Introducing Dr. David Buss

Sponsors: ROKA, InsideTracker, Headspace

Choosing a Mate

Long Term Mates: Universal Desires

What Women & Men Seek in Long-Term Mates

Age Differences & Mating History

Deception in Courtship

Emotional Stability

Lying About Long-Term Interest

Short-Term Mating Criteria, Sliding Standards & Context Effects

Sexual Infidelity: Variety Seeking & (Un)happiness & Mate Switching

Genetic Cuckolds, How Ovulation Impacts Mate Preference

Long-Term vs. Short-Term Cheating, Concealment

Emotional & Financial Infidelity

Contraception

Status & Mating Success

Jealousy, Mate Value Discrepancies, Vigilance, Violence

Specificity of Intimate Partner Violence

Mate Retention Tactics: Denigration, Guilt, Etc.

Narcissism, Machiavellianism, Psychopathy

Stalking

Influence of Children on Mate Value Assessments

Attachment Styles, Mate Choice & Infidelity

Non-Monogamy, Unconventional Relationships

Mate Value Self Evaluation, Anxiety About the Truth

Self Deception

The Future of Evolutionary Psychology & Neuroscience

Books: When Men Behave Badly; The Evolution of Desire, Textbooks

Concluding Statements, Zero-Cost Support: Subscribe, Sponsors, Patreon, Thorne


Dr. David Buss is a professor of psychology at the University of Texas, Austin and a founding member of evolutionary psychology. His laboratory focuses on understanding strategies humans use to select mates in the short and long-term, including why women and men cheat, the courtship dance, assessing status, emotions related to mating, and mate poaching. He has authored many important books, including The Evolution of Desire and When Men Behave Badly, which provides strategies for healthy mate selection and relationships. Darwin's theory of sexual selection explains phenomena that cannot be explained by survival selection, and humans have mutual mate choice, meaning both sexes must reciprocally select each other. Long-term mating is rare in the mammalian world, with only 3-5% of species exhibiting this behavior. Mate retention tactics, dark triad traits, stalking, and polyamory are all discussed in relation to mate selection. Neuroscience is merging with evolutionary psychology to get at the underlying mechanisms that are driving the process. Dr. Buss has several books available, including The Evolution of Desire, When Men Behave Badly, and Evolutionary Psychology.

- Dr. David Buss is a professor of psychology at the University of Texas, Austin and a founding member of evolutionary psychology
- His laboratory focuses on understanding strategies humans use to select mates in the short and long-term, including why women and men cheat, the courtship dance, assessing status, emotions related to mating, and mate poaching
- His laboratory also looks at biological influences on mate selection and more recent work focuses on darker aspects of mating and sexual behavior, such as stalking and sexual violence
- Dr. Buss has authored many important books, including The Evolution of Desire and When Men Behave Badly, which provides strategies for healthy mate selection and relationships

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- Infidelity is difficult to gauge due to its secretive nature
- Kinsey estimated 26% of married women and 50% of married men have committed infidelity
- Men's primary motive for infidelity is sexual variety
- Women's primary motive for infidelity is unhappiness in their primary relationship
- 70% of women who have affairs become emotionally involved with their affair partner
- Two competing hypotheses for why women have affairs: dual mating strategy and mate switching

- Genetic cuckoldry is when a man believes he is the genetic father of a child, but it turns out he is not.
- Rates of genetic cuckoldry in the modern environment are low, around 2-3%.
- Early studies suggested that women experienced a preference shift toward more masculine and symmetrical men when ovulating, but subsequent studies have failed to replicate these findings.
- The mate switching hypothesis is now endorsed as a more likely explanation.

- Women tend to have affairs with one person and become emotionally involved with that one person over time
- Men who have affairs tend to have affairs with a larger number of affair partners
- Online communications make it easier to meet more people, but also easier to get caught
- Anything not in your head is available for others to find
- Video cameras everywhere can record activities and interactions

- Emotional infidelity is falling in love with someone else, becoming psychologically close to someone else, and sharing intimate or private information with someone else.
- Men tend to be more focused on the sexual components of infidelity, while women are more upset by the emotional infidelity.
- Financial infidelity includes having secret credit cards, bank accounts, and diverting pooled resources to one set of genetic relatives.
- Men tend to have a narrower definition of infidelity than women.

