Andrew Thomas59:01

       Sh- which m- from a human perspective makes total sense, but the literature actually shows that if they don't know the status of whether the- uh, co- the therapist was an alcoholic, uh, e- earlier in their life or not, it makes no real difference. Uh, and similarly, it doesn't have to be this way. Um, you know, uh, guys who stick with male th- uh, with female therapists, providing they're not bringing the ideology into the therapy space, providing they are empathizing, should have decent outcomes. So part of it is a perception from the clients themselves, "They can't possibly empathize with me, so they won't," uh, but part of it, in the- in the worst examples, is that ideology entering into the therapy space.

   26. CWChris Williamson59:43

       Mm. That's pretty disheartening, I guess, and m- I imagine just causes more men to think that therapy isn't for them or that they're a- an unfixable problem or to sort of discount mental health interventions overall.

   27. ATDr Andrew Thomas1:00:00

       Yes, and- and this is the- the problem because you've got a- a sex which, by and large, is constantly being told, "You're not opening up," and they see opening up as a sign of weakness. And then when they finally do get the- th- they're brave enough to start doing that, um, it kind of backfires and they feel like they're-

   28. CWChris Williamson1:00:19

       Or their experience is invalidated, right?

   29. ATDr Andrew Thomas1:00:21

       ... yeah.

   30. CWChris Williamson1:00:21

       "I know that you might be feeling this, but that's because of dot, dot, dot."
10. 1:07:18 – 1:16:48

    How Population Density Impacts Family Size

    1. CWChris Williamson1:07:18

       how income and population density affects family size?

    2. ATDr Andrew Thomas1:07:22

       Oh, that's interesting. I've called it the Musk Effect. Um, but-

    3. CWChris Williamson1:07:25

       (laughs)

    4. ATDr Andrew Thomas1:07:25

       ... uh, uh, tagging Elon Musk, hoping that that would get picked up and retweeted, and then I would, uh, be able to make an income on Twitter with my millions of followers.

    5. CWChris Williamson1:07:34

       Mm-hmm.

    6. ATDr Andrew Thomas1:07:35

       So a co-author of mine, uh, Peter Jonasson, managed to get, uh, a dating website service to give us some data. Yeah. And we managed to get it from this company that basically owns a whole bunch of dating websites all over the world, uh, and some of them quite niche, like Jewish dating and, you know, uniform dating and that sort of thing. Um, um, in this dataset, we've got about four million dating profiles with characteristics about the people, but also things like, how often are they getting messages and likes from other people, and stuff like that. So, we did one paper, which was about interest, like who's getting interest on dating websites, where we showed that a combination of income, um, and occupation predicted that people got more, more hits, particularly, uh, if they were male. And this follow-up paper, we thought, "Oh, we've got a, a dataset here of four million people. We know where they're from. We know the states. We know the countries, and we also know how many kids they've got. Can we predict who's having kids?" Um, and what we basically found is that, that, that, I mean, there's a bit of a, a no-brainer, uh, in some respects, that if you've got a lot of money, um, it's easier to provide for more kids. And so generally speaking, income predicts greater number of children. Um, I know that p- you can probably find some counter-examples of that from your, um, uh, networks and people you know in your life of those who maybe are on social security or have big families. But by and large, the more you have, the pr- the, uh, constraints, the number of kids you have gets reduced. But there's something... There's also something else going on, where it's people in cities, by and large, who are having smaller numbers of kids. Um, and we believe there's a, a, a reason consistent with evolutionary theory for that, which is that w- when you have a dense population, when you're shoulder to shoulder with people, when you can't get a dentist because they're full, when you can't get into a GP surgery, when you go to Tescos and it's Black Friday and there's everyone around, when you're in that sort of environment, um, you're getting this signal that resources are tight. Yeah. It's, uh, uh, space is a, a premium. Resources are, sources are a premium. And so in that case, it might be a better strategy to put all of your eggs in one basket and have a smaller number of children that you know that you can provide for and really help and support, rather than having lots in a very sort of dense environment that are going to struggle, um, to, to sort of thrive. And then in the study, what we found was that if you look at the population densities of the countries and the states from the participants and looked at their income and put these in a model, that, yes, you find those two predictors. So, people who have more income, they tend to have more kids, but there's also this thing of if they're in really packedly, packed, dense cities, then they tend to have fewer kids. But then what's, uh, really interesting is you get an interaction. So, if you're in... I do this now for an interaction. I don't know, I don't know why. Um...

