Joe Rogan Experience #1959 — David Buss Transcript

Transcript

0:00 the Joe Rogan experience You have so many that it's nearly impossible. And he's sober. was your life's work, which was your life's work is human mating strategies. Yes. As a psychologist, And I was reading in evolutionary biology. And so I was trained as an empirical scientist where, you know, you take the hypotheses, And of course that's really what Darwin's first book on the origin of species was all about,

3:58 And so people equated natural selection with survival selection. advantage? It's like, first of all, metabolically expensive. well, both sexes face the same survival problems, right? which aspect of morphology you're talking about. So men are only, say, 10%, 11% taller than women, So battles, the stereotype is two stags locking horns in combat, and the victor gains sexual access to the female.

7:59 competition. In fact, there's somewhat of a long evolutionary history of males doing these physical contests in warfare and sometimes within groups. preferential mate choice. And there, the issue is what are the qualities that men and women or Second, there has to be some heritable heritability to the variability. to qualities that lead to same success in same sex battles or due to possessing qualities

11:19 We don't know totally the answer to it. or a third factor. But we do know females prefer it and probably linked to a health cue, possibly You see the, and you raise an interesting issue that having to do with the sex difference even called the preferential mate choice component female choice simply because he observed that it women have preferential mate choice. And I know this for a fact, not just from the empirical

15:09 in a relationship, that has to do with the whole concept of having the opportunity to spread your genes without any commitment, right? So like someone who is what you would call hot and They find this woman attractive and they want to have sex with her. also raises the interesting issue of males versus females. So, and this gets to a fundamental sex

17:15 Okay, that's fairly straightforward. Well, what do they get out of it? forward this idea that the reason that women do it is that they're So there's been some, and it's not conclusive. I wrote a whole book on murder, yeah. could work in principle. And it could work if there were no costs. And this is, you know, theorists proposed is that there are certain markers of good genetic quality.

21:54 insults or a high mutation load or has what they call a developmental system that's very kind of So because it's only in that narrow window of ovulation that she's going to be getting the such as estimating the woman's time of ovulation through a backward counting method. How do you run a study like that? in the predicted, in the ways predicted by the theory?

24:42 So what do they have, like a survey they fill out? And so women just rate, oh, how attractive is this guy? typically masculine features. And so they would look at, do women rate the photos of these masculine and symmetrical guys more attractive when they're ovulating than when they're not and the reasons that they're having affairs and the nature of the affairs, there are things that cropped up

27:38 emotional imbalance, extreme desire for attention, narcissism, which leads people to seek out exorbitant amounts of attention from other people. a male bodyguard. So fairs happen in all cultures. Yeah, fairs happen in all cultures. And so on the assumption that she'll be able to find someone more desirable out there. Now, this seems like the most obvious thing in the world, right?

31:16 Why is he cheating with Elizabeth Hurley? And so there's a dramatic sex difference in why men have affairs with desire for sexual variety pushing most men into it. But that's a minority. Yeah, that's one variant of it. There are, in fact, personality characteristics and developmental characteristics I don't think that really plays into infidelity so much.

35:19 Like if you encourage psychopathy or narcissism or not even courage, but if somehow or another, So most people are cooperators. became more common where you could move from place to place without psychopathic traits. So it says psychopathy. Narcissism is attractive to women. And this is one of the questions I get asked a lot is, why are women attracted to bad boys? You know, guys who

38:51 But over time, with experience, women become less and less attracted to these bad boy characteristics. These are the manipulators. This actually came from, originally you know, so probably more difficult to do it, say, in the military where they're very regimented, And you do meet a lot of psychos that are doing that. and very aggressive. Does he have ambition?

41:48 That's right. where there's this denial, this current world where there's a denial of the differences between males and females And you also want to see it cross-culturally. you know, who knows. So that's why I did 37 different cultures until I got enough evidence that don't share the same methodological problems, Well, that's not true. We're all from

46:14 level truth. There are sex differences in our reproductive biology. So fertilization occurs internally within women, not within men. But men can never be sure. when in fact it was a rival's offspring, well, he's actually benefiting the rival's reproductive success at a tremendous cost to his own. And so solving this paternity uncertainty problem is so critical and so dramatic that it accounts for why long-term

49:22 making sure that they develop the right skills, etc. The issue is what adaptations have been evolved to solve this problem? Yeah. Yeah. which motivates mate guarding, which involves an array of behaviors from – maybe looking at other men, maybe I better ramp up my investment in her and show her that I'm But if you leave me, I will inflict a lot of costs on you.