- Couples counseling often involves arguments about contraception use
- Neuroscience suggests that this may have deeper evolutionary roots
- Condoms are a relatively recent invention in evolutionary time
- The withdrawal method of contraception is a poor choice as it was designed not to work
- Note to those trying to avoid unwanted pregnancy: use contraception

- A lot of mating preferences are conscious, but some are unconscious.
- Low waist-hip ratio is associated with higher fertility, lower endocrinological problems, and lower age.
- Higher status gives people the ability to choose from a wider pool of potential mates.
- Having desirable mates endows people with higher status.
- There is a reciprocal link between status and mating success, where mating success leads to high status and high status leads to more mating success.

- Jealousy is an evolved emotion that serves several adaptive functions, such as mate-guarding and paternity certainty
- Threats to a romantic relationship can come from many sources, such as mate poachers, mate value discrepancies, and cues of infidelity
- People respond to jealousy in a range of ways, from vigilance to violence
- Intimate partner violence is a problem in America, with 28-30% of married couples experiencing it
- Men tend to do more physical damage when engaging in violence, and women may use violence in self-defense
- Reducing a perceived mate value discrepancy is a key function of male violence

This chapter is already very short - skipping summarization:

that is really interesting about the intimate partner violence and that's the specificity of it, depending on circumstances. And namely, when the woman gets pregnant, she's more vulnerable to physical violence. And when the man suspects that he's not the father of that pregnancy, he's more likely to direct the violence toward blows to her abdomen. Okay, that's specific. And so in that case, the function is hypothesized function is to terminate the pregnancy by a rival male as opposed to deterring the woman from committing an infidelity or from leaving the relationship entirely. So that's why one function of intimate partner violence is just sequestering the woman and keeping her all to himself. So it's both to prevent infidelity and to prevent defection. I have a friend whose wife told me

- Mate retention tactics are used to reduce mate value discrepancy and can range from psychological manipulation to violence.
- These tactics are designed to constrain behavior and can include denigration of partner, feigning anger, and making partner feel guilty.
- Every species, but especially humans, wants to make more of itself and protect its young.
- Evolutionary psychology and neuroscience can merge at the level of underlying mechanism.
- Dark triad is a concept related to evolutionary psychology.

- Dark triad consists of narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy
- Narcissism includes grandiosity and entitlement
- Machiavellianism involves exploiting people for personal gain
- Psychopathy is characterized by a lack of empathy
- Men tend to score higher on psychopathy than women
- Dark triad traits are associated with sexual deception, harassment, and coercion
- A minority of men have all three dark triad traits

- Darwin's theory of sexual selection explains phenomena that cannot be explained by survival selection
- Intrasexual competition and preferential mate choice are two causal pathways of sexual selection
- Intrasexual competition involves same-sex battles for sexual access to the opposite sex
- Preferential mate choice involves members of one sex agreeing on desired qualities in the opposite sex
- Humans have mutual mate choice, meaning both sexes must reciprocally select each other
- This creates competition among men and women for access to the most desirable mates

- Stalking has multiple motivations, but one of the most frequent is a mating motivation
- 80% of stalkers are men, 20% are women
- Stalking is often an attempt to get back together with the woman, either sexually or in a relationship, or to interfere with her future mating prospects
- 15% of the time stalking works to temporarily reestablish a sexual relationship or lure the woman back in for a more permanent relationship
- Stalking is often a result of a mate value discrepancy, where the stalker is lower in mate value than the victim

- Having children decreases a woman's and a man's mate value when seeking another mate.
- Women tend to have greater custody of children and invest more in them throughout their lives.
- Displaying effort in investing in a woman's children is often a mating tactic.
- With subsequent marriages or as men get older, the tendency is to seek mates that are progressively younger.
- Men with status and resources remain attractive to younger women.

- Early childhood attachment to parents influences mate choice later on
- Neural circuits for attachment in childhood are repurposed for other forms of attachment
- Secure attachment style is conducive to a long-term mateship
- Avoidant attachment styles have difficulty with intimacy and higher probability of infidelity
- Anxious attachment style can create problems of its own, such as being overly clingy and dependent
- Frequency of demand for immediate text message responses is correlated with relationship load

- Polyamory is an attempt to bypass certain aspects of mate choice and sexual partner choice, while acknowledging jealousy.
- Motivations for engaging in polyamory are sex differentiated, with men typically wanting sexual variety and women sometimes agreeing to it as a mate retention tactic.
- Jealousy can be triggered by sexual or emotional connections, and couples have different rules for their polyamorous relationships.
- Online pornography parasitizes men's evolved desire for sexual variety, but can be problematic for young people.