    7. CWChris Williamson1:10:45

       (laughs)

    8. ATDr Andrew Thomas1:10:45

       It's like I'm a Power Ranger.

    9. CWChris Williamson1:10:47

       You are.

    10. ATDr Andrew Thomas1:10:47

        Um, so what you find is in the really highly densely populated areas, that income kind of counteracts the population density effect. So, what that means is, yes, you know, you're in a situation where there's lots of people around. They could be competing for space. They could be competing for resources. But if you, if you've got the money, you can care less about that sort of stuff, and so have, again, more kids relative to that. So, the reason I called it the Musk Effect, I could have called it the Boris Johnson Effect if I wanted to as well, is you can think about these guys who were raised in cities rather than out on the outskirts in farms, who have those very large families and also have the very large income to boot. Um, now, what's really cool about that study is that if you're thinking about implications, what to do with that information, well, th- there are certain things that you can do to give the impression that a, uh, a city or a- an area is less dense than you might think it is. Um, th- this is gonna sound like a really, really, uh, weird example, but I-

    11. CWChris Williamson1:11:56

        Are you about to say that you can fix the-

    12. ATDr Andrew Thomas1:11:58

        Yeah. (laughs)

    13. CWChris Williamson1:11:58

        ... birth rate collapse by getting nicer walkways and putting more trees up into the cities?

    14. ATDr Andrew Thomas1:12:02

        Yeah. Well, this is, this, uh, this is the idea. This is the idea. You could have, like, the 15-minute cities and stuff like that. The cringe example I was gonna say, actually, is that, and don't ask me why I know this, but, um, I've been planning to, like, take a cruise in a, a couple years', uh, time. And there's this one cruise line where, uh, I know the ships are identical and the capacity is identical, but the configuration is different. And you get complaints on all of the reviews for the one ship saying, "It's too dense. It feels like everyone's on top of each other," and stuff like that. And on the other one, you don't. Even though, same amount of people, same size ship, different configuration. So, it is pointing at, could there be these little tweaks that if we're worried about population decline, well, maybe the best thing to do isn't shove everyone in a city. Or if you are gonna shove everyone into a city, can you make it feel like it's a little bit more spaced out and roomy?

    15. CWChris Williamson1:12:51

        I asked Stephen J. Shaw, uh, probably the best population birth rate researcher that I know, uh, I asked him what's going to happen as populations start to decline. Let's take America, for instance. Uh, there's not exactly a shortage of space out here. And I said, "Okay, so l- l- let's say that we go from 330 million to 150 million." We're just gonna get chopped in half. Let's say it's gonna happen-

    16. ATDr Andrew Thomas1:13:14

        Mm-hmm.

    17. CWChris Williamson1:13:14

        ... over the next, I don't know, 150 years, something like that. Uh, are we going to see half-full...... school classes? Are we going to see towns that every other shop or every other house is going to be empty? And he said, "No, that's not what's going to happen at all. You're going to have entire towns that are totally empty, and most of the big cities are going to remain the same level of population density." So, this probably doesn't speak particularly well for your current working hypothesis- No. ... because you're not going to have an even removal of humans across the entirety of a, a, a country. They're still going to congregate around the most popular, biggest cities, with the best infrastructure and the coolest gyms and the best food, or whatever it might be. Uh, it's going to be entire towns that essentially just get abandoned.

