123: David Buss | Troubleshooting Strategies from the Evolution of Desire

Transcript for David Buss | Troubleshooting Strategies from the Evolution of Desire (Episode 123)

Jordan Harbinger: [00:00:00] Welcome to the show. I'm Jordan Harbinger. As always, I'm here with my producer, Jason DeFillippo. Today, I'm talking with Dr. David Buss. He's a regular here on the show and he's a Professor of Psychology at the University of Texas in Austin, but he's no ordinary professor. He's the guy when it comes to evolutionary psychology and mating. He's authored a grip of books about why we feel desire, what it means, how jealousy works as we've discussed in previous episodes with Duana Welch, and he's got just a fascinating insight into the mind of us humans and how and why we mate. Today, we'll discover what dating apps are doing to our brain and a little useful insight about how they work. We'll also discuss mate switching strategies, why women have affairs and how both men and women both can be aware of the mechanisms at play here. We'll also explore the idea that we can track our mate value and keep our relationships strong and secure.

[00:00:55] There's fascinating insight into the human mating mind here. And I'm glad to have David as a regular here on the show. And if you want to know how I managed to book all of these great people and manage my relationships using systems and tiny habits, check out our Six-Minute Networking Course, which is free over at jordanharbinger.com/course. Now, here's Dr. David Buss.

[00:01:15] We've talked before and I kind of came up in my field reading your stuff. Not my field as a lawyer of course, but my field as a, as a dilettante, unqualified evolutionary -- armchair evolutionary psychologist. I guess you could say, somebody who is always interested in this because I thought if I can just like any good nerd, if I can get to the bottom of why men and women do things from an evolutionary perspective, maybe I'd have a chance of getting a stinking date in college or grad school and I can't be alone in that. I feel like a lot of people in your field professionally probably started off by going, “That's why I'm single!” And then just going down the rabbit hole.

Dr. David Buss: [00:01:58] Yeah. Well, or you know yeah. If you understand basically human mating psychology or adaptations for mating both in ourselves and in the people that we're trying to attract. I mean that gives you a leg up in the mating game for sure.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:02:14] Yeah. And I thought that that would probably be something that, “Wow! The dating arena changes so much.” And one of the common objections that I had back when I was teaching guys about dating stuff years ago, back in college and grad school and things like that, people would say, “Well, that won't work in Chicago” or “That won't work in my area.” And then of course, as my business grew, it was, “Well, that won't work in my country.” And what I realized was something that you come to the conclusion of years and years ago, decades ago probably, which is a human biology pretty much the same all over the Earth. You can't really say that won't work if we're talking about a biological explanation. So evolutionary psychology and the things that you study, especially mating psychology, this is universal regardless of culture, or is that an overstatement?

Dr. David Buss: [00:03:03] Well, it's largely true. It might be a tad of an overstatement in the sense that there is cultural variability, but a lot of that cultural variability is easily or I shouldn't say easily, but it is explained on the basis of our underlying evolutionary psychology. So for example, if you live in an environment where there is a scarcity of food, resources, then people tend to value plumpness in a potential mate more than thinness. If you live in a culture where there's an abundance of food, people value thinness over plumpness because plumpness in a food scarce culture reveals that those who are a little plump are healthy and they have been well nourished and they have had enough to eat. And so there is predictable cultural variability, but at a fundamental level, we all have the same psychological architecture. We all have the same fundamental mating psychology.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:04:03] You know what this reminds me of David is have you ever seen, I'm going to butcher the name of this, so in fact, I won't even try, but it's this phenomenon or this practice I should say where it's like in Ethiopia or Eritrea or something, and women when they want to get married, they go to this camp for lack of a better word, and there's basically this old spinster there and she feeds them this buttermilk kind of stuff seven times a day and they just drink it over and over and over, and they have to hold it down because your body wants to reject it because it's basically just pure fat and you're drinking this over and over and over again, and you're trying to gain like 30 to 60 pounds so that you look more attractive so that a man will like you. And they go around interviewing these guys from whatever -- I really want to say it's Ethiopia or somewhere similar, Somalia, and the guys are like, “Yeah, the bigger the better.” And they're not joking, they're really showing a preference. And they study it, and they said, look, this preference is, they want women who, if they were transplanted magically into Canada, the United States, somewhere else in the West, you'd say, “Hey, you should probably lose a few dozen pounds. You're a little unhealthy.” And they're like -- and you see the before picture and you just go look at this beautiful young lady and then you see the after picture and you go, “Why would you do that to yourself? What the heck is going on here?” And I'm sure they say the same thing about crash diets and things, and breast implants or whatever we're doing in other parts of the world. But that to me, have you seen this before? Is this familiar to you or do you know what I'm talking about?