53:37 And so I better stick with this guy even though he's abusive because I'm never going to find anyone else. So with the guy putting the woman down or insulting her appearance, you know, and then speculation is that older men sometimes snap up younger women before they have sufficient She was like working at a burger flipping joint up in – I think it was Vancouver.

57:05 close the loop is because you were talking about okay you didn't Yeah. Yeah. Well, she did. And he convinced her to meet with him one last time for old time's sake. And he killed her and then killed himself. So extreme, extreme case. And then there are others. Well, maybe I'll stop there. And so it's not a theory that men are from Mars and women are from Venus. It's a very precise

1:00:26 woman or man, but can, if they pass the placental barrier, can be dangerous to the fetus. And so her taste preferences return to be very similar to those of men. They want to meet the guy she's going out with. but the daughter getting pregnant yes at the wrong time with the wrong guy well at the wrong time with the wrong guy. Well, at the wrong time specifically when they're young, right?

1:03:53 You're not worried about the man. They're kind of complementary forms of explanation. But you're literally talking about your child when you're talking about curfews. And if you look cross-culturally, the people who try is them of their ass, their butt in the air, their arched back, they're covered in sweat, to. Well, I think it's what we talked about before.

1:08:27 And then it becomes, and then the other part of the problem is it becomes a business. woman out there, like on display, but she's signaling that she's desiring better mates. They kind of avoid it. And so they avoid them and try to be, if it gets too close, they push them away. about being committed to someone because that person then starts to put restrictions on them

1:12:35 And the idea is that that attachment style, which some claim gets fixed in infancy, then But parents are also contributing genes as well as environment. filters and they're using these deceptive tactics that change the shape of their body, things combined. Like they're trying to go for the coup de grace. They're in their underwear whether it's TikTok or Instagram,

1:16:06 scroll through my search can I grab some coffee yes please here thank you and I will find some This is an unheard of situation for a young woman to try to navigate. what they are at this point. There hasn't been long enough and we don't know, there haven't been and say you taste six jams and people go, fairly detrimental and possibly catastrophic effects long term.

1:20:47 of men suffer from dating anxiety. You know, that is they fear rejection. And so they don't want to But if people are comparing themselves to what they're seeing on porn, then from a woman's perspective, she thinks, well, men are expecting me to be a sexual acrobat in real life. And so it's creating these with the 2002 record And so I think that's going to create what I would call

1:24:12 conquer that is you do this successive approximations and then you get to the point sites as well. Yeah, of course. options. So there's the potential of finding that one person who really is a perfect mate for you. That kind of stuff is so unusual for a human being who's a single person in the dating world to have this kind of data, this kind of input, and this kind of stimuli coming your way.

1:27:13 the happiness of my relationship like no there's no never been anybody like you before yeah like Yeah. which is why when people ask me for advice, Not only that, many of the qualities that are critical for long-term mating success, you can't assess in one snapshot like that. speak the language. And so they're kind of forced to experience some stresses, some ambiguities,

1:30:02 Yeah. Yes, of course. I mean, Guatemala, as you probably know, I mean there's like extreme economic inequality there. not only the physical qualities, is he going to be a good protector, but also is he psychologically, These differences are purely brought upon by the patriarchal society to try to suppress members of the opposite sex. Well, if you go back to sexual selection theory that we were talking about earlier, part of

1:33:31 Well, no, it means different things. Because it doesn't have a belonging in science. And this may not exactly fall in ideology, but I'm sure... Have you had Steve Pinker on your show? I've been friends with him for many, many years. And I was skeptical as a graduate student. And so weirdly, I had this mentor who believed in the blank slate and that there were no evolved

1:37:46 psychology. The bars for men are here. and print journalism and it's promoted as if it's a fact yeah and by and by some uh social scientists And deviation from those narratives, you know, sometimes comes at some peril. Well, it turns out, in studies that I've done and other people have done, men and women Men and women judge that differently. Okay. And the reason

1:41:39 But what about women that sexually harass men? That's interesting though. The primary – even the 10% where it's not men sexually harassing women. very different than if they're composed of reasonable women. And so this is an example of And I'll give you like one extreme case. This was a while back. I don't remember the exact year. Now, if those inferences, if we consult, well, how would I feel if I were in that situation?