    18. ATDr Andrew Thomas1:14:04

        Yeah. And why, why would, would you want to? Why would you want to move out of a city where if you've lived and you've grown up there, and you've got instant access to all of these things, that really speaks to that instant gratification. Mind you, I, I used to... I grew up in a city and now I've moved to a smaller one, and I, the idea that I couldn't go to a corner shop and buy paracetamol at 2:00 AM, like, you know, really se- sent the, uh, uh, uh, you know, the shits up me. And then I just got over it when I... and found out that it was fine. Um, so I think either what's gonna happen is you're gonna need to incentivize moving out. Um, that, that can be done, you know, people can be nudged. Or it's more about saying, "Well, if people don't wanna stay in those cities, what can we do to..." Because it's, it's meant to be this idea of a subtle cue, right? So it's not necessarily something that people are aware of, but it's just the idea that people's everyday life is feeling a bit cramped, and there are things that you can do to diminish that feeling that don't necessarily mean that you've got to remove the number of people from a city.

    19. CWChris Williamson1:15:06

        Have you got any idea whether income inequality impacts the family size?

    20. ATDr Andrew Thomas1:15:12

        Um, not from this study, no. And I don't actually-

    21. CWChris Williamson1:15:15

        That'd be cool.

    22. ATDr Andrew Thomas1:15:15

        ... know the answer to that question.

    23. CWChris Williamson1:15:16

        It'd be-

    24. ATDr Andrew Thomas1:15:16

        That would be a, a... Really cool.

    25. CWChris Williamson1:15:18

        It would be cool if someone could do that. Um, you know, I know for instance, income inequality does all sorts of weird things to, uh, female beautification and self-objectification, sexy selfies-

    26. ATDr Andrew Thomas1:15:28

        Yeah.

    27. CWChris Williamson1:15:28

        ... Candice Blake's work, all that sort of stuff. So it would make complete sense if-

    28. ATDr Andrew Thomas1:15:33

        Yeah.

    29. CWChris Williamson1:15:33

        ... it did.

    30. ATDr Andrew Thomas1:15:34

        I mean, it does all sorts, it does all sorts of things. Uh, again, looping back around to incels, incel chatter tends to happen a, a bit more in high, um, income in- inequality areas. One of the reasons I'm um-ing and ah-ing as well is that it, it... Popping into my head are these examples from all these different cultures, like there are some... I'm pretty sure the Igbo in, um, in Africa, for example, they depend on large families. So you get to a point where income inequality... Maybe income inequality isn't what you wanna be looking at. You wanna be looking at absolute posit- uh, poverty, because when you get to, to a certain level, um, you really depend on having more kids in order to prop up the family. The Igbo come to mind because they're a good example where, in the West normally, um, when a couple has a kid, their marital satisfaction, their relationship satisfaction goes down quite reliably-
11. 1:16:48 – 1:25:49

    New Research Nuances on Body Counts

    1. CWChris Williamson1:16:48

       Body count, the internet's favorite mating topic to discuss. We spoke-

    2. ATDr Andrew Thomas1:16:52

       Oh, yes.

    3. CWChris Williamson1:16:52

       ... a little bit about this in the past.

    4. ATDr Andrew Thomas1:16:54

       We did.

    5. CWChris Williamson1:16:54

       What-

    6. ATDr Andrew Thomas1:16:55

       We did.

    7. CWChris Williamson1:16:55

       ... are the new nuances in there?

    8. ATDr Andrew Thomas1:16:58

       Okay. So last time... When was the last time we did this? We did this probably a couple of years ago now and during (laughs) and during that inter- that podcast I was like, "I've got this great study that I'm writing up." Well, this is how long it takes me to write stuff up because I'm pretty sure this week I'm finally gonna push the button on it. But basically, um, what I realized was there's, there's quite a bit of research out there around absolute number. How many, uh, uh, past partners people are having, what the optimal is. Steve and I did some stuff on, you know, how willing would you be to date someone who had this number of partners and we tracked that relationship. But one day I was there thinking, "There's an ex- I think we're missing a trick here. There's an extra thing." Because if you've got 12 partners and, uh, uh, but you had 11 of them when you were 18 and experimenting, and then you've only had one in the last 20 years, that says something very different than the other way around, doesn't it? Like if you've got (laughs) someone who had one partner when they're 18 and now they're mid-30s and you find out they had 11 in the last six months, something weird's going on, right? So it's not just about the number, it's about when they happened, right? So I've, I've run this study and there was about 5,000 people across three studies with 15 subsamples, and 11 of those subsamples were from different countries. And what we did is we said, "Here is... Pictorially, here's a representation of someone's sexual history, the number of partners they've had and when they happened," in a sort of notches on the bedpost sort of way. So this was the start, and then they had one here and one here and blah, blah, blah. So you can see it. And then we messed with that by either, by changing the number of lines, so we did four, 12, and 36, which are the numbers from mine and Steve's original study where four was optimal, 12 was kind of in the middle, and 30-