Dr. David Buss: [00:05:30] Yeah, I do. I also don't remember what that culture is, but yes, I have read about it. And variability, I mean the cross cultural variability on body preferences does vary on that thin plumped dimension. And as I said, it's predictably linked to the scarcity of food resources. And so a naive person might look at that cultural variability and conclude, “Oh, is so it's not universal.” People are just responding randomly or it's all culture failing to see that it's a contingent adaptation as we do adjust to our local environments in predictable ways.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:06:11] I just found it. It's Mauritania. I'm sure it's probably elsewhere, but rural Mauritania campaigners say the cruel practice of force feeding young girls for marriage is making a significant comeback since a military junta took over the West African country. So whenever we see strong dictatorships like this, especially in Africa, we see things get taken back a few years. It doesn't always work that way, but that to me was fascinating, that this would be something cultural that we -- that were adapted to, we can't really tell, I would imagine if something's cultural or evolutionary. I mean, you would have to do a study in your laboratory to find out whether something is cultural, wouldn't you?

Dr. David Buss: [00:06:52] Yeah, but I guess the evolutionary psychology doesn't make the sharp dichotomy between things that are cultural and things that are quote, biological in that we all have the same fundamental evolves psychological architecture, same fundamental psychological adaptations, but they're differentially activated in different cultures. And then also there's the issue of level of abstraction. So you could say, for example, we know my work in other people's work is demonstrated that women place a high preference on guys who have high status and resources. Well, if you go to the Ache, good hunting skills are what give you status and resources because that's literally meat for the table or meat for the village. Whereas in other domains, so in the academic domain, prestige publications gives you status on a resources. I don't know if you are in a motorcycle gang, bravery in the face of danger or the ability to do hand-to-hand combat with other motorcycle gangs might give you status and resources. So there’s cultural variability, but at a more basic level of abstraction, there’s status and resources. So what appears highly variable on the surface is explicable in terms of the underlying psychology.

[00:08:12] I mean, another quick example of this that people can easily understand is language. If you grow up in China, you’re going to speak Chinese. If you grew up in the United States you’re going to speak English or sometimes Spanish. But we all have the same fundamental language acquisition devices. Language is innate, but the particulars of the language that we happen to learn are dependent on the culture that we happen to grow up in. So it’s important not to be too confused by surface cultural variability.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:08:46] That's interesting. And I think it's funny that you brought up the example of academia and public publishing. I'm just imagining some party in a psychology department where

someone's walking around finding out how many papers you've published and chasing you down to date. Like if you want to reproduce as a professor, you better get that book out, buddy.

Dr. David Buss: [00:09:07] Right, right. So yeah, so one, whereas like if I went into a faculty meeting and department meeting, and I slapped a moose that I just killed on the table, it would not increase my status within academia. But if you were in the Ache or in any other hunter gatherer group, taking down a large game animal would increase your status. So yeah, I mean it's fascinating to me, and the status is one of those relatively under-explored topics. My lab's focusing heavily on status right now. That's why it's kind of been the top of my mind, but that it is somewhat variable in terms of -- in the modern environment, you have all these niches that people have developed, stamp collecting or people are experts at coding where they're experts at hacking, whatever the case is. We have these kazillion niches now where people can attain status within their local niche, and that's what people do. They go to groups where their particular assets are highly valued. Anyway, I'm rambling on a little bit about this, but it's I think a fascinating area of research.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:10:19] I liked status a lot actually. That's something I focused on a lot when I was teaching social dynamics and when I teach military contractors or government or civilian personnel, I actually focus a lot on status. Not in the same way that you're doing it. You're an actual scientist. I focused on little hacks and things like that so I would be very curious once your work on status is published, to have you back on the show as well, because status yeah, is really is something that I tend to obsess over as well.

Jason DeFillippo: [00:10:49] You're listening to the Jordan Harbinger Show with our guest, Dr. David Buss. We'll be right back after these brief messages.

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[00:13:31] Hey, don't forget we have a worksheet for today's episode so you can make sure you solidify your understanding of the key takeaways from Dr. David Buss. That link is in the show notes at jordanharbinger.com/podcast, and thanks for listening and supporting the show. To learn more about our sponsors and get links to all the great discounts you just heard, visit jordanharbinger.com/deals. If you'd like some tips on how to subscribe to the show. Also go to jordanharbinger.com/subscribe, and now back to our show with Dr. David Buss.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:13:59] I want to go to Swiped. I had a chance to watch this and willing to this in the show notes. If you have HBO, it's called Swiped: Hooking Up in the Digital Age. It's a guess a documentary or an inside look at dating apps and I found this quite fascinating. Tinder, other dating apps, they trigger what's called short term mating psychology. Can you explain what this is and how this kind of works in a nutshell?

Dr. David Buss: [00:14:25] A Tinder or short term eating psychology.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:14:27] Oh, sorry. I think we all know how Tinder works. I'll explain how -- here's the deal. I'll explain how Tinder works. You explain short term mating psychology. Basically what Tinder is in case you have been married for a while slash living under a rock is an app where you download and install this. It uses your Facebook profile photos and other photos to make a really quick dating profile along with everyone else. And you swipe left for someone you're not interested in swipe right for someone that are basically choosing a potential dates in less than a second. And you do this -- guys and women are doing this constantly and it can cause addiction and all kinds of other stuff we'll talk about. But it's instead of even reading someone's profile, now we're just kind of point and click at what we think we might want. And then it matches you if the other person does the same. So that's Tinder in a nutshell, but I would love to hear what this does to our brain.