1:45:22 and then there are some men who are slamming all women, you know, and misogynistic, you know, elements of the manosphere. And there's this kind of Three daughters. Well, congratulations. Zero sons? Okay. Yeah. Because I've done it. I've been there. I'm guessing. But I want to get back to this because this is what I think is so important. I don't see a path

1:48:46 in which it might collapse is with the sort of work that I'm trying to do, which is in part showing how the sex difference denialism harms women. So an example, you don't even have to go And same is happening with some other drugs like clonazepam. a fascinating cultural change in our lifetimes, where it used to be you go back 30 years and but it's actually a profound difference when it comes to the mating market.

1:51:35 Men are more likely, And then online pornography is another one, which I think might have this effect of kind of sapping men's motivation to meet women in real life. He's great. Yeah, he's a wonderful guy. And we've become friends, and our interests turn out to coincide And as they get educated, they advance to the higher degrees. One of the things that I talked to Chris about that I'd love to hear your perspective on

1:54:57 Yeah, I'd love to talk to her about that. As I said, I want to see this work replicated a bit more before I believe it. they're no longer interested in their current mate. Right. And there's some evidence that these hormonal contraceptives can also influence in a negative way sexual desire and orgasmic ability. So again, perhaps collateral damage that no one anticipated.

1:58:39 studies and finds that these sex differences are, in fact fact larger in gender egalitarian countries. Well, that's unclear. It might be, and this is speculation, it might be that in where you have She hasn't so far, as far as I'm aware, to these data. Like what is the motivation? In cases like hers, the woman I just mentioned, they've built their entire reputation, their entire careers on this theory.

2:01:51 And how do they get away with that? are contributing to that bad outcome. Okay, one is that these people, and the one that I just mentioned, they're self psychology to be a dispassionate scientist and say, okay, look, I'm willing to, I'm going to And so normally, I mean, that's why I think science is a good method. What a messy creature we are. actually academics who are promoting this idea yeah and that, like you said, self-replicate.

2:07:45 there's almost an inverse correlation between number of years of higher education and ability Right. Well, but it's because you're not a grifter. But unfortunately, academics encourages grifting Which is wild. I think it is, though. but they score high on these tests. Actually, now we're reinstating it because we realized that was a mistake. to do with gender identity it has to do with politics it has to do with their

2:13:09 So I teach pretty large classes. have mentioned that we've been talking about, I went to the chair of my department, and It's different from identity and gender identity. And I said, I'm going to be teaching about this, And he supports my adherence to the science without the infusion of ideology. And then all of a sudden, this stage of the game, you're like, hey, I'm going to teach facts.

2:16:01 And that's what I thought universities were supposed to be about. Not only facts but the free exchange of ideas, you know, that there aren't ideas that are, you know, can't be discussed openly and rationally and then the freedom of – I thought that's what universities were all about. But I'm pretty careful in what I teach and I'm pretty careful also to label things as well-established or some evidence for – or this is a speculation.

2:17:43 it's very, very interesting. But, you know, on the positive side, and maybe this is my overly optimistic nature, each of whom succeeded in the mating game. They succeeded in selecting a fertile partner, Yeah. I'm going to opt out of the mating market That one focuses on jealousy and infidelity. and that's the rap that it's gotten. And I mean, of course, jealousy has tremendous negative effects. It feels psychologically terrible. It leads to violence. It leads to even suicidal

2:22:17 comes from. Yeah. Yeah. And, and women as well as men have it. Now men have to solve the paternity that it's really all these systems that have evolved over time to ensure reproductive success and ensure And I feel fortunate to study humans, which I think are the most interesting species. Like we are, we're not just are deeply in denial, but we're also find other people who

2:25:07 We want our tribes to increase in number. just we don't want to admit the reality sometimes for whatever reason because if it doesn't denial of the science in many fields so even like you know then as you know the notion that He's down in Australia now. But he and I published this article where we studied, ability. And this seems odd in my own psychology. So they were having themselves trouble kind of

2:29:21 you know, because I've been friends with many women in academia. And early on in my career, I had a good friend who she was at the same career stage as me. And so there has been at least some history of discrimination against women on grounds like that and beliefs that women were inferior to men in certain domains. a way that's evolving my concern about all this stuff is always that while it's moving in a good direction that grifters get

2:31:45 You've got The Evolution of Desire, The Murderer Next Door, The Dangerous Passion, and When Men Behave Badly. And if I thank you Strategies of Human Mating, to hear the actual science and the actual data behind these things. Bye, everybody.