- People want to feel attractive and attracted in relationships
- Self-esteem is hypothesized to be an internal monitoring device that tracks mate value
- There is consensual mate value and individual differences in mate value
- Accurately assessing mate value is complicated due to the number and complexity of components
- Rejection can lead to mating anxiety, but can be overcome through cognitive behavioral desensitization

- Robert Trivers first proposed the hypothesis that self-deception can increase the effectiveness of deception in 1976.
- People use others' displays of self-confidence as a cue to their goods.
- Narcissism can lead to overestimates and underestimates.
- Psychopaths are very good at deception, but it is unclear whether they are good at self-deception.

- Evolutionary psychology and neuroscience are merging in some formal way.
- Examples of this include research on vasopressin levels in monogamous and polygamous prairie voles.
- Neuroscience is getting at the underlying mechanisms that are driving the process.
- Evolutionary perspective brings to bear evolved function and ultimate explanation.
- Collaboration between evolutionary psychology and neuroscience could lead to brain imaging studies on jealousy.

- Most recent book is called When Men Behave Badly, The Hidden Roots of Sexual Deception, Harassment, and Assault
- Deals with conflict between the sexes, sexual conflict, deception in internet dating, financial infidelity, emotional infidelity, sexual infidelity, coping with conflict within a relationship
- Previous book is The Evolution of Desire, Strategies of Human Mating, which deals with what people want in a mate, tactics of attraction, tactics of mate retention, serial mating, causes of divorce
- Textbook is Evolutionary Psychology, The New Science of the Mind, which deals with mating, survival problems, evolved fears and phobias, kin and family, friendships, social hierarchies, status hierarchies, warfare

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- Long-term mating is rare in the mammalian world, with only 3-5% of species exhibiting this behavior
- Humans have evolved a long-term pair bonding strategy, with males investing heavily in offspring
- A study of 37 cultures found 3 clusters of qualities desired in a long-term mate: universal qualities, sex-differentiated qualities, and highly variable qualities
- Universal qualities include intelligence, kindness, mutual attraction, love, good health, dependability, and emotional stability
- Sex-differentiated qualities include good earning capacity, slightly older age, and qualities associated with resource acquisition

- Women prioritize attention structure and hard work when assessing potential mates
- Men prioritize physical attractiveness when assessing potential mates
- Physical attractiveness is associated with youth and health, and is not arbitrary
- Women bear the burden of pregnancy and have higher costs associated with making a bad mate choice
- Men use mate choice copying to assess potential mates

- Men prefer women who are 3-4 years younger than them on average
- Marriage statistics show an average age gap of 3 years at first marriage, 5 years at second marriage, and 8 years at third marriage
- Preferences for younger women increase with age
- Virginity is the most variable desire across cultures
- Sex differences in mate selection remain invariant over time

- Both men and women lie in predictable ways to embody the mate preferences of the person they're trying to attract.
- Men tend to exaggerate their income by 20%, add two inches to their height, and women tend to shave 15 pounds off their reported weight.
- People post photos that are not truly representative of what they look like.
- People eventually find out the truth and it can be a deal breaker.
- It is advised to meet the person in person and interact to get a more accurate beat on the person.

- Emotional stability is important in long-term mating
- Going on a trip together can help assess emotional stability
- Emotionally unstable people take longer to return to baseline after a stressful event
- Self-regulatory mechanisms can help combat stress
- Deception can be a feature of relationships

- Deception has been present in mate selection for a long time
- Men often deceive women by exaggerating their feelings and similarities
- Men may also be deceptive about their intentions (long-term vs. short-term)
- Modern internet dating has opened the door for new forms of deception, such as Photoshopping
- In ancestral environments, people had access to more sources of information about potential mates, which is less available in modern environments

- Physical appearance is more important for women in short-term mating than long-term mating.
- Men are willing to lower their standards for short-term mating.
- Women prioritize "bad boy" qualities in short-term mating.
- Women use mate copying heuristic to assess attractiveness.
- Women's attraction to men is more context-specific than men's attraction to women.

Dr. David Buss: How Humans Select & Keep Romantic Partners in Short & Long Term | Huberman Lab #48