Dr. David Buss: [00:15:18] Well, I think for one thing, there's an overall sex difference on this. So men more than women have stronger motivations for short-term meeting and we know this through a million studies and very different variables. Men have a greater desire for sexual variety. They're willing to have sex with total strangers with no emotional involvement. They seek sex after less time has elapsed. They have more sexual fantasies about total strangers. They do more partner switching in the course of a single sexual fantasy episode than women do, and so they're really profound sex differences. And this isn't to say that women aren't into short-term mating. There are, there's a minority of women who are dispositionally inclined to short-term mating, perhaps 10 percent, and then there are some women who do short-term mating some of the time, like if they're between relationships, and then there are of course, some women who do short-term mating in the hope that it will turn into a long-term mating relationship, and sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't. But nonetheless, men and women differ profoundly in their underlying mating psychology, and this shows up on Tinder.

[00:16:33] So different studies have estimated that somewhere between 25 and 30 percent of men who are on Tinder are actually married. So they're in committed relationships, but they're looking for something on the side or you take a different dating app, ashleymadison.com, which is a website designed for people who want to have sex outside their marriage. Well, it turned out when it was hacked and information was revealed, there's like a ton of men on this site and practically no women. And so they were actually doing some somewhat unsavory practices of creating fake female profiles in the effort to convince men that there were more women on this app then in fact there were, and this shows up on Tinder by the way, were men who were pursuing a short-term mating strategy will swipe on a zillion profile. So they'll just like maybe swipe on 200 and 300 women and if they get a couple of hits, a two or three hits then great, they're playing a numbers game. In women even on Tinder, tend to be much more selective about who they swipe right on.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:17:48] What this do? Is this harmful? Is this something that we should be wary of or is this just how our brains operate? No big deal.

Dr. David Buss: [00:17:55] Well, I think that's unknown to some extent. Let me put it this way in an evolutionary context, in ancestral environments, we lived in small groups, perhaps 50 to 150 people or so, and we occasionally encountered other groups. There was fusion and fusion and so forth, but in the course of our lifetimes, you would have encountered perhaps a few dozen potential mates. What you have with something like Tinder or the modern online dating world is you have thousands or actually literally millions of potential mates, and so you're bombarded with the impression that there is an infinite variety to choose from. It could have the effect of saying, “Well, this person is right on eight of the 10 things I want, but they're not right on 10 of the 10, so I'm going to keep looking. I'm going to --and so it may lower commitment if there is the impression that there always someone better around right around the corner.

[00:18:57] I mean, the two big things that I think are hijacking or evolve, mating psychology are these online dating sites and online pornography. And these are both evolutionarily novel inputs but inputs that hijack or evolve psychology in particular ways, but whether these things are destructive, whether they impair long-term mating relationships, whether they make people less satisfied with their regular partner, these are unknown. I mean, these technologies are really too recent for researchers to have done systematic studies to uncover whether these things are fundamentally damaging or not. I mean my guess is that they probably have pluses and minuses like many things. So on the plus side, they give you exposure to potential mates that you would never ever meet in real life. I mean, there's only so many people that you run across in your day to day life. People at work, maybe people in your social group, maybe you go to a bar or a club or a concert and you bump into someone. But here are these Internet dating sites gives you access or potential access to thousands or millions of potential mates. And so you might find people that you never would ever find in your day to day life and so that's perhaps a plus, and then on the minus, it could cause negative effects such as decrease in commitment or this subject or the unwillingness to commit because you always think there might be someone better right around the corner.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:20:34] It's almost true that there is somebody quote unquote better around the corner because we're not really looking at, “Well this person gets along with me. I like their level of education. This is really suitable for me.” We're just looking at appearance, and if novelty is wired into the human brain, which we know at least for the male brain, it certainly is. Then there is always going to be somebody three months later who's maybe a little bit more exciting, and I saw the apps put a disproportionate weight on physical appearance. I'm guessing that's because there's no other channels of information available. We're not looking at -- we're not hearing them, we're not seeing them move around, we're just seeing their photos.

Dr. David Buss: [00:21:12] Yeah. And in part, and in part because a lot of information is difficult to obtain at a glance or even in the first mating. So we know my worker's shown things like how emotionally stable or unstable is the person. That's a very important thing to know in a long-term mate, but you can't assess that at a glance and you can't even rely on someone's profile to get whether you -- you have to observe their emotional stability over time or how dependable are they, how moody are they, what is their a status trajectory over time, some things just can't be assessed in that immediate glance, and so there is a tendency for the photograph to overwhelm all other sources of information. So you have the photograph and then you have maybe a few written words and the photographs just overwhelms all other sources of information which is really why people have to meet because someone can look great on an Internet dating site, but then you meet and there's no chemistry. And so I always encourage people to, to realize that fact and if you're really interested in the person, meet them and if you're interested in long-term mating, you have to observe them over time, ideally in different situations.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:22:35] That makes sense, of course. And I think a lot of people my age and up know this. I'm 38 but I do wonder, and I don’t know if you've studied this, are people who are currently in their 20s, I don't want to be insulting, but are they even aware of this? Did they know that that hasn't happened? I've heard that people don't even make phone calls anymore. And I think the joke was made in the documentary and Swiped where someone said, I think you'd be labeled a psychopath if he actually made a phone call and talk to someone.

