Did Evolutionary Psychology Get Dating All Wrong? - Dr Paul Eastwick

we were talking before we got started, uh, many of the past guests that have been on my show and much of my education, I think, into the world of mating dynamics, understanding relationship science, uh, has been informed by an evolutionary perspective.

Yeah.

I think it's fair to say that your new book takes somewhat of an opposing perspective-

Yeah

... to much of the evolutionary psychology position. Is that a, a fair assessment?

I think that's fair. I am not using the standard like, this is not a standard nature-nurture thing. [chuckles] Uh, that's not where I'm coming from. I'm coming from a place of, actually, there's a different way of talking about human nature, a different way of talking about the way that humans evolve to form relationships, that I think is kind of missing out there, and that's more or less why I wrote the book.

What's your background? Because most people, when we talk about relationship science in the modern world, are going to be coming out of some kind of EP-

Yeah

... mating research lab. What are you?

Yeah. So I would say I'm a scholar of close relationships. There's a whole field, and we call ourselves relationship science. We're largely in the social and personality psychological tradition, but there are threads that connect to things like clinical psychology, family, uh, family studies, things like that. So we are informed by an evolutionary perspective, too. It's just a different one. So, for example, we talk about attachment perspectives a lot, and attachment has very deep evolutionary roots, going back to Bowlby and so forth, but it's just a little different from the standard evolutionary psychological perspective.

That's interesting. Okay, so [clears throat] what is your problem with the sort of classic Evo script-

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... as you see it?

Yeah. I think it overestimates a few things. It exaggerates some features of human mating, and it's only in a few cases where I'm like, "Oh, it's totally off the mark," but I think there's a big emphasis on things like mate value, the idea that some people are more desirable than others. There's an emphasis on gender differences, right? Like, men and women are really, really different in the mating realm. I also think there's this emphasis on, like, the short-term versus long-term mating distinction, and, like, some people are good at one or the other. Um, I think these ideas, uh, we've got a lot of misconceptions, to put it mildly, about [chuckles] those three things. Um, and I think once we kind of pick those things apart, we can, uh, put the pieces back together in a way that fits what I'd call the relationship science view, which is more about attachment, compatibility, and forming relationships through small networks.

Okay. Yeah, I, I think a lot of conversations that I would have would be about short term versus long term.

Yeah.

A lot would be related to sex differences, preferences. I think the world of EP a lot of the time is talking about this, uh, sex differences, e-especially in terms of preferences for life, not just preferences in another parta- partner. Um, yeah, I, I, I think that's fair. I guess, right up top, the words mating market, probably one of the most ubiquitously used in all of the world of evolutionary psychology mating research.