    9. CWChris Williamson1:18:54

       12 Was the same... Was 12 the same as one or zero?

    10. ATDr Andrew Thomas1:18:58

        No. 12 was, uh... So, so zero was about the same as five or six-

    11. CWChris Williamson1:19:03

        Right.

    12. ATDr Andrew Thomas1:19:03

        ... something like that. So you d- you do remember right though. So, so a virgin was less desirable than having someone with one partner or two or three. Um, went past that, then it sort of starts to shoot down.

    13. CWChris Williamson1:19:16

        And the, uh, arc is longer for men than it is for women?

    14. ATDr Andrew Thomas1:19:19

        Uh, a little bit. Yeah, yeah. But it's more the, the differences are more about whether you're asking about a short-term mating context or a long-term mating context. So we picked four, which kind of was optimal, then 12, which was midway down the ramp, and then 36 when it starts to tail off. We said, "Well...... make those three conditions. And then what we did is we displayed those different conditions in different ways, 15 different ways each, to participants, ranging from increasing in frequency sharply, so they started off with a couple of partners and then recently they've had loads, through to equally spaced out over time, to the opposite, where they had loads and loads of partners around their sexual d- debut, and then they've really slowed down and had some clear long-term relationships, right? And we ran that with all the countries and stuff, and we found some really interesting stuff. So first of all, first thing to say is, that effect of... And we were a- saying basically, "Here's someone's sexual history. How willing would you be to, to go on a l- uh, a date with them in a sort of long-term context? So would, would you entertain an i- uh, relationship with this person?" Reliably, four scored higher than 12, scored higher than 36, every single country. China, Brazil, Poland, Australia, Norway, UK, US, Greece, Slovakia. I've got to pick a... Uh, there's got to be one that I've missed and, uh, Norway. Um, every single country. Little bit of a variation in the strength of the effect, but there everywhere you look. And there's some marked differences there, uh, if, in terms of culture, but you find that as a constant. So that was the first thing. So first of all, that's, to my knowledge, the first look at body count cross-culturally, and it seems to point at something which there's some small relative differences between cultures, but by and large it's something that is a human constant. But then what we found was an interaction with this frequency change thing. So the differences between four, 12, and 36 are the largest when it looks like new partners is increasing in frequency. Then it becomes super important the number of past partners that you've had. Um, so the, so if you were to take, uh, four, for example, the line kind, kind of looks like this. If you've had four partners, doesn't really matter when they were, you're kind of appraised similarly. But when you go for 12 and 36, it changes and people become a lot more forgiving if those partners, if the, the, um, those new partners are confined to the past and were around sexual debut and you've kind of slowed down. Then the sizes shrink between them. And again, we find that in every single sub-sample and every single culture that we looked at, which is fascinating. I'm the worst type of cross-cultural psychologist going, 'cause I don't care so much about the differences. I care about the universal element, and that's something we found. But also really interesting, almost next to no sex differences whatsoever, which is opposite to this, uh, sexual double standard thing that people predict. So people think, "Oh, you know, the, the guys will really care about the number of past partners that women have. The women won't." It's sort of like, "Oh, you know, he's, he's a Chad. I'll, I'll excuse him." Um, no evidence of that, um, pretty much at all. So men and women, when they're appraising someone for a long-term relationship, kind of want the same things. And actually, funnily enough, this is something that as a, a wider research program thing... So there's this study, there's some stuff I've done with Steve, there's some stuff I've done with, uh, Leif Kanner. Um, time and time again people think that there will be a sexual double standard. They predict that other people will give a sexual double standard. But when you get people to respond from their perspective, they don't, which is quite interesting.

Episode duration: 1:26:26