Dr. David Buss: [00:23:00] Yeah, I don't know. I mean there is a sense in which each generation now and there faster and faster is growing up in a fundamentally different culture. I think that you're right about the age factor. So I think when you're younger and you are inexperienced in mating, you don't really realize what's important or what's important for a long-term mating relationship. I mean for short-term it's much easier. Is there sexual chemistry? Is there attraction? But for a long-term, I mean I didn't even realize this in my own mating life. The importance of emotional stability because I got involved -- I don't to get too personal here, but when I was much younger I got involved with a woman, she was gorgeous, she was intelligent, she had an exciting personality and she had like a many things that I really wanted in a mate, but she was emotionally unstable and that emotional instability undermined all the other qualities over the long run. And so after that relationship broke up, the importance of emotional stability elevated in my priority list, and then I've done empirical studies since then on what personality characteristics lead to disaster in relationships, and that's a big one.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:24:25] Yeah, I can imagine. Are there telltale signs of emotional instability that you can talk about that might help people avoid that or is that sort of beyond the scope of your expertise?

Dr. David Buss: [00:24:35] One of the hallmarks is how they react to stress and the key there is that we all experienced stressful events. Someone's tailgating us or we miss a meeting or someone doesn't show, well they're all a million stressful events that we experience. But how someone reacts to those events and critically latency to return to baseline is critical. So what basically what happens is stressful events sometimes knock people off of a center so to speak and people who are emotionally unstable take a longer time to return to baseline. They stay emotionally out of whack for a longer period of time, and so that's a telltale sign. That's why one of the things I always recommend for people who are seriously thinking about committing or really want to find out if this person going to be a good long-term mate, is go on vacation with them. Go to a different country where not everything is familiar, where you're going to experience unknowns and different contexts and stressful events and that really if you can spend two weeks in a foreign country with someone and that really gives you a quicker assay of their level of emotional stability as well as some other variables. But yeah, a how they handle stress and latency, they return to baseline, those are some key telltale signs.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:26:04] Oh, that's interesting. That's really useful. I think a lot of us probably needed that 10 years ago, but hey, if you don't know what we're talking about because you've never experienced it, just go ahead and make a note of it as mentally. That's definitely a useful rule of thumb.

Jason DeFillippo: [00:26:18] You're listening to the Jordan Harbinger Show with our guest, Dr. David Buss. We'll be right back.

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[00:28:06] Thanks for listening and supporting the show. Your support of our advertisers is what keeps us on the air and to learn more and get links to all the great discounts you just heard, visit jordanharbinger.com/deals, and don't forget those worksheets for today's episode. That link is in the show notes at jordanharbinger.com/podcast, and now for the conclusion of our interview with Dr. David Buss.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:28:24] Back to the apps. I think a lot of these apps are designed by college guys in their dorm rooms. So it's catering to some of this base mail stuff that we got, that we grow up with.

Dr. David Buss: [00:28:39] Yeah, well certainly, I mean Tinder is known for being a short-term mating app. I mean it's not exclusively, I mean I know people who've gotten married to people they met on Tinder, but it's much more of a short term mating app then let's say, OkCupid or eHarmony or some of the other ones.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:29:01] Yeah. I've got a friend who got married to somebody from Tinder, but it's not the usual story, of course.

Dr. David Buss: [00:29:06] Yeah. Well, and then there's another one that I'm sure you've heard about called a Bumble.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:29:12] Yes.

Dr. David Buss: [00:29:12] Which is based here in Austin. And it's kind of like Tinder, except that it requires women to make the first move and then if the guy reciprocate then they can start a conversation. But it's interesting in that it gives women the feeling that they are more in charge and less bombarded by creeps. So I mean this is something that women deal with. I mean I know this one woman, she got on a dating site. It wasn't Tinder, it was a different one, but within something like a week, 500 guys had expressed an interest in her and she went through laboriously each of these 500 profiles and then she picked one to have coffee with and then it turned out there was no chemistry. And so that one fell through. But whereas guys, and this is very well documented, do more of a high volume strategy when they're on these dating sites.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:30:06] Yeah. I don't think, no offense, we didn't need a scientific study to know that men are growing for a high volume when it comes to women on Tinder.

Dr. David Buss: [00:30:13] Yeah.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:30:14] I hope we didn't spend too much funding on that one. But yeah, that definitely makes sense. I know from just my own biology and the way that I thought about women in college especially, or when I was single, that volume strategy is where we're going because men -- tell me if this parallels your research. Men, we would love to just hook up first and then decide whether we like the person more than that, whereas I think with women it tends to be kind of the opposite.

Dr. David Buss: [00:30:42] Yes, yeah. Women generally need a little bit more information, but you know it also, I mean these things do vary. One of the thing a variables that's really interested me lately is sex ratio in the mating pool because things really dramatically shift. I mean, if there's a surplus of women relative to men, then things shift much more to short term mating and women basically are forced to become -- fulfill men's desires for that sex quickly before you know the person very well, whereas when they're the surplus of men in the mating pool, it's the opposite. Relationships tend to be very stable, they tend to be very committed. Guys who are successful enough to attract a woman, basically hold on for dear life and do heavy mate guarding. But the sex ratio shifts, I mean I go to give talks at different universities and colleges, and I notice it even when I go to a university where there's a 60 percent women, 40 percent men, women are dressed more provocatively, they're dressed in skimpier clothes, shorter skirts, et cetera. They show more skin and basically because the whole system has to shift or it doesn't have to, but it does shift more to a short-term mating strategy compared to when there's an equal sex ratio or a surplus of men.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:31:59] Right. So if there's more women, they have to show more skin to try to get catching them and keep them. And if there's more men than men have to be a little bit more -- act a little bit more jealous I guess, and do a little bit more mate guarding.

Dr. David Buss: [00:32:13] Yeah, exactly. Because basically the rarer sex is the more valuable sex. So I mean if you have say 60 women for every 40 men, that means that there are going to be a lot of women who are mateless at least if they just do mate with one person, and so it intensifies competition in the more frequent sex.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:32:38] Yeah, that makes sense. And I know New York has that issue as well for—

Dr. David Buss: [00:32:43] Oh yeah, yeah.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:32:43] Women can talk about that a lot in New York.

Dr. David Buss: [00:32:45] Yeah, yeah. Especially Manhattan, large cities in general tend to draw a large volume of single women. And so yeah, so the surplus of women occurs. Yeah, especially strong in New York, but also in places like Los Angeles and other big cities.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:33:03] Mate switching, this is what your paper was about. The most recent one that I read, mate switching the mate switching hypothesis and I thought this was, I think this is a really interesting set of hypotheses and just goes along with our evolutionary biology and evolutionary psychology tract here. Tell us what mates switching is. It's pretty obvious I would think, but I want your definition and then of course, I want to talk about the causes here. Because speaking of mate guarding, I think this is something that men fear and I think that women are also afraid of this type of behavior. Ruining their own relationships.

Dr. David Buss: [00:33:37] Yeah. Well, okay, so just by way of a little bit of evolutionary background in ancestral environments the probability that your mate would -- let's say a woman from a woman's perspective, probability that her mate might die get killed in a small group warfare, or might get disease, might get injured or might leave her was pretty high. And so women who cultivated a backup made would've been an a in a better position than women who didn't. And so basically there are a number of -- mates switching is simply either laying the groundwork for getting out of one relationship and into another or just having that what I call mating insurance. So something might happen to your house, you get house insurance, you have car insurance. We also have mate insurance, people have backup mates, and in case something should go wrong and it might not necessarily be someone that they switched to permanently, but it might be like a transitional relationship. So that's a little bit of background for a selection pressure.

[00:34:54] The other key selection pressure is going to be when a mate value discrepancy opens up. So basically people tend to pair off based on similarity and mate value. So the eights tend to go with the eights, the tens with tens, the sixth with the sixth, et cetera. Okay, but you can have an eight start out with an eight. But over time, let's say the guy loses his job or becomes an alcoholic or something goes wrong, or from the woman's perspective, perhaps her mate value increases, they move to a different environment or her career takes off. And so it's very difficult to maintain perfectly matched mate value trajectories over time, but if a mate value discrepancy opens up, so you're an eight and person you started with was an eight, but now they're a six. Well, people start becoming dissatisfied with the relationship and look to trade up, look to divest themselves of their existing mate and either get back into the mating pool or trade up with someone who has shown an interest in them. So that's a little bit of background.

[00:36:03] Now, one of the interesting things about mate switching is that if you asked, and this is where I part ways with some of my evolutionary psychology colleagues, so if you asked let's say a hundred evolutionary psychologists, why do women have affairs? I would bet something like 95 percent of them or more would say good genes that, they argue for the good genes hypothesis. That is women try to pursue what they call a dual mating strategy, a securing investment and resources from one guy, but obtaining superior genes from another guy. And there's some evidence for that, but I think there's a lot more evidence for the mate switching hypothesis, which has been relatively neglected in the research literature on this. And so some clues that I assemble, some empirical findings that I assembled as support this are one, women who have affairs tend to be unhappy with their relationship, sexually and emotionally, and you may think, well this is of course is obvious. Of course, women who are unhappy are going to have more likely to have affairs. But the interesting thing is, is not true for men. It's true for women but not men. So if you compare men who have affairs with men who don't, there's no difference in their happiness with the relationship.

[00:37:23] Okay. Second women who have affairs tend to fall in love with their affair partner. One study found that 79 percent did. With men, it's only about a third, and so this would be a terrible design feature if all you're trying to do from a female perspective is to obtain good genes from your affair partner, falling in love with him, becoming attached to him is exactly the opposite of what you want. You want to get the good genes and then cast them aside or make sure you don't jeopardize your primary mating relationship. So those are two pieces of information.

[00:38:01] And then a third is with actual molecular genetic studies. We know that the earlier estimates of paternity uncertainty rates that is the person that you believe to be the father is actually not the genetic father. Those rates turn out to be far lower than initially thought. So it used to be believed in people including me, believe this, that the rates were like 10, 12 percent paternity uncertainty rates. But it turns out large scale studies and meta-analyses now reveal it's more like one to one to two percent. And so what that means is that very, very few women are pursuing a this dual mating strategy, getting genes from one guy and resource from another. Now of course, it's possible that ancestrally it was more common and that may be in studies of more traditional societies, it might reveal that that's currently unknown. But I think that the mate switching hypothesis to explain why women have affairs is much more plausible. There's a lot more evidence in support of it compared to this dual mating strategy hypothesis.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:39:10] So as men, looking at some of what you just mentioned here, especially with the status, as men, it seems like we constantly need to be increasing our value or at least making sure that our value relative to that of our significant other wife or girlfriend is increasing or higher. And this also explains why men get so insecure when their wife or girlfriend becomes successful, gets a bigger career, gets a big break.

Dr. David Buss: [00:39:34] That's right.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:39:35] And maybe intuitively or instinctually, we realize we're in trouble even -- a lot of people say, “Oh, it's the male ego. Get over yourself.” But really there's some science behind this that says, “Hey, you might want to pay attention. You're slipping.” Even if you're not the one slipping, you're slipping relative to your significant other, to your mate.

Dr. David Buss: [00:39:55] Right. And it's the relative that's important, and it is true, yeah, men are threatened by it. The fact is divorce rates are twice as high if the woman makes more than the man in terms of income than the reverse. The way I interpret that is we know that women place greater priority on status and resources and if the guy fails to fulfill those desires, women are not happy about it, and so now this doesn't apply to everybody there. I mean, I know couples where the woman is more successful than the man and they're perfectly fine. But this I --, we're just talking on average here. Discrepancy in terms of professional success is going to create unhappiness in the woman and the guys are going to be threatened for perfectly legitimate reasons, at least statistically.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:40:47] So is it just income? There's got to be more to the picture. I'm sure a lot of thought or possibly this is subconscious goes into whether or not to a female implements or a woman implements a mate switching strategy.

Dr. David Buss: [00:41:01] Yeah, yeah, of course. It's not, it's not solely income. As a matter of fact, I think it's income might even be the least of it, although a lot of studies show income is pretty important, but I think it's more the qualities that lead to resources and status. So is the guy ambitious? Is he industrious? I actually know a woman who recently got divorced at her initiation because the guy she married, she thought he was a go getter. I thought he was ambitious and hardworking and it turned out he was just a slacker. I mean he was smart and if he applied himself, could have been very successful. But he preferred to hang out with his buds, go to bars, take trips to Mexico, et cetera. It's these qualities that are correlated with or that predict success that women tend to. So if the guy's income slips a little, if he's hardworking, then there's not necessarily a problem. If his income slips because he's playing video games all day and sitting around with a six pack of beer on his stomach, then that's going to be a problem.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:42:15] That's funny. That's interesting. And it's also really good news for those of us that might be a little insecure about where we are in our career. It isn't necessarily just our level of income. It has to do with a total picture, including I've read our potential and I read that when I was in law school because I remember going, why are law students attractive? I mean theoretically or medical students more attractive because theoretically we're just as broke. We're actually more broke than a regular student because we have more debt, but it's the potential that's being measured.

Dr. David Buss: [00:42:47] Right, yeah. I first wrote a wrote about that in my book, The Evolution of Desire, that's exactly what women look for is they look for that future resource trajectory, not necessarily the how thick his wallet is at the moment.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:43:01] And is this happening subconsciously because I think there's a lot of women right now who are like “This guy, I can't believe this guy. I'm not thinking about this.” “How dare he say or imply this?” Is this happening at a subconscious level?

Dr. David Buss: [00:43:15] I think for the most part it is, some women are consciously aware of it. I mean, of course, I don't know, I mean I've supervised about 30 PhDs and about half of them have been women. And so the women that I've supervised, they're very aware of it. Of course, it could be because they are very familiar with the scientific work on that. So there was this one anecdote where one told me she was having a conversation with her friend and one that asked the other like, “Why are you going out with this guy? He's so short.” And then the other woman replied, “Well he's very tall and he stands on his wallet.”

Jordan Harbinger: [00:43:55] Oh wow! That burns.

Dr. David Buss: [00:43:58] But I think a lot of it is goes on under the hood so to speak, outside of our conscious awareness.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:44:06] Yeah, that makes sense.

Dr. David Buss: [00:44:06] Yeah. When might just become unhappy with the relationship and not necessarily know exactly why.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:44:14] Yeah. Because I don't -- I want to make sure that we're not gay. We don't get put on blast. Like, “Hey look, this is ridiculous. It doesn't make any sense. This isn't how women are thinking.” We're not trying to put our blame women for relationship problems or anything like that. This is just one of many biological processes that happens inside relationship dynamics. So I just want to clarify that.

Dr. David Buss: [00:44:36] Yeah, yeah. Absolutely.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:44:38] Now how do we track our own mate value? Can we do that? Are we able to sort of take a look at what we've got and focus on the right things? Because I think a lot of guys are like, I need to get a Ferrari. I need to get money. I need to get this. I need to get a six pack, whatever. How do we track our own mate value? Is that possible? Is it worth doing?

Dr. David Buss: [00:44:57] Yeah, that's a great question, and there isn't a lot of work, a lot of scientific work on it. So what I can offer is just some speculations and my speculation is that we do track it, and exactly how we do, I don't know, but anecdotally you see this all the time, that people say, “Oh, she's out of my league,” or “He's out of her league,” or “She's too good for you.” These kinds of anecdotal things that really reflect mate value discrepancies, and people do, I actually think in male brains there's a switch that goes off when they suddenly experience a dramatic boost in status, like they had a struggling act or suddenly has a hit movie or a struggling musician suddenly has a hit record that in the male brain there's this switch of, “Oh, now I'm entitled both the more short-term mating opportunities, but also I'm entitled the higher mate value partner.” And you see this a lot with the movie stars. So I mean like Jim Carey was one, that had a very stable relationship. As soon as he became famous, all of a sudden he broke up, did some short-term mating and then remade it with a variety of women. Sylvester Stallone's another one. I want to say, and don't know the details of Jon Hamm, but he was in like a 20 year relationship and then Mad Men hit. And then somehow next thing I know he and his partner have broken up.

[00:46:31] Now we don't know an individual cases, whether it's the success of the male that has caused the breakup. I mean, it's probably going to be highly variable, but these are just anecdotes, but I think they're enough evidence to suggest that people do track their mate value. And I think part of the way that they do it is they track it by other people's reactions to them. The status in which they are -- the status and esteem in which they are held by members of the group. And we all track, we track our on and we track other people's status.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:47:05] That's got to be hard to withstand. And I know that I'm going to come across as such an a-hole for saying this, but it's got to be tough as a guy too. I can put myself in the shoes of somebody who is dating someone for a really long time and then suddenly becomes world famous, A-list celebrity and is like, “Hey, I can do all of these things that I've fantasized about as a kid. The world is unlimited. Is that going to be all right with you, Honey?” “No.” “Okay, let's figure out how we can work this out.” It's just really hard to reconcile.

Dr. David Buss: [00:47:35] Yeah. Especially, yeah, in the modern world. I mean, we evolved in the context of mild polygyny where men were legally permitted to take multiple mates if they had the status and resources to do so. I mean, historically 93, not 93, 83 percent of cultures were polygynous and permitted this. And so what used to be divesting of a mate was simply in ancestral times the acquisition of an additional, an additional mate. But in the modern environment, we have a presumptive monogamy and so we don't, we don't do that. Although some men, some men do, and then -- but we in essence practice this through serial mating.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:48:18] What is serial mating?

Dr. David Buss: [00:48:19] Mating with it. I don't mean Cheerios or Wheaties, I mean mating with one person, breaking up, and mating with another person, breaking up. So people go through, you know, I mean, it's very rare. So one statistic that I cite actually in the Mates Switching Paper is that 85 percent of people have gone through at least one romantic breakup, and so what that means is people don't find the one and only when they're 18 years old and then have lifelong monogamy for the rest of their lives. We go through a series of relationships typically, and that's what I mean by serial mating. Mating with one person for a while, breaking up and then mating with another person for a while.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:49:00] Sure, yeah. It makes sense. You didn't mean cereal, it took me a minute to let that sink in. I would imagine it'd be pretty tough to mate with a Cheerio although I guarantee you some of those listening has tried. I dare, I promise you that. All right, so the mate switching hypothesis provides an alternative as to why women have affairs, including things like mate insurance, backup mates, and things like that. Can you take us down that road? Because there are a lot of -- there are a lot of seemingly innocuous things in here like “Oh it's fine if my girlfriend is friends of the opposite sex,” which it is and should be. But sometimes guys get jealous about that. We used to think and we do often think those guys are being ridiculous or being insecure, but they're not completely off base. This is part of the mate switch strategy potentially.

Dr. David Buss: [00:49:48] Yes, that's right. So in the paper and another writings I talk about the variety of different sort of submates switching hypotheses. So one I mentioned before is what I call the mate insurance notion that the people, men and women do this. They cultivate backup mates that they may not ever act on but, and these might be opposite sex friends. So he's just a friend, she's just a friend, but there's the sort of made insurance idea. Then there is using an affair, well you -- woman or man might fall in love with someone else and just want to switch mates literally, some use in the fear as a mate --what I call a mate expulsion tactic. That is, it's much easier to divest yourself of a relationship if you've already got someone kind of waiting with open arms. And so there are a variety of -- and then some use affairs just to test the waters to see whether there might be someone better for them out there or to see what their mate value is.

[00:50:55] You talked about how do we assess our mate value? Well, one way is you get out there in the meeting pool and see who's interested. If there are a lot of eights, nines and tens who are very eager to mate with you, then that reveals something about your current mate value. People who've been in a relationship for a while don't necessarily have the most accurate understanding of their mate value because you've been out of the mating marker for a while, but when you're single or get back into the mating market, that's when you find out, and people reenter the mating market at a different stage in their life. They might have things they didn't have before, like kids or debt or they might have a more successful career. And so it helps to get information from assessments and other people's reactions to you. So I don't know if that answers your question. I think I've got a little rambly there.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:51:50] Well, yeah, I was hinting at the idea that a lot of times people have opposite sex friends. And of course, most of the time they're just friends probably. There's not a whole lot going on there, but sometimes it can be a backup mate. And we can tell sometimes when this might be the case because maybe that person gets really jealous when their quote unquote friend finds himself in a long-term relationship. “Oh, I don't like her.” “I don't like him. He's weird.” I don't know if there's bad things about this guy. And it's like, “What are you doing? This is your friend. Don't you want them to be happy? Why are you acting so jealous?” And sometimes we don't even know why we're doing that.

Dr. David Buss: [00:52:23] Yeah, yeah. Well, and I think that you can even predict that attraction to quote opposite sex friends is going to be higher than average because just like there is a sort of native mating people mate based in part on similarity, of interests, political orientations, a worldviews, education intelligence, et cetera. People assort with their friends on those exact same characteristics, and so on average people are going to become more attracted to their opposite sex friends than the average person. And sometimes friends can become rivals, so statistically speaking there is a threat, and so these attributions to threatened male ego and insecurity I think really don't do the trick of explaining what's going on there in the underlying psychology -- in our underlying mating psychology. That is, we're sometimes these threats are indeed real.

[00:53:23] One reason why you mentioned jealousy and I've talked a lot about jealousy. I wrote a book about jealousy called The Dangerous Passion. But one of the things is, is that jealousy is activated when there is a threat and it doesn't have to be an immediate threat, but a threat lurking on the horizon of relationships such as, “Oh, he's just a friend. We just like hanging out.” But people intentionally suppress their expression of jealousy because expressing jealousy is in part a signal that you are threatened and it might be a signal that you are lower in mate value than your partner. So it's kind of an interesting emotion and that it's functional in that it leads us to do mate retention tactics and to respond to legitimate threats, but it also is a can be damaging to express it too much because of what it reveals about your own mate value.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:54:15] We just put every opposite sex, platonic relationship under the bus with this, I feel like. Dr. David Buss, thank you so much for coming on the show. There's so much here. I'd love to get into the jealousy stuff and there's even things here about how women's behavior changes when they're ovulating. I mean this is just fascinating material for me. So I really thank you for your time and we'll have to have you back again as well.

Dr. David Buss: [00:54:38] Yeah, great pleasure to talk to you.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:54:42] Time flies whenever I talked to that guy, Jason. I'm telling you it's just flies. He's got so many -- I never get through my notes with David Buss.

Jason DeFillippo: [00:54:49] No, we looked at it. We're like, “Oh, we're at 50 minutes. Maybe it's time to wrap.” We only have six pages of notes left to go.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:54:55] Exactly, yeah. I'd love to talk status. I mean that was my jam back when I was doing the whole dating thing and really when I was inventing the Advanced Human Dynamics curriculum recently I went through a lot of the status stuff that I teach to military intelligence agencies and things like that, and the roots are all in mating. They really are all in survival and reproduction. We were talking offline off air with Dr. David Buss about this is what butts selfies are. This is what Jim photos are about. This is what Instagram as a network is about, and he took it one step further, Jason. He was saying the entire Internet is basically a dating app. The whole universe is about dating and mating.

Jason DeFillippo: [00:55:36] Yeah, that was pretty amazing. I cannot wait to have him back on to discuss his next book that's coming out pretty soon, I think.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:55:42] There's just so much. Every time he drops the paper, I'm just like, yep, and just inhale that thing. Dr. David Buss, of course, we'll link to some resources for him and other books and things that he's authored in the show notes. Great big thank you to Dr. David Buss. Want to know how I managed to book all these great people and manage my relationships using systems and tiny habits? Check out our Six-Minute Networking Course that's free. It's over at jordanharbinger.com/course. A lot of people say, “I'm going to do this.” “Yeah, I'll do this.” “Oh, I've got a lot this week. I'll do it next month, whatever.” The problem with that, kicking the can down the road, we're not able to make up for lost time when it comes to relationships, networking, the number one mistake I see people making is postponing this and not digging the well before thirsty. Once you need relationships, you want to leverage relationships. You're too late. These drills are designed to take just a few minutes per day, so I don't care if you're busy. This is the type of habit you just can't ignore. It's not fluff. This is crucial. It's all at jordanharbinger.com/course, and it's free, so quit your crying.

[00:56:42] Speaking to building relationships, tell me your number one takeaway here from David Buss. I'm @jordanharbinger on both Twitter and Instagram. I'm doing a lot more on Instagram these days, so hit me up there. Great way to engage with the show. This episode was produced and edited by Jason “Swipe Right” DeFillippo. Show notes are by Robert Fogarty. Jimmy helped us prep with this one. Thank you, Jimmy. Worksheets by Caleb Bacon. Booking back-office and last minute miracles by Jen Harbinger, and I'm your host Jordan Harbinger. The fee for the show is that you share it with friends when you find something useful, which is hopefully in every single episode. So please share the show with those you love and even those you don't. Got a lot more in the pipeline. We're excited to bring it to you. And in the meantime, do your best to apply what you hear on the show so you can live what you listen, and we'll see